Mandarin Plaid

by S. J. Rozan

  Third Street and Avenue C was probably as picturesque right now, on a beautiful early-spring afternoon, as it ever got. That’s what I was thinking when the cab dropped me at the corner, where grimy walk-up tenements, some abandoned and some not, were packed shoulder-to-shoulder as if, at the end of a weary day, they needed to borrow each other’s strength to stand. A plastic shopping bag, ballooned by the wind, skittered by on the sidewalk as I walked up the block to the address I had.

  I was on the north side of the street because the address was on the south side. I wanted a chance to survey the area, just to look around, just to see. I wanted to check the building out from top to bottom before I descended into the depths of it.

  Across the street from the place I was looking for, I stopped and stood. The building I was going into was one of the abandoned ones, with plywood hammered into the holes where the windows had been and now, in places, knocked out again so pigeons and squatters could move freely in and out. The door lay flat on its back next to the gaping doorway. Not a place I’d have chosen to spend a spring afternoon, but a place I might have headed for if I’d needed to lay low—like for example if I’d kidnapped someone and was waiting for my ransom money.

  I stood still across the street from this place, letting my eyes wander along the sidewalks, over the rooftops. No one seemed to be watching me particularly, unless this was a pretty sophisticated operation and the staggering junkie at the corner or the twelve-year-olds playing hooky from school to get in a game of stickball were part of it.

  Good, I thought. That’s that, then. Nothing to do now but just go on in there, Lydia. Just go on in.

  I gripped the money package tighter, squared my shoulders, and went on in.

  It wasn’t a nice place. Stray cats and dogs, or maybe stray people, had left the pungent aroma of urine floating in the air above the thicker scents of molding food and rotting wood. I kicked an aluminum take-out container as I moved cautiously along the dank, dim hallway. It scraped, something scurried into the shadows, and rice spilled across my shoe.

  Yum. Okay, Lydia, I ordered myself, find the way to the basement. Maybe, I suggested, you could try looking under the stairs to the upstairs. I did that, and I found a door. I thanked myself very much and pulled it open.

  “Who’s that?” came John’s shout.

  “Lydia Chin,” I answered. “I brought what I was supposed to bring.” I don’t know why I said it like that; I just had trouble yelling down the cellar steps, “I have a million dollars in a little package here.”

  “You’re alone?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Come down,” John ordered.

  I creaked my way down the steps. About halfway down, the sunshine that had been willing to come a few tentative feet into the hallway refused to go on. After that the only light came from a thin line that leaked around the basement door, half off its hinges in the areaway under the sidewalk. Gee, I thought, I could have come in that way, if I’d only known.

  “Back here,” John’s voice called, so when I reached the bottom I headed back there, away from the door and the thin line of light.

  There was light in that direction, too, though, a softer yellow patch spilling across the dusty concrete floor from a room near the back of the building. I stopped and turned toward it when I got to the doorway it was spreading from. I didn’t go in, because the lamp that was making it was pointed directly into my eyes and I couldn’t see a thing.

  “Well, look at this,” Roland Lum’s jaunty voice said, from somewhere beyond the light. “She really is alone.” The light swung away. I blinked, and now I could see.

  Before me, standing in front of a rusting hulk of a boiler, were two black-hooded, ninja-masked figures, one taller, one smaller, both holding guns. Their shadows swayed under the swinging metal-reflectored lamp one of them had just let go of. Seated beside them, blindfolded, hands tied behind him to the chair he was in, was John Ryan. Crusted blood stained his cheek.

  Ninja masks. Ninja masks and black clothes. I thought of the hard cobblestones of the West Village, and I wanted to rush over and slug whichever one of these figures was Roland Lum.

  But I didn’t. “I’m alone,” I echoed calmly, standing balanced and relaxed. What I said was a little bit of a lie. My gun was with me, clipped in its holster onto my belt, covered by my loose jacket. Part of me wanted its reassuring weight, its cool smoothness, in my hand right now, but the other part knew that we were all safest if it stayed where it was. “I have the money,” I said. I held out the package in both hands, so they could see that that was all I held.

