Live Bait

by Ted Wood

  I rode up seventeen floors, listening to Muzak and wondering what kind of person defaces the walls of elevators. From the height of the scratches on this one it was somebody short. That let Tony off the hook.

  His apartment was located at the far end of the hall and I stood for a moment to check that there was nobody around. An apartment corridor is a bad place to be ambushed.

  Nobody jumped out of a doorway at me and I came to P6 and tapped. I could hear rock music playing; it sounded like a party, but somebody heard me at once and the door swung open inwards, almost slickly enough to be automatic. But I don't believe in magic. To me the open door meant an ambush and I reacted without even thinking.

  I took a quick step into the room and turned to slam my full weight against the door, flinging it back another foot as I faced away from it, preparing to take on whoever was setting me up. The door didn't hit the wall. As I expected it squeezed back, against the body of the man who was hiding behind it.

  I tried to hold it against the wall, but the man was too small to be trapped. He forced himself out of the space and came at me like a cyclone, crouched in the kung fu stance, whirling and kicking as I backed away, reaching for anything I could throw. I hit him with the Princess telephone but the cable checked it, preventing it from hurting him. Then I scrabbled a lamp and dish of fruit at him, but he was winning, backing me away from the door. I reeled back against a coffee table, scooped the ashtray off it and sent it at his head but he ducked under it and came on. Desperately I grabbed the table and held it between us. It was only a delaying tactic. My arms would tire before he did. So I did what all the manuals advise rape victims to do. I began to shout. "Police, here! You back off. Police! Police!" It wasn't very dignified, but neither is lying in a hospital bed with your arms and legs tied to the ceiling, and that was the only outcome I could see to this situation.

  And then, almost contemptuously, he ended it, sending a smashing kick at the table, tearing it sideways in my hands as he half stepped forward and hit me like a lightning strike over the right temple.

  As I somersaulted away from him into darkness, one detail filled my mind. He was small and dark and deadly, and he was dressed in a suit that was too wide in the lapels, too long in the skirt to be fashionable, unless you happened to be Chinese, which he was.

  Chapter 13

  I thought at first I was in the belly of a chopper, my body jouncing awkwardly against some spar that was digging into my chest. But as I opened my eyes I found I was looking at the soft, fawn broadloom rug of Tony's apartment. The jouncing was coming from the shiny toe of a big shoe that was sticking out of the leg of a polyester suit, the kind that comes with two pairs of pants for ninety-nine-ninety.

  Painfully, I rolled on to one elbow, my head threatening to snap right off my neck, and peered six feet away to the happy moon face of Elmer Svensen. "Nice try, asshole," he said and dug me again with his shoe.

  Normally I would have caught his foot at the ankle and thrown him on his back but my body was playing old man games on me.

  "Did you get him?" I heard my wheezy voice ask and the big face split into a grin.

  "Let's establish the rules of this game," he said. "I ask the questions, you do the answers. Okay?" I had heard him use similar routines a dozen times on investigations we had shared. It was his method of letting the suspect know there was no chance of getting away with anything. He was caught, dead to rights.

  "Did you get the guy who hit me? He was Chinese, dark suit, maybe five-three, around 120."

  Svensen laughed the bigger than life laugh of the schoolyard bully. With his big meaty face hanging open he turned around and called to his partner, "Hey, guess what, hotshot got all messed up by some Chink pygmy."

  There was no answer and Svensen dropped the laugh and prodded me again with the same shoe. I reached up and tapped him on the shinbone with the point of my middle finger. "Don't do that," I cautioned him. He drew his leg away with a yelp of surprise and I got up, first to my knees and then to my feet.

  "Did you see the Chinese guy?" I asked again, politely. There is nothing like being hit on the head to heighten your sense of the importance of politeness.

  Svensen snarled now, all pretense at humor and amusement gone. "I didn't see any Chinaman because there wasn't any Chinaman."

