15th Affair

by James Patterson

  The press was all over us. It didn’t matter that the shots that had injured the passersby had been fired by criminals. The fallout was all on the SFPD.

  Under pressure, Jacobi gave a press conference, saying that military-grade automatic weapons had been seized from apartment 3F at 1035 Stockton, but he didn’t mention the missile launcher and he didn’t take questions, saying only, “I can’t discuss an ongoing investigation.”

  No documents or identification had been found on the dead men in 3F. There were also no fingerprint matches, and no one had come forward to claim the bodies. We had too many questions without answers, but we did have the sorry patsy, young Henry Yee.

  Conklin and I were with Yee and his lawyer in our small, gray interview room. A camera rolled tape from a corner of the ceiling, and the observation room behind the glass was packed with high-level cops, including Brady, Jacobi, and our DA, Leonard Parisi.

  Henry Yee was five feet tall, nearsighted, and pretty much lost. His lawyer, Ernest Ling, was a mild-mannered man who went by the street name of Daddy. Mr. Ling negotiated for Yee, and given Yee’s importance as a material witness, Parisi himself had agreed to drop the gun charge as long as we were satisfied with what Yee told us.

  So far, we had established that Yee was twenty years old with two years of high school. He had two small-time drug arrests and no parents.

  The lease for apartment 3F had passed to Yee when his mother died. And then, about a month ago, Yee had sublet the apartment to four men from China who paid him eight hundred dollars over the rent for him to sleep elsewhere. Yee worked as a waiter and dishwasher for Mei Ling Happy Noodles and had been sleeping in the storeroom. His subtenants hired him to bring them take-out and do occasional odd jobs. He also stopped by the apartment to change clothes.

  Sometimes the four men joked around with him, and he also overheard some of their conversations. So he said.

  Yee had been carrying a gun under his apron when Wang and Michaels snatched him up. He had no license to carry, and certainly no need for a gun in his job. The Colt .45 was a gift from his subtenants, and apparently, to Yee, it was a prize.

  That gun had been lucky for us, too.

  Yee was an adult with a sheet. He was looking at prison time for the illegal possession, and if he could be implicated in the crash of WW 888, he would be eligible for the death penalty.

  Daddy Ling had made the best and only deal for his client. Now we needed Henry Yee to tell us everything he knew.

  CHAPTER 70

  HENRY YEE WAS sipping from a can of Coke, looking at morgue photos of the deceased.

  Said Yee, “This one. He’s called Dog Head or Dog. I don’t know his real name. This one is called Jake. This one speaks no English. He’s called Weisei. But this one,” he said, pointing to the picture of the man with the scar, “he goes by Mr. Soo. He is not a gangster. He says he works for the government.”

  Conklin asked, “What were the weapons for, Henry?”

  “I don’t know,” said Yee. “Mr. Jake told me it was private business.”

  I said, “Did these men ever discuss the airplane that went down at SFO?”

  “That airplane from Beijing? No, I didn’t hear that.”

  I said, “We think they did have something to do with that airplane, Henry. Think hard. Did you hear anything at all?”

  Ling said to his client, “Henry. You don’t have to worry. None of those men can hurt you.”

  “They didn’t tell me anything,” said Henry Yee.

  I said to the lawyer, “Mr. Ling, this isn’t working. Your client has given us his name, rank, and serial number. That’s not the deal we made.”

  Daddy Ling said, “He’s afraid it’s going to come back on him. That’s not crazy, Sergeant.”

  Ling had a whispered talk with his client, who looked up at me through the thick lenses of his glasses. He nodded and heaved a long sigh.

  Then he said, “This is the only thing I know about the airplane. I don’t think it means anything, and please don’t get mad at me.”

  I felt a chill, as if we were on the edge of a breakthrough, but I was afraid to trust the feeling. This mutt had been a total disappointment.

  “Night before last,” said Yee, “me and Mr. Soo both got home at the same time and I notice that Mr. Soo’s car is all banged up. I say, ‘What happened, Mr. Soo? You all right?’”

