“Parked in front.”
“Get in. I’ll give you a ride.”
57
WE SAT IN THE OFFICIAL vehicle, hazards on, blocking traffic, and I gave him the whole sordid mess. About Murph and family, the guy with the dragon tattoo. About Daniel Zhang and Dorothy Zhang. About the men and women with the mauled faces. I didn’t mention the hot weapon I’d flashed on Daniel Zhang’s attackers.
“It seems as though there may be some intimidation going on,” Tang said.
“May be some intimidation? Four people were killed. Two kids and a woman included. I watched a guy get the shit kicked out of him.”
“I know, but this doesn’t…I can’t make any sense of this.” He scratched at his stubble. “Let’s break this down: we have two things going on—your buddy in Woodside and your friend Zhang up here.”
“Daniel Zhang is not my friend.”
“The thing in Woodside still doesn’t read like a street gang to me.”
“What about the pictures? The sick people? They connect Daniel Zhang to Woodside through his sister.”
“I can’t say that they do or that they don’t. Are you sure your buddy—what’s his name?”
“Paul Murphy.”
“Are you sure Paul Murphy wasn’t involved in anything unpleasant?”
“Like what?”
“Gambling, drugs, women…”
My initial reaction was no, of course not. But after the first knee-jerk, my surety—strong and solid as granite—crumbled. What the hell did I really know about Paul Murphy? That we’d been buddies ten years ago? The closeness I’d been feeling toward him since he’d died in my arms was an illusion. I knew nothing about Paul Murphy, father, scientist, dead man.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
“And Daniel Zhang?”
“I already said. I only met him yesterday.”
A car behind us laid on the horn, and Tang motioned the person around us. “Well, we’re not going to get too far with this.”
“So you’re not interested?”
“Man, give me a break here. I wasn’t interested and now I am, okay? Just because things don’t add up here doesn’t mean I don’t think something’s going on here. Something is going on, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“You said your guy had a tattoo?”
“Yes.”
“What did it look like?”
“It looked like the tail of a dragon or something. Red and black. On the left side of his neck.” I traced a finger under my ear. “Here.”
“Did it look like it came from behind? Like the rest of the piece might have been on his back?”
“I suppose. What does that mean?”
“Triad generally goes for a black dragon on the left biceps, white tiger on the right biceps. Some of them go for more, like, say, a big dragon down the back. They do it in the old style, hand poked, to show how much pain they can take.” He watched the traffic for a moment, then said, as much to himself as to me, “Tattoo suggests gang.”
“You said you didn’t think it was a gang.”
“I say a lot of things. That detective down in San Mateo, Sanchez, right? I’ll give her a call and have a conversation.”
“Good. Finally.”
“But I’m not on the Paul Murphy case. Not my turf, man.”
“Christ,” I said. “You guys are worse than public health with the jurisdiction thing.”
“My world’s big enough as it is. I don’t need to go rooting around down south for work.”
I opened the door, nearly dinging the side of the Corolla. “Hey,” Tang said, “I thought all you guys drove Mercedes.”
“And I thought you guys didn’t profile. We’ll talk soon, Inspector.”
58
AS I MADE MY WAY over the Golden Gate Bridge, red like a raw wound against the surging Pacific, I turned Paul Murphy over in my head, looked under that rock. Poked around the dark bits, the “gambling, drugs, women…”
Paul Murphy, gambler? No. Beer-soaked games of poker did not a gambler make.
Drug addict? The Pope was more likely to develop a raging crack habit than Paul Murphy, who had always been one of those “my body is my temple” types.
Women? Most of the pictures on Murph’s drive were women, sure, but I couldn’t see him risking hearth and home to sow his wild oats in such diseased territory. Still, there could be something there.
