Private Eye 4 - Nobody Dies in Chinatown

by Max Lockhart

  "While these guys are busy belly-bumping their way toward a pension"—he dropped the money on the table, glanced at the three cops—"I'm going to look into this. This guy isn't going to just lose his name to somebody else. This time somebody really did die in Chinatown. And I'm going to find out why."

  "What's the big deal here, Cleary? It was just one Chinaman robbing another Chinaman and a third Chinaman got killed."

  Cleary didn't dignify Hine's remark by answering, but finished his drink, waved away Frank Tang's offer of the fresh one, and started for the door. "See ya, Charlie."

  "You remember what I said, Jack," Fontana said. "Don't push."

  Cleary nodded to Tang as he passed. The Chinese proprietor was the only civilized man in the house, himself included.

  "Hey, Cleary," Sfakis yelled after him. "You still chasing ghosts?"

  He didn't dignify that comment with a reply, either. There was no point in trying to explain what he wasn't sure he understood himself. He had come to Chinatown to bury a ghost, and now there were two ghosts. Both Chinese, both innocent, both swept away in the gutter like so much trash. If he could avenge the laborer's death, maybe it would balance the scales, and the other ghost would give him some peace.

  He walked, his mind a blank, until the soft light of dawn picked out details of Chinatown. The street was deserted, a couple of slow-moving vegetable trucks and an occasional work-weary Chinese coming off an all-night shift were the only signs of life. A Chinese noticed his Caucasian face and ducked his head. A white man in Chinatown at dawn could only mean trouble.

  Cleary passed storefronts with catfish lying in shallow boxes of ice, melting on the sidewalk, stacks of exotic vegetables on the pavement in front of the closed shops. It was foreign, it was familiar, it was part of his past; a door he had never closed. He had to close it this time, stop the leaks of past into present, or he would be trapped worse than a convict in a prison of his own making. He had to restore the order of things in his own world, and he could do it only by changing this one. So be it.

  He stopped and shook a cigarette out of his pack. As he flicked open his lighter and lit up, he looked up at a familiar street sign marking the intersection of Hill and Flower streets, the one place he didn't want to be, not tonight, not ever. Like the streets, her life and his had intersected only once.

  Light and time seemed to blur, surroundings to lose color. He saw her on the other side of the street, her large, almond-shaped eyes looking at him with fear and hopelessness and wanting. The wind molded the red satin dress against her slender body and ruffled the silky curtain of black hair. He caught a faint odor of jasmine and lifted his hand. The sun rose over the buildings, caught her in its spotlight, and she vanished like mist, leaving behind—nothing.

  He blinked, his hand and arm frozen in a motion of reaching out to touch what wasn't there. He staggered across the street, his legs moving in slow motion like sluggish, hung-over winos in the morning light. He reached the spot where he had seen her, searched the alleys on either side of the block, peered through locked shop windows. Finally he sank down on the sidewalk, resting his head on his bent knees. She was there; he saw her, saw her dress blow in the wind, even smelled her perfume. Raising his head, he looked back across the street at a limp banner, lettered in Chinese and hung from a second-story window. He covered his face with his hands, felt the stubble that reminded him he hadn't shaved in three days, and wondered if he was completely crazy. He couldn't have seen her, couldn't have traced the shape of her breasts when the wind flattened her high-collared Chinese tunic against her body, couldn't have smelled her perfume. There was no wind this morning. The air was absolutely motionless, as if it, too, was holding its breath waiting to see Jack Cleary shatter into more pieces than an exploded firecracker.

  He pushed himself up, heard bones pop in protest, and swayed dizzily as he straightened. Not enough sleep. That was what was wrong. He hadn't slept in a couple of days, and he was disoriented. He had read somewhere that lack of sleep caused hallucinations. The alternative, that he was really seeing ghosts, was impossible. But in case it wasn't, he was going to exorcise that particular ghost. It was either that, or Fontana might really find him in an alley somewhere, not dead, but a blithering idiot.

  Looking up and down the street, he spotted a phone booth and stumbled toward it. Reaching it, he rested his head against one of its glass walls for a second, taking deep breaths until he stopped shaking. He raised his head and looked back toward the place where she had materialized. "It's not going to happen again. I'm not going to let it," he called to the empty street. "It's going to be different this time. I'm going to make it different."

