by Henry Chang
On the hilly sidewalk, outside a Chinese restaurant, she inserted the phone card, made the call.
“Where are you?” Johnny asked.
She heard the edge on his voice. “Saam Fansi,” she said calmly. Play it straight with him. “The San Rema Motel.” She still needed him.
There was surprise in his voice now and she announced quickly, “I am speaking to you from an outside phone. I only have time to say this once, so listen carefully.”
She imagined him nodding yes, grabbing for pen and paper so he wouldn’t miss a word.
“Get yourself a car. Wait until night and drive up.” She paused for effect. “I need you here” Selling him the plan, the dream. “We’re partners, remember. I’m setting up in the jewelry business.”
“Jewelry?” he asked.
“But I can’t talk about it here. Write this down. San Rema Motel. San, like in mountain.” Way mah, unnecessary trouble, he was hearing. San Ray-Ma. 100 Stockton, see dork den, he was hearing it phonetically. “Room 3M. Wait for dark, make sure no one follows you.”
She hung up and adjusted the phone card, then her eyes scanned the number on the torn swatch of Chinese newspaper. Call New York, she thought, as she waited through the audio response.
* * *
It was 9 a.m. L.A. time when Golo, calling from New York, got hold of Fifth Brother in the Ching association at Wilshire and Yellow.
“No need to waste words, brother,” he said. “Room 3M at the Holiday Inn in Chinatown. There’s a man, maybe a man and a woman.”
“What do you desire? “
“Follow them, do nothing else.”
“Done. What else?”
“I need a gun. Nine-millimeter. When I arrive.”
“I’ll send the leng jai, the punk boys. One of them will pack for you.”
“My respects to Seventh Uncle, brother.”
“Respects all around.”
Golo hung up, and left the clubhouse, went toward Mulberry, where the last of the incense filtered out of the Wah Sang funeral house onto the street and made bittersweet the spirit of the night.
Betrayal
The two bulls from Internal Affairs Division surprised Jack, two big white cops with neat crewcuts and eyes like steel rivets. The captain introduced them, Rob Hogan, Paul DiMizzio. Jack watched quietly as Hogan spoke first.
“Detective, can you explain why we have you on videotape going down to Number Nine Mott Street? Why P.O. Jamal Josephs confirms a subsequent meeting in a bookstore with a known Chinatown gang leader? And why the DEA has you on a bug offering to deliver confidential department information?”
Jack was speechless a moment, his heart trembling during the questions, absorbing the shock and surprise.
“If you have that on tape, you should know I was investigating the Uncle Four shooting.”
“And you got shot yesterday, am I correct?”
“Yes,” Jack said. “It was only a graze.”
“You got shot because of the investigation?”
“I’m not sure it’s connected.”
“What have you come up with in your investigation?”
“Nothing concrete. I’m working some angles.” There was a pause. The men shook their heads, frowning.
“With due respect,” Jack said, “the department expects me to solve a crime in seventy-two hours because I’m Chinese?”
The bent-nosed partner, DiMizzio, stepped forward.
“You knew it was illegal to go down into that basement?” he challenged.
“Not in the course of an investigation—”
“Bullshit, Yu. You went down at midnight, twice. That’s after your shift and on your own time.”
“Yeah, because there’s a freeze on overtime, otherwise—”
“Public Morals Division has it under surveillance. Were you aware of that?”
Jack shook his head.
“You might have compromised several ongoing investigations, besides associating with known members of Chinese organized crime.”
“He was someone I knew from the neighborhood.”
“You saying you have a snitch in the Ghost Legion?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“That’s too bad, he could have been helpful.”
Hogan, never taking his eyes off Jack, said, “Yeah, we know all about Tat Louie and his punk-ass bullshit. Gambling. Drugs. Extortion. Another On Yee wannabe. Yeah, we know he was shit deep on the Peking Haircut Case. Nine years ago. Remember that?”
Jack remained quiet, staring back, thinking of Wing.
DiMizzio said, “Three Wah Ying gang members butchered in that barbershop on Hester? Stabbed. Shot. Had their dicks cut off?”
“Yeah,” Jack answered. “Never caught anyone, did you?”
“No,” said Hogan. “The case is still open, but we know Tat was involved. And you two were friends then, correct?”
“I was in the army then.”
Hogan smirked, said, “Funny how the Ghosts walked in and took over after that. Never saw another Wah Ying anywhere.”
Jack smirked back. “Yeah, well, the world spins like a wheel. What goes around, comes around.”
DiMizzio glowered. “What’s that? Chinese philosophy? Or are you condoning murder?”
“Just like I said,” Jack repeated. “What goes around, comes around. What’s your beef? It’s my fault you don’t know how to close a case?”
“Maybe you know more than you’re saying,” Hogan snapped. “Maybe you were involved.”
“Maybe you should go fuck yourself,” Jack barked.
“Tough guy, huh?” Hogan scowled. “We’re going to keep an eye on you.”
“Yeah, the way you guys keep an eye on things, I know I got nothing to worry about.”
