Neon Dragon

by John Dobbyn

  She took the least awkward path.

  “Your Honor, I said the people are ready. I’ll stand by that.”

  The judge played with the tips of his reading glasses at the edge of his mouth while the mental tumblers clicked into place. He finally called his docket clerk over with the court schedule.

  “What about this, Peter? How does Tuesday look?”

  “You have a light schedule, Judge. Remember you were going to leave next Tuesday for the Colorado conference. That takes out the rest of the week. You just have a pretrial conference on Tuesday morning.”

  The judge chewed a bit on his glasses before he looked up at his clerk.

  “Set this down for Tuesday, Peter. Ten o’clock. Call Mary and have her move the pretrial back to four thirty Monday afternoon. And have her cancel my reservations for the conference. This is more important.”

  Judge Posner looked back at the two combatants.

  “You have what apparently you both wanted, counsel. Let’s go back out. I want this done publicly and on the record.”

  I CAUGHT A CAB BACK to my apartment by way of a brief stop at Mass. General. Lanny was sitting up in bed, as bright and pretty as if she had not just been bombed out of a car. It was clearly the bright spot of my day to see her, and the feelings we had three nights before seemed to carry over in spite of the circumstances.

  It was a briefer visit than I’d have liked, but I needed a shower, a change of clothes, and a few hours’ sleep before a long night. It gave me the chance to think through the plan of attack Mr. Devlin outlined to me before we left the courtroom. I had to give the man credit for guts. Thank God he was lead counsel.

  I had left him outside the courthouse, facing what looked like a porcupine of microphones in front of three rows of newspeople. The questions were coming six at a time, and I could see a bit of the old glory coming back in his eyes.

  THE PHONE BROUGHT ME OUT of a sound sleep at six o’clock that evening. It had been dark for over an hour. Harry’s voice lifted me somewhat out of the after-fog of a daytime nap.

  “Mike, what time are you leaving?”

  I checked my watch. “I’d better get rolling now, Harry.”

  “Good. You want to pick me up, or shall I meet you someplace?”

  “You’re not coming on this one, Harry. I can’t repay you for what you’ve done already.”

  “I want to see it through to the finish, Mike. Can you pick me up?”

  How could I refuse? Besides, the company would keep me awake.

  “Half an hour. We’ll eat on the road. Bring some coffee. And the dress code is definitely a business suit. Conservative tie.”

  THE RIDE TO CANADA WAS LONG, broken only by intermittent stops for food and changes of driver to keep alert. We crossed the Canadian border at six o’clock the next morning and drove the rest of the way to the motel where we’d left Mei-Li.

  We picked her up and hit the road immediately. It was too close to Toronto to make it comfortable to spend excess time. Before we reached the U.S. border, we spread some blankets and made Mei-Li as comfortable as possible in the trunk of the car.

  Whether it was the continual assault of the coffee on my nervous system, or the prospect of spending more years than I cared to think about in a federal penitentiary for alien smuggling, I couldn’t tell. I only knew that my stomach was being eaten alive by hordes of rabid little cankerworms. Harry looked like he had the rest of the world’s cankerworms in his stomach.

  We passed the Canadian officials, who showed no great interest in our leaving their country. As we approached the U.S. customs officers, I gave thanks that Mei-Li was a light, petite size three. I remembered that back in the days when whiskey runs to Canada were practiced by Americans who otherwise wouldn’t run a yellow light, customs troops always checked the trunks of cars that were riding too low on the rear springs.

  As we approached the officer, I noticed that he was a walking mountain of starch. I could feel Harry tense up.

  “This time I’ll do the talking, Harry. Let me have your identification.”

  He gave a quick nod and handed it over. I drove up alongside the officer. He took the picture ids and gave Harry a good look. He checked them against our faces, but didn’t hand them back right away. I could feel Harry’s left leg begin to quiver.

  “Do you have anything to declare?”

  “No, nothing.”

  He took another look at Harry without handing back the passports.

