by S. J. Rozan
“You’re going out there with that?”
“That creep stole my .38, I told you that. One of the many things I have against him. This is the only other weapon I have a license for besides a slingshot.”
“You might be better off with a slingshot.”
“Mary says we’re not supposed to use them, anyway. She specifically said to tell you that.”
“I don’t intend to have to. Isn’t that the plan?”
It was. And it was a good plan, too.
And it almost worked.
T H I R T Y - T H R E E
Shouldered with concrete barriers and filled with frozen puddles, the broken pavement of the parking strip at the end of the Christopher Street pier spread itself four car lengths wide on the river side of the West Side Highway. There was one way in, off the highway from the north, and one way out, onto the highway from the south.
A hard breeze was pushing in off the water as Bill and I drove in. Black choppy waves roughened the river’s surface, dulling the reflections of the lights that glinted from the New Jersey waterfront. As we rolled slowly down the length of the strip, I thought that the river’s other shore had never seemed so far away.
The tree-lined streets and intimate restaurants of Greenwich Village beckoned coyly from across six lanes of traffic; here, with the whoosh of cars on one side and the lapping of the river on the other, the most picturesque objects were a few parked cars, some abandoned ones, and a jettisoned supermarket cart.
On the strip’s north end, hard up against the wet, rough timbers that formed the river-side edge, three figures hunched around a fire built in a steel drum. Cinders flew into the air, thrashed wildly in the wind, and blinked out.
Other scattered people could be seen in this freezing no-man’s land. Leaning on the burned-out hulk of a car, a pair of black men waved their hands in jerky, slow-motion emphasis to whatever drugged-out discussion they were having. A figure so swaddled in coats and hats that I couldn’t tell its sex or age snored, legs spread, back against a wooden piling, an empty bottle of Thunderbird by its knee. Others, shadowy, moving little, huddled in the darkness near the cars, or in the meager protection of the windowless cars themselves.
Bill pulled halfway down the strip and parked against the timbers, as we had arranged with Mary. He let the car idle for a few seconds longer than he usually does; then he turned it off.
We looked at each other.
He said, “You take me to the nicest places.”
I tried to think of a wise-guy comeback, but I didn’t have one.
Bill leaned toward me, kissed me softly. His kiss was warm and the touch of his hand on my hair was warm and I knew the night outside, on this rubble strip between the black river and the mindless headlights of the highway, was icily cold. For the first time I ever remember, Bill was the one, in the end, who moved away.
“Ready?” he asked.
“No.”
“Want to wait awhile?”
“Uh-huh. How about until June?”
“Sure,” he said. He grinned.
I grinned back, wondering if his felt, from the inside, as shaky as mine.
There was no signal, and no more words, but it was time. We opened our doors.
Another glance at each other.
We got out.
This was the scariest part. My heart pounded a fast staccato beat against the walls of my chest.
I had Trouble pegged as a guy who’d want to gloat, who’d want to be in his victim’s face, taunting and laughing, before he pulled a trigger. We were counting on that.
But I could be wrong. Maybe he’d decided to just wait until we were exposed and, from cover, blow us away. Even with the vests, flying bullets were a thing you wanted to avoid: They could hit you in the head, and you’d die. Or the knee, or the hand, and your life would never be good again.
With jerky glances I scanned the parking strip. I seized on the wavering of a shadow. I jumped at a paper bag tumbling across the pavement. I bit my lip, waiting for the explosive burst of gunfire, snapping my head around when a piling cracked against the pier.
I realized I was holding my breath.
Let go, Lydia, I told myself. It looks like it isn’t going to happen.
And nothing happened. Over the roof of the car, Bill’s eyes met mine. We closed our separate doors, not slamming them, just pressing them shut. We walked around to the trunk, met there, and waited.
“How many of these guys do you think are ours?” Bill muttered, gazing across the asphalt at the zombie figures, half-seen in the darkness and shadows.
I thought, suddenly, about my mother’s ghosts, and Mrs. Blair’s. And my own.