  “He’s very mad. He got into a car fight with a police lady he calls Dirty Mary.”

  Did he mean me?

  “Why Dirty Mary? Like Clint Eastwood?”

  The kid nodded and went on.

  “Anyway, Mr. Soo had already told me after the crash that he needed proof for his boss that some man was on that plane. He said Dirty Mary stopped him from doing his job. That made him look bad. But I think he did find the body,” said Yee.

  “What makes you think that?” I asked.

  “Like a week and a half ago, I helped him unload his car and I saw a body in the back wrapped in a sheet. I just saw a foot that was all burned. Mr. Soo shut the trunk before I could see more.”

  Pictures were coming up in my mind and tumbling end over end. The first time I saw Mr. Soo outside the ME’s office, he’d said he wanted to see his son. I’d turned him away and a bunch of cops had backed me up.

  “Was he looking for his son?” I asked Henry Yee.

  “No, it wasn’t his son,” said Yee. “It was someone else.”

  I thought of the missing victim of WW 888. The body had gotten mysteriously lost at Metropolitan Hospital. I remembered the chaos that night, the exhausted, traumatized people, more corpses than any one morgue could handle.

  I could imagine someone disguised in hospital scrubs, looking at rows of bodies on gurneys, reading toe tags. I could imagine someone wheeling a corpse out of the hospital emergency room.

  No one would have stopped a person in scrubs. Not that night.

  I was breathless, almost faint. I stood up and, placing the flats of my hands on the table, I leaned toward our only material witness.

  “Think, Henry. Did Mr. Soo mention the name Michael Chan? Was he looking for the body of Michael Chan?”

  “He never said the name,” Yee said.

  The kid looked terrified. Of me? Or of retaliation?

  Ling said his client had cooperated fully. The interview was over. Yee was released.

  I still had questions. Plenty of them.

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER 71

  CINDY CALLED TO say, “Lindsay. I’ve got breaking news. Big-time. Can you meet me downstairs in five minutes? I’ll drive you home after.”

  “Give me a hint,” I said, shutting down my computer and locking my desk drawer.

  She was speed-talking. Warp speed.

  “A tip came in twenty minutes ago. From a guy who saw the photos I’m running of the Four Seasons’ Jane and John Doe, and he says he’s got video of them. In the hotel. On a hidden camera. He’s going to show me the video. Is that enough hint for you?”

  It certainly was.

  “I’m on my way.”

  Conklin had already left for the day. I asked Brenda to call off my ride while I phoned Mrs. Rose to say I’d be late. Then I zipped up my jacket and ran down the stairs.

  Cindy had my attention for sure. Was the tipster solid? Would there really be a video of the kids in that room? And if so, would the video reveal their killer? Had Cindy cracked the case on four homicides? I was hoping. I guess I’m still an optimist after all these years.

  Cindy was waiting for me in front of the Hall as traffic rushed and dusk fell. I got into her ’09 Honda Civic just two steps ahead of Traffic Control, who was about to shoo her away.

  “Start talking,” I said as I buckled up. “Where are we going? You’ve got my undivided attention.”

  The car lurched as Cindy put it in gear. “His code name is Jad,” she said. We were heading northeast on Bryant, Cindy turning her head every few words to pin me with her big blue eyes.

  “‘
Jad’ was doing surveillance for somebody. I took it to be a government agency, but he wouldn’t say who. He was, however, emphatic that what he caught on tape could get him killed. I could feel him sweating over the phone.”

  “And so why did he contact you?”

  “Because in my copy I begged anyone with information as to the identities of John and Jane to get in touch with me, confidentially. He also said that what he knew was eating him up inside. His voice was cracking up, Linds. He was freaked out.”

  “Did you tell him you were bringing me?”

  “Well, what I said was that I wasn’t going to meet a stranger alone. That I was bringing my associate. Like Woodward and Bernstein. You know?”

  “Oh, man.”

  I was shaking my head. This wouldn’t be the first or even the fifth time Cindy had waded into a highly flammable situation because she was onto a big story.

