by S. J. Rozan
“Plus suspect in theft from Chinese people,” Inspector Wei added. “So NYPD has gratitude of Shanghai Police Bureau, also government of People’s Republic.”
“And,” Mary finished, “we also took up seven armed gangbangers as a result of your information.”
I was impressed that Mary could produce such an abundance of cop jargon, but this wasn’t the time to mention it.
“Also, Captain Mentzinger wants something from you. So he’d rather I didn’t keep you on ice for the rest of your life.”
“What does he want?”
“We’ll get to that. First, I’m going to ask questions, and you’re going to answer as though you were a good, cooperative PI.” I sat in cooperative PI silence. “One: You did think C. D. Zhang knew who Wong Pan was when you went charging in there, right? The way Bill says?”
“Bill did. I thought maybe.” I didn’t like this shift that made Bill the good guy and me the bad guy in Mary’s eyes.
“And it had occurred to you the White Eagles might be after the Shanghai Moon.”
“Maybe. Possibly. But I thought that’s why they were all gathering near Bright Hopes. I had no idea Fishface Deng knew about the noodle shop! I mean, how did he?” I asked that even though a theory on it was one of the things I’d come up with sitting here in silent meditation.
But if I thought I was going to slip in a question and get Mary to answer it, I was mistaken. A glare, and she said, “It didn’t occur to you just to keep an eye on the place and wait for us? Never mind, that would be only if you’d wanted to help us take up Wong Pan. But that wasn’t it. You wanted to see what was going on. Right?”
“Oh, Mary, of course I did! All right, that was bad judgment. But after all this, to actually see the Shanghai Moon-”
I stopped as Mary reached into her pocket and pulled out a Ziploc holding a cardboard box. “Go ahead. This is what it was all about? Open it.” She tossed it over.
The box was the worse for wear, probably from things like when I landed on Fishface, and it was dusty with fingerprint powder. Despite my new theory, my heart pounded as I lifted the top and pulled off cotton batting. On more batting, stuffed in tight so it wouldn’t roll around, lay a big green cat’s-eye marble.
I sat back heavily against my chair. “Damn.”
“Damn? That’s all you have to say?”
“It’s a marble.”
“That’s right. Not some romantic mysterious lost gem. A piece of glass.”
“Wong Pan never had the Shanghai Moon.”
Mary looked to Inspector Wei, who shook her head. “After you tell story from Attorney Fairchild, Shanghai Police Bureau investigates carved box. Have two expert try. Take to hospital so can make X-ray. Box doesn’t has secret compartment.”
A tide of futility and failure washed over me. Oh, Rosalie, Kai-rong! I’m so sorry!
“Lydia?” Mary’s tone gave me a chill. “You know, you don’t seem surprised. What are you holding back? Girlfriend, I swear-”
“I only just figured it out,” I said wearily. “While you kept me sitting here for an hour. Girlfriend.” I looked from one cop to the other. “Did you find out how the White Eagles knew about the meeting in the noodle shop? Or how Wong Pan knew who Fishface was? No, stop, don’t tell me you’re the one who asks the questions. This”-I pointed at the marble-“confirms what I was thinking. The whole thing was a sting.”
“Go back,” Mary ordered. “Wong Pan knew Fishface?”
“He called him ‘Deng dai lo.’ Not just his name, his title. How would anyone from outside Chinatown know that, let alone some guy from Shanghai? Unless they’d met. And a marble? Wong Pan can’t have expected C. D. Zhang not to look in the box. He didn’t care. The box was showmanship. It wasn’t supposed to be opened. Wong Pan hired the White Eagles to knock the meeting over.”
Neither cop said anything. That made me suddenly crabby. My best friend keeps me on ice for an hour and then doesn’t buy my theory? “This was the big score. Not some jewelry store stickup. This was the gig that was going to launch their soldier-of-fortune careers. The big score had a client. Wong Pan was the client. Ask him. Or ask Fishface.”
