Chin - 01 - China Trade

by S. J. Rozan

  I looked at Bill. He shrugged. “He’ll be disappointed,” he said. “Guys like me don’t get Times obits. You?”

  “Twenty-eight-year-old female p.i.s? Are you kidding?” I said.

  “One question is why, if he did Trish himself, he wants to hire us out.”

  My mind went back to the night before, to the gum-chewing black woman cop escorting Roger Caldwell into his own office, past the body of Trish Atherton lying dead on the floor.

  “You didn’t see him,” I said. “He looked like he was going to be sick, and I don’t think he’s much of an actor. Whatever happened between them, I’d bet anything he hadn’t planned to kill her. I don’t think he could do it again with his own two hands. Anyway,” I said, unwilling to dwell on the question when I had a much more interesting one to think about, “we’ll just have to ask him, won’t we? Okay. So what are we going to do about this?”

  Mrs. Blair stood up from her husband’s desk chair. “What are you going to do? Can you even ask that? We’ll go to the police at once, of course. Mr. Smith and I both heard the conversation. There can be no question as to his intentions. Roger Caldwell must be arrested immediately.”

  Bill and I were looking into each other’s eyes, and I could see by the glint in his that he was thinking along the same lines I was.

  “Yes,” I said to Mrs. Blair. “We’ll bring the police in. But I think we should go through with this.”

  “Ms. Chin, what are you saying?”

  “The contract hit,” I explained. “I think you should do it. And I know just the contractor.”

  I called Mary.

  “Lydia? For Pete’s sake, where have you been?” she demanded, after some yelling across the Fifth Precinct squad room had brought her to the phone. “I’ve been worried about you.”

  “Why? Has anything new happened? Between the Main Street Boys and the Golden Dragons?” A sudden fear that I hated to admit to clutched my stomach, dampened the sizzle put in my spine by the plan Bill and I, to Mrs. Blair’s astonishment and disapproval, had worked out.

  “No. Nothing. I just don’t trust you when things are too quiet.”

  “Ummm.” The good news was that that meant she hadn’t heard about the murder of Trish Atherton and my being mixed up in it. The bad news was that I was going to have to tell her. “Now, listen,” I began. “And don’t yell until I’m done, okay? There’s a really good idea at the end of this.”

  “I don’t like the beginning already,” she said in a cold cop voice. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I’m about to hand you Trouble on a platter.”

  “Oh, thanks. That’s just what I need, a platterful of trouble. Or do you mean Trouble, like in the Golden Dragons?”

  “That’s what I mean. You want him?”

  “What’s he going to cost me?”

  “Nothing. It’s a great collar. You’ll be famous. You’ll get a promotion.”

  “You’re trying to talk me into something.”

  “It’s too good to pass up.”

  “If it were that good you wouldn’t be trying to sell it to me before you even tell me what it is.”

  Touché. “Okay, here it comes.”

  I started to lay it out for her, what we wanted to do. I began with Roger Caldwell and the death of Trish Atherton, which got me the reaction I expected.

  “A homicide? And you didn’t tell me? What the hell’s the matter with you, Lydia? You’re turning into the worst kind of cowboy. What are you thinking? What—”

  “Mary, come on. We called the cops right away. This guy Bernstein caught the case. He’s a detective. He did all the right things. You know him?”

  “No. And I don’t care. That’s not the point. When you get to where there are two bodies involved in the same case you’re working on, get out, Lydia! What’s wrong with you? And don’t give me the thing about this could all be coincidence. I want to know what you’re working on, who it is, what it’s about.”

  “I can’t, Mary. But I can give you something better. Let me finish?”

  “Lydia—”

  “Please?”

  She breathed out a sharp, exasperated breath. “Okay, finish. But it won’t do you any good.”

  So I went on. I told her about the art laundry scheme, skated cleverly around the relationship of Mrs. Blair and her brother to the situation by saying that Dr. Caldwell knew the Blairs through Mr. Blair’s collection, which anyway was true. I managed not to mention Chinatown Pride and my original reason for being part of this case. I spoke fast, and was eloquent, reasonable, thorough, and persuasive.