DiMizzio moved closer. “Smartass, worry about this. A lawyer for the Fuk Ching Association has filed a complaint of harassment, claiming you tried to shake them down. What do you say to that?”
“Bullshit. An idiot could see through that.”
The captain flashed a look of disgust as Hogan closed the interview.
“We’re suspending you, Detective, pending further investigation. Surrender your gun to the captain, and keep yourself available to the department.”
Jack handed over the Colt wordlessly as they watched him, then went to clean out his desk, his mind boiling. This is the way they slide me out? The captain wouldn’t back him, a four-month transfer cop he’d never really got to know. Inscrutable. Jack knew it.
DiMizzio and Hogan skulked away. The captain banged into his office and slammed the door behind him.
They had betrayed him, after all the hard work he’d put in, Jack fumed. They were going to kill the investigation, let him go down on charges while suspended.
They, they, they. He was unsure where to assign blame, direct his anger, for the shapeless, silent conspiracy of cops and politics all around him.
Fuck them, he thought, he’d figure out his PBA moves when the formal charges came down.
He pulled his knapsack from the locker, was turning to go when the phone rang.
He recognized the woman’s voice. “Jun Yee Wong is at the Holiday Inn, Los Angeles,” she said. “Chinatown.”
I know this, he began thinking.
The caller ID flashed (415) 444-8888.
“Room 3M. He will be gone when night falls.” The phonecall ended, he heard the dial tone.
Jack ran the area code until it stopped at San Francisco; a woman from the Bay City sending him off to Los Angeles. But if he pulled in the SFPD, he knew everyone might disappear.
He toted the knapsack out of the stationhouse and jumped into the first radio car on line at Confucius Plaza.
“LaGuardia,” he said, “and push it.”
East To West
At the airport, Jack flashed his memorial gold badge from the Detectives’ Endowment Association, a black mourning band hiding the letters DEA, with added distraction from his photo ID, which was prominently displayed o
n the flap of the badge case. The security man at the gate checked the identification card, matched the photo to Jack’s face, never suspecting Jack was under suspension. The off-duty Glock rested snugly in the holster in Jack’s waistband, and quietly slipped onto the plane with him.
The flight out of LaGuardia had been delayed an hour, and when he arrived at LAX, it was already in the thick of the evening rush. He reached the Holiday Inn too late to catch the guest in 3M, but the motel clerk identified Johnny Wong from the Taxi and Limousine Commission license photo, said he’d left midafternoon, his room key was in the return slot.
“He rented a car,” the clerk said.
Jack cursed quietly. Johnny had had a few hours head start already.
“It was a Ford compact.” He gave Jack the license plate number.
Jack knew he would patch it along to the highway patrol, but he figured the Ford compact would be heading north. To San Franscisco. He punched up San Francisco Bell on his cell phone and identified himself, requested a phone location. Then he caught a return limo back to LAX.
Go
Johnny cruised the coastal highway north, stayed under the speed limit. To his left a gray mist blended the sky with ocean, laying down a curtain of fog. Below him the whitecap surf was a green-blue blur far under the concrete highway. He cranked down the window, took a breath. Night was too far off, and he had gotten spooked, jumping the gun. San Francisco was maybe nine hours away, with the wind buffing his face. He thought he could be there by morning.
A red muscle car appeared, a dot in his rearview mirror, a few cars back. As he noticed it, it dropped back, disappeared. He wondered if it was the same car he’d spotted at the hotel.
Find Mona, the woman who’d escorted death and fear into his life, try to get some straight answers.
The road twisted toward the tree line above the mountains of Big Sur. Traffic thinned out. The light faded to night and all the cars looked black and shapeless in the mirrors. The ocean crashed below in the darkness and he couldn’t tell anymore if anyone was following him.
The highway flew by with the smell of salt air. He put on the radio for background, pop music; the reception cut in and out. He thought of Mona, and the last time their bodies had touched.
Stop
It was dark when Golo’s phone jangled, Fifth Brother’s low boys calling from their car at an all-night takeout shack outside Salinas.
“He’s stopped for coffee,” they said. “Looks like we’re heading for San Francisco.”
“I’m on my way,” Golo said.
Fog
The fog was cool and wet as it rolled up Grant Avenue near the highway, then slipped back down Jackson, past the phone booth outside the Pagoda Restaurant where Jack stood watching the evening settle over the Bay. He had just caught the 7:10 out of LAX and was hoping Wong jai was going to turn up in San Francisco. The circle was closing, and he knew Mona was inside it somewhere.
He sat in the rented car, took out the magazine pictures and his Glock, loaded fifteen hollow-points into the clip and watched the phonebooth. He called the agency on the cell phone and put out a bulletin on Johnny’s rental car, wondered where it’d turn up. Midnight passed and no one came down Jackson. He drained his second coffee and pondered his next move, sitting in the hushed night, waiting through the mist for the first light of day.
Shadow
The red muscle car with black-tinted windows followed at a distance as the highway signs ran from Redwood City, San Mateo, Burlingame, to San Francisco. The unseen passengers watched Johnny’s compact rental go north, then east toward the Bay. The rental car was moving slow and easy, and that suited them just fine.