  Harry looked straight ahead.

  He looked back at me.

  “What was your business in Canada?”

  I gave him my best take-it-seriously look. “For the most part the usual, raping and pillaging the villagers.”

  Harry’s leg shot straight out. I thought it was going to go through the fire wall. Fortunately the officer didn’t notice. Everything in the sight line of the officer appeared calm as a duck on water.

  The officer looked at me as if he might squash this impertinent bug. I said a devout prayer in the seconds that followed. When I looked back up at the officer, my entire body heaved a silent sigh. Inside all that starch, there lay a sense of humor. He was actually grinning when he handed back the id’s and waved us on.

  When we were driving safely on U.S. soil and at least ten miles out of sight of the starched guardian of the border, we let Mei-Li out of the trunk. We stopped at the next minor city to buy clothes for her—some jeans, shirts and sweaters, and a warm jacket—and food and coffee for us all. It took us another ten hours to hit the outskirts of Boston.

  I pulled into a gas station. While Harry filled up the car, I got the number from information and called my secretary, Julie, at home. I knew she had an apartment with one other girl in Belmont.

  Mei-Li, even considering her past life, had been through hell in the previous two days. I thought she needed some comforting female company in a safe environment.

  “Julie, Michael Knight. I’m really sorry to bother you at home. I need a beaut of a favor. This is so far above and beyond the call.”

  She was the angel I’d anticipated. If it was an imposition, and I knew it was, she never let on. I knew Mei-Li would find some peace there.

  I dropped Mei-Li at Julie’s, Harry at Harry’s, and I just plain dropped. When I hit the bed in my apartment, it was early Sunday morning, about the time I usually leave for church. I figured the Lord would rather have me alive in bed than stone dead of exhaustion in a pew at St. Basil’s.

  I woke up sometime Sunday evening, staggered to the kitchen for a glass of milk, and fell back on the bed in the deepest sleep of my life until early Monday morning.

  27

  MY FIRST STOP Monday morning was to pick up Mei-Li at Julie’s. Julie had left for work. Her roommate, Liz, answered the door. Julie had apparently indoctrinated her, because she demanded identification before she’d produce Mei-Li.

  The China doll looked even more radiant in American clothing. In jeans, sweater, and loafers, she looked like an American grad student.

  Apparently Julie and Liz had fallen in love with her. They were sharing everything that Harry and I hadn’t bought for her.

  I was sorry to have to tell her about the morning’s business.

  “This is no way to begin your first week as a free American, Mei-Li.”

  Somewhere between Toronto and Belmont, I had made up my mind that she was never going back to the Chinese rat pack, if I had to adopt her.

  “I need to have you come with me to the morgue.”

  I FOUND THE SAME ATTENDANT, who took us directly to the vault. Mei-Li was a soldier, until the attendant undid the covering and she saw the face of her friend, my little Red Shoes. I took her outside until she was able to face it.

  “Which hand has the cut, Mei-Li?”

  She indicated the left one.

  I went back in and covered up the rest of the body, leaving only the left hand exposed. I brought her back into the room. She began weeping when she looked at the hand. That was all I n
eeded to know.

  The attendant asked if she could make an identification. I told him I couldn’t be sure. I made a sympathetic gesture toward her obviously undone state and said that I’d be in touch with him.

  After returning Mei-Li to Julie’s apartment, I drove from Belmont to Cambridge. I called Tom Burns from Harvard Square.

  “Tommy, it’s Mike. This is the end of the trail. I need just one more favor. I need to locate Dolson, the arsonist that …”

  He knew.

  “That’s the one. I need to find him mucho pronto. Like yesterday. Can you do it?”

  “Shouldn’t be hard, Mike. He’s the type leaves a trail.”

  “Thanks, Tom. You might check the parole office. I don’t see him staying out of trouble. If he’s not in jail, he’s probably on parole for something. Hey, why am I telling you your business?”