  “Linds, he said it was OK to bring you. And there’s more,” said my crime reporter friend. “Along with the video of those two kids, Jad also has footage of what could be Chan and Muller. Yeah, Lindsay. Really. Asian guy. Blond woman. I’m thinking, Oh, my God. It’s now or never. Jad could take off. This time tomorrow he could be on another continent.”

  “We should be going in with a tac team, Cindy.”

  “I agreed to keep this confidential. And I believe him. He’s going to show us the video. He wants to. He called me. Look, we’re meeting him in the parking lot at Washington and the Embarcadero. It’s wide open. We’ll be perfectly safe.”

  I told her, “We’ll be sitting ducks.”

  “Wait a minute. Didn’t you just outwit three armed desperados with nothing more than a quick draw on your stick shift?”

  I laughed. “You have a way with words.”

  “And that’s why they pay me the OK bucks.”

  Cindy grinned at me and threaded her car through a narrow opening in traffic. She maintained maximum possible acceleration from Bryant to the Embarcadero, where she smoothly entered the lot right across from the Ferry Building. She took one of the empty spots facing the street and left the motor running.

  She fished her phone out of her bag and made a call. “Jad? It’s Cindy. I’m here.”

  There was a pause.

  “The blue Civic. Front row. OK.”

  Cindy clicked off.

  “Our date with destiny,” said my friend. “He’s on the way.”

  CHAPTER 72

  AN OLD BLACK Lincoln with a noisy muffler took the looping turn off the Embarcadero, crossed the wide roadway, and nosed into the parking lot where Cindy and I sat waiting.

  The Lincoln’s driver braked at the back of the asphalt, plates up against the chain-link fencing and partially hidden from our view by a staggered row of parked vehicles.

  I watched over my shoulder as he got out of his Town Car and headed toward us. The tipster was overweight. He wore a thin, gray knee-length coat and carried a nylon computer bag in his right hand. He came up behind us and knocked on Cindy’s window, which she buzzed down.

  Cindy said hello and introduced me as “Lindsay, my partner on the crime desk.”

  Jad took off his gloves, put them in his pocket, and said to me, “Pleased to meet you. Let’s sit in the back.”

  Cindy and I disembarked from the front seat and arranged ourselves in back so that the big man was sitting between us. When I got a closer look at him, I saw that he was young, early to midtwenties, with pale hands and brown eyes that couldn’t quite meet mine.

  I quashed a nervous impulse to laugh. Sitting in the shadows next to this stranger who was passing secret information made me feel like I was inside an old comedic spy movie. Was this improbable spy the real deal? Had he caught a professional killer on video and in the act?

  I tuned back into the moment as Jad was saying, “I told my bosses that the equipment didn’t work. You know, shit happens. So, this is video, here. I’ve seen it and you’re going to see it, and then I’m gonna destroy it. This footage is never coming to a theater near you.”

  Cindy said, “How am I going to report this if I don’t have the footage to back me up?”

  Jad opened a very thin laptop and it lit up the backseat. He said, “Cindy, that’s your problem. I agreed to meet with you conditionally. After you see the video, you’re either going to get independent corroboration or you’re not. This is as far as I go.”

  Jad tapped at his keyboard and said, “On your mark, get set.” And then he pressed Play.

  I instantly recognized the image on the screen as room 1420 of the Four Seasons Hotel. Michael Chan was sitting at the end of the bed, flipping channels on the television. A doorbell sounded and Chan turned off the TV and walked toward the door, out of camera range. A moment later, I heard Chan saying, “You’re late.” And the door closed hard.

  Chan and Muller entered the frame. Muller’s legs were clasped around Chan’s waist and he was holding her tightly as he walked her toward the bed. Her glasses were gone and I could almost see her eyes beneath the curtain of bangs.

  They laughed and kissed deeply, and then Chan laid Muller down on the bed facing him. He removed her boots and tossed them aside, all of his movements confident as though he’d been through this ritual before.

  I caught bits of their game play. Chan said that he was the Prince of Gorgonzola. She said her name was Renata and that he had paid her for sex once before in Rome.

