by S. J. Rozan
The locksmith showed up right as Bill was finishing. He raised his eyebrows at the fingerprint powder all over everything. “Run-of-the-mill B and E?” he said to me. “How come you rate?”
“Homeland Security,” Bill offered without looking up.
An hour later my window had a case-hardened dead bolt and bars, my office was neater than it had been in months, and we still had no idea what had gone on. All my papers were accounted for. If the burglars were after anything besides making a mess and driving up my blood pressure, I couldn’t see that they’d had much success.
Neither had Bill, it looked like. “A partial palm. A smear. And what might be a thumb up by the lock.”
“I bet that’s mine. Oh, well, that wasn’t the point. What’s ‘case-hardened’?”
“Your pal Mulgrew.”
“What?”
“A cop who’s lost all human emotion.”
“Okay, be like that.” I took out my phone and dialed. I spoke briefly in Cantonese with Armpit Kwan’s heartbroken mother in New Jersey. Then I called the cell phone number she gave me for her heartbreaking son.
“Yah?” Well, it was the right number. That was Armpit: nasal and aggrieved.
“Hi, Clifford. It’s your cousin Lydia.”
“I don’t have—”
“Lydia Chin, Armpit. You do have: Our mother’s fathers were second cousins twice removed.” Or something. Whatever it was, he didn’t know it, I’d bet on that. “Your White Eagle homies broke into my office this afternoon and I want to know why.”
“Lydia Chin?” Armpit paused in pretend thought, which is the only kind he has. “Oh, that Lydia.”
“Why, Armpit?”
“Why what?”
“My office!”
“Aw, cuz, you’re tripping.”
“Don’t let’s go through all that. They were here, they made a mess, and you’re going to tell me why.”
“I don’t know shit about anything.”
“That’s all you know about anything, but I want to hear it anyway. You want to meet uptown where no one knows us, or you want me to come find you in Chinatown?”
“No way I’m meeting you.”
“Then I’ll find you, and your new friends will see us together.”
“No way you’re finding me, either.” Armpit was stuck in a groove.
“Cousin, I’m a private eye, remember? I can do pretty much everything the cops can do”—I put a little weight on “cops”—“and I don’t have to be as careful about legal niceties.” I wondered if anyone had ever used “nicety” in conversation with Armpit before. “I can trace your phone. No, don’t hang up, it’s already too late. And I can also lift fingerprints.”
A half-second delay. “So?” He was buying it, so I stepped it up.
“I have three sets of prints here. Later I’m going to send them to a private lab I use. Unless I have something better to do, like talk to my cousin. One set’s small. The kid, Armpit. You sent in a kid, and once I know who it was you can bet I’m telling his parents. And their family association, and their village association, and whatever tong their village association headman belongs to. And the beauty of it, Cousin Clifford, is that all those people, who will then go out of their way to give the White Eagles as hard a time as they possibly can, will know it was your cousin who jammed the White Eagles up. And the White Eagles will know it, too. Now: uptown, or right there where you are?”
And bless Armpit’s cowardly, probably stoned, and inarguably stupid little heart, if he didn’t suggest a pizza place on Union Square. Which was a good thing, because while Bill could lift fingerprints, we had no way to ID some ten-year-old from prints even if he’d left any, which he didn’t. The point of Bill dusting and lifting was to make sure the locksmith, the travel ladies, and any curious onlookers above could confirm we’d dusted and lifted. Also, though certain technologies available to the police are in fact available to PIs, I couldn’t trace a cell phone call. So it was good he’d told me where to meet him, because right at that moment I had not the first idea where Armpit was.
30
Bill and I subwayed up to Union Square. We found Armpit Kwan in Vinnie’s Pies, stuffing into his pasty face a slice mounded with every ingredient anyone ever thought to put on a pizza.
“Who’s he?” Armpit sullenly demanded as Bill dropped into a chair.
“Bill Smith,” I said. “Another detective. What’s that?”