  “No,” she said, when I was done.

  “Mary, think about it. You can take him off the street. Keep the thing from starting between the Golden Dragons and the Main Street Boys. Isn’t that worth a little risk?”

  “No.”

  “What can go wrong?”

  “Besides him killing you?”

  “He won’t. You won’t give him the chance. I won’t go anyplace you guys didn’t get the chance to get there first.” Damn, I thought. There goes my English grammar again, and Tim’s not even in the room.

  “Lydia, you’re nuts. Most people disappear when they hear there’s a contract out on them. You two want to help organize it.” She was silent for a minute, a good sign. “Why not just let Bernstein pick up Caldwell based on the phone call? He could squeeze him and take the Atherton case off the books, anyway. We’ll deal with Trouble some other way.”

  “Caldwell’s not the problem now. Bernstein can get him any time. But the Golden Dragons and the Main Street Boys: It’s going to happen unless we stop it, Mary. You know what it’ll be like if it does. We can’t let it.” I added the other thing I was thinking. “And I want Trouble, Mary. This is my chance. And it’s yours, too. You could make Second Grade over this.”

  “Or get busted to night paperwork. I think it’s crazy, Lydia.”

  Now we were really getting somewhere: “I think it’s crazy,” instead of “It’s crazy.”

  “You might get some of the others, too.” I tried to sweeten the deal as much as I could. “For illegal weapons, anyway. You’ll have probable cause to search them.”

  “Don’t use cop terms when you’re trying to sell me something. It makes me suspicious.”

  “Sorry.” I held my breath. If Mary weren’t my good, good friend, she wouldn’t be yelling at me for wanting to do something this risky. But if she weren’t an ambitious cop, she wouldn’t have made detective this early in her career. I asked, “Will you do it?”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Will you?”

  “I’ll have to run it by my C.O.”

  I stopped myself from cheering. “Go ahead. Call me back.” I gave her Mrs. Blair’s number, hung up, gave Bill and Mrs. Blair a big grin and a thumbs-up. Bill returned the grin. All Mrs. Blair had for us was a disbelieving stare.

  T H I R T Y - T W O

  Mary called back. There was a lot of arranging back and forth. Mrs. Blair, still both amazed and reluctant, called Lee Kuan Yue and asked him to come uptown. When he got there he had the same reaction to the plan as she had had, but he was finally persuaded that it was a good idea, good for Chinatown and good for all of us.

  So he made his phone call and went back downtown.

  And we waited.

  While we waited, Mrs. Blair, her breeding impeccable even in a situation as absurd as this, had Rosie O’Malley prepare lunch. We ate in the dining room, around a table so polished—probably by Rosie—that I could see my reflection in my own eyes.

  Eating sliced chicken on very curly lettuce, with a fine-crumbed white bread, butter, and pickled green beans, we talked about Hong Kong, which Bill had seen in the Navy and where Mrs. Blair grew up. We talked about my childhood in Chinatown, and about Bill’s, in Kentucky and then on Army bases all over the world. It was polite conversation, the kind people have at the dining table in a dining room where family portraits watch you eat. I’d never been watched by family
portraits before.

  As we were finishing our coffee and tea, Rosie came to announce that Mr. Lee was on the telephone. The electricity in the room, so civilly veiled as we’d waited and conversed, jumped to life. I felt it fly through me, sparking off the table and the portraits and the glinting silverware.

  We all gathered around the telephone in the hall, where Mrs. Blair briefly spoke to her brother. She replaced the receiver softly in its cradle and turned to us. “It’s arranged,” she said. “Kuan Yue doesn’t know exactly what will happen next.”

  “He’s not supposed to. He’s out of it now. Now it’s up to us.”

  “And what is it that’s up to you? What are you going to do?”

  “We’re going to go downtown,” I said. “And wait some more.”