  The figure closest to me gestured with its gun at the other one, who came forward and took the package. Black-gloved hands ripped the paper, rifled through the packs of bills inside. The figure nodded.

  “Okay,” I said, keeping my tones controlled and reasonable, as though I’d just paid the agreed-upon price for a pound of perch and was ready to have it wrapped to take home to my mother. “That’s the deal. Untie John now, and we’ll leave.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” the shorter figure said. That was, it turned out, the one with Roland’s voice.

  John turned his blindfolded face toward the voice. “You—”

  The figure’s gloved hand smacked John sharply on the back of the head. “Shut up.”

  John didn’t. “What—”

  The figure hit him again, harder. John’s head dipped; before he’d lifted it again black gloves had stuffed a filthy-looking towel into his mouth and taped it around with adhesive tape. John made strangled noises, kicking in his chair. The ninja-masked figure leaned heavily on John’s shoulder, letting the gun dangle casually.

  “People know where I am.” I addressed the ninja masks with no change in tone. “They’re giving me time, not a lot of it, and then they’re going to call the police. If you keep to the deal, you have a chance of getting away, but if you don’t, you won’t.”

  The shorter figure shook its head. “Other way, I’m afraid. And it’s your own fault. I tried to keep you out of it. I really did.” The left hand, the one that wasn’t holding the gun, peeled the ninja mask off. The face underneath was, completely unsurprisingly, Roland’s.

  “You knew, didn’t you?” he said. His smile was half regretful, half pleased, like an actor in a play that had been panned except for his own exceptional performance, singled out universally for praise.

  I nodded. Keep it going, Lydia, run out the clock until Genna calls Francie, and Francie sends the Marines. “If you knew I did, why the masks?”

  “We thought you might not be alone. We didn’t see any point in advertising.”

  “Who’s that?” I asked, pointing at the figure by his side.

  “Forget it,” Roland said. “You don’t need to know.”

  “Did you shoot at me in the park?” I asked. “Or did you steal the sketches in the first place?”

  “Why don’t we just say I was doing great until you came along? I should have known you’d screw me up. But honestly, Lydia, I didn’t know you were any good at this. All I remembered was that you were a pest. I mean, you were always underfoot when I was hanging out with old Elliot, but you didn’t really make trouble, you were just annoying. You were even kind of cute, for a kid sister.”

  Annoying? I thought. Cute? I felt hot blood rush to my cheeks. Then, calm down, Lydia, I told myself. He has a gun. He can call you whatever he wants.

  “But when I started screwing you up,” I said, “you tried to scare me off? In the Village?”

  “I tried.” He grinned, shamefaced. “And you know, you fight okay. I didn’t really want to hurt you, but maybe I should have. Scaring you sure didn’t work. Does it ever?” he asked, as an afterthought, just friendly and interested.

  “Not really.” See, Lydia Chin can strut, too. “So then you invented Peng Hui Liang?”

  The grin turned rueful. “I really thought that was going to work. I thought it would appeal to your white knight thing. Did nasty old Rol
and really knock up some poor FOB? Can Lydia find her and save her from him? Tune in next week.”

  “Then I was supposed to go running all over Queens so you could finish up. And then John followed you and this new opportunity fell in your lap.” I pointed to John. Gagged and blindfolded, the tilt of his head told me he was following our words closely, nevertheless.

  “Yeah,” Roland said easily. “And you should have done it. Even if you tipped to it. I went to a lot of trouble to get you out of the way. Maybe you should have gotten out of the way. Did you ever think of that?”

  “I thought of it.”

  “Instead of sending me on a wild-goose chase all the damn way uptown and then screwing around in my factory.”

  When he said that, Roland’s face lost its affability, went hard, as I’d seen it do in the restaurant at the waiter’s mistake.

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said.

  Something made a soft, scraping sound. All of us jumped a little, then relaxed. Nerves, Lydia, I thought, as my pulse raced. Rats in the shadows. Stay calm, please, or at least calm-looking.