“Pizza, dumb-ass. I didn’t say I’d talk to him. Just you.” Or words to that effect, extruded through crust, salami, peppers, and pineapple. Sauce plopped onto Armpit’s shirt, joining something brown from yesterday, or last week, or whenever his heartbroken mother had last done his laundry.
“Well, you will talk to him.” I was grateful for the garlic in the air. Like most gang nicknames, Armpit didn’t choose his own, and it didn’t come from nowhere. “He and I work together.”
“Shit, Cousin Lydia. I thought you were a big tough girl. Didn’t know you were working for a baak chit gai.” The term he used means literally “chicken roasted without soy sauce.” It’s what the gangs call white people these days.
“Actually,” Bill said, “I work for her. I’m the muscle. So she doesn’t have to get her pretty hands dirty.” He crowded Armpit a little. Armpit pulled back, but all that got him was pressed against the wall.
“Listen,” I said. “I want to know what the White Eagles were after in my office. And whether they got it. You tell me that, I’ll even pay for your pizza.”
“Oh, big whoop.”
“And if you don’t,” Bill said in a friendly fashion, “I’ll cram it and the box it came in down your throat.”
“Fuck you!” Armpit, starting to rise, clonked into a badly colorized photo of Sicily.
“Armpit! Sit down! Bill, leave him alone. He’s my cousin. He’s cooperating.” This was about the cheesiest good cop/bad cop routine Bill and I had ever done, but Armpit was a cheap date.
“Well, you lose, cuz.” Armpit sank back, gave Bill another glare, and curled his lip at me. “I don’t know what the deal was.”
“Armpit, I know you’re just a wannabe with that gang, but I need to find out—”
“Fuck you! A wannabe?” He yanked up his sleeve to expose his red, swollen shoulder, where a misshapen eagle screamed in for a landing. If this was Auntie Ro’s brother-in-law’s work, I hoped he had a day job. “You don’t get one of these if you’re a wannabe. I’m made, baby.”
Made? Chinatown gangs were recycling Mafia slang? Where’s your cultural pride? I wanted to ask. Instead, I said, “I don’t see how that can be true, if you don’t know anything about what went down today.”
Trapped like a rat. Bright spots flared in Armpit’s cheeks. “I didn’t say I don’t know anything. I said I don’t know what the deal was, and I fucking don’t.”
In a flash Bill grabbed his wrist. “Clean up your language. Ms. Chin doesn’t like to hear that.”
Armpit tried and failed to pull away. “Ow.” He stared in offended amazement.
I said, “What does that mean?”
Armpit swung back to me. “Huh?”
“You don’t know what the deal was, but you don’t not know anything? Does that mean something? I hope so. Because if it’s just words, I have to tell you, Bill hates words.”
Bill let Armpit go and reached for his Coke, which he downed probably so he wouldn’t laugh out loud.
“Hey!” Armpit protested as his caffeine and sugar vanished. “Lydia!”
I gave him a benign smile. “It-tee-bit-tee fingerprints. Four fulls and two partials. Whose can they be?”
“Jesus Christ, cuz, you’re a pain in the ass. What?” Armpit said as Bill leaned toward him. “Oh, screw it. I don’t know the deal because we didn’t plan the job. We don’t give a shit—all right!—about your office, cuz. Some guy hired us.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. I don’t! Dai lo didn’t tell us.” Dai lo, literally “big brother
,” is a Chinatown gang leader’s title. “He just said we’d get good money to distract the travel ladies, open the place up, and let this guy in.”
“Let him in? The White Eagles didn’t search the office themselves?”
“Why would we? What the—What do you have that we could ever want?”
“What did the guy want?”
“How would I know?”
“Does your dai lo?”
Armpit rolled his eyes.
“Find out.”
“What?”
“Find out. Who it was, what he wanted.”
“You’re crazy.”
“No, Bill’s crazy,” I said. Bill leered crazily. “I’m just your cousin with some little kid’s fingerprints.”
“I can’t.” Armpit’s voice rose in pitch as it lowered in volume. “I can’t ask dai lo shit like that. What if he doesn’t know? If the guy didn’t tell his name, ever think of that? Dai lo will think I’m trying to make him look bad.”