  I sat down on the arm of Tony's chesterfield. "I was here," I explained mildly. "Take my word for it there was one tough little Bruce Lee of a Chinese kid, and he was good."

  "Okay," Svensen said, suddenly hearty again. "Let's go along with this fairy story of yours. Only I want all of it. First of all why were you in this apartment? Second, everything that happened while you were here."

  I gave him the outline, leaving out all reference to Straight. I had come back to talk to Tony because the people at Bonded had asked me to follow up on the investigation, not in an official capacity, just to see if I could find anything out in a casual way. When I got to the apartment, I suspected something tricky and had been right, painfully right.

  Svensen listened, not saying anything, just glancing at me and then around, to his partner, who seemed to be waiting outside the door, as if afraid to come in and embarrass me with his presence.

  When I finished, Svensen said. "Won't stand up, none of it."

  "Why would that matter, I haven't done anything wrong, I come to visit a guy, somebody jumps me and hits me in the head. Except for one hell of a headache I'm in no trouble."

  Svensen turned to look me full in the face now, his grin starting to show, like the edge of a woman's slip. He backed off one pace and beckoned to me with his index finger. I got up and followed, holding my head in both hands. It felt as if it might drop off if I let go.

  He led me down the short hallway beyond the living room. It had three doors in it. One went into the bathroom, the second was closed, the third was open and led to a bedroom with an enormous round water bed in the middle of it, covered with a silk embroidered counterpane. On the counterpane lay what used to be Tony Caporetto. He had blood oozing from the corner of his mouth and his eyes were open, rolled back in his head, just the whites showing.

  Svensen sniffed, unwrapping a fresh stick of gum. "You do real neat work," he said.

  Chapter 14

  "Get real. He was taken by the same guy who hit me." I managed to keep my voice level, with no trace of pleading in it, but I had been at too many incidents with Svensen as my partner not to recognize how thin my story sounded.

  Svensen put his gum wrapper neatly in his pocket. Anywhere except a crime scene he would have tossed it over his shoulder. "Cute," he said, folding the gum into his mouth as if it were part of some complex technical process. "The guy ices Tony. I'm not sure how many times he was hit, but there's all kinds of bruising I can see. We'll know better when the coroner's been here. So, anyway, he beats Tony to a bloody pulp, then he comes out and gives you a neat little lovetap on the head so you can just come out of your sleepybyes as the big bad policemen get here."

  "You were watching." I said it mockingly but I was worried. On the evidence in front of him there was no other conclusion he could have reached. I tried to brazen it out. "Why aren't you looking for the kung fu kid?"

  "Because there isn't one." He took three quick angry chews at his gum with his front teeth, like a squirrel. "You and Tony were on the outs from the first time you met him. First off that phony deal, you fighting a couple of his boys on Queen Street. Then, next thing you're in his hangouts looking for him. He caused you trouble and you wanted to square him. Well now you have, kiddo, and you're going inside for ten years."

  I said nothing. He had a case, but not much of one. I concentrated on telling myself that story. I didn't want to think about getting sent to one of the penitentiaries where men I had arrested were doing time. The last policeman that happened to ended up cutting his own throat one night, rather than have it done for him in the exercise yard.

  The next hour went by like the first act of a play I'd seen too many times. Th
e homicide squad arrived, then the coroner, then the local inspector. The media people gathered outside. It would have been tedious, except that this time I was the prime suspect. The homicide men took me back to the station when they had finished their preliminary investigation and sealed the apartment.

  Normally they would have spent four or five hours going over the place, digging through the last pocket of the last suit in the closet looking for information that might point to Tony's killer. But this time they didn't have to. They had me.

  There were two of them, both equally tired and gray-faced, even now at the tag end of the hottest summer in years. One was heavy and worried looking, the other was thin and a little short. By one of those department coincidences that can sometimes wreck a career they were named Hooper and Cooper, close enough to cause a lot of confusion in court. Somebody in the department had rhymed it to give them their nickname, the supersnoopers.