  The teasing continued as Chan unbuttoned and peeled off Muller’s clothes, then stripped off his own. She moved under his hands, and if she didn’t just love the hell out of how he was turning and touching her, she could have won the golden statue for best actress.

  The two were nearly naked on the bed, their heavy breathing sucking in all the air in the room, when the computer screen went black. Dead black.

  Cindy said, “Hey. What happened?”

  Jad said, “Yeah, that’s a bitch, right? I thought it was my equipment that lost the connection. Well, that wasn’t it. The Wi-Fi in and around the hotel was blocked.

  “Stay tuned,” said Jad. “There’s more.”

  CHAPTER 73

  JAD WAS CUEING up another video.

  He clicked the arrow and the video rolled.

  I recognized 1418, the room next to Chan’s. There were two single beds, a sofa, a desk, and a coffee table, and the two young people, a black male in cords and a sweater, and a white female in jeans and a pastel plaid shirt. They were sitting at their ad hoc computer stations, looking at their screens.

  Jad said, “Nothing happens in here for a couple of hours.” He fast-forwarded the video and the time stamp sped from 4:30 to 6:20.

  As Jad had said, there wasn’t much happening in 1418.

  The boy sat at the desk, the girl hunched over the coffee table, both gravely watching their computer screens, which were turned away from the camera. I couldn’t see what they were watching, but presumably, it was Chan and Muller in the room next door.

  They ate sandwiches, chugged from their water bottles, and wheeled the room service cart outside the room, all without incident. At the 6:20 marker, Jad slowed the film and said, “Don’t look away. Don’t even blink.”

  The young man in the video poked a key on his laptop and spoke to someone on his screen.

  “Hey, Joe. You on the way up?”

  A voice came over the computer’s speakers.

  “Bud, where’s Chrissy?”

  I felt a shocking chill and a sensation of falling. I gripped the armrest and tried not to move or speak or cry out. That was Joe’s voice. I couldn’t be mistaken. My Joe.

  “I’m here, Chief,” said the girl at the coffee table. She got up from her chair, leaned over her colleague’s shoulder, and waved her hand at his computer screen.

  “OK. Good. I’m still in the lobby,” said the voice of the man I’d loved for years, the man who’d promised to love me through sickness and health, the father of my baby. He said, “What’s going on?”

  “They’re both in there. W
e’ve got action,” said Bud.

  “Any talk about that plane from Beijing?” Joe asked.

  The girl said, “Nothing yet. They’re all about each other, Chief.”

  “OK. I’m coming up.”

  “Copy,” said Bud.

  And then, at 6:23 on the nose, Jad’s picture dissolved into static.

  I was falling again, but my mind stayed in gear.

  Sometime between the time the Internet feed went down and when Liam Dugan, the head of hotel security, showed us the dead housekeeper in the closet, a total of four people had been murdered.

  Jad was saying to Cindy, “The two dead kids. Bud and Chrissy could be their real nicknames. If you run their pictures again with those names, maybe someone will come forward. You heard ‘Joe’ ask about an airplane from Beijing?

  “Three days later, an airplane from China was blown to hell over Route 101. Maybe Bud and Chrissy were killed because they knew about the plane. I wish I didn’t, but I know it, too. And now so do you,” Jad said.

  He said to Cindy, “Someone should put it out there that there was foreknowledge of that plane crash, don’t you think? But it can’t be me.

  “And now say good-bye to the video.”

  “Wait,” Cindy said. “Play the last minute again.”

  Jad sighed, then reversed the footage and ran it forward. I heard Joe ask about an airplane from Beijing. Joe knew about that plane. Joe knew.

  Jad closed down the video and dragged the file to an icon labeled DESTROY. Software flames consumed the files.

  The videos might be permanently destroyed, but they were part of me now.

  I couldn’t forget them if I tried.

  CHAPTER 74

  THE WIND HAD picked up during our fifteen-minute meeting in the parking lot, whipping the young trees standing in their concrete planters on the sidewalk as traffic illuminated the six-lane Embarcadero.

  It looked like any normal summer evening in San Francisco, but nothing would ever be normal for me again.