  Roland shrugged. “Well, I don’t care. Factory’s over. I hate that stupid place. Dust and the noise and the damn ladies gossiping, running like scared chickens from the INS. How’d your mom stand it all those years, Lydia?”

  There was a simple answer to that, I thought: she had to. But it hadn’t really been a question, and Roland went right on.

  “And for what?” he demanded. “So my brother and my sister can come to me all the time, oh big brother, you have to help us out, you have the factory, I need tuition, I need to buy a house. You ask your brothers for money all the time, Lydia?”

  “No.”

  “Because it gets on your fucking nerves, let me tell you,” he went on, as if I hadn’t answered. “If they think I’m ending up like my old man, busting my ass seven days a week and then popping off out of nowhere so my sister can drive a Benz and my brother can sit around a pool in Malibu, they’re fucked.”

  “That’s what this is? Your ticket out?”

  “Damn right. And Lydia, it’s too bad, but you’re the only thing in my way.”

  “I’m not in your way, Roland. Take your money and leave.”

  Roland laughed. “And what? You couldn’t leave it alone when you didn’t know what was going on. You’re sure as hell not going to just wave bye-bye now.”

  “It’s your only chance, Roland. Leave now. I won’t follow you.”

  “But you’ll know. And you’ll tell, because you’re a good little detective. I’d offer you money, come in with us, but I don’t think you’ll do it. And besides,” he considered, then shook his head, smiling, “I don’t want to share.”

  He lifted the gun slowly until it was pointed right at my heart.

  “You’re not going to kill me, Roland.”

  “You’re wrong, Lydia. The first one wasn’t very hard. The second one’s got to be easier.”

  The first one. “Did you kill Wayne Lewis?”

  Roland smiled. “Of course I did,” he said.

  At that John began to kick again.

  Roland’s face snapped from friendly to furious. “Shut up, I said!” He lifted his gun and smashed it down by John’s ear. John’s head drooped. He started to raise it slowly, then let it drop again. He made a choking sound, but he didn’t kick anymore.

  Roland’s expression relaxed, and the smile came back. I looked at John, now still in his chair, and then back at Roland. Of course you did, I thought. Now tell me why.

  But I didn’t say that. What I said, quietly but trying not to sound scared, trying not to sound as if any of this was anything out of the ordinary, was, “I meant it, about the police coming. You’d better leave now or you won’t be able to get away.” While I spoke, I breathed levelly and watched his eyes, watched as Sensei Chung had taught me, watched for the telegraphing flash of motion that comes fractions of a second before the punch or the kick or the shot, the flash that always comes from the eyes. If you’re watching, that warning is sometimes enough.

  “I guess you’re right,” Roland said. “I’m sorry, Lydia. Sorry for old Elliot. But I guess it’s time to go.”

  Roland’s partner lifted a gun, too, and pointed it at me, too. Left or right? I wondered. Which way to dive?

  But I didn’t have to decide. “Lum!” a male voice roared. A loud, resonant male voice. A beautiful voice. Bill’s voice. “Both of you! Drop the guns!”

  Roland started like a rabbit. I hit the ground, left, away from him. I yanked my .38 from its holster as Roland’s shot howled through the basement air. Another answered. Roland ducked behind John, making him a shield. Roland’s partner, left alone and exposed, fired through the doorway. From the hall I heard a yelp, then another shot. The ninja-masked head snapped backward and the figure slammed against the rusting boiler, crumpling slowly to the floor.

  The force of the crash loosened the ninja mask; it had slipped partway off by the time the figure hit the floor. Askew, it revealed full, pouty lips, and high, delicate cheekbones. At the temples, drifting out from the blackness of the hood, were wisps of glossy hair the white-gold color of morning light.

  Andi Shechter.

  “Lum!” Bill yelled, bursting into the thousand questions I was asking myself. “Give it up! The place is crawling with cops!” I knew that wasn’t true. If the cops were here, they’d never have let Bill in. There were no cops.