Mary said, “I talked to Fishface. He says any story about clients is bogus. Everything the White Eagles have ever done was his own idea. Not that they’ve ever done anything, a friendly little social club like them. But if they ever had done anything, it would have been his idea.”
“What does he say his social club was doing in New Day Noodle waving guns around?”
“Funny, I asked him that. He said they smelled smoke and went in to help, and what guns?”
“What do you mean, what guns? They were all carrying, every one of them.”
“That’s what you say. As soon as they saw how trapped they were, it was raining guns on Canal Street. Not one White Eagle was found with a weapon.”
“But-! Oh, never mind. This was a sting. And Wong Pan was the client.”
“You really think so?”
“Fishface didn’t think this up. It’s way above his pay grade. There has to be a client.”
“Agreed. I mean, you think it was Wong Pan?”
“As opposed to who? Whom? What?”
“Wait here.” As though I had a choice. Mary got up and left. Inspector Wei went with her, and I thought I might be in for another meditation session, but she came back a minute later with two mugs. “Terrible.” She handed me one. “Worse than Shanghai police station. How is possible make such bad tea?”
“They say the coffee’s worse.”
Wei nodded, considering that. “In China, not many private investigators. Only study mens for wives, for divorcing. Not useful to police, like you, like Investigator Smith.”
“Useful? Are you kidding? Do you see how furious Mary is?”
“Detective Kee your friend, wants you not get hurt, Investigator Smith also. But your informations, valuable to her, for case, for career.”
“You think?”
“Behind furiousness, eyes full of pride, having smart, brave friend like you. You can’t see?”
I sure couldn’t. While I was wondering whether there was any truth in that or if it was just a case of cultural misinterpretation, Mary came back. She held a briefcase I recognized, having watched it swing from C. D. Zhang’s hand down the length of Canal. Dropping it on the table, she repeated herself. “Go ahead. Open it.”
I did. It was stuffed tight with a month’s worth of Tsingtao Daily. “Wow. What?” I looked up. “I don’t get it.”
I could see the cop and the friend warring in Mary. Actually, not: Both obviously wanted to tell me “Hah!” and send me away not getting it. But the cop, who had a case to crack, grabbed the lead. “Right now we’re thinking C.D. Zhang stole the cash. Not that anyone’s admitting there was any cash, so we don’t know how much, but Bill says the Shanghai Moon would be worth at least a million.”
“That’s what we were told. But C. D. Zhang, stealing it? That’s nuts.”
“That doesn’t make it wrong. People have ripped off relatives for a lot less.”
I thought of C. D. Zhang’s eyes glittering as he warned me, The Shanghai Moon’s a quicksand, tread carefully. And something else: Fishface Deng smiling at C. D. over the back-room table. I’d thought that was a red-envelope familiarity, but it could, I supposed, have meant something else. “You’re saying C. D. Zhang steals the money, then fakes getting robbed by the White Eagles? But what about the newspaper? Why substitute if he wasn’t really being robbed?”
“Showmanship, like the marble. Make the weight of the briefcase look right.”
“But the marble… If C.D. hired the White Eagles-”
“I think they both did. Wong Pan and C. D. Zhang. That’s why the meeting was in a public place. So the world would know they’d been robbed. The whole thing was a sting on Chen and Zhang.”
I didn’t like that, not at all. But there was the briefcase in front of me, full of no cash. “Wong Pan and C. D. Zhang were b
oth the client? What do they say?”
“I told you! C. D. Zhang isn’t talking, and I can’t lean on him unless we charge him. My captain doesn’t want to do that right now, to avoid, you know, another stupid mistake.”
Brought about by your best friend, okay, I get it. “And Wong Pan?”
“Wong Pan. Now, Wong Pan is exactly the problem.”
Both cops regarded me evenly, as though Mary had said something I was supposed to do something about.
“What?” I demanded. “He killed Joel. And Sheng Yue, too, whatever he says.”