I said, “I hope all of them.”
The tide was in; even this far up, the Hudson reeked like the ocean, salty and smelling of distance. On the highway, cars that didn’t know we were even here raced by in both directions. Eerie yellow light from the towering streetlights made all the shadows sharp, but didn’t let me see if anything was moving in them.
And something was.
“Little private eye!” A shout; three figures, sauntering out of the shadows, ambling easily toward our car, toward us.
“Christ!” Bill said, under his breath, but he didn’t move. “That’s him?”
“Sure as hell,” I said.
Beside me, Bill lifted an eyebrow.
I never swear.
“Little private eye!” Trouble repeated. “And look, big private eye too.” Stopping about six feet from us, he grinned at Bill. “Hi. Name is Trouble.”
“I know that,” Bill answered steadily. “I’m Smith.”
“Okay,” said Trouble.
I looked at the boys with Trouble, standing one on each side, wearing identical leather jackets and identical sneers. The boy on Trouble’s left was greasy-handed Jimmy, from the time in the courtyard. I didn’t know the other.
“So,” I said briskly, “you have something to sell?”
Trouble grinned. “No.”
“No?” I made myself sound indignant. “Then why’d you bring us all the way out here? I thought you were selling something.”
“Not sell,” said Trouble, still grinning. “Give away.”
“You said porcelains. You’re giving away porcelains?”
“You know,” Trouble said thoughtfully, “porcelains making trouble for Trouble since you first come talking them. Fucking porcelains bad for Trouble, bad for face. Maybe now, people stops.”
“Stops what?” Dammit, Lydia, speak English.
“Stops looking,” Trouble said. “Last time, private matter, for face. Everyone doesn’t knows. Now, everyone will knowing. People gets killed because porcelains, maybe other people stops.”
“Killed?” The conversation was going more or less according to plan, but my heart didn’t want any part of it. It was trying to escape from my chest. It took a few seconds before Trouble’s words really registered.
When they did, I realized that I actually wasn’t sure what was going on.
“ ‘Last time’?” I asked. “What does that mean, ‘last time’?”
Trouble chuckled. So did Jimmy. The other boy was busy looking around nervously; he must have missed the joke.
“ ‘Last time’?” I repeated.
Then the light dawned.
I suddenly felt lighthearted and happy, an unacceptable sensation when you’re standing in the icy wind in zombie-land with three guys who’ve come to kill you. “Hsing Chung Wah,” I marvelled.
Bill cut me a look; I saw the light dawn on him, too.
Trouble grinned, but he didn’t answer.
I nodded to myself. “That’s the way it was, isn’t it? The Golden Dragons killed Hsing Chung Wah yourselves. Not Bic.” Not Bic. Life was good. “Not the Main Street Boys. They didn’t kill anybody.”
“Oh, little private eye getting so smart.” Trouble applauded me sarcatically.
“For face.” Bill picked it up. “Lydia’s right, isn’t she? You had an
arrangement with the Main Street Boys, and Hsing broke it. You didn’t know anyone had stolen porcelains from Chinatown Pride until Lydia came to see you. It pissed you off, didn’t it? Made you look bad, a guy who can’t stick to a deal. So you had to find out who it was. That probably wasn’t hard. Maybe Hsing even bragged about it. To embarrass you. To make you lose face. I’ll bet he did, didn’t he?”
“Hsing Chung Wah.” Trouble stopped grinning; he spat on the pavement. “Little stupid boy. Thinks can be big shot, dai lo, big maybe as Main Street Boys, even big as Trouble. Bullshit little boy.”
“Yes,” I said. “But you had to do something about it.”
“That’s right,” Bill said, his eyes on Trouble. “That’s why there was no payback, why the Golden Dragons never came for the Main Street Boys. What Hsing did was bad for the Dragons’ face. It made Trouble look like he couldn’t control his own crew. Trouble couldn’t let that happen, so he had one of his boys blow him away. Right?”
“Not boys!” Trouble snarled. “Trouble doesn’t needing boys, give him face! Trouble does everythings Golden Dragons needs!”