  A Chinese shopkeeper unlocked his shop door and looked curiously at Cleary, then went back inside and dropped the shutter over his door again. Foreign devils meant trouble, but crazy foreign devils were worse.

  Cleary reached in his pocket for a coin and inserted it into the telephone. Dialing his office number, he gently pressed his thumb against his closed eyelids, hoping to relieve the dry, burning sensation, while he listened to the phone ring.

  "Just a minute," answered a voice on the other end. Cleary heard the receiver thud against something as Johnny Betts dropped it.

  "Damn it to hell!" Johnny's exasperated voice came out of the receiver, then the sound of paper products being crushed, then more cursing. "Tomato beef chow mein all over my T-shirt. Stuff tasted like garbage anyway. Probably canned in Iowa." The Everly Brothers singing "All I Have to Do Is Dream" served as background music to his grousing.

  The receiver was picked up again. "Nice of you to call, Cleary." Johnny's voice was beyond exasperation and approaching anger. "I've only been waiting here since two A.M. Had to call for Chinese carry-in, and let me tell you, that restaurant on the corner ain't ran by no Chinese. That guy never got closer to China than Kansas."

  "I thought you said Iowa."

  "Iowa, Kansas, what's the difference? Neither one of them is famous for Chinese food. Now what did you need at"—there was a second's silence—"six o'clock in the morning! You better be dead or in jail, Cleary, 'cause If you're not, you're dead and I'm in jail for killing you."

  "Shut up, Betts, and listen."

  "Hey, man, you sound like shit. Like maybe you swallowed sandpaper and it stuck in your throat. You been to bed yet?"

  "No, I've been too busy. Now listen. A man died last night, Betts. I want you to find out everything there is to know about him."

  "Is this a new case, or does it have something to do with that bail jumper? Did you have any better luck at finding him than I did?"

  "Betts, the dead man is the bail jumper," explained Cleary, grinding out his cigarette with his heel.

  "What would anybody want to kill him for? I mean, the bail bondsman was pretty mad, but not enough to kill him for two hundred bucks. It's not like he could collect a bounty on the guy." Johnny still sounded bleary-eyed, which was the only reason Cleary wasn't going back to the office to pull his head off and shrink it.

  "Betts, you sound like you got tomato beef chow mein for brains this morning. Now shut up and let me explain." Cleary did so in as few words as he could manage, interrupted frequently with Johnny's "damn's" and "I'll be's."

  There was a long silence on the other end of the line before Cleary heard Johnny clear his throat. "You know, Cleary, I can't see why we're getting involved. It's not like we've got a paying client. The bail bondsman sure isn't going to pay to find out who killed the Chinaman. It sounds like a plain vanilla murder during a robbery, and, furthermore, it sounds like a tong war. Those tongs are mean sons of bitches, and I don't think it's a good idea to stick our noses in their business. We're liable to get them chopped off."

  Cleary rubbed his hand over his face. He was getting a little tired of everyone telling him to stay out of Chinatown. "This is something I have to do, Betts. It's personal. I owe somebody a debt."

  "Yeah? Well, you nearly got your head blown off just yesterday paying off a pers
onal debt. Have you forgotten Joe Quinlan?"

  "No, I haven't forgotten Joe."

  "You know what I think, Cleary?" asked Johnny, his voice sounding too wise for his years.

  "No, but I'm sure you're going to tell me."

  "Damn right I am. I think you ought to start paying cash. Every time you owe somebody, it's dangerous to your health. I think you ought to let this one go. You're in no shape to be tied up in knots again. You're frayed around the edges as it is."

  Cleary thought of his hallucination. "In this case, Betts, it's dangerous to my health if I don't get involved, and you let me worry about my frayed edges."

  "Talking to you is like talking to a brick wall, Cleary. You be careful, you hear?"

  "Sure, kid. I'll walk like I'm skating on ice."

  "Then you better wear a life preserver, because sure as shootin', you'll fall through the only hole in the pond."