  “Cause you can’t help interfering, Mike. That’s what got you into this in the first place.”

  “Guilty. I’m out of the office, Tom. I may be in a bad cell-phone position. If you come up with something, will you leave a message with Julie?”

  It was ten o’clock when I knocked on the door of Barry Salmon’s cocoon. I could see him through the opaque glass, weaving his way through the clutter. He opened the door and peered at me through red roadmaps of eyes. I don’t have as much blood in my body as Barry had in his eyeballs.

  “Barry, you gotta take better care of yourself.”

  “Mike! I don’t see you for a decade. Now we’re daily visitors. Come on in.”

  I waded through an aroma so sickly sweet that you could become a diabetic just breathing.

  “A wee touch of the pipe, I detect here, Barry.”

  “Well, you know, Mike, it makes the sunrise that much more effective.”

  “There are no windows in this room, Barry.”

  “Ah. Yeah, that’s true. But a couple of puffs and I can imagine it.”

  “As a matter of fact, that’s what brings me here, Barry.”

  “You want a puff, Mike? I’ve got the best you ever smoked. Come over here. You’re my guest.”

  “Barry, you’re all heart. I need a different favor. You remember we were talking about Anthony Bradley. And maybe some of that group he belongs to that helps with tutoring students.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Some of them are involved in another function, aren’t they?”

  Barry was not too far into the bag to recognize a thin-ice question.

  “Mike, you’re not with the feds or anything? You’re not fuzz, are you? Cause if you say ‘no,’ and you are, that’s entrapment.”

  Wrong, but this was no time for a law lecture.

  “I’m just a lawyer, Barry. In fact, I’m a defense lawyer. I sometimes defend the people you’re concerned about protecting.”

  “Oh, well, that’s a horse of a different hue. What do you need?”

  “I figure there’s a clique within that club that’s dealing drugs big-time. I think my client, Anthony Bradley, was the head of it. My intuition tells me that numero dos is a slick little dude named Abdul. How am I doing?

  “Um. I might have heard words to that effect. Nothing for the record.”

  “That’s close enough, Barry. Could it be that you’ve dealt with Anthony or this Abdul on the odd occasion?”

  “Without recalling anything specific, stranger things could have happened. Not with Bradley. Possibly with Abdul. Notice the use of the legal word, ‘possibly.’”

  “You’re a paragon of caution, Barry. Could you give me a couple of other names you’ve ‘possibly’ dealt with in that little circle?”

  He sucked in heavily what passed for air in that room and moaned, “Wow. I don’t know.”

  “C’mon, Barry. We’re just talking possibilities here. Nothing incriminating.”

  “Merely in the realm of possibility, could we say Tony Mazzarelli? We might consider the name of Rolf Samuelson.”

  “That’ll do it, Barry. Here’s the punch line. I need to know for sure about Anthony Bradley. It’s an important piece. What I want you to do is call Abdul. Set up a meet someplace neutral. Make it that restaurant across from the T station in the square. Tell him someone from the Chinatown connection has some wonton soup they want to dispose of. Will you do it?”

  He popped a cigarette between his lips—this time legitimate, Marlboro. He held the pack out to me. I shook my head.

  “You don’t even use these, Mike? Damn, what gets you through the day?”

  “Willpower. What do you think, Barry? Will you do it?”

  “See, I suspect that I’m cutting off a source here, Mike. You said I should take better care of myself. That’s not taking care of myself.”

  “That’s not exactly what I meant, Barry. Besides, you can’t tell me that after all these years you don’t know every source from here to Chelsea.”

  “You raise a legitimate point.”

  I detected a crumbling. “I really need this one, Barry.”

  He pulled over a phone and peered at the numbers he was hitting through a white cloud of Marlboro fumes rising from the stick between his lips. There was a pickup after three rings.

  “Yeah, is Abdul there?”

  There was a slight pause before even I could hear a voice crackling in rap rhythm from the other end.