  “Screw you!” Roland screamed. “Drop your guns or I’ll blow his fucking head off! Do it! What do I have to lose?” He raised his gun and fired a wild shot into the ceiling. Plaster splashed down around us as Roland cocked the hammer and pressed the gun to John’s head.

  “All right,” I said. “All right!” I threw my gun across the floor, and stood.

  “Whoever the hell you are!” Roland yelled into the hallway. “You do it, too! Do it!”

  Bill said nothing, but stepped from the shadows into the light of the room, tossing his gun before him.

  “Hands on your heads!” Roland barked, and Bill and I did that, standing helpless in the dusty room where Andi Shechter bled on the floor.

  Roland switched the gun to his left hand and kept it hard against John’s temple while his right pulled at the rope holding John’s wrists. John’s arms flopped down to his sides. He moved them vaguely, lifting one to hold his head. Roland hauled him out of the chair.

  John in front of him, Roland began to edge out of the room. John moved clumsily, tripping.

  “Lydia!” Roland ordered. “Pick that up and give it to me.” He nodded at the brown paper package bursting with green stacks of bills that Andi had dropped. I knelt slowly, gathered it up, and passed it to him. He squeezed it under the arm he was gripping John with and started to move toward the door again.

  I was closest to Roland. I waited for Bill to make the move, to create the distraction that would draw Roland’s attention so I could tackle him. I knew that’s what was coming next.

  But it wasn’t.

  From the darkness of the hall a woman’s voice yelled, “Hey!” Not Roland’s name, not a command, just “hey!”

  It was enough for Roland. He shoved John back into the room, spun and fired two blasting shots in the direction of the sound.

  John tripped and clutched at me for balance as I flew toward Roland. He made me trip, too, my knee crashing on the concrete before I righted myself.

  A shot rang from the dark, from where the voice was. Roland made a sound of surprise. He staggered forward, then he fell.

  A deafening silence filled the basement. For a second everyone, everything, was frozen.

  Then I grabbed up my gun and pushed past John, who was pulling weakly at the tape around his mouth. I held my gun on Roland as Bill leaned over him, feeling his throat for a pulse. Bill shook his head and stood.

  Eyes shining, smiling a strange smile, left arm bloody, Dawn Jing stepped out of the basement shadows.

  THIRTY

  In the
life of East Third Street, police cars and ambulances were clearly not unusual enough to cause a lot of alarm, even on a beautiful spring afternoon. The small crowd that collected watched with mild interest, the way you’d watch a children’s game from your front stoop, as the Crime Scene cops disappeared inside the building and, eventually, the paramedics brought Roland’s body out, and then Andi Shechter’s. They were covered, and then strapped down, as though even in death they might still be looking for a ticket out.

  The Crime Scene cops came out after a while, too, with the spent shells Dawn and Andi and Roland had fired, and the ninja masks and the rope from John’s wrists and the filthy towel and the million dollars, all bagged neatly in clear plastic bags. Roland’s and Andi’s personal effects were in other bags, just the small things everyone carries with them in the course of a regular day—wallets, tissues, combs, and keys, the things that are supposed to help you make your way from one day into the next.

  John was already gone, semiconscious with a concussion, carried off with sirens and flashing lights to St. Vincent’s Hospital. I’d called Genna right after I’d called the police, to tell her he was hurt but alive. I’d said to stay where she was, and that I’d call her as soon as I knew which hospital they were taking him to.

  I hadn’t told her Dawn was here. In the dusty air of the basement, Roland motionless as the concrete at my feet, I’d waited, looking from Bill to Dawn, for someone to explain this to me. Bill, crouching down to examine the gash in John’s temple, had said simply, “Dawn knew where to come.” I didn’t consider that much of an explanation, but John was holding his head and moaning, Dawn was bleeding, and Bill said, “Later.” That usually meant, “In private,” and that was okay with me. So I ran upstairs, found a street corner phone, and called it in. Then I called Genna; by the time I was off the phone with her and headed back down the block, the howl of the sirens was getting close and the action had started.