White Tiger

by Stephen Knight

  Manning rose and shook Kaplan’s hand. Her grip was firm, but her handshake was perfunctory. She released his hand and put her attaché case on the desk.

  “Pleased to meet you. I’m Jerry Manning.” Manning held his hand out to Ryker. Ryker stared at it for a moment, then settled on a nod instead.

  “Sorry for the wait,” he said unconvincingly.

  Manning dropped his hand. “Yeah... no problem. I think you guys know why I’m here?”

  “We do, and if you’ll bear with me for just a moment...” Kaplan opened her attaché case and pulled out three stacks of forms that had been neatly stapled together. She spread them on the desk and held out a pen to Manning.

  “These are the nondisclosure forms you’ll need to review and sign before Sergeant Ryker can share anything regarding the Lin case with you. The language has already been vetted by both the D.A.’s office and Mr. Lin’s legal representatives. Were you informed of this?”

  Manning nodded.

  “Then here you are.” Kaplan wiggled the pen she held. Manning took it, gave the forms a cursory examination, and then signed all three copies under her watchful eye. If these weren’t the forms Lin’s attorneys had agreed to, then so much the better. Manning didn’t care one way or the other.

  “Thank you,” Kaplan said when Manning returned her pen. “The S.F.P.D. gets one copy, the district attorney’s office retains the second, and Mr. Lin will receive the third by messenger tomorrow morning.” She gathered up the signed forms, dropped them in her attaché case, and snapped it shut. Her movements were quick and economical, and Manning had no doubt she was an apex predator in the San Francisco court system.

  “I’ll leave you and Sergeant Ryker alone now. Thank you, Mr. Manning.”

  Manning shook her hand again. “My pleasure.”

  With that, Kaplan left the room. Ryker closed the door behind her. He had a thick notebook under one arm. He looked back at Manning with flat blue eyes, his expression one of barely-concealed disgust. Manning maintained a poker face as he looked back. He figured Ryker was a few years younger than he was, and shorter. He was broader in the shoulders and his dark hair was neatly combed, but there was a haggard cast to his face. Whether it was because Ryker was a cop who had seen too much or just didn’t sleep well at night, Manning had no idea. He watched as Ryker slowly sat in the chair across the table from him. Ryker clasped his hands together on top of the notebook and stared at Manning for a good thirty seconds without saying anything.

  “So are we just going to stare at one another, or are we going to get down to it?” Manning said finally. He pointed to the notebook.

  “I don’t like this, Manning. I don’t like it at all.” Ryker’s voice was a ragged baritone, commanding and maybe even a bit imperious.

  Manning shrugged. “Not my problem, Detective.”

  “Detective sergeant,” Ryker corrected.

  “Is that your full name?”

  Ryker didn’t smile. Manning slid back into his chair, and kept his palms flat on the table. Its surface was marred here and there by scratches, old coffee stains and even older cigarette burns which must have dated back to the 1980s.

  “I had you checked out,” Ryker said before Manning could continue. “You’re an interesting guy.”

  “Really.” Manning tried hard not to let his chronic disinterest creep into his voice, but he failed.

  “Former Army Special Forces. Afghanistan, Iraq, Panama. Been around the block a couple of times, huh?”

  Manning said nothing.

  “Tried out for Delta Force, but didn’t make the cut,” Ryker said unexpectedly. “Why was that?”

  “It was boring,” Manning said.

  Ryker grunted and leaned forward with his hands pressed against the notebook, as if frightened Manning might try to snatch it away.

  “Delta Force was boring, huh?”

  Manning said nothing, just waited. He didn’t have to wait for long.

  “What’s a supposedly stand-up guy like you doing working for a scumbag like James Lin?” Ryker asked.

  “What does it matter, sergeant?”

  “He have something on you?”

  “What could he ‘have’ on me, sergeant?”

  “You tell me.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “You work in Asia a lot these days, right? Security interests?”

  “A lot of ex-military go into the security business after leaving the service.”