“Explain you’re being blackmailed. Fishface Deng, he’s your dai lo, right? He’ll understand.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“Yes, of course. But whatever it takes, Armpit. By tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, man. Don’t do this to me.”
“What’s the problem? You’re made. You’re on the inside. Congratulations, by the way.”
Armpit ran his greasy hand through his hair. “It’s new,” he mumbled.
“What?”
“The tat. Just got it.”
“Yes, so I understand. You’ve achieved your goal, Armpit. Now achieve mine.”
A look of desperation stole into his red-rimmed eyes. “Dai lo needs guys he can trust. For this big score coming up. That’s how come.” He pointed to his shoulder. “It’s my chance. Don’t screw me, cousin.”
The third-stringer called off the bench into the big game. The understudy stepping into the spotlight. Who could fail to be moved? “Okay, you can have until tomorrow night.”
“Oh, man! Oh, no, come on, give me a break.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“This bullshit”—he cringed away from Bill, but Bill only smiled encouragingly—“what happened in your office. If I rat it out, dai lo will kill me.”
Sad to say, that might be literally true. And if I thought my mother was displeased when I’d sent her out to Queens, just wait until she learned I’d sent my cousin Clifford on to his next life.
Armpit pushed, sensing my wavering. “And the big score. I don’t want to screw my chances, you know, in that. There’s serious money involved. And besides money . . .” He stopped, with the wide eyes of a punk who, even stupid and stoned, realizes he’s said too much.
“What, besides money? What is there for guys like White Eagles, besides money? Well, cheap sex and bad drugs. Is that what you’re afraid you’ll be missing?”
He glared and picked up his Coke. Discovering it empty, he slammed the can onto the table. It made a pretty feeble noise, but I nodded at Bill, who got up and came back with two Cokes and a seltzer. Armpit snapped one open, glugged some, peeled a sausage from his congealing slice, and stuffed it between slick lips. Finally he spoke. “Dai lo has this idea. That’s why he needs guys. We’re gonna be, like, a private army.”
“You’re what?”
“For hire.”
“You’re what?”
Exasperated, he explained. “Because the score, we got hired for that, too. Like, that was first, then your thing. But, so, we can be this private army, that’s what dai lo’s thinking. Word’ll get around. People will come to us.”
I exchanged looks with Bill. “Well, isn’t that wonderful? Ambition. Beautiful. Tell me about the score, Armpit.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. They tell me where and when it goes down, I show up. That’s all.”
“Show up and do what?”
“Whatever they tell me! Nobody’ll get hurt. For real, swear to God. Lydia, come on, don’t fuck this up for me!”
“You don’t know where, when, or what’s going down, but you swear no one will get hurt?” Oh, no, I thought. I sound like my mother. “Let’s go at it this way: You’ve been casing jewelry shop windows. How is that sleazy activity related to the big score?”
“Wasn’t.” If he’d been trying to send the message I’m lying, he couldn’t have done better than the mumble and darting eyes that went with that word.
I sat back. “You’re knocking over a jewelry shop.”
“Uh-uh.”
“Oh, not a jewelry shop job? So you do know what it is.”
“I fucking do not! But it’s sure as shit not something as lame as that.”
I took a chance: “Mr. Chen’s shop? Bright Hopes?”
“No way.” His voice dripped derision, but color flared through his video-arcade pallor.
“Mr. Chen’s a friend of mine.” So what if Mr. Chen wasn’t speaking to me? “I’d hate to see anything happen to him.”
“Oh, jeez, cuz! Nothing’s going to happen to Old Man Chen! He’s not even—”
“He’s not even what?”
“Anyone I know. He’s not even anyone I know.” Armpit was visibly, pitifully proud of how he’d saved that one.
Bill leaned closer. “And this big fucking deal big fucking score you don’t fucking know anything about. It’s related to what happened at Lydia’s office exactly fucking how?”
Armpit watched Bill nervously. “Who says it is?”
“I do.”
“You’re full of—You’re wrong.” Armpit stammered, but, in an impressive display of nerve and will, he got that out.