Back in school, Murph was what you’d call “a player,” if being such could be cleansed of its oilier connotations. He never seemed to want for female companionship, and was always bolting from the lab to have dinner with “a friend,” then returning to his bench relaxed and rejuvenated. For me, who seemed to be doing constant battle with the one woman I was dating at the time, the easy liquidity of his relationships was galling. He was never one to gab much about the girls, and I never got the sense that Murph felt they were conquests; it didn’t seem to me that he moved through women to shore up a weak ego. Rather, he just seemed to like them, and I mean all of them. He was democratic in his tastes. A plain-Jane, firebrand poli-sci PhD had as much chance as a former homecoming queen. Some guys got their jollies from extreme sports, some from combat, some from making money. With Murph, I thought, unkindly, it was women. He became expansive around the ladies. At every party where he had a female in tow, he would introduce me and, sotto voce, say that whoever was “a really terrific girl. Really great.” Then he’d be back at her side, beaming, that tree limb of an arm draped around her hips. How many times had he beamed? I wondered. How many hips at how many parties?
But the Casanova Murph had departed long ago, hadn’t he? Married, two little Murphys, a “monster of a mortgage”? I’m no naïf when it comes to the secrets people keep. The forward, twisting stride of disease—AIDS, syphilis, herpes—relies all too often on deceit. But I could not label Paul Murphy like that. I could not call him an adulterer.
And yet a question kept nipping at my heels: Why not?
I am uncomfortable with this, I thought. Take a break from it. Focus on Daniel Zhang. Flip the stone. Find nothing.
Concentrate on the road. Concentrate on Highway 101, then 37 east to Napa Valley. Watch the traffic flow through the concrete vessels arborized around the city. Watch the traffic stagnate, clot, coagulate to a line of crimson brake lights. Curse.
To Dorothy Zhang then, turn her over, the woman you were going to see. Think of Daniel again, who had undoubtedly talked to his sister. Think of Daniel, who Jack Tang suspected was involved in something unpleasant.
Wonder if Dorothy and Daniel and a man with a tattoo who was not Michael Kwong would be waiting for you. Wonder if calls were made to triads, Joe Boys, Wah Chings, to other monsters.
My guts knotted and I felt as though I were about to throw up. It wasn’t the hangover this time. It wasn’t the coffee. I thought: I am sick of this. I am sick of ignorance, sick of not knowing.
Try to concentrate on the scenery. Look at the Bay to your right. Watch the gulls. Feel sick again.
For luxury seekers not fortunate enough to have visited Napa, well, don’t get too worked up about it. It’s not some quaint jewel in wine country, not Edgartown amongst the cabernet, not Savannah nestled in zinfandel. Napa’s an old ag town originally born as a station stop for goods making their way south to San Francisco. Despite the cultural mystique of the place, the actual city has the struggling, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps feel of an old East Coast city—Reading, Pennsylvania, say. There’s been a good stab at redevelopment, centering largely on a revitalized riverfront, with pricey new eateries, galleries, a new museum. But pull back the curtain a bit, and you see a working, sweating village: low-slung office buildings, bail bondsmen, burger joints, and taquerias boasting a grade of “A” from the local health department.
But Napa is not Napa is not Napa—that is, the town is not the Valley and not the vineyards. The bulk of tourist dollars bypass the city. The money finds its way to the
wineries and tiny, precious, wallet-busting towns along Route 29, which cuts north-south through the Valley. Some of the best restaurants in the world are up here, in Yountville and St. Helena. I’d love to try one, but the five-hundred-dollar price tag for dinner for two was a bit of a buzz kill. I figured I could always trade the Corolla for an entrée, but I’d be left holding the bag for the appetizers, dessert, and tip.
Using the directions I’d gotten at Miles’s place, I found my way to a quiet street at the north edge of urban Napa, to a small complex of town houses that looked as if they were designed on an architect’s computer and dropped wholesale—trees, homes, kids on bikes—onto the ground.
I double-checked the address. Heart thudding with anxiety, I got out of the car.
The town house was a brown-shingled two-story faced by computer-generated shrubbery. I punched the button for the bell, bracing myself to go face-to-face with a Chinese beauty. Inside, a chime. The peephole darkened. A lock clicked. The door opened.