  “Yeah. Blackwell, Pinkerton...but you, you work for yourself. A hired gun sometimes, maybe some other stuff. You work for Lin in the past?”

  “This is the first time I’ve worked for James Lin,” Manning said. “I’ve never worked for him or his family before.”

  “What about for one of his companies?” Ryker pressed.

  “Not that I’m aware of. Look, Ryker—I know Lin has you pressed to the mat, and I respect that. But you keep dancing around and drag things out, I’ll eventually have to tell him you’re not being cooperative. That’ll probably go poorly for you, right?”

  Ryker didn’t react outwardly, but Manning knew he had scored a hit. He backed off a bit.

  “You don’t like this, and I don’t blame you, having to explain yourself to an outsider. I don’t like it either. For my money, Lin’s making a mistake by pulling so many strings. But the guy wants to know who killed his kid, and he wants to make sure he finds out before it hits the papers.”

  “What do you know about Danny Lin?” Ryker asked suddenly.

  “Nothing. But from what little I know, he was a serious prick who had some issues with a lot of people—you included.”

  Ryker did nothing for a few moments, then nodded slowly. He finally lifted his hands off the notebook and opened it.

  “This is the murder book,” he said. “It’s a log of every action we’ve conducted over the course of this investigation. Everything we do, everyone we talk to, every bit of evidence we collect, it all gets logged in here. You can read it, but you can’t copy anything, and you can’t talk to witnesses or suspects.”

  “I just signed the NDA forms,” Manning said. “You don’t want Lin’s people stepping in and talking to people of interest and screwing things up more than they already are. I get that.”

  “Lin’s already done that,” Ryker said. “The Russian—you know him?”

  “I know him.”

  “He’s already pounding the pavement after Danny Lin’s girlfriend. He’s supposed to stop. If he doesn’t, our little chats come to an end.”

  “I know that, too. Lin’s called him off.”

  “And replaced him with you, maybe?”

  Manning sighed and got to his feet. “You know Ryker, you’re probably a really good cop. But you’re an asshole. Either give me the God damned book and shut up, or I’m out of here and someone’s going to break their foot off in your ass. Your call.”

  Ryker got to his feet as well. “Are you threatening me, Manning? Not the smoothest move, is it?”

  “I don’t really care. I get paid the same. This door’s unlocked, right?” Manning asked as he walked for the door.

  “Read the fucking book,” Ryker snarled as soon as Manning’s hand landed on the door knob.

  Manning returned to the desk and sat down. Ryker pushed the murder book toward him and leaned back in his chair, glowering. He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at Manning as he pulled the notebook closer and opened it.

  It took an hour to go through the notebook. Ryker’s notes were neat and perfectly legible, and Manning had very little trouble following the case’s development. But other than the collection and categorization of the physical evidence and the attached autopsy results, there wasn’t a lot to go on. Manning asked Ryker questions here and there, which he answered as monosyllabically as possible. It was obvious the detective was more interested in sulking than in helping Manning understand some of the various acronyms and procedures.

  “Departmental forms?” Manning asked
finally, as he closed the murder book and pushed it back to Ryker. “Where are they?”

  “They’re not here,” Ryker said.

  “Have them for me tomorrow. I’ll be back at the same time.” Manning got to his feet.

  “I may not be available,” Ryker said.

  Manning shrugged. “I don’t really care, man. It doesn’t matter to me if you’re here or not, just make sure the forms are available to me. I need to review them. This was also agreed upon.”

  Ryker got up and tucked the murder book under his arm. He walked to the door and opened it, then waited for Manning to step through.

  “You’re some piece of work, Manning,” he said as Manning stepped past him and into the hallway beyond. “I still don’t get why you’re working for Lin.”

  “Because he pays me,” Manning said.

  “Or because you’re as dirty as he is.”

  Manning turned and faced Ryker as he stepped into the hallway. Ryker left the door open behind him and stared back.

  “You have anything on James Lin?” Manning asked.

  “He’s a dirtball,” Ryker said.

  “No shit? Thanks for your expert assessment. So what? You ever arrest him for anything? Even jaywalking? Even charge him with anything?”