  FIFTEEN

  Cleary parked his Eldorado in front of the old, square-brick station house on First and Hill streets. Turning off his ignition, he sat for a while, watching uniformed cops marching young thugs with greasy haircuts, old winos with stained trousers, bunko artists in loud suits, wife beaters with their knuckles still bruised, and the pros at crime, in and out of the front entrance. Everybody was protesting their innocence except the pros. They knew better. Don't talk to the cops; talk to a lawyer instead. Let him talk to the cops. It was the best way to avoid having a tired, overworked, underpaid uniform belt you across the mouth.

  Cleary got out and walked into the station house.

  The institutional green plaster walls were chipped, dirty, and bilious looking. The desks were old and battered, with drawer pulls missing, and legs inexpertly nailed or glued back on. The building was always cold in the winter months and too hot in the summer. It was old, rundown, with faulty plumbing and inadequate lighting. It smelled of sweat, urine, vomit, and fear. It was familiar, and it used to be home.

  A young thug wearing a greasy duck's ass and three-inch burns was handcuffed to the radiator. Chewing on a matchstick and playing imaginary drums to the rock and roll beat blasting from a small radio on the desktop, the thug was swaying and oblivious, his mind, what there was of it, in some other place.

  Topper Hull, a middle-aged detective sporting the world's shortest brush cut on a well-oiled skull, and wearing a starched white shirt with rolled-up sleeves and a cross-draw holster, reached over and turned off the radio.

  The thug stopped his beat in midair, a sullen, surprised look on his face. "Hey, I was listening to that."

  "I told you to keep that radio off, Elvis," said Hull in a resigned voice. Resigned, because the detective knew the thug didn't have sense enough to drop the subject. Resigned also because he knew he would be forced to do something about it, and he was tired of young punks. He would rather deal with a pro any day of the week. The pros knew the rules.

  He stepped away from the desk toward Cleary. "It's been a while, Jack."

  Cleary shook hands. Hull was a solid, unimaginative detective, but he gave it his best shot, which was more than Cleary could say for Hine and Sfakis. "I need to make a statement, Hull. Murder down in Chinatown."

  "I heard about it. Gusalito'll take it," he said, pointing to a desk. "Excuse me a minute." He walked back to his own desk, where the thug had defiantly snapped the radio back on, cranked up the volume, and was returning to his imaginary skins with a vengeance.

  Hull reached over, picked up the radio, and suddenly brought it down on his knee, neatly breaking it in half. He handed the two pieces back to the thug who stared dully at them. "I told you to leave the fucking thing off." He walked back to Cleary and Gusalito.

  Gusalito, a younger, slimmer version of Hull, and wearing a snap-brim hat to cover his receding hairline, looked at Cleary. "We get a dozen like him every day," he said, nodding toward the thug. "Country's going to hell in a handbasket. Now let's get this statement done."

  Cleary sat in the wooden chair in front of the desk and dictated his statement, hearing his voice crack and sound more hoarse as he talked. Beyond the tone of his voice, he didn't listen. He had been over the events so many times since the murder happened, he was like an automatic. He just kept firing until he was empty.

  Gusalito slurped coffee out of a paper cup and laboriously typed the report as Cleary dictated. With his two index fingers, he punched the last few words. "There, that should do it, and in triplicate." He ripped the report out of the old Underwood and handed it to Cleary. "Give it a quick proofread, and we're done."

  Cleary scanned it quickly, noticed the detective's typing hadn't improved, and signed the statement. "Thanks, Gus," he said.

  "Shoot-out in Chinatown. You could always draw the action, Jack, just like a damn lightening rod. Stick you in the ground, then wait with a net to catch the falling hoods."

  Hull shook his head. "You're wasting your time, Cleary. We've had a bumper crop of homicides this year. We got forty open cases just like this one, most of them in Chinatown."

  Cleary glanced at the report, seeing the intellectual face of the dead Chinese instead, and put it on Gusalito's desk. "Now you got forty-one."

  He got up and started toward the front entrance when he heard a boisterous commotion at the end of the hall. He turned to see Hine and Sfakis leading in a handcuffed young Chinese gang member. Sporting a duck-assed pompadour and wearing a bloodstained, yellow-and-green-satin dragon jacket, the young kid was one of a growing number of Chinese, mostly young, who straddled two cultures. They loved American rock music, haircuts, and life-style, but the dragon jackets stated emphatically that they were still Chinese, still held in thrall by the tongs.