Johnny felt as if he was being followed again. But when he checked his mirrors he saw nothing suspicious, just the normal lights of night traffic queuing up behind him, even as he turned into the San Rema.
Nobody followed him in, and he told himself he was just being overly cautious. He checked the address he’d scribbled on the piece of memo paper from the Holiday Inn.
Then he parked the car in the space nearest the exit.
The Trans Am powered around the complex and rolled into the parking lot from the back access road. The engine idled and one of the low boys came out carrying a cell phone in his hand, keeping to the shadows as he followed Johnny into the courtyard. He watched Johnny go up to the middle landing, turn left toward the third door in the row, knock on it.
There was a long pause, words spoken low from Johnny’s mouth. The low boy brought the daai gor daai—cellphone—to his ear, tapped into the keypad a direct pager redial.
Then he backed away toward the red car, scoping Johnny, and waiting for Golo Chuk.
Lies
Mona hadn’t expected Johnny. She was surprised at the knock on her door. She kept quiet, holding her breath, calming her heartbeat, moving toward the pistol in the Samsonite.
“It’s me, Wong jai,” the voice said.
She realized what had gone wrong; the cops had failed. She fought the urge to flee. He knocked again. She watched him through the peephole and gathered herself, playing it cool, letting him in.
“You got here fast,” she said, pouring him a drink.
“As fast as I could,” he answered, tired out from the long drive.
“Rest up, we’re safe here,” she said. “For now.”
Johnny lay down on her bed and began to wonder what was going to happen next, but the brandy was tuning him out. She turned off the lights and, like that, he was asleep instantly.
Mona plotted through the darkness. Wait until daybreak. Then she’d call from the outside again. The same setup, only the location had changed. Curses on the police, practically being handed the fugitive, they still let him slip away. She knew Johnny was edgy so she’d have to convince him to stay put, for a couple of days at least. Her mind was spinning, the ideas spiraling in her head.
Waiting
Daylight washed over the Bay, a serene picture. Jack could see activity over toward Portsmouth, old folks practicing Tai Chi. A few people, some schoolchildren, passed, strolling down Jackson. He checked his watch, wondered who would show at the phone stand, wondered if he wasn’t wasting his time. There was nothing else he could do, he decided. His cop future hung on a woman’s phone call.
Arrival
Golo deboarded the redeye flight from New York, hustled a cab to the San Rema Motel and found the red Trans Am. When the black window powered down he smelled the rush of marijuana smoke, saw the low boys with their gold chains.
“Chuk sook,” one of them said respectfully, “Seventh Uncle, the man went into Room 3M.”
“You have something for me?” Golo asked, disdain in his voice.
The low boy handed him a Star nine-millimeter, said, “There’s a full clip of Black Talons. You have to cock it first.”
“I know how it works,” Golo snapped, disgusted at the veiny redness of their eyes. He remembered the fuckup with the gang boys in New York, didn’t want trouble or witnesses this time around.
“You can go,” he said, dismissing them. “My respects to Fifth Brother.”
The Trans Am growled away, disappearing into morning traffic. Golo felt for the handcuffs and knife in his pocket and chambered a round into the Star.
He spat onto the sidewalk and started toward room 3M.
Mona kept her eyes on Johnny, who lay crashed in her bed, and quietly backed her way out of the room, pulling the door shut with a small metallic click. She straightened her sunglasses and followed the landing down to the courtyard.
Jack fought the heaviness in his eyes, rubbed his temples.
A woman was coming down the hill, wearing a gray jogging suit and sunglasses, a black bag under her arm. When she got halfway down someone else appeared at the top, a tall man with his hands pressed down inside his jacket pockets. He followed her, keeping at a distance.
Something vaguely familiar about him, Jack thought.
The woman stopped at the phone booth, fumbled
with a square of paper.
Jack brought out the glossies from the Hong Kong magazine.
Short haircut. She lowered the sunglasses a moment, carefully pressing the phone buttons. Looked like Shirley Yip? She was on the phone only a minute.
Jack decided there was enough of a resemblance, then the tall man came through the parking lot behind the Pagoda Restaurant, his face taut and grim in a way Jack recognized from the shootout in Sunset Park.
The woman spotted the tall man almost immediately while he was still a half block away. She dropped the phone, started running back up the hill.
Jack exited the car holding the Glock as the man followed her. They ran two blocks uphill and went toward a motel building on the next corner, Stockton, as Jack chased up the hill after them.
BLANG!
Johnny’s eyes snapped open, saw Mona at the door, breathless.
“What?” he asked, rising up from the bed.
“Trouble,” she gasped.
He grabbed his vest, the Ruger. “What happened?”
“Someone must have followed you.” Desperation showed in her eyes.
He went to the door, while she snatched up the Rollmaster, and pointed at her to hush. He listened for a long moment as she squinted out the window toward Stockton, getting her bearings. Her mind clicking, These dogs will not stop me. Not a sound outside.
“If we get split up,” she whispered, “we meet at the Empress, by Chinatown. In the lobby by the telephones.” Johnny nodded agreement.