  “I was working up a nice case against his son before I got yanked off it.” Ryker hefted the notebook in one hand. “Poor Danny-boy...I guess things didn’t work out for him after all, huh?”

  “That was the son, not the father—try not to get them confused. You don’t like Lin? Fine by me. But Lin wants you on this case, sergeant. For some reason, he has it in his head that you can solve it. Me, I’m not so sure. I think that when—if—you finally catch up to the killer, you’ll shake her hand.”

  Ryker’s face darkened. “Pretty serious accusation.”

  Manning shrugged. “You can always prove me wrong.”

  With that, he turned on his heel and left.

  ###

  “So how’d it go?” Chee Wei asked when Ryker returned to the office.

  Ryker tossed the murder book onto his desk and sat in his chair. He shrugged.

  “He’s not really easy to rile up,” he told his partner. “Didn’t give me much to go on. But a guy like that, there’s only one reason Lin hired him. He’s going to off the murderer as soon as we reveal her identity.”

  Chee Wei raised one eyebrow. “You think?”

  Ryker tapped a folder on his desk. Inside it was a sanitized version of Manning’s service record, which had been delivered by courier from the U.S. Army’s Total Personnel Command in Virginia.

  “You’ve just got to read between the lines a bit,” he said. “The guy’s a pro. Maybe not a real assassin, but he has the capability. He’s no messenger boy. Lin hired him for his muscle.”

  Chee Wee shrugged. “He’s got tons of people who can do that, like that Russian guy.”

  “Lin wants to keep the Russian guy in his stable. This Manning, I don’t know. He might ship him off to Japan or China or wherever the hell he comes from, or he might just make him go away. He’s an outsider, he doesn’t fit inside of Lin’s organization. It might be easier to do that, and safer for Lin.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Ryker thought about his answer for a long moment before speaking. “Guys like Jerome Manning are a different breed,” he said. “I think this guy was a mover and a shaker in the Army, until his family got killed in Washington. I think he might be doing this as penance work, or something.”

  Chee Wei laughed. “Wow, when did you get your degree, Doctor Freud?”

  “Blow it out your ass, punk,” Ryker responded.

  CHAPTER 17

  Ryker’s head was swimming by the time he arrived at the police station. Most certainly, his life had taken an interesting swing, though in which direction he had no idea. Normally, he’d be ecstatic—it wasn’t every day that a hair shirt like himself found his way into a rich widow’s passionate embrace, especially one as alluring as Valerie Lin. The fact that he pretty much obliterated every departmental rule and regulation regarding officer objectivity was simply icing on the cake.

  So what are you going to do about it, you flaming idiot? he raged at himself as he maneuvered his car through the downtown traffic. Refuse to see her ever again? Send Morales or Chee Wei to do any follow-on interviews? If Jericho ever finds out about it—or even Spider—I’m dead fucking meat.

  The fact that he had been presented with a goldmine of an opportunity didn’t factor in to it. While there wasn’t a police officer with a beating heart who wouldn’t have given his eye teeth to be in Ryker’s place, most detectives weren’t in the same position. Solving the murder of Lin Dan was going to eventually involve something incendiary, either for the victim, or his family. The press was already on it—Ryker’s cell phone mailbox was full of messages from local beat reporters he knew, all angling for a juicy story that was a newsman’s dream. Of course, he wasn’t allowed to speak to the press directly, unless directed by his superiors, but on occasion, those jackals were sometimes capable of producing a nugget of information that could be worked into something that might fit inside the investigation’s framework. So far, given that James Lin was generally uncooperative beyond producing a different shine on the painfully obvious—Lin Dan was a playboy, and had obviously pissed off someone—the investigation was limping along without much in the way of real breaks.