  “Hey, my man, Abdul. I’m just a conveyor here. I got a call from a dude says he’s from Chinatown. Says he has some wonton soup to peddle. I don’t know who he is. He wants to set up a meet.”

  There was another pause before Abdul spoke. Barry answered him.

  “This dude says he wants you meet him in the restaurant across from the T station in the square. The sooner, the quicker.”

  Barry gave me the nod, yes. I flashed him the OK sign and mouthed the words “Booth in the back.” On my way out, I could hear Barry relaying the message.

  I reached the corridor and took a deep breath. It cleared the light-headedness that was beginning to set in.

  IN FOUR MINUTES, I was behind the sports section of the Globe in a booth halfway to the back of the restaurant. In another five minutes, I heard the bopping rhythm of Abdul’s sneakers pass me on the way to a vacant booth at the very back. At ten thirty in the morning, there was no one else in that section.

  I slid out of the booth and came around from behind Abdul. I slid in beside him before he could do anything but sputter jive. I turned off the flow and calmed him down by somehow getting enough words in to convince him I was there on business. He was trapped, but listening.

  What I needed was to solidify a piece of the puzzle in my own mind. Were any members of the student organization into drug distribution at the university, and more to my purpose, was Anthony the point man dealing with Kip Liu and the tong for supplies? I was going on the Lex Devlin theory that you can best serve your client in a criminal case if you know the truth—the whole truth—and Anthony himself had perhaps not been a fund of that commodity.

  “Abdul, you know whom I represent. Are we clear on that?”

  His nervous brow was furrowed, but he gave me a slight, quizzical nod.

  “Good. Then some business needs tending. There’s a concern that you must be getting low on supplies. There’s also a concern about interrupting the flow, losing customers. Not good for business.”

  He was soaking up every word, but there was no reaction. He was also not saying that he hadn’t the foggiest idea of what I was talking about.

  “My client had me make contact with the man where they sell the wonton soup. He’s also concerned. My client may be out of service for a while, maybe permanently. Contacts would dry up unless someone takes the reins. My client says you’re the man to take over the top spot. He thinks you’re ready to go from Indian to chief.”

  Nothing. He was still looking. He was still not talking. I had to get a confirmation in my own mind about Anthony’s connection.

  “The question, Abdul, is are you up to it? Behind all that bopping jive, is there a
businessman who can handle a serious operation? Needless to say, the position carries a higher cut.”

  The furrows grew deeper, but no words came out.

  “Or do we look elsewhere? I’ll tell you right now, you’re not my choice, but my client insists on giving you a chance. Either way, I have to know immediately, because steps have to be taken.”

  He just looked from me to the table. I had to jar him loose.

  “OK, Abdul. That answers it. The job interview is terminated. You’ll be hearing from the new man.”

  I started to move out of the booth when he caught my sleeve.

  “Hold on, man. Sit down. I don’t know anything about you.”

  I settled back in.

  “Well, I’ll tell you, Abdul. You know the one I represent. You know I know about the Chinatown connection. You know I know about the operation here. You’re smart enough to notice that I’m talking to you instead of to the U.S. Attorney. Maybe that tells you something. If it doesn’t, so be it. You’re out. I meet with a new contact, and you go on being a flunky. I’m happy either way. The only option I don’t have is to waste time. There’s a kettle of wonton soup waiting to be delivered.”

  The look on his face said the wall was cracking. One last thrust.

  “Last chance, Abdul, I’m no dentist. I’m through pulling teeth here. We talk, or I walk. Call it. I have to get word to my client.”

  I gave a little move-out body language, and he grabbed my elbow again.

  “All right. I’m in. Tell Anth … your client. I’m the man. I just gotta be careful.”

  That locked it shut. Now I knew. Whether or not Anthony pulled the trigger on Mr. Chen, he was no choirboy. While I was at it, I decided to work the mine a bit further.

  “Careful is good. Careful is what keeps the operation going.” I checked my watch. “Let’s get this done, and I’m out of here.”