Stepping sharply in, Trouble shoved Bill back against the car.
Bill, caught off balance, seemed to stumble. Then his fist drove forward, caught Trouble under the ribs. Trouble grunted. He grabbed for Bill’s throat. Greasy-handed Jimmy whipped a gun from under his jacket to hold on me in case I had any ideas about wanting to help.
All right, Mary! I thought. Look, a gun. Come out, come out, wherever you are.
As Bill broke Trouble’s hold, the lounging black junkies from the burned-out car sprang into action. “Police! Don’t move!” one yelled. They charged across the broken asphalt.
More shouts. The three guys from the steel-drum fire raced down the pavement in our direction.
Trouble spun around, forgetting about Bill. He whipped out a gun, aimed at one of the racing cops.
Jimmy, next to him, did the same.
The other kid, wild-eyed, didn’t seem to know where to turn. He had his gun out too, waving it while he stared frantically around as though he were looking for something.
Then a car screeched onto the parking strip from the highway. It burned rubber to reach us. Rocking and fishtailing as the driver slammed the brakes, it swerved to a stop between us and the cops.
The passenger-side door flew open. A figure stepped half out, one foot on the pavement, one still in the car.
“Hey, asshole!” a familiar voice bellowed. My blood went cold. “Trouble! Asshole! There are some people you don’t touch!”
“No! Don’t!” I yelled, my words flying into the freezing wind. But it was already too late, before I spoke.
I heard the chatter and whine of automatic fire.
Something slammed into me, knocking me to the ground. It was Bill, who pressed me to the pavement as Matt Yin, with the AK-47 he hugged against his hip, blew Trouble and Jimmy away.
The other Golden Dragon flew toward the car, yanked open the rear door. I thought Matt was going to shoot him too, but he didn’t. The kid flew in and the door slammed behind him.
Tires screeched again. The car plowed straight on. Cops dove for cover, shooting after it.
It didn’t stop.
T H I R T Y - F O U R
It took a long, long time to get things straightened out at the Fifth Precinct, a long time before Mary let me go home.
In fact it was a long time before she even came to speak to me in the stuffy interview room where the uniforms who’d hauled us down to the station house had stuck me. One rough-voiced cop had opened the door after some interminable length of time and asked if I wanted coffee. When I shook my head he didn’t give me a chance to ask for tea, just said, “Suit yourself,” and shut the door again.
Except for him, I was alone for over an hour, trying to breathe and meditate and find some way to chase from my mind Matt’s hard smile, and the wink he’d given me as our eyes met in the second before the car sped off.
Even in the dry, overheated room I still felt cold. It was a cold that came partly from hunger, partly from standing in the shivering wind off the river for a time that felt like forever. The EMS and the Crime Scene Unit and the Medical Examiner’s man had raced onto the parking strip, squealing their tires, screaming their sirens, flashing their lights. Numb, I’d watched as the medics and the cops did what they do, moved around and over and between the blood and the bodies. Radios had chattered and squawked, and horns had honked impatiently as the highway traffic had slowed so the drivers could gawk.
I’d mumbled answers to some questions, though I had a feeling more had been asked than I had really heard. Mary, finally, sounding more disgusted and angry than I’d ever known her, told someone to take me and Bill downtown, and stalked off without looking at me. Trouble’s blood was freezing into crusted pools on the broken pavement by the time I was led away.
Now, staring at the grimy mustard-yellow wall of the interrogation room, I sank my hands deeper into my jacket pockets, hunched my shoulders up further, tried to stop thinking, tried to be warm.
When Mary pushed through the door carrying two steaming styrofoam cups of tea I was almost glad to see her.
She put the tea on the gouged wooden table and stood there, hard-faced. I just looked at her, unsure what to say.
“Well?” she finally asked. “Well? What the hell was that?” When I didn’t answer, she gestured shortly to the tea. Then she yanked out a chair for herself across the table.
Sitting, she said again, “What the hell was that?”
