Robert B Parker - Spenser 21 - Walking Shadow

by Walking Shadow(lit)

  "I hate cold things," Susan said.

  "People clean battery terminals with warm Diet Coke," Farrell said.

  "That's their privilege," Susan said and drank some.

  "You working on that thing up in Port City?" Lee said.

  "Yes."

  Pearl the Wonder Dog came loping up through the stand of wild flowers, jumped effortlessly up onto the table, poked her nose into the takeout bag, and held the point, her tail wagging like the vibrations of a tuning fork.

  "She appears to have bayed the sandwiches," Farrell said.

  "Get down," Susan said forcefully, and Pearl turned and lapped her face vigorously. I reached across and picked her up and put her on the ground and gave her half my sandwich.

  "Isn't that rewarding inappropriate behavior?" Farrell said.

  "Yes," I said and gave her the other half of my sandwich and rummaged in the bag for a new one.

  Farrell turned and gazed at the house.

  "This is a hell of a project," he said.

  "Also long-range," I said.

  "You going to move in together when it's done."

  Susan and I said "No" simultaneously.

  Farrell grinned.

  "Okay, we're clear on that. You got a plan?"

  Susan looked at me. I shrugged.

  "Outside," Susan said.

  "My plan is to cut almost everything down and start over."

  "Inside," I said, "I plan to rip nearly everything out and start over."

  "But no vision of what it will look like when it's done?"

  "Step at a time," I said.

  "Part of stripping it down is learning about it. You get to know the house, and when it's stripped back to the essentials, it will sort of tell you what to do next."

  "Like an investigation," Farrell said.

  "Very much like that," I said.

  "Except the house doesn't lie to you."

  "Are they lying to you up in Port City?" Susan said.

  "Yeah. Did you tell me that Sampson went to school on the GI Bill?"

  "Yes."

  "So he was in the military?"

  "Yes."

  "He told you that?"

  "Yes, and showed me pictures of himself, in uniform, in front of some kind of bunkery thing. Why?"

  "DeSpain says the FBI has no record of his prints."

  "But if he was in the army..." Susan said.

  "Yeah. They should have them."

  "I should be able to run that down for you," Farrell said.

  "Take a while."

  "I'd appreciate it," I said.

  Farrell nodded. Pearl had moved under the picnic table and was resting her head on Farrell's leg. He looked down at her and broke off a small portion of his sandwich and fed it to her.

  "What do you do about people who don't like having your dog in their lap when they come to visit?" Farrell said.

  "We assume there is something wrong with them," Susan said.

  "And we try to help them."

  CHAPTER 17

  I met Herman Leong in a diner on South Street. He was a short guy with horn-rimmed glasses, a thick neck, and a close crewcut.

  His eyes were humorous. He wore a buttoned-up tan sweater under a black suit. When I joined him at the counter, he was eating pancakes. I ordered coffee.

  "Quirk says you looking for information about Chinatown," he said to me.

  I stirred some sugar into my coffee. The mug was thick white china veined with spidery cracks.

  "Sort of," I said.

  "You know anything about Port City?"

  "Sure."

  "I'm into something up there that I don't understand."

  "You must be used to that," Herman said.

  "Quirk's been bragging about me again," I said.

  "There's a big Chinese community in Port City."

  "Chinatown North."

  "Who runs it?"

  "Lonnie Wu," Leong said.

  "Just like that?" I said.

  "Sure. Lonnie Wu is the Port City dai low for the Kwan Chang long."

  "What's a dot low?"

  "Means elder brother." Leong said.

  "A dai low is a gang coordinator. Tongs don't have soldiers any more. It's cheaper and safer and more efficient to sub it out. Mostly now they use street gangs for muscle. The dai low recruits kids, organizes them, serves as liaison between them and the long."

  "Wu had a couple of Vietnamese kids with him last time I saw him," I said.

  "Probably Death Dragons," Leong said.

  "That's the Port City gang they use. They're Vietnamese of Chinese descent. Refugees, some of them second generation. You can't deport them. They don't care if they live or die. Don't care if you do. They'll take a contract on a three-month-old baby."

  "Does Boston run Port City?"

  "The Kwan Chang long, yeah, through Lonnie Wu. The thing about a dai low is that, normally, he's the only long guy the gang bangers see. They get busted, he bails them out. They go to court, he gets them a lawyer. He pays them. He puts out the contract. So Lonnie's all the Death Dragons know."

  "He a big man in the Boston long?"