  Which is how Bill and I came to be hanging twitchily around my office, staring at the silent phone, listening to the radiator hiss. Bill smoked endless cigarettes, I drank endless cups of tea. We sat, stood, paced, sat again, stood some more, and talked about nothing.

  The only argument we were thinking about having we got out of the way early.

  “There’s no point in your being there,” I objected, for the third time. “It would be better if you were with the cops.”

  “It wouldn’t be better.” Bill knocked ash off his hundred and fourth cigarette. “It would only make you feel better, because if you got killed I wouldn’t get killed too. Although allow me to point out that if you get killed you won’t care whether I get killed or not.”

  “Only in your cynical white person theology. In reality, I’m being particularly unselfish in not insisting that you do get killed with me so I could have someone I know with me on the other side.”

  “Baloney. You want me to live if you die, so you can come back and haunt me. I’m just trying to avoid that.”

  “I wouldn’t haunt you.”

  “You do anyway, and you’re still alive.”

  “That’s not my fault.”

  “That you’re alive, or that you haunt me?”

  I glared.

  “Anyway,” he said, “it is. Your tall alabaster body with its long tanned limbs, your flowing mane of golden curls, the clear pale blue of your eyes …”

  “You’re not making sense.”

  “I’m nervous. A Chinese gangster half my age is planning to kill me and he doesn’t call, he doesn’t write … Besides, the vests are mine.”

  He waved his cigarette at the Kevlar body armor piled on my desk.

  “I thought you were going to give me one for Christmas.”

  “I didn’t, did I?”

  “Bill—”

  “Forget it. This is a crazy idea, and the only possible way I’m going to let you do it is if I’m there.”

  “What do you mean, ‘let me’? Just how do you think you could stop me?”

  “Not by physical means, clearly. But I have enormous moral authority in your life. You know that’s true.”

  “God,” I said. “If I say you can come, will you shut up?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  So Bill won the argument. I felt guilty, but secretly I was glad.

  Then came the babbling about nothing, folded in with short silences in which the radiator hissed and Bill and I each thought our own thoughts. Maybe the radiator thought thoughts, too.

  It was close to two hours before the phone rang. Although that was the one thing we’d been waiting for, the sudden shrilling of the bell froze us both. I didn’t grab it up until the third ring.

  “Chin Investigative Services. Lydia Chin speaking.” I tried not to let my words trip over themselves the way my heart was flopping around in my chest.

  “So, little private eye really got office.” The sneering, taunting voice was the one I’d hoped to hear.

  “What do you want?” As if I didn’t know. I nodded to Bill.

  “How you feel? Hurt a little?” the voice asked me with mock concern.

  “Go to hell.”

  “Mustn’t talk like that,” he scolded. “Not good for woman, use bad words. Little private eye still looking for porcelains?”

  “Why? You have some?”

  “Might. Want to talk about it?”

  “Last time I talked to you I was sorry.”

  “Last time, because you snooping. This time Trouble inviting you.”

  “Where?”

  “Someplace private. Better for business.”

  “I don’t like your kind of business. Where?”

  “End of pier, Christopher Street. Nice breeze, nice view. Tonight. Eight o’clock maybe.”

  “The end of the Christopher Street pier?” I repeated, looking at Bill. He shook his head, pulling his hands toward his chest in a way that meant “come closer.” “You’ve got to be kidding,” I said to Trouble. “You expect me to go to the end of the pier in January? At night? To meet you? Forget it.”

  “Little private eye want porcelains, better come.”

  “The pier, but not the end. The parking strip in front.” I raised my eyebrows at Bill. He nodded.

  “Hmm,” Trouble said. “Okay, sure. Parking strip.” It was easy to see what he was thinking: that Lydia Chin was dumb enough to think that a fifty-foot-wide block-long strip beside the highway, inhabited by stumbling junkies and the cardboard-housed homeless, was a safe place.

  “It’s more public,” I told him. “Easier to get away from.”

  And, I didn’t tell him, easier to fill with cops hiding behind things.

  “Okay,” he said. “Eight o’clock See you, little private eye.”