It was not Dorothy Zhang.
The guy wore dress pants with a white shirt, unbuttoned at the collar. He wore reading glasses and carried a newspaper draped across his arm. Middle-aged, middle height, Asian.
“May I help you?” he asked.
I said I hoped so and told him I was looking for Dorothy Zhang.
“I’m sorry,” he said, seeming confused. “Who are you looking for?”
I repeated her name. Behind him, the television quietly babbled some news program.
“Well, she doesn’t live here,” the man said with an avuncular tone, avuncular smile. “I don’t know who this woman is.”
Over his shoulder, in the living room, I could see a boy, seven or eight. He watched us solemnly. “That must be Timothy,” I said.
The man laughed. “No. That is not his name.” I waited for him to offer the boy’s name. He didn’t.
I asked, “Where’s his mother?”
He continued smiling pleasantly. “His mother is not here. May I ask your name?”
Since we were both lying here, I defaulted to a previous namesake. “Bert McBrooke. I’m a lawyer.”
“And what would you want with a Dorothy Zhang, Mr. McBrooke?”
“I really can’t say. You understand.”
“Of course. I apologize for asking.” The politeness of this exchange was so heavy, I felt like I was in Buckingham Palace, trading niceties with a duke.
“I’d like to talk to your—Is he your son?” I craned my neck to see the boy, who stepped out, then back, as if he had accidentally touched an electric fence.
“And I cannot possibly imagine the reason he would want to speak with you, Mr. McBrooke. Thank you for visiting us. Good day.”
Before the door closed, I caught another glimpse of the boy, staring at me with unblinking eyes.
59
THE NEXT DAY, I DID the most difficult thing I’d ever done. Well, maybe I exaggerate, but it was tough.
I sold the Corolla.
The more I thought about it, the more I decided the car was a liability. This aging gray thing with its Georgia plates was a beacon for anyone who chose to follow it. So, with a heavy heart, I sold my baby into the murky used-car market.
The representative of this market was a dealer in Napa I found through diligent research, that is, by driving past his lot. This particular functionary in the experienced-car trade was a white man in his fifties, face blasted red by a summer spent hocking his wares on the open lot.
After sticking his nose into the innards of my speed machine, he dropped the hood and frowned at me. “Five hundred.”
“Five hundred dollars?” I was incredulous.
“Yup.”
“Come on. I was thinking a thousand. The blue book is a thousand fifty.”
“Blue book for excellent condition.” He began a slow walk around the Corolla. “You got rust—” He pointed under the driver’s-side fender, to a cracking line of oxidized metal. “You got tears in the upholstery.” True enough; I’d torn the bejeezus out of the backseat hauling a mountain bike years ago. “You don’t have a CD player.”
“It plays cassettes. It has a sunroof.”
He looked at me like I was a moron.
“Okay. Nine hundred,” I said.
“Five twenty-five.”
“Eight fifty.”
“Five forty.”
“Eight hundred.”
“Five forty-five.”
I could see where this was going. He had me by the short hairs, as my grandfather would say. “Five forty-six,” I said firmly. “Cash.”
He smiled. “Sounds good to me.”
I’m sure it did. Asshole.
60
IN THE END, I NETTED five hundred forty-one dollars, since the bastard made me pay five bucks for a ride to the car rental agency. “Gas prices.” He shrugged. The irony that my car netted me about ten days of San Francisco rent wasn’t lost on me. That it brought me one-fourth what I paid for the laptop in my shoulder bag wasn’t lost on me either. There were a hundred other inequities that weren’t lost on me, but I had bigger things to worry about. For example, the stares I was getting at Glenfield Elementary School.
I’d arrived there midway through the school day, just as the kindergartners were being belched from the building. I’ll say this for the parents of Napa Valley: they are vigilant. For them, a thirty-something white guy, sitting in a nondescript car, parked near the front doors of an elementary school, is about as inconspicuous as a nudist at a Rotary meeting. And just about as welcome. After the fourth mom hurried her tot by my midsized Saturn, I decided to spare the worried parents any more strife.