  Hooper was the lean one. He took me through my story again, listening without comment. When I'd finished Cooper jumped on me.

  "This is the second time you've been busted for murder, right?"

  "It was manslaughter. And you know what happened. I came across three bikers and a grocery store clerk. The guys came at me and I put two of them down."

  Cooper sighed. "Yeah, I know the story. It's part of the goddamn folklore of this department. Lord knows why. A lot of guys have done the same thing."

  Hooper interrupted him, waving his cigar. "Not so, Coop, this guy was in the U.S. Marines." He made a joke of it, then snarled at me. "I was in Korea for crissakes, what's the big deal."

  "Look, send me home, it's been a long day. I've been hit in the head. I don't need any more war stories," I complained.

  Hooper waved his hands, like a grade school music teacher conducting the Christmas pageant. "You're missing the point, like how come you could take out two bikers, big sonsabitches with leatherboots an' sweatstains an' all that. Yet you walk in on some dinky little Chinese kid an' he puts you down?"

  "Don't you ever watch TV? This kid was a skilled kung fu fighter. The only surprise to me is, why he didn't finish me off while I was down."

  "Yeah," Cooper nodded. "That's exactly where Hoop an' me start to wonder what gives."

  And so, as I had known I would have to, I told them all that had happened to me since leaving Murphy's Harbour. They listened, noncommittally, smoking. Then Hooper said, "So let's go over to your place and pick up this envelope that came to you today, if it's there."

  Cooper nodded. "Good idea. How much d'ya say there was in it?"

  "Just over a thousand dollars."

  "How much over a thousand?" Both of them had become suddenly more interested. Hooper took his cigar out of his mouth to wait, as if smoke might interfere with his reception mechanism.

  "Eighty bucks. There was a thousand and eighty dollars in it." I looked from one to the other, wondering what I had missed so far. Neither one spoke. They just looked at one another with beams of satisfaction. I waited and when they didn't speak I asked, "Well, aren't you going to let me in on it?"

  "Sure." Hooper gave a dry little cough. "Ever hear of the Triads?"

  "Sounds like a college football team."

  He shook his head. "No, these guys are for real. They're the closest thing there is to a Chinese Mafia."

  I said nothing. It was all news to me but I was wondering how they had gotten on to the subject. Cooper explained as he led me out to the elevator. It was still very relaxed, they hadn't charged me, didn't put the cuffs on. "Seems like there's a temple, monastery, something, in China. It was full of kung fu monks. This was, what, Hoop, four hundred years ago?"

  Hooper nodded. The elevator came. We got in. Cooper went on. "So the king got mad at these guys for whatever reason makes kings mad. And he sent his soldiers to wipe 'em out."

  "And there were a thousand and eighty of them?" I was excited. The men I had surprised at the job site had been Oriental; now I was sure they were kung fu experts. It was starting to fit.

  "No, it was a hundred and eight of them, left after the crap cleared," Hooper explained. "And that's the figure they use in all o' their negotiations. It's always some factor of a hundred and eight."

  "The guy who spoke to me on the phone didn't sound Chinese." I was replaying the memory, trying to make the voice conform to a physical type. I remembered forming the image of a heavy middle-aged Caucasian, blasé, bored, casually cruel. "No," I said slowly. "The guy who called me was a Canadian. A used car dealer type."

  We came to ground level and they went out with me to their car. I wasn't under arrest but there was one either side of me, they weren't sure how much to trust me. If I'd run away, they would have shot without hesitation.

  I went into the back. It wasn't a cage car, for which I was grateful. But I didn't try the buddy-buddy trick of leaning forward ingratiatingly. Policemen spend so much time in cars that they have relaxation down to an art form. Hooper drove and Cooper carried on with the conversation, not turning his head, just cranking up the volume on his growl.

  "So it gets kinda mystifying to me," he said. "You got somebody makin' like he's Chinese only he isn't, sending you Triad money. Then you got some little gook kickin' you in the head."

