“Are you taking her home?” asked the nurse pushing the wheelchair.
“I guess I am,” Lee looked at Armstrong for concurrence. She acknowledged him with a curt nod.
The nurse helped her into the passenger seat of Lee’s Fiat Spider. With the top down, she had no trouble getting in. Armstrong could keep the leg straight with the seat pushed back as far as it would go. As they waited behind another car to exit the hospital parking lot, Lee glanced over at her and saw her profile as she stared out the front of the car. They drove in silence the entire way.
Armstrong lived in the upper flat of an old Edwardian house. It was in a decent neighborhood where the character was defined block by block. Down the street, Lee could see a housing project painted a faded blue. Yet he knew that an exclusive shopping row lay only four blocks to the north. Across the street was a Baptist church painted a tired pink with a cross on the top outlined in neon lights. A bus with the sign “Herb’s Tours” was parked in the driveway along the side of the church.
It was obvious after they parked that Armstrong was intent on getting where she was going without Lee’s help. She slid out of the seat onto the curb, stood on her good leg, and pulled out the crutches behind her. Then she used the crutches to get to the outside stairs.
Lee stood behind her in case she lost her balance and she painstakingly climbed the 10 steps to the front door. When she reached the top, she stopped, rested on her crutches and tried to catch her breath. Then she took the purse Lee was carrying, extracted a key and unlocked the front door. The sight of the flight of stairs heading up to the upper flat made her pale.
“C’mon,” said Lee. He took the crutches from her and set them beside the door. Then he took her left arm. She resisted at first. Then, he tugged a little harder until she relented and let her arm drape over his neck.
“Grab the railing,” he said. “We’ll stop if it hurts.” With his arm around her waist, they mounted the stairs. She used his neck and the railing on the side of the inner staircase for support, and jumped while he lifted and steadied her. In a minute, they were at the top.
“Where to?” he asked.
“The bedroom.” She pointed toward the back of the flat. She hopped still using him for support while he half carried and steadied her. When they reached the queen-sized bed, she let go of his neck, turned on her good leg, sat down and reclined slowly.
Lee retrieved the crutches. On the way back to the bedroom, he glanced around approvingly. It was the type of apartment he might have chosen, rich with natural wood and the detailed touches in turn-of-the-century interiors that he loved. He saw that Sarah was inclined toward art deco style furniture. It looked like she had bought carefully in secondhand stores.
Lee brought the crutches to the bedroom and set them on the floor along side the bed. Armstrong had her arm over her eyes and seemed completely spent. He stepped back to the door.
“Do you want anything? Water? Something to eat?”
She shook her head. Lee paused, trying to decide what to do.
“I saw the whole thing and it looked like more than an accident,” he said. “Do you have any idea why anyone would want to do you harm?”
Armstrong shook her head again, her arm still covering her eyes.
“Look, I’m very sorry about your aunt,” he said. “From what everybody says, she was a fantastic woman. And I’m sorry about the story. You’re right…I just screwed up. It’s too late to change it. The best I can do is wait until the medical examiner figures out the cause of death. I’ll make sure it gets in the paper.”
Lee waited a few seconds. She still didn’t move. He turned to leave.
“Wait,” Armstrong said. She pushed herself up to a sitting position. Lee could tell she was trying to decide whether he could be trusted. He wasn’t sure of the answer. Trusted with what? Her secrets? The story of her aunt’s death? Her honor? He stared back blankly. Finally, she held out her hand to him. “Why don’t we just start over? I’m Sarah.”
“Okay. I’ll go for that,” he said with a half smile of relief. He took her hand and tipped his head forward. “Enzo Lee…at your service.”
• • •
THE HOUSE WAS about 20 miles northwest of San Jose, at the end of a long steep driveway that was, itself, at the end of a narrow street that snaked up the Santa Cruz Mountains. It offered a fabulous view of the Santa Clara Valley, best seen from the balcony that ran around the entire second floor, except for the side of the house that was nestled in the mountainside. Like the exterior of the house, the furnishings inside were entirely white or shades of beige. The bedrooms downstairs were large and furnished with deep carpets and thick quilts. But the focal point of the house plainly was on the upper floor.
Upstairs, the combined dining room and living room was large, more than 5,000 square feet. The space seemed even larger because of a vaulted ceiling. Coming up the driveway at night with the curtains opened and the lights turned on, the living room looked like a stage. All it lacked was a spotlight to illuminate the principal actor who, in this case, happened to also be the sole resident of the house.
This morning, though, the occupant had shunned the incredible view, the splendorous room and the colorful abstract paintings hanging on the walls. Instead, the owner of this opulent palace was in a small downstairs room. The room centered around a computer terminal connected to a Cray T3D supercomputer capable of performing nine billion mathematical calculations per second. The computer enabled a user to tear apart complex structures of molecules into their constituent parts and reassemble them, adding certain modifications in the process. It saved months of laboratory time.
The short, squat man, who resembled a friar with a large bald spot on his crown surrounded by a fringe of thick black hair, was using the computer for a much more simple purpose. He was reviewing files of electronic mail and financial records, most of it not his own. Finally, he found what he wanted and printed the documents on an HP Laserjet. He folded the printed pages and inserted them into a plain white envelope. He looked at the copies of the San Francisco News that lay on a white, melamine desktop beside him, scanning the bylines. In block letters he addressed the envelope to “Enzo Lee, Reporter.”
Chapter 5
AS LEE LEFT Sarah’s flat, he turned his Fiat east on Bush Street. If he was going to keep his promise and report on the cause of death of Judge Gilbert, he might as well start now.
The San Francisco’s Medical Examiner’s Office was located in an annex behind the Hall of Justice. Lee checked his watch. It was only 3 p.m. He might have to wait a while, but he guessed he’d be able to see Chief Coroner Michael Santos even if he dropped by unannounced.
Santos had a reputation as being a brilliant but eccentric forensic pathologist. His office was located just off the main laboratory where the autopsies were performed. Like the laboratory, it was decorated in modern industrial style with square, commercial quality linoleum tiles in mottled gray, light-green walls and fluorescent lighting overhead. Tall, dark file cabinets lined the walls of the office waiting area.
On top of the file cabinets sat large bell jars filled with fluid and what appeared to be human organs. Some of the fluid in the jars was tinted red and blue. Lee hoped there was some professional reason for the display but suspected it was someone’s bizarre taste in office art.
When Lee was ushered into Santos’ inner office by his secretary, he found the coroner behind his desk wearing a white lab coat. Santos was about 50. He was tall and thin with sunken cheeks and thick, Coke-bottle glasses. In front of him sat a melon-sized model of a human brain with removable parts. Off to one side was a small cluster of pill bottles.
“Uhh…Hello, Mike,” said Lee. “We’ve talked on the phone before. I’m Enzo Lee from the News.” Lee thought about shaking hands, but Santos hadn’t offered his or even stood up. So, the reporter took the single chair sitting in front of the desk.
Santos opened his mouth as if to say something, and then closed it. He did it
again. Lee realized Santos was just stretching his mouth as if to exercise his jaw muscles. It was disconcerting. It made Lee feel as if he was trying to conduct a conversation with a fish.
“Mike, I’ve come about Miriam Gilbert.”
Santos stopped his mouth exercises. The dull glaze in his eyes brightened into a gleam and his thin-lipped mouth turned up at the corners.
“Ahhh,” he said. “Our judge.”
Lee half expected Santos to invite him next door for a viewing of “our judge” so he decided to hurry along the interview.
“Mike, let me cut directly to the chase. Do you have a cause of death?”
Santos didn’t say anything for a moment. He gave Lee a long, sly look. Lee thought if Santos had had a mustache, he would have twirled it. Instead, Santos began disassembling the brain in front of him. He did it without looking, his eyes still on Lee as the plastic pieces of the model brain made a clicking noise.
“I do and I don’t,” said Santos.
God, thought Lee. Was this going to be 20 questions? It suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t eaten any lunch and was starving. “Okay,” said Lee, pulling off his glasses and massaging his eyes wearily. “Let’s start with the ‘I do’ part.”
“A clot,” said Santos. “A basic blood clot cut off blood to the brain. A massive stroke.”
“That sounds simple enough,” said Lee. “So, what’s the mystery?”
“All the other clots,” said Santos. “The hundreds…no, make that thousands of tiny clots that filled every artery, vein and blood vessel of any size.”
“What?” said Lee.
“I’m describing something that I’ve never witnessed in my 26 years of practicing medicine,” said Santos. “Someone’s body filled with tiny blood clots and no apparent reason for it.”
Lee said nothing while Santos continued staring at him, manipulating the brain parts. The clicking was nerve wracking in the otherwise silent office.
“Okay, I give up,” said Lee. “What is the significance of all this? I’m just a layman.”
“Something caused this to happen and I have no idea what it is,” said Santos. “It could have been a chemical, something environmental, or maybe even some infectious agent like a virus or bacteria that I’ve never heard of.”
“Infectious?” said Lee. “You mean other people could get it?”
Santos shrugged as he turned a chunk of the left hemisphere of the brain in his fingers. “Anything is possible,” he said. “I’ve ordered all the tests and we’ll just have to see what comes back.”
“But, what if it is infectious?” said Lee.
Santos shrugged again. “I’ve double bagged the body and washed down everything with antiseptic. There’s nothing I can do except take antibiotics.” He nodded at the cluster of pill bottles near his right elbow.
Lee thanked the coroner and found out what time the next day the first set of test results would come back. As he walked out the door, Santos finished the brain puzzle and moved it to the side of the desk with a small, satisfied smile.
On his way back to the newspaper, Lee knew he would have to write another news story based upon what Santos had told him. He wondered how he could do it without causing a panic in the city.
• • •
IT WAS DARK when Lee jumped off the Powell Street cable car. He walked down to Stockton Street and then continued north through the several blocks that hold Chinatown’s bustling fish and vegetable markets.
Lee lingered for a minute outside the picture window of a small restaurant. Behind the glass, four roasted ducks dangled from metal brackets that clasped their necks. Their flat bills pointed stiffly downward toward the metal trays placed to catch their drippings. Inside, a sweaty cook wearing a soiled apron looked up, grinned brokenly, and turned back to his cleaver which became a blur as a fifth bird was quickly transformed into bite-sized pieces.
Lee continued along Stockton, wallowing in the odors of black bean sauce, raw fish, ginger and other heavy smells that he couldn’t name but still identified with Chinatown as much as the ubiquitous curio shops with their Buddhas, cheap china and T-shirts.
He stopped at Wayne Chan’s market. He waved at Wayne Jr., a young man in his early 20s with a ring in his right ear. Wayne Jr. wore his hair Elvis Presley style with long sideburns and a short pompadour in front. He was picking through a pile of rock cod on a bed of ice as a picky shopper described in loud Cantonese what she wanted.
“Sansin. Sansin. Fresh. Fresh. Get me one that’s fresh. Siu. Siu. Small. Small. When was that one caught?”
Lee walked through the cod, the large flounder and the small pink snapper sitting in the crates filled with crushed ice, and past the big tank where live dungeness crab sat stacked atop each other. He went to the vegetable side of the store and picked out a bunch of choi sum, a bright green cabbage with yellow flowers. He paid another young member of the Chan extended family, a sunny-faced girl with laughing eyes and a beguiling smile who made him wish he was 15 years younger.
He continued up Stockton, past busy Columbus Avenue, and crossed from Chinatown into the North Beach Italian district. In two more blocks, Lee came to a three-story house with front windows on the top two floors that curved outward along the entire width of the building, protruding like an edge of a double-layer cake. He walked up the staircase on the side of the house, unlocked the door on the right and went up another flight of stairs to his flat.
At the top of the stairs, an orange and white cat greeted him by rubbing against his legs, forcing Lee to do a quick stutter step to avoid tripping.
“Hi, Max,” said Lee. “I hope your day was better than mine.”
Lee stood at the doorway leading to the small kitchen and tossed his keys on the table. They hit with a bang, despite the cushion of overdue bills, junk mail and the morning editions of the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle spread out on the table top.
He walked over to the living room which faced the street. Lee stood with his hands on his hips, staring down at the nearby Italian espresso cafes. Beyond them, across Columbus Avenue, he could see most of the way down Grant with its profusion of restaurant and store signs, mostly colored in red and yellow and carrying Chinese characters next to the English words. He had rented the flat for its location and because of the inlaid hardwood floors and elaborate Victorian molding in the double-parlor living room and dining room. He liked where he lived, close enough to see Chinatown but not in the middle of it.
Lee’s usual routine was to visit his grandmother in her rest home. He tried to go at least twice a week. But, the thought of spending the next hour in the rest home depressed him.
“Screw it,” Lee thought. “I’ll go tomorrow.” He would call and have the staff at the home tell his grandmother to expect him the next day.
Lee went back to the kitchen, bent down to rub Max’s head, which was positioned over a bowl of cat food, and pulled an icy bottle of Stolichnaya vodka out of the freezer compartment of the refrigerator. He poured the clear, syrupy liquid into a short water glass, sliced a lime in half and squeezed the juice from both halves into the glass.
He sat in his favorite reading chair positioned for the view in front of the bay window and set the glass on the side table. Lee mulled over his quandary.
Not very long ago, he had been a different type of reporter. He had specialized in investigating corrupt politicians and finding the secrets that corporations tried to hide. He was one of the best at it in New York.
Then, his aggressive style of reporting backfired. He trusted a source who had a separate agenda. By the time Lee figured out he had been played, he had blundered into professional quicksand. His newspaper had to issue an embarrassing retraction. Lee’s editors deserted him and he came close to losing his job at Newsday.
The move to San Francisco and the feature beat had been a salve to that time. It was a means of starting over, a way to stay in the news business that almost seemed like part of his DNA at this point. Now he
was free of the high expectations – his own and his editors’ – of breaking the big story. He didn’t need to worry about being pressured into making another costly mistake.
But the events of the last two days had awakened the old instincts. He could sense in the shadows beyond his reach not just a puzzle to solve but something dangerous, too. Of course it worried him that he didn’t understand the danger. And, it brought back the not-so-distant memories of the low point in his career. But, he couldn’t deny that he was feeling the old adrenaline rush - a reignited fire in his gut that he hadn’t realized how much he missed until now.
Lee swished the Stoly and lime mixture around in the glass and took a sip. The first one produced a burning sensation as it flowed down his throat. The second sip didn’t burn at all.
Chapter 6
MASTER CHU HELD the position of the ascending dragon for an absurdly long time, his left leg held up in the air, his arms extended forward with palms out. With his weight balanced on his right leg, he sank down and slowly straightened the left leg until his toe touched the pavement. Then, he completed the slow step forward, pulling his arms in to assume the starting position of the crane with spreading wings.
Lee mimicked the wizened old Chinese the best that he could but he felt like an oaf beside Chu with his smooth, precise movements.
Lee thought that of all the animals that serve as models for the various tai chi exercises, the crane seemed to fit Master Chu the best. Chu’s London Fog windbreaker and stretchy leisure pants couldn’t disguise the fact that his limbs were bird thin. Lee imagined the bones would snap if somebody grabbed his arm the wrong way.
He had met Chu during one of his early morning jogs through Chinatown. Lee had noticed the ancient-looking man going through his graceful routine of slow-motion exercises alone in the middle of Portsmouth Square. During the day the square was alive with the sounds of kids chattering in Chinese and English, and the old timers slapping mah jong tiles onto stone tables as they cursed their bad luck. But, early in the morning, before the metal shutters protecting the nearby shops slid open with a clattering bang and the city buses came roaring up Kearny Street, the square was dark and deserted, an uninviting patch of elevated cement holding only long shadows cast by streetlights.
Project Moses - A Mystery Thriller (Enzo Lee Mystery-Thriller Series) Page 3