  Hine and Sfakis held out their fingers in the old V for victory sign. The other cops set up a cheer like the two had just pitched a no-hitter in the seventh game of the World Series, and the kid was the trophy. He looked like a trophy in more Ways than one, thought Cleary, approaching the circle of cops surrounding the youngster. He looked like a wounded animal surrounded by joyous hunters. He also appeared to have had the shit kicked out of him recently. He glanced down at Hine's shoe and saw a red-brown smear on the toe.

  "You fat slobs got me framed up," began the young Chinese, his voice almost totally void of an accent.

  "I told you to shut up!" said Hine, grabbing him by the face and pinching his battered features together. "You a deaf Chinaman?"

  Sfakis nudged Hine in the ribs. Hine flinched, and Cleary hoped that meant the kid had gotten back some of his own. "Look who's here," said Sfakis, his head turning on its nonexistent neck.

  Cleary stopped next to the youngster and studied his eyes. The black, oblique orbs showed no sign of recognition. In fact, an expression of puzzlement mixed with hope replaced his defiant smirk, as though he saw Cleary as a chance to get out of a jam.

  "I didn't do it," the kid said to Cleary with a glance back toward Hine and Sfakis. "They're framing me."

  "Listen to that shit," Hine said to Sfakis.

  Cleary studied the green-and-yellow-satin jacket, thumbing through his memories like index cards. "You belong to Joe Boys," he said finally.

  The kid nodded, a little surprised that a Caucasian could distinguish between the various Chinese gangs. "I didn't rob nobody, mister. And I didn't kill nobody neither."

  A superior sneer curled up one side of Hine's lip. "He's your killer all right, Cleary," he said in a self-satisfied voice, and Cleary realized the detective was subtly mocking him for letting a skinny kid hold him at gunpoint. "He don't scare you without this, does he?" Hine dropped the ugly sawed-off shotgun on the desk with a thud.

  The Chinese boy's eyes rounded as much as his race's eyes could at the sight of the shotgun. "That's not mine! I never saw it before!"

  Hine backhanded the kid across the face, cutting off anything he wanted to say. "When I want something from you, I'll beat it out of you." Several cops snickered at the joke. Cleary felt sick.

  "You're chopped suey, kid," Hine continued
, dragging out his joke for the benefit of the crowd.

  The kid looked at the circle of tough Caucasians surrounding him, his eyes wider than before. Turning slowly he stopped and looked defiantly into Cleary's eyes. The expressions of puzzlement and hope were gone. This foreign devil with the unshaven face was no different than the rest. He had been stupid to look at him with hope. He would not be stupid again. He flashed a message of hatred at Cleary. He was captured, but not beaten. The foreign devils could not accomplish that.

  Sfakis put a mask, one of the Chinese masks used in the holdup, in front of the kid's face. For a second all Cleary could see of the boy were two blinking eyes.

  "Look familiar, 'Creary'?" he asked, grinning at his Chinese pronunciation.

  "You've been in Chinatown too long, Sfakis. You sound just like them. Close my eyes and I can't tell you from a tong gunman." He had the satisfaction of seeing the neckless wonder turn red.

  "That's not mine!" yelled the kid, trying to push the mask away.

  Sfakis punched him in the kidneys, two hard, crippling blows that sent the kid to his knees. Cleary clenched his fists to keep from delivering two punches to the same location on Sfakis's fat body. He was outnumbered, and he didn't think he would have any allies, not even Hull and Gusalito, They wouldn't understand hammering a cop over a Chink kid. And any blow the detective took from Cleary, he would double and give to the kid. That was just the way life worked. It was the order of things.

  Cleary had to satisfy himself with the dirtiest look he could muster. Sfakis shrugged it off. "These gang kids are are muscling in all over Chinatown. They don't deserve any better, and it gives us credit with the tongs. They don't like them any better than we do."

  Cleary watched the kid being pushed away toward the cell block. Something didn't feel right, but he couldn't pinpoint in his mind what was wrong. He needed to sort out his memories and images of last night. He looked down at the sawed-off shotgun and the Chinese clown mask on the table. Picking up the mask, he poked his finger through one of the eyeholes. He frowned again as unease prickled up his spine.