  Ryker pulled his Impala into the station parking lot. He put the vehicle in park but sat behind the wheel for a long moment, his hand paused on the ignition without turning off the engine. Images of Valerie Lin flashed across his mind’s eye: her mouth forming a perfect O was she climaxed beneath him; the sweep of her perfect hip, illuminated in the wan evening light; the almost chaste kiss she gave him as he left the big house in Sea Cliff. The images all conspired to arouse him yet again, and Ryker sighed, willing the ridiculous tumescence away. He couldn’t go strolling into the stationhouse with a full woody, so he had to sit in the car and repeat his social security number over and over in his head. Eventually, his erection subsided to a more manageable level.

  “Oh man,” he sighed as he switched off the ignition and unfastened his seat belt. “What the hell am I going to do now?”

  He threw open the door and emerged into the overcast day. As he slammed the door shut behind him, he noticed Chee Wei standing nearby, leaning against the rear of his Lexus sports coupe. The slender Chinese man was looking at him with a quizzical expression.

  “You all right?” Chee Wei asked.

  “Fine,” Ryker said. He returned Chee Wei’s expression with one of his own. “What are you doing here?”

  “I still have to report in for start of shift, remember?” Chee Wei answered. “You know, regulations and all that, since I’m still on the clock?”

  “Oh. Yeah.” Ryker rubbed his eyes. “Who relieved you last night?”

  “Morales. Here’s hoping he can keep his hands to himself—that woman’s a real maneater, and she’ll leave him with only stumps.” Chee Wei straightened and hitched his trousers up on his hips, staring at the building across the street.

  Ryker smiled.

  “What, you upset that we have a rotation going?” he asked.

  Chee Wei looked over at him, frowning.

  “Hey, he’s former NYPD. Those guys can be real pigs, you know? All that hard-edged east coast, big city bullshit they push around.”

  Ryker snorted and pushed his hands into his pockets.

  “You’ve got to be shitting me,” he said. “You can’t possibly think you and Zhu are going to be the next item in the society pages? Besides, Nicky’s a good guy—give him a break, huh?”

  Chee Wei’s face flushed with embarrassment, and he waved the statement away.

  “Hey, don’t take it the wrong way, man. She’s just high-end, you know? A guy like Morales wouldn’t know what to do with something like that, anyway.”

  Ryker shrugged and started toward the stationhouse. Other
police officers were arriving; to his great displeasure, Ryker saw Cueball hurl himself out of his flashy new Dodge Charger. Their eyes met, and Cueball favored Ryker with a half-sneer, half-snarl. Ryker merely looked away.

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” he said to Chee Wei. “By the way, how were the dumplings?”

  Chee Wei let out his breath like a deflating tire.

  “Man, you know about that?”

  “Of course—I am a detective, after all.” Ryker walked up to the glass door leading into the stationhouse and pulled it open, motioning Chee Wei ahead. “Go on, I’ve got the door—you’re obviously having a tough day.”

  “Thanks, and blow me,” Chee Wei said, marching through the door.

  “Can’t we just cuddle?” Ryker stepped across the threshold and let the door close just as Cueball piloted his bulk toward it. Ryker didn’t wait to check out his expression, just turned his back toward the bigger man and followed Chee Wei.

  “Let’s take the stairs,” Ryker said, pulling open the stairwell door. Chee Wei turned back, a questioning look on his face. It faded as soon as he saw Cueball pushing through the door behind Ryker.

  “Yeah, let’s.” He followed Ryker into the stairway as the older man began climbing them, taking them two at a time. Chee Wei hurried to keep up.

  “Hey, where’s the fire?” Chee Wei asked. “This your new exercise routine or something? Trying to get yourself in shape for Valerie Lin?”

  Ryker turned on the landing and shot Chee Wei a sharp glance without meaning to. Chee Wei caught it and smiled, happy that he had stroked an apparent nerve.

  “Yeah, that’s it, a couple of days running up and down the stairs’ll make you into a lean, mean fighting machine,” the younger detective continued. “Pretty soon, you’ll be in as fine of shape as, say, me.”

  “And I really look back on those days when I was a skinny twelve-year-old kid with acne,” Ryker shot back, resuming his climb up the stairs. “Did Zhu cop to anything yesterday? Anything that might be relevant to the case, that is. I’m sure she told you all about the lady Rolex watch she wants for Christmas.”