  "Or…" Hooper said. They looked at one another like an old married couple and grinned happily. "Or," Cooper continued, "you got a vivid imagination and a lot of things you want covered up."

  There was nothing to say. I'd sat in his place enough times, next to a partner who had heard all the pathetic lies with me a thousand times and we had laughed and looked for the obvious answers, the ones that are almost always right. There's an old saying that some doctor dreamed up, talking of diagnosis but applying equally to crime: When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. These men were thinking that way, and that meant I was due to end the evening in a cell at headquarters. It was the only answer that fit all the facts they had.

  The lights were out at Louise's house. The two detectives came out with me quietly. There had been no mention made to me but I guessed they had a search warrant. I hoped they wouldn't execute it. I didn't want Louise's kids woken up and frightened.

  And that was what reminded me of my previous fears. I had put them out of my mind once Sam was in charge. If anyone came into the house he would be pinned to the floor. I didn't think a kung fu background would help against Sam. He was quicker than any man he'd ever been up against. And besides, if there was a fight, surely Louise would call the police station right away.

  If I had been alone I would have walked the perimeter of the house before going in, but with two detectives along I just unlocked the front door and switched on the light.

  In a low voice I called "Sam!" and from the back hallway I heard his savage working growl.

  "My dog's pinning somebody," I said quietly. "There's no tricks, I have to walk through and see what's happening."

  I sensed the detectives glancing at one another but didn't turn back. I went carefully through the door that led to the basement. Sam was on guard, standing over a man who was lying face up on the short stairway, his eyes bulging with fear and congestion from being kept with his head lower than his feet for a long time. The detectives came and stood at the doorway, gazing down at the man for about fifteen seconds before Hooper asked, "This the same Chinaman who jumped you at Caporetto's place?"

  Chapter 15

  I told Sam "Easy" and he sat back on his haunches, beside the man's feet. "He's yours," I told the detectives.

  Hooper walked down the stairs past the man, looking down at him as a civilian might look at an accident victim. When he was four steps below him he said. "Okay, on your feet and against the wall."

  The man didn't move, just rolled his eyes first at Sam, then at me. I motioned to him with one hand, hooking him up. He stood, carefully. I took a step back, making it look casual, but making sure to be out of range of those hands and feet. I was still shaken from the blow I'd taken earlier. I noticed that Cooper had
his hand under his suitcoat, at the back of his belt, on his gun I judged. He was being careful, too.

  Hooper said, "Hands on the wall, feet well back," but the prisoner didn't respond, just glanced at Hooper as if he wondered where the noise was coming from.

  "Sonofabitch don't speak English," his partner said. They stared at one another in growing wonder. "Hey, Bennett, show him what to do," he told me.

  I did it, carefully not making the mistake of letting them know I spoke a few words of Mandarin. I knew that if I as much as ordered Chinese food for the next month I'd be linked to this case inextricably.

  Keeping Sam between us, I pressed both hands on the wall and gestured with my head for the prisoner to do the same. He did. I shuffled my feet back until I could barely support my weight and gestured again. This time he was very slow to move. He had been counting on breaking away but could see the limitations of the posture. I straightened up and wagged my finger at him until he did what we wanted. I wasn't happy about his position. Because he was standing on stairs, his uphill leg was bent. If he were as good as the man who had jumped me at Tony's place he could bound up from that leg like a jack-in-the-box. "I wouldn't trust him, he looks a lot like the guy who hit me," I warned.

  Cooper was ready for him. He came down the stairs, squeezing past me and Sam and stood his full weight on the toes of the man's uphill foot. I saw the little man flinch in surprise but he did not cry out. Then Hooper came up the stairs the other way and snapped the handcuffs on his left wrist then pulled him upright and neatly snagged the other arm behind him.

  "Okay, Coop, you can leggo o' that foot now," he said amiably.