  “One more thing. I’m bringing my partner. I’m not talking to you alone again.”

  “Sure, no problem,” Trouble agreed easily. “Like to meet him anyway.”

  I hung up with no good-bye.

  “What did he say?” Bill asked. “I wish you had an extension, by the way.”

  “Where would I put it, in the bathroom? Buy me one for Christmas. He said he wanted to meet you.”

  “Most people do. It’s the price of fame.”

  “The parking strip in front of the pier? Does that sound good?”

  “Terrific. What time?”

  “Eight.”

  “He’ll be early, to plant his guys.”

  “So Mary will just have to be earlier.”

  Mary, at the station house, answered the phone before the first ring was over. “Where the hell have you been?” she barked.

  “You’re getting repetitious. I’ve been in my office waiting for Trouble to call, just like I was supposed to be.”

  “And?”

  “He called. He wants to get together.” I told Mary what Trouble and I had arranged.

  “Nuts. You’re nuts.”

  “Mary, think ‘collar.’ Think, ‘Second Grade.’ ”

  “Think ‘funeral.’ ”

  “Think ‘we’ve already set this in motion, it’s too late to stop it now.’ ”

  “I know. I never should have let that happen. I’m having serious second thoughts.”

  “I’m sorry. But even if we wanted to stop now, we really can’t. Trouble thinks he’s got a contract on me and Bill. He’d get suspicious if Lee suddenly told him don’t bother. That could be dangerous for Lee. Unless you want him actually to go through with it, we have to do this. This way at least you’ll have the situation under control, and end up with Trouble on a plate.”

  “Nothing you’re ever involved in is under control, Lydia.”

  “Mary, don’t shake my confidence right now, okay? Let’s fight later, when it’s all over.”

  “I just hope we get the chance.”

  From then on our talk was all business, going over the plan. Mary drilled me on alternative moves for different scenarios. There really weren’t many alternatives: Basically, Bill and I were supposed to drop to the ground when the action started and not come up until it was over.

  “Don’t pull a gun,” she said. “And tell your cowboy boyfriend the same thing.”

  “He�
�s not my boyfriend, and he’s not a cowboy.”

  Bill made a face of wounded pride.

  “Let us do the shooting,” Mary went on, ignoring me. I decided not to press the point, under the circumstances. “We’re going to be all over them the first weapon we see. That’s all we’re going to wait for.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “He’ll get there early.” Mary repeated what Bill had said. “To spot his boys around. We’ll be there earlier. Don’t worry.”

  “You’re the one who’s worrying.”

  “Someone has to.”

  “You just said not to.”

  “I’ll see you later. You have your vests?”

  “Yes.”

  “Goodbye. Lydia?” she said, as I was about to hang up. ‘Good luck.”

  “I don’t need it. I have you.”

  She hung up, instead.

  The next few hours were excruciating, just a long bridge, a cuseway to be sped over as fast as possible connecting now and later. Because there was the possibility, small as it was, that the appointment had only been to throw us off guard and Trouble could be planning an ambush, Bill and I had decided to stay together and out of sight. We left my office as soon as I hung up with Mary and took a cab to Bill’s place. No Golden Dragons were in sight and no one followed us.

  At his apartment Bill put on music. We started with something relaxing and soothing—Chopin Ballades, he told me—but that didn’t work, so we moved to jumpy, fast-moving works, by Bartok and Scriabin (names I knew) and then Sessions and Part (names I didn’t). We read the Times. Bill, who works out of his house, did paperwork. At six we called Shorty downstairs and asked him to send up chili for Bill and a spinach salad for me. We ate, cleaned up, put the Times on the recycle pile.

  We looked at each other.

  I asked, “Can I say, ‘let’s roll’?”

  “Just once.”

  “Let’s roll.”

  We Velcroed ourselves into the vests, me ouching as mine pressed on the bruises left from my last meeting with Trouble. Bill checked his .38, which we both knew was loaded and antiseptically clean, and slung his shoulder holster over his vest. I checked my .22 and put it in my jacket pocket.