“Oh, he killed them both. He’s all but admitted it.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Well, for one thing, we didn’t exactly take him up neat and clean. We had guns, bullets, SWAT guys. Streets closed, tourists diving for cover. A wildly expensive operation and a public relations nightmare. Captain Mentzinger’s fielding hysterical calls from every civic group in Chinatown. And he’s expected at One PP in an hour to explain himself.” One Police Plaza, NYPD headquarters, where precinct commanders go to be chewed out by brass. Mary leaned forward. “For another thing, Wong Pan, on the verge of signing off on both homicides, has suddenly clammed up.”
“Why?”
She gave me a drama-department pregnant pause. Then she turned to Inspector Wei and cued her with a nod.
“Shanghai Police Bureau sends me here, bring back killer of Inspector Sheng Yue.” Wei spoke evenly, but her resolve was unmistakable. “Wong Pan doesn’t want coming back.”
I ventured, “I don’t blame him.”
“The State Department is pressuring the DA to send him back, though,” Mary said. “Closing two homicides means less to them than our relationship with a friendly foreign power. But the DA doesn’t want to, and Captain Mentzinger sure doesn’t, either. China gets the prize and we’re left empty-handed with a mess to clean up?” She gave me a look to remind me who made the mess. “And this is where you come in.”
“In the middle of a tug-of-war between the DA and the State Department?”
“I know, amazing, right? For someone who should be locked up in Brooklyn.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“I would if I thought it would work. Anyway, keeping you locked up isn’t my problem. It’s the seven White Eagles we might have to cut loose.”
“Why would you?”
“What can we charge them on?”
“Attempted robbery?”
“What robbery? Grand theft marble? Receiving stolen newspaper?”
“Breaking and entering?”
“A public noodle shop?”
“Oh, come on! Kidnapping?”
“Their lawyers already told the press these misunderstood Samaritans got scared when they saw all the firepower outside, since they’ve been harassed by cops all their lives, and you and Bill had guns, and they didn’t have any guns, so they panicked and used you as shields to escape the police brutality they’d come to expect, which was bad judgment and they’re very sorry, and of course they were planning to let you go.”
“Are you-What was that thing Fishface had against my head if they had no guns? What about all the guns all over the street?”
“Every one we found had been filed rough. Not a usable print anywhere.”
“But-”
“Lydia! It’s not what it was, it’s how a lawyer can make it look. At the very least they’ll make bail. Then they’ll disappear.”
I let out a disgusted breath. “All right, I get it. I can’t believe it, but I get it.”
“Good. Now get this, too: Captain Mentzinger is very, very reluctant, under the circumstances, to let these guys walk.”
“I’m with him. But he thinks there’s something I can do? Armpit? I can try, but-”
“No, he’s useless. We picked those guys up, but we have nothing on them, so why would they roll?” She paused for effect again. It was effective. “But if there were a client? Someone to testify the White Eagles had been hired to knock over the meeting? That’s criminal conspiracy. And C.D. Zhang got shot in the course of it, which, according to the DA, makes the White Eagles responsible even if it turns out a cop shot him. Then we could put them all away. That would make the DA and Captain Mentzinger very happy.”
“But Wong Pan was a client. Can’t he testify?”
“He could. And he will-if, and only if, he gets a promise we won’t extradite.”
I looked at Inspector Wei. “And he’s not about to get that, is he?”
Wei smiled. “No.”
Mary said, “So we have to get the White Eagles another way. Then everyone has face and everyone’s happy.”
“You know how much I like for everyone to be happy. But how can I-”
“Alice Fairchild.”
“What?”
“She must be in on it.”
This is what your best friend can do: voice thoughts you were trying to pretend to yourself you weren’t having.
I said, “I can’t give her to you. I’m sorry. I really am. But until I’m sure she’s involved, I have to protect her.”
“I know what I’m asking,” Mary said in a softer voice. “I know she’s your client.”
“More than that. She was Joel’s client.”
Mary sat back and considered me. “For what it’s worth, Bill said the same thing.”
“I’m not surprised. Except that you’re telling me. Aren’t you supposed to be playing divide and conquer?”
“With anyone else, I would be.”
I nodded slowly.