  "Not exactly. Chinatown is Chinatown. There isn't much that's yes or no, you understand? He's a dai low. Theoretically, he's got one contact in Kwan Chang long. And, theoretically, I don't know who it is. Nobody's supposed to. Dai lows guard that pretty close.

  That way he's sort of separated from Kwan Chang by the secrecy thing. If only two people connect the long and the gang, it's hard for the cops to connect them."

  Leong finished his pancakes, swirling the last bite around in the syrup on the plate before he put it in his mouth. He chewed it carefully.

  "And if only two people know, and the cops find out," I said, "the long knows who told."

  Leong nodded, swallowed his pancake, and drank some coffee.

  He patted his mouth with a napkin, and took out some cigarettes.

  "You mind?" he said.

  I shook my head.

  "So..." Leong put a cigarette in his mouth and rolled it into the corner. He got a Zippo lighter out and snapped a flame and lit the cigarette and put the lighter away with one of those efficient little movements smokers have developed over the long ritual of their addiction. I admired the movement. I kind of missed it, although it had been nearly thirty years since I smoked. He exhaled some smoke.

  "... Lonnie is important to Kwan Chang, but the job means he needs to be kept pretty separate from the long. Except for one thing. He married in to the family of the guy runs Kwan Chang."

  Leong was smoking a Lucky Strike. No filter. The burning tobacco smelled good, although I knew it wasn't.

  "So that's why the separation is theoretical," I said.

  "Who's his in-law?"

  "Uncle Eddie Lee. Fast Eddie, Counselor for Life. Lonnie Wu married his sister."

  "Doesn't that make it a little complicated?" I said.

  "Yeah. Most long bosses don't want a dai low for a brother-inlaw. But there it is. And you know how us Chinese are with the family thing. Eddie's the senior male in the family. He's responsible for everyone else, including his brother-in-law. What's your interest?"

  "I went up there to look into a murder at the Rep theater. I talked with a bunch of witnesses, the damn killing took place on stage..."

  Leong nodded.

  "I heard about that," he said.

  "And one of them was Rikki Wu. Afterwards, her husband came to my office with two shooters and told me to stay away from his wife, and to stay out of Port City. I did stay away from his wife.

  I didn't stay away from Port City, and a couple days ago somebody drove by and tried to shoot me through the window of a restaurant."

  "You're as good as I heard," Leong said.

  "Death Dragons want you dead, normally you're dead right away."

  "I'm an elusive devil," I said.

  Leong looked at me with eyes that had seen everything. Nothing impressed him, nothing shocked him, nothing excited him.

/>   And it was not just what he had seen; his eyes held the history of a people who for millennia had seen everything, and been shocked by nothing unimpressed, unexcited, unflinching, tired, permanent, and implacable.

  "Not for long," Herman said.

  "Thanks for putting me at ease," I said.

  "Those kids have lost face," Herman said.

  "It's not about money any more."

  "I'll be alert," I said.

  "You know anything about the woman?"

  "Rikki? No. I hear she's a very snooty and spoiled broad, but it's just what I hear."

  "Any reason you can think of why he wants me out of Port City?"

  Herman shrugged. He smoked his cigarette without removing it from his mouth, so he had to squint a little to look through the smoke. As ash accumulated; he leaned over and tipped it off with his forefinger onto his empty plate.

  "Nothing specific. It's not my turf. You'd have to figure there's something he don't want you to find out about."

  "Know anything about the rackets in Port City?"

  "Not really," Herman said.

  "Usual Chinatown stuff, I imagine.

  Extortion, gambling, heroin, prostitution, illegal immigrants."

  "Chinese don't have a monopoly on most of that kind of thing," I said.

  Herman smiled.

  "They do in Chinatown," he said.

  His cigarette was about to burn his lips. He spat it out and rummaged for another one.

  "My mother used to call it the walking shadow."

  "The tongs?" I said.

  "The whole thing," Herman said. He lit another cigarette, put the Zippo away.

  "The whole thing. Wherever you went if you were Chinese, it followed you. Disappears when you shine a light on it. Move the light away, it's right there again, walking shadow."

  He was looking past me out at the street, looking at the people moving past us, and they seemed to me for a minute as they must have seemed to Herman Leong all the time: insubstantial, and temporary wisps of momentary history that flickered past, while behind him was the long, unchanging, overpowering weight of his race that bore upon the illusory moment and overpowered it.

  "You going back up there," Herman said.

  "Yeah."

  "Mistake."

  I shrugged.