I reached for a cup, held it in both hands. The tea was dark and bitter and the styrofoam squeaked. My hands trembled, no matter how hard I tried to make them behave.
I sipped at the tea, until I thought maybe I could talk.
“I don’t know, Mary.” My words were scratchy in my throat. “I didn’t know about any of that.”
“You didn’t know Matt Yin was Bic? You didn’t know the Main Street Boys had an informer on the Golden Dragons?”
She almost yelled her questions at me. “You didn’t know who killed Hsing Chung Wah? Don’t lie to me, Lydia! You’re in enough trouble already.”
“I only knew…” Those words didn’t sound like words a all. I cleared my throat and tried again. “I knew about Matt. But not any of the other things. What was supposed to happen tonight—what was supposed to happen was what we set up. Trouble was supposed to think he was ambushing me and Bill, and you were supposed to ambush him. Really, Mary. That’s really what I thought.”
“And Matt? When were you going to tell me about that?”
“I…I don’t know. I don’t know why I didn’t.”
“I know why. Because you know everything. You know better than anyone, and you’re going to solve everybody’s problems and be everyone’s hero.”
She reached for the other cup of tea. “So now Matt’s killed two people,” she said. “So they wouldn’t kill you.” She looked up from the tea. I felt like she’d punched me. “And we can’t find him. Do you know where he is?”
I shook my head. I offered weakly, “There’s a restaurant in Flushing…”
“China Seas. We’ve been there. We picked up two of his boys. That’s how we know about the informer and what was on Matt’s mind. Are you lying to me now, Lydia? Do you know where he is?”
I shook my head some more. “I never lied to you. Really. I didn’t tell you everything, because I wanted to protect some people, but I never lied.”
“Protect. Who the hell are you to protect anyone? Protect who? Matt?”
“No. Well, maybe.” My confusion must have been as obvious to Mary as it was to me, because she shoved her chair back from the table and began to pace the room behind me. “Nora,” I said, before she spoke.
“Nora? Nora Yin? What do you mean, so she wouldn’t know her brother was a gangster?”
“Yes. But not only that. I thought he’d killed Hsing Chung Wah. For her.”
“What do you mean, for h
er?”
“He was protecting her too.” That thought struck me as funny. I swallowed some tea so I wouldn’t start to giggle. Matt was protecting Nora. Lee Kuan Yue was taking care of Mrs. Blair. Brothers making a mess all over New York, taking care of their sisters. I started to giggle anyway, tried to hide it in a cough. Oh, please don’t get hysterical, Lydia, I begged myself. Chew on your styrofoam, but please don’t get hysterical.
It seemed to be a losing battle. I sputtered as I swallowed some tea. All those brothers. The Five Chinese Brothers. One of them had an iron neck, one could swallow the sea.
Then a thought, like a big black wave of icy Hudson water, broke over me.
I sobered up instantly.
“Lydia?”
I was startled back to the mustard-colored room by Mary’s voice.
“Lydia, what’s wrong with you? Don’t zone out on me. There’s no room for that. There’s too much going on now.”
“No,” I said. “No, I’m all right.” Which wasn’t true. I had an answer now to a question I’d almost forgotten, and the anger that had suddenly exploded in me was enough to bounce me off the walls.
Instead, I sat where I was, drank the rest of my tea, and told Mary about the case. I guessed it didn’t matter, now. I heard myself talking, about Nora, about Chinatown Pride, about Bic and Trouble and Dr. Caldwell—who had been picked up by Bernstein from the 19th on a conspiracy-to-murder charge an hour ago, according to Mary—as if I were a long way away, as if all this were some story that might or might not have actually happened, but in any case hadn’t happened to me.
As I talked, the anger burnt itself out rapidly, like a fire you can start but just can’t keep lit. The numbness took over again. I knew I was way beyond the end of my strength, running on fumes and habit. And the need to be tough.
Mary waited until I was through. Then she asked questions and I answered them. She went away, came back, asked some more questions. She went away again, for a long time.
Finally, she came back. “You can go home,” she said.