“Okay, see if this persuades you,” she said. “This non-extradition deal wasn’t Wong Pan’s idea.”
“I’m assuming it was his lawyer’s.”
“No. By the time he got a lawyer, someone had already filled his head with ugly pictures of what would happen if he went home, and others of the relative delights of American prisons.”
“Who did that?”
“Mulgrew.”
“Mulgrew? Who asked him?”
“That’s where Wong Pan is. Up there.”
“At Midtown? Why?”
“They’re not happy with us. They’ve been two steps behind all along and it’s made them look bad.”
“So for being smarter than they are, you have to give them the prize?”
“Their captain made a grab. The second it was over. The homicides are theirs, remember, and we had nothing else to charge him with.”
“Nothing to-”
“Down here? He was minding his own business, having a meeting in a noodle shop, when gangsters broke in and kidnapped him. He wasn’t a criminal. He was a victim.”
“I-”
“Besides, Captain Mentzinger has his own troubles. Something about SWAT teams and bullets flying.”
“Okay, okay. So what’s Mulgrew up to?”
“Closing his homicides. Wong Pan confesses, pleads it out, saves the cost of a trial, Mulgrew’s a hero. And if Wong Pan gives him the White Eagles on a deal that makes me and Captain Mentzinger look stupid, that would ice his cake.”
“I’d like to ice his cake myself. What if Wong Pan doesn’t get his deal, gets sent back, and never gives up the White Eagles?”
“What does Mulgrew care? They’re our problem down here.”
“What a dirtbag.”
She leaned across the table. “So shut him down. Give me Alice.”
I bit my lip. “I don’t know, Mary.”
We looked at each other for a while, neither of us happy. Mary breathed a sigh. “Okay, you can go.” She stood and headed for the door.
“Mary, really! I don’t know where she is anyway. But I’ll see what I can do. Can I ask a question?”
“I can’t wait.”
“Do you have Armpit stashed around here somewhere?”
“No. We leaned on those losers, but all they’d tell us is Fishface said to go hang around that corner and stay there until he said otherwise. You know what’s scary?”
“What?”
/> “As long as we have Fishface and the All-Stars locked up, your idiot cousin and his homies are the White Eagles. I may take them up again so they don’t shoot their own feet off.”
“I have a better idea.”
“You always do.”
“Can you let word leak out that you wanted to charge them, that whole loser crowd, but I asked you not to, and as a favor to your best and oldest friend, you didn’t?”
“That would give him big face. Using his family influence to protect his friends.”
“Yes, but he’d owe me.”
“He already owes you for not using fingerprints you don’t have.”
“So maybe we’d reach a tipping point and actually get something useful out of him. I’ll call and give him a squeeze.”
“Yeah, right.”
Inspector Wei said, “I think is good idea.”
Mary turned to her. “You do?”
“If can’t get anything by arrest Cousin Armpit, good idea, create guanxi debt. For this case, or for future.”
“Oh, fine. Though if Cousin Armpit comes through, Lydia, now or ever-”
“You’ll be the first to know. One more thing?”
“Please, be my guest.”
“If C. D. Zhang ripped off Mr. Chen and Mr. Zhang for a million dollars, why are they sitting at his hospital bedside?”
“Maybe,” Inspector Wei said, “they want to know where is.”
“Or maybe because whatever he did,” said Mary, “he’s still family.”
37
The Fifth Precinct air conditioners may have been wheezy, but they’d been getting the job done. The minute I walked out onto Elizabeth Street, my shirt melted around me. Car exhaust and the aroma of roasting chickens thickened the sluggish air. I took out my phone and called my cousin.
“Yah?”
“It’s Lydia, and I just saved your skinny ass.”
“Huh?”
I explained how close he and his homies had come to protective custody. “But the detective’s a friend of mine. So I told her to leave you alone.”
“Why?”
“You’re welcome. Because you’re my cousin and I have a certain amount of family feeling. And because I really, really want to know who the White Eagles’ clients were, for the noodle shop job and for my office.”