  "I'm in the tough-guy business," I said.

  "I jump a case because two teenagers tell me to fade, and what do I do next for a living?"

  Herman nodded.

  "Guess you got to go back," he said.

  "Yeah."

  "Couple things," Herman said.

  "One, these kids are absolute stone killers. Don't be thinking that they're seventeen, or that they weigh about one hundred pounds. Killing people is who they are.

  Makes them feel good."

  I nodded.

  "Same with anybody got nothing else," I said.

  "I'll shoot one if I need to."

  "You'll need to," Herman said.

  "And more than one."

  "You said 'a couple of things." What's the other?"

  "Bring backup." Herman said.

  "I heard about you. And I know about you even if I didn't. You're a cowboy."

  I shrugged.

  "You can't do this alone," Herman said.

  I grinned.

  "No man is an island," I said.

  "Who said that, Hemingway?"

  "John Donne, actually."

  "Close enough," Herman said.

  "Low faan all look alike, anyway."

  CHAPTER 18

  I met Hawk in a parking lot behind the Port City Theater. It was drizzling, and the rain had made puddles on the uneven asphalt surface. Oil leaching into them made unpleasant-looking color spectrums on the surface of the dirty water. Hawk was wearing a black cowboy hat and a black leather trenchcoat, which he wore unbuttoned. He was leaning on his Jaguar, and beside him in a leather jacket and a tweed sc ally cap was Vinnie Morris.

  "Vinnie," I said.

  "Spenser."

  "Assistance," Hawk said in his mock WASP accent, "in combating the yellow peril."

  "You mention to Vinnie the fee?" I said.

  "Told him he'd get what I'm getting."

  "You back with Joe?" I said.

  "No."

  "Things are a little slow."

  "Yeah. I got some dough put aside, but I'm sick of going over the dump every day, shooting rats."

  "Good to keep your hand in," I said.

  "Hawk tell you the deal?"

  "Un huh."

  "Need to know anything else?"

  "Who pays for my ammunition," Vinnie said.

  "I do," I said.

  "It's a fringe benefit."

  "Man, my career is taking off," Vinnie said.

  The drizzle was becoming more insistent.

  "We smart enough to get in out of the rain?" Hawk said.

  "You bet," I said.

  "Want coffee?"

  "Pick some place we don't like," Hawk said.

  "So it get shot up we won't feel bad."

  "I got to meet Jocelyn Colby over here in something called the Puffin' Muffin."

  "Fine."

  Vinnie looked at Hawk.

  "The Puffin' Muffin?" he said.

  Hawk shrugged.

  "Get used to it," he said.

  The Puffin' Muffin, in the theater arcade, was one of the many shops in Port City designed for affluent Yankees, and located in places where affluent Yankees never went. When they did come, it was for an evening of theater at which time they were rarely hungry for muffins.

  "Got a nice big picture window," Hawk said.

  "Yeah."

  "Let's not sit in it," Hawk said.

  We took a seat against the rehabbed brick wall.

  There was a counter across the back of the place and a display case full of muffins. On the walls there were pictures of muffins; the pictures were interspersed with theater posters from the Port City Stage Company. The furniture was blond. Including the muscular waitress, with her long hair gathered in a geyser on top and tied with a pink ribbon. She poured us coffee from a thermos pot.

  "Is it possible to get a muffin with my coffee?" I said.

  She didn't smile. People never thought I was as funny as I did.

  "Blueberry, bran, corn, banana, carrot, pineapple orange, cherry, raspberry, apple cinnamon, maple nut, lemon poppy seed, oat bran, cranberry, and chocolate chip," she said.

  "Corn," I said.

  "Toasted or plain?"

  "Plain."

  "Butter or margarine?"

  "Neither."

  "You want jelly with that?"

  "No."

  "Honey?"

  "No."

  She looked at the other two.

  "Same," Hawk said.

  Vinnie nodded.

  The waitress went away.

  "Any sign of anyone following Jocelyn?" I said.

  Hawk grinned.

  "Same guy following the Greek."

  "You," I said.

  "Un huh."

  "Nobody else."

  "Nobody," Hawk said.

  The waitress came back with three corn muffins and put them down in front of us. She freshened our coffee.

  "Can I get you anything else?" she said.

  "No, thank you," I said.

  She1 nodded and ripped a check from her pad and put it facedown on the table. Vinnie passed it to me.

  "For cris sake I said, "ammunition and coffee?"

  "I want the full ride," Vinnie said.