So I drove aimlessly around Napa, letting my mind drift, which was a mistake. A drifting mind, I found out, took me right between the Scylla of tattooed men and the Charybdis of Brooke Michaels. For a second, I considered calling Brooke to check in, but scrapped the idea. With all the other things going on, deciding not to call Dr. Michaels was a small and probably Pyrrhic victory. But it made me feel better.
I was still feeling pangs about the Corolla, but the anonymity of my new wheels was a comfort. As was the highly functional air-conditioning, the sound system that consisted of more than just one tweeter, and the driver’s seat, which didn’t poke an unruly spring into my ass. My laptop was in the backseat, along with my deodorant and toothbrush. I was ready for anything.
61
I DITCHED THE CAR A good distance from the school and walked. The kindergartners were at home now, their mothers no doubt shivering at the memory of the creepy guy in the blue Saturn. The grounds were deserted, leaving me to enjoy the stunning September day. There were tidily planted flower beds outside the school, a flagpole with Old Glory hanging limply from its summit. The tinny sounds of band practice drifted from some unseen music room.
It had been only a few months since I’d last stepped foot on the grounds of an elementary school. The occasion had been a whooping cough outbreak in a rich suburb of Atlanta where quite a few of the affluent, Internet-savvy, and misinformed parents had gotten it into their heads that vaccinations were more of a liability than a benefit. Pertussis wasn’t even my bailiwick at CDC, but I wanted to see the disease close up, so I tagged along with the investigation. Two days with wheezing, grunting, miserable juveniles and their nitwit parents. My colleagues and I decided that nitwits who are so flipped about the dangers of vaccines that they don’t take their kids for their shots should be forced to breathe through a straw for a week. Let the parents see how it feels. Then we can talk.
Security wasn’t high at Glenfield—apparently the kids there had not yet discovered the joys of packing heat to math class—but there was a man sitting behind a desk near the entrance. I showed him my ID and he directed me to the principal’s office.
The admin suite was new and smartly appointed. Glenfield, I guessed, had a deeper tax base to draw on than Daniels Elementary, where I’d honed my early intellect. These guys had purchased their furniture sometime in the pa
st few years, whereas the Daniels administrators had inherited theirs from the Greatest Generation or before.
The principal of Glenfield turned out to be one Ginny Plough: short, plump, and with that kind of boundless energy you’d expect from someone who grooved on kids. I told her I was a public health physician here to speak with Timothy Kim. Surprisingly, Ms. Plough asked to see my credentials. I pulled out the expired CDC ID badge. She squinted up at me, worried.
“Golly, I hope there’s nothing wrong.”
Golly?
“There isn’t,” I said. “I just want to talk to Tim for a few minutes.”
“Should he be in school?”
“Of course,” I said. “Really, it’s nothing to worry about.”
“Tim’s all right, isn’t he?”
“I’m sure he’s fine.”
“But you’ll be sure to let us know…Timothy is new this year, and we have many children…”
I beamed a reassuring public health smile, and she picked up the phone and called her secretary.
Five minutes later, I sat alone in Principal Plough’s office, thinking of all the songs I would have come up with for her had I been a third grader here. “Principal Plough was a sorry old cow…” That kind of thing. Kids are so mean.
There was a knock on the glass door and Principal Plough arrived, clasping the hand of a short Asian kid who looked about as thrilled to see me as he would a plate of Brussels sprouts. Whether it was the sight of me, or whether it was because he’d been hauled out of class to the principal’s office, I couldn’t tell.
But one thing I could tell: this was the same child who’d been staring at me the evening before.
Principal Plough deposited the boy on a chair next to mine and excused herself. “I’ll be right outside if you need anything,” she told the boy, then shot an uncertain glance at me before departing.
“Hi, Tim,” I said.
He mumbled something.
“I’m a doctor from the government and I have some questions for you. Is that okay with you?”
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