Private Eye 4 - Nobody Dies in Chinatown

by Max Lockhart

  He pulled the tearful little girl out the door, with the shamed mother hurrying after them. Another mother, recognizing her place in the order of things and ashamed of challenging it, got up and, taking her little girl, waddled out the door.

  Kai-Lee, her shoulders slumping in dejection, lifted her hand to stop them, then let it fall. Her eyes watched the door with a kind of resignation, then refocused on Cleary, widening as she recognized him. Hesitating only a moment to weigh what his presence might mean, she turned back to the girls and clapped her hands.

  "Class dismissed," she said, her voice light and pleasant again as she practiced her skills at being polite in the face of humiliation.

  Actually, thought Cleary as he followed Kai-Lee into her office, Chinese women had raised being polite in the face of humiliation to an art form. Practice makes perfect, and no one had more practice at that particular art form than a Chinese woman. Selling one's daughter into prostitution, abandoning an infant girl to die, binding a baby's feet to grow into hideous, misshapen lumps of flesh, were all customs that had lingered into the twentieth century. Sometimes Cleary wondered why the women didn't slaughter every male over the age of ten.

  Cleary examined the tiny room that was Kai-Lee's office and found it as unpretentious as the woman who decorated it. Photos of popular modern dancers, and smaller pictures of her students lined the walls. He took one of the class photos off the wall and studied it.

  Kai-Lee cleared her throat. "They think it's frivolous." She waved her hand in a graceful dancer's gesture. "They would rather see their daughters learning to sew or work a cash register."

  She stood uneasily for a moment, then turned to a small stove and lit a flame underneath an ultramodern, art deco whistling tea kettle. Finally she turned back to face him. "They don't understand that this training could help their daughters go into the world."

  Cleary hung the picture back on the wall. "They don't want their daughters to go into the world. They might learn something frivolous, like the fact that their names belong to themselves."

  Kai-Lee avoided looking at him, but he saw the same knowledge in the eyes so steadfastly staring over his shoulder at the studio. "I looked into your brother's case," he continued, changing the subject to the one both of them had been avoiding. "What he needs is a good lawyer."

  Kai-Lee looked up at him, hope still lingering deep m her eyes. Like Fontana's, he thought suddenly. "Tommy's been in trouble all his life. But I know in my heart my brother could not have done something like this. I raised him since he was five years old."

  He studied her face for a long moment and saw in her eyes the unalterable truth of what she believed. He frowned, remembering his own sense of unease. "Kids can go off the track."

  She ignored him, and taking a key chain from around her neck, unlocked her desk drawer. She carefully, almost reverently, as if she were handling a treasure beyond price, took out a shoebox and set it on the desk in front of Cleary.

  "I found out what a private investigator does. He helps people for money."

  "I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do for you." He pushed the words past a painful obstruction in his throat.

  She opened the shoebox and dumped the entire contents on the table in front of Cleary. A small stack of old bills amounting to perhaps two hundred dollars, ancient jewelry, gold, and a few jade trinkets tumbled out. A gold ring rolled across the desk, and he stared, mesmerized, as she caught it in her slim ivory-skinned hand. She clutched it for a moment, then gently laid the ring on top of the pile of money and desperately pushed the whole collection toward him.

  "It's everything I have," she said, looking at him while a blush of embarrassment reddened her cheeks.

  The tea kettle whistled, and she bit her lip and turned toward the sound. Cleary didn't move as he stared down at all the valuables a single woman owned. The shrill whistle continued, rising and falling in intensity like the...

  ... sound of a siren ripping through the night, outside on the streets of Chinatown. He felt again the heat, the stifling closeness of the room that the ceiling fan, turning lazily above the bed, did nothing to alleviate. The sheets were coarsely woven cotton, and scratched his nude body unpleasantly. The neon light outside the window flashed vivid red and yellow colors over his bare chest. Leaning across the rumpled sheets, he ground out his cigarette in the cheap glass ashtray. Resting on his elbow, he watched smoke spiral up from a still-burning, lipstick-stained cigarette abandoned in the ashtray. She did that a lot, lit cigarettes and forgot them, Cleary thought.

  She walked out of the shadows, pulling her scarlet dress over her head. He hated that dress. It reminded him of what she was, and what he didn't want her to be. "Don't go," he said, reaching to rub his hand up the nylon-clad thigh exposed by the slit in the Chinese dress. "I want you," he added huskily, trying to entice her away from her other life and into his, because she satisfied more than his lust.

  She stood still, pressing his hand tightly against her flesh, expressions of desire and resignation fighting for supremacy in her eyes. "I've already gotten you in trouble with your bosses."

  "That'll blow over," he said, his hand finding the warm silky flesh above her garter. "And if it doesn't, to hell with them."

  Giving him a disbelieving smile, she turned her back and lifted the black skein of hair out of his way. He sighed and zipped up her dress. Her charm, a small, simple bronze medal, had slipped around her neck and now hung down her back. He sat up and slipped it back around to lay between her breasts. He gently cupped her, pressing the pert nipple against his palm, before he reluctantly released her.

  "I talked to the tong myself. They have no problem with you," he continued as she picked up her cigarette. She glanced over her shoulder at him, and he attempted to explain. "Everyone seems happy with the arrangement."

  He reached for her again, and she avoided his hand, looking at him with her oblique, fathomless eyes. "There's nothing more I can do for you. My hands are tied."

  The image of the hopeless and resigned look in her eyes lingered with him long after she left, the bronze charm glittering defiantly around her neck...

  ... as another siren blasted through the streets below Kai-Lee's studio. Cleary's vision cleared, and he stared down at the dance teacher's life savings as she returned with two bowls of tea and carefully set them on the wooden desk.

  He reached out, proud that his hand wasn't shaking as hard as his heart was pounding, and picked up a small bronze charm, very common and very inexpensive. "I'll take this."

  She looked at him like a startled doe. "But it's worth nothing."

  He closed his fingers around it, and for an infinitesimal beat of time, felt the warmth of human flesh. "It'll be plenty."

  EIGHTEEN

  Cleary followed the jailer along the row of cells. Some things never changed, he thought, recognizing a few denizens. He had arrested these same guys, for these same crimes, when he was working for the department. They were black, white, Mexican; color didn't matter. They were rich, poor, desperate; money didn't matter. They were abused children, privileged children, benignly neglected children; parents didn't matter. They were illiterate, functional, intellectual; education didn't matter. They were loved, hated, tolerated; emotional attachments didn't matter. They all shared one common denominator: like Frank Tucