The Spy Across the Table

by Barry Lancet

  Ian lowered his voice before he said, “The first lady also said you nearly caught the guy. Too bad you didn’t nail his ass.”

  “Give me time.”

  Ian nodded grimly. “She also let slip you’re working on the murders for her. That true?”

  Something hollow and raw opened up in my chest. As I gazed at the framed photograph on the casket across the nave, in my mind’s eye Mikey stepped from the shadows, green eyes averted, inviting me over for Thanksgiving dinner. With my mother recently dead from cancer and my estranged father settled in Tokyo, Mikey knew I had no close family nearby. He brought me to his house and I met Ian and his parents. They couldn’t have been more gracious, and by the end of the evening I felt, for the first time since I set foot in San Francisco after my mother’s passing in Los Angeles, that I had, if not family, something close to it.

  “She’s a client, yes, but Mikey’s and Sharon’s interests come first.”

  Ian clamped a firm hand on my shoulder. “Government getting involved could help or it could send things sideways. You never know. But you won’t be stopping, will you, Brodie?”

  “Quitting’s not in my playbook. You know that.”

  “I know you’ll do right by Mikey.” The hand on my shoulder tightened its grip, then Ian bent down and said, “You find the guy, me and the boys want a crack at the bastard before you hand him over.”

  “Nothing would make me happier. Don’t know where this thing will lead, but if I can, I will.”

  Ian’s eyes misted over and I glanced away.

  What he didn’t know, and I couldn’t mention, was that the elephant backstage at the Kennedy Center had followed me out here and would have to be addressed. It trumpeted a simple but devastating fact: people are shot for a reason. Between Mikey and Sharon, one of them had a secret.

  CHAPTER 13

  LIEUTENANT Frank Renna of the SFPD and his wife, Miriam, were seated about ten rows from the front and had saved me a place.

  Renna was a big and beefy man with a large square face and hard eyes. He wore a dark suit and tie for the funeral, but his occupation seeped through. Miriam was a tall, slender blonde with soft hazel-green eyes that quietly took in everything with a lawyer’s thoroughness. The pair had met while she was an assistant district attorney for the city. As a friend, she’d let drop, on more than one occasion, that it was hard living with a cop. The workload dragged her husband down. I had no trouble understanding. Renna and I had been through some tough cases together, from the Japantown incident onward.

  “Such a tragedy,” Miriam said as I took my place.

  “No rhyme, no reason,” I said, just to say something.

  “This kind of thing, there’s always a reason,” Renna said.

  The elephant had reared.

  “I was being rhetorical.”

  “Tells me you haven’t gotten anywhere.”

  Miriam squeezed her husband’s hand. “Honey . . .”

  “I’m working on it,” I said. “I’ve got people in Japan digging around and I’m flying there tomorrow. You’ll cover this end, right?”

  “Yeah. Already got some boys poking around.”

  The church interior was small but majestic and, in its soaring ceiling, otherworldly. Above us, the roof rose up with breathtaking swiftness, coming together at its tented pinnacle in a giant cross. From narrow windows, soft beams of light dappled pews and aisles. Shaded areas took on a rich chocolate hue.

  “Good. I know something’s out there.”

  The problem had to be faced. Only I planned to start tomorrow, thirty thousand feet above the Pacific, my seat cranked back, a scotch in hand. Until then, I hoped for a few more untroubled hours—make that less troubled—and some downtime with my seven-year-old daughter.

  Miriam said, “Who’s looking after Jenny while you’re gone? Kerry Lou?”

  “Yes.”

  Kerry Lou Meyers was the single mother upstairs whose daughter was Jenny’s best friend. We exchanged babysitting favors, and I paid her to watch my daughter when I left town.

  “Mention she’s welcome to bring the girls over to play with Christine and Joey anytime. They all get along well. Jenny or both girls can even stay for a night or two if they wish.”

  “Thanks. I’ll tell her.”

  A priest ascended the podium and spoke passionately about his long association with the Dillman family, then about Mikey, whom he had known since birth. He talked about a life tragically taken. About God’s inscrutable ways. And about unmitigated violence in society.

  From all sides, smothered sobs punctuated the priest’s pauses. I didn’t add to the muffled chorus, but I felt a sting at the corner of my eyes.

  Renna poked me in the ribs. “Two o’clock. Asian on the far right. Seventh row on the aisle. Good suit. Just sat down. Eyeballed us, meaning you, I’d guess. Looked only once.”

  As far as I could recall, Renna had not turned his head in the direction he’d indicated and wasn’t looking that way now.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Sitting, looking around the rest of the church casually . . . but not this way again . . . Wait . . . still looking around . . . Get ready . . . on my call . . . wait . . . wait . . . eyes shifting front . . . locked on the casket . . . priest . . . now.”

  I turned and smiled at Renna and his wife. I said something meaningless and Renna nodded. Miriam returned my smile. I focused on them, but out of the corner of my eye scanned the pews and counted rows.

  At the end of the seventh row, I saw a thick thatch of well-groomed black hair hovering over the collar and shoulders of an expensive-looking, hand-tailored suit.

  The sight sent a surge of adrenaline through me. Primal urges sprung up. I bristled with the desire to strike out.

  “I don’t believe it,” I said.

  “So you know him,” Renna said, unsurprised.

  “Do, and wish I didn’t.”

  Renna grew interested. “Because?”

  “He’s one of the most dangerous men I’ve ever met.”

  CHAPTER 14

  MIRIAM shifted nervously and her police lieutenant husband said, “He got a name?”

  “Zhou.”

  Renna’s eyes seemed to retreat as he flicked through the catalog of names in his head. “The spy out of Beijing?”

  “Yeah, via Tokyo. The home invasion cases eight, nine months ago. Gave me background on Chinese gangs.”

  When an old Japanese World War Two veteran showed up unannounced at Brodie Security claiming Chinese triads were killing off his old war buddies in Tokyo, I’d eventually needed a knowledgeable source high within the Chinese embassy to guide me. Someone in a position to know secrets. Through a mutual friend, I’d been introduced to Zhou, who extracted blood before he delivered.

  Miriam’s eyes bounced from my face to her husband’s and back. “What’s he doing here?”

  “No idea,” I said.

  Renna’s cheeks puffed out, first one, then the next, as if rolling a clutch of marbles from one side of his mouth to the other while considering my reply. Eventually he said, “But nothing good?”

  “Count on it.”

  In stages I felt my blood turn to sludge. A bleakness crept into my heart. Zhou and his ilk inhabited a slippery netherworld I had vowed to avoid after our first encounter. Not that I couldn’t handle him. More that I didn’t need the aggravation. I had a daughter and an antiques shop and friends in many walks of life around the world. Life was interesting. Rewarding. Zhou’s world involved underhanded politics and manipulation and a constant undermining of friend and foe for an extra grain of power or position.

  “Guy gave you a hard time, if I remember.”

  “He did.”

  “You also told me he was good.”

  “He’s more than good. He’s a genius at what he does. And he’s a survivor. Which in his world makes him as devious as they come. He’s also paranoid and more dangerous than a rattlesnake on steroids.”

  “The rattler’s flexing
in your backyard,” Renna said.

  “What’s mine is yours,” I said.

  The last words of the closing prayer left the priest’s lips. A subdued rumbling of amens rose to the ceiling, then a half dozen pallbearers ascended the podium. They formed a chain, passed the sprays of flowers adorning the casket to those in the front row, then lined up along either side of Mikey’s coffin.

  It pained me that I wasn’t one of the men escorting Mikey to his final place of rest. Ian had put my name up for the honor, but other members of the Dillman clan had overruled him.

  “By all rights you should be one of the pallbearers, Brodie,” he’d told me by phone last night, “but others think his death is partly your fault. Not me. Not Ma and Pa, but others.”

  What others? I wanted to ask. Let them tell me to my face. I’d straighten them out. I already felt as guilty as hell. Every waking moment since Mikey’s death, I wrestled with grief and self-reproach and a never-ending list of what-ifs.

  I cast a look over the heads of the congregation, wondering which of the Dillman family attendees had struck out my name. I wanted my day with them, but that wasn’t going to happen and I would not burden Ian with my discontent. I gave him the “I understand” he needed to hear because it was Ian.

  I had done nothing but arrange what had been for Mikey a dream meeting. And now, secretly, even as waves of remorse continued to wash over me, I found comfort in the thought that he and Sharon had had some minutes together before it happened.

  The next instant the service was over. The congregation began to stir. The pallbearers hoisted the casket, descended the podium, and made their way up the central aisle.

  “Originally I thought you should be up there,” Renna said. “Now I’m thinking with Zhou around it’s better this way.”

  In patches, people stood and followed in the coffin’s wake.

  Renna glanced across the room, then his bulk seemed to rise higher in its seat.

  “He’s on the move,” my police lieutenant friend said.

  CHAPTER 15

  I’M on it.”

  I rose while at the side of the podium the officiating priest was consoling Mikey’s parents. He clasped Mrs. Dillman’s hands in his as he spoke. Other mourners began to gather in groups at the entrance and outside on the elevated plaza.

  I skirted past Renna and he said, “Miriam, we’ll catch up with you at the cemetery.”

  “No reason for you to abandon your wife,” I said. “I can handle this.”

  “The guy’s slippery, right?”

  “As they come.”

  “Then you need backup.” He turned to his wife. “You’ll be okay?”

  Miriam’s brow rippled. “I’ll be fine. It’s you two I’m worried about.”

  Renna squeezed her arm reassuringly, and we poured into the aisle with the rest of the guests. We were two lanes over and ten yards back. Zhou slipped easily through the departing crowd, adjusting the knot of his tie as he went. Then his head swiveled, lizardlike, toward me. Right at me. His eyes flicked once and he turned away.

  Damn. He was playing us.

  I expected him to exit out the front with the mourners, but he stepped into a stairwell at the back of the pews and headed down.

  “You see that?” I asked.

  “Saw the move and the look. Don’t like this guy.”

  “Welcome to the club. What’s down there?”

  “Shop, restroom, offices. Which one do you think he needs?”

  “Whatever’s behind door number four.”

  We reached the stairwell. Like the rest of the church it was elegant and designed. Dark earth-toned tiles. Discreet lighting behind beveled rectangles. The spy was nowhere in sight.

  I plunged downward with a stream of churchgoers. Renna stayed close on my heels. On the first landing, the stairs doubled back, dropping quickly to the basement level. The faint aroma of incense wafted up from below.

  “The smell from the gift shop?” I asked.

  Renna nodded. “Souvenirs.”

  At the bottom, the basement landing opened up into a hallway of gray linoleum and gray walls. All sense of the otherworldly vanished. There was still no sign of Zhou.

  Renna shot glances left and right. “You see him?”

  “No.”

  “Where to, then?”

  The restrooms were to the right, a pair of arctic-gray metal doors to the left. Straight ahead, the gift shop display window offered hand-painted crosses and souvenir booklets about the cathedral. Two dozen people milled about. None of them was Zhou.

  “Too public for a spy,” I said. “You see any staffers?”

  “No.”

  “Then I say we head into the back rooms.”

  Renna nodded. “Wish I’d brought my piece.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  On the other side of the arctic-gray entry a long hallway branching left and right confronted us. A paneled door brought the right-hand branch to a dead end. A few swift paces and a twist of a knob confirmed the route could take us no farther. Nor would it have accommodated our prey. We turned our attention in the opposite direction. The passage hobbled on for about ten yards before dropping into a short set of stairs and doglegging right.

  “Only choice left,” I said.

  “Best of a bad lot. Really wish I had the gun.”

  We traversed the hall, stairs, and dogleg with caution, emerging on the far end of the turn into another long passage. No sign of Zhou. All the doors were locked. At the end of the passage we found ourselves peering through a pair of glass emergency doors.

  “That’s it, then,” I said.

  “Unless your rattlesnake slithered under.”

  “Not impossible.”

  The exit opened out onto an enclosed patio, which in turn led to a parking lot at the back of the church. The patio had painted cinder-block walls and a ground-to-ceiling wrought-iron gate to keep out riffraff. The gate probably did double duty as a back entrance for staff.

  The glass doors were stickered with security system warnings. I jiggled the bar release on each door. Neither gave way, but the next instant Zhou stepped out from behind an exterior wall.

  “Come back in and we can talk,” I said loudly.

  He grinned, swiveled on his heels, and sauntered off.

  Scowling, Renna leaned a shoulder on the door and pressed down on the bar with the full weight of his six-foot-four frame. No go. He ran his fingers along the edges of the door, then under the handle.

  “By law, this can’t be locked. Your snake jammed it somehow.”

  ”So what’s his point then?”

  In the same instant we both pivoted and looked back the way we had come. Our eyes raked floor tiles, walls, the ceiling. Renna dashed from my side. He drew up ten yards later.

  “What?” I asked, not wanting to stray from the emergency exit in case Zhou reappeared.

  “He’s not coming back,” Renna called.

  “How can you tell?”

  “The snake left you a love letter.”

  Renna stepped aside and pointed at what looked like an envelope tacked to the wall with a pushpin. I joined him. In our initial hunt for the spy, we’d charged right by it.

  CHAPTER 16

  THE eggshell white, garden-variety envelope bore my name. I lifted the flap. No note had been inserted but the underside of the triangular flap contained five words:

  GARY DANKO.

  AFTER THE FUNERAL.

  Renna raised an eyebrow. “The restaurant?”

  “The man likes good food.”

  Gary Danko had reigned as one of the city’s premier dining destinations since it first opened its doors.

  Renna scoffed. “And you know this how?”

  “Took me to an expensive place in Ginza. That’s an upscale district in central Tokyo. Japanese skewered delicacies, sashimi that melted in your mouth, and some brilliant saké. Everything was world-class. Cost the Party a fortune.”

  Renna shook his head. “And him
an exemplary servant of the People’s Republic of China.”

  THE FORT MASON AREA

  After attending the burial service in Colma, just south of San Francisco, Renna and I raced back into town.

  Now we stood outside Gary Danko, a few yards from the intersection of Hyde and North Point. In the tinted black windows of the chic restaurant we could make out our own reflections and those of the cars streaking by behind us, but none of the décor or diners inside. We still wore our funeral attire, which looked, if not stellar, at least presentable.

  “How about that,” I said. “We’re dressed to dine.”

  “Better than your usual ratty jeans.”

  “Or that muddy blue thing you try to pass off as a suit.”

  We stared at our reflections some more. The wind snuck under our ties and waggled them about as if a pair of flirtatious women, invisible but frisky, stood by our sides. A short five blocks away, rough chop coming off the bay would be crashing against the pilings under Fisherman’s Wharf.

  “Ready to look at what’s behind door number five?” I said.

  “Getting tired of doors.”

  “It’s his natural paranoia.”

  “Tough way to live.”

  I nodded. “Before a meet, there’s always hoops.”

  “He came to us.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Enough already,” Renna said. “In we go.”

  He palmed the door, flashed his badge at a startled hostess in a long black dress with matching shawl hugging her shoulders, and—after a quick scrutiny of the bar and the seating to the immediate right—stomped into the more secluded dining quarters on our left flank, returning seconds later without a body in tow.