“Armpit,” I said, “did the same guy hire you for both jobs?”
“No. That’s why dai lo’s so happy.”
“Why?”
He looked at me as though I were the one whose On light wasn’t lit. “Because word must be getting around already! Before we even do the first job, we get another one. The customer’s happy, he tells other people, then the second customer’s happy, he tells more people, and there you go: the Chinatown White Eagles, Soldiers of Fortune.”
* * *
“The Chinatown White Eagles, what?” Mary couldn’t have sounded more incredulous if I’d told her they’d all taken Buddhist vows.
“I know. But doesn’t it sound like you should be keeping an eye on them?”
“You don’t know anything about this big score?”
“No, except they’ll never pull it off if they let Armpit anywhere near it. But I don’t think it’s as simple as robbing a jewelry store.”
“You said Mr. Chen’s name got a reaction.”
“Maybe he pays his protection money to the White Eagles, so Armpit knows him. I think Armpit really doesn’t know what’s going on. He’s a bad liar.”
“And you’re not going to make him find out about your break-in?”
I sighed. “It’s too risky. He’d be as obvious to his dai lo as he was to me. I don’t like the guy, but he is my cousin.”
“If we break this big score, I might have to arrest him.”
“Be my guest. I just can’t be the one who gets him killed.” She wasn’t happy, I could tell, but she was Chinese, so she got it. “I did keep some leverage. He’s really scared about the fingerprints, that the tongs will come down on the White Eagles and he’ll be blamed. So I promised I won’t use them for a while, assuming he gives me something useful at some point in the future.”
“Don’t hold your breath.”
“I won’t. But it’s not a bad trade, since I don’t have fingerprints.”
“If the big score has anything to do with a jewelry shop, even if it’s not a burglary,” Mary thought out loud, “it’s got to be one the White Eagles shake down. They wouldn’t dare cross another gang, even if they were being paid.”
“That occurred to me, too. Can you find out which real estate is theirs?”
“Patino’s up on that, the maps and charts. And maybe I can get a line on one of these cus
tomers. I’ll see if anyone knows who’s been hanging around with the White Eagles’ dai lo. Or I could just pick him up.”
“Fishface Deng? And do what? He’d get a lawyer, you’d get nothing, and he’d know you know they have something big coming up.”
“I hate to just wait and let it happen.”
“I sympathize. But I’ll keep the pressure on Armpit. He may come through yet. And whatever it is, and even if it isn’t related to my break-in—”
“Which you’re sure it is.”
“I don’t know. Maybe not. But even if it isn’t, won’t it be great for your career when you catch the White Eagles with their hands in the rice jar?”
“Where to, boss?” I pocketed my phone. Bill and I stood in the muggy evening watching the skateboarders rattle down the Union Square steps.
“You’re the boss. I’m just the crazy, word-hating muscle.”
“I’m tired of that. I want to be the muscle for a while. Being the boss takes too much thinking.”
“Works for me. If I’m the boss, you’re fired.”
“Now you sound like Alice.”
Wouldn’t you know. As soon as I said her name, my phone tinkled the new-client song.
I threw it open and stuck it to my ear. “Lydia Chin. Alice? Is that you?”
“Lydia? Yes, it’s me.”
“Where are you?” One finger in my ear to block the traffic and the skateboards, I tried to make my voice normal. She didn’t know how much I knew, and I didn’t want to spook her.
“Lydia, I need to talk to you.”
“Yes, I think we should. Are you back in New York? I’m free right now.”
“How about later tonight? About eleven? In Sara Roosevelt Park.”
That threw me. “That park’s not the most savory place at that hour. Why not—”
“No, Sara Roosevelt Park at eleven.”
“Why?”
“It needs to be someplace unexpected. I can’t risk being seen.”
“What are you talking about?”
Then she put an end to my attempt at normal. “Lydia, it’s Wong Pan. He says he’s got the Shanghai Moon.”
31
“Sara Roosevelt Park at eleven?” Mary was only slightly less incredulous than ten minutes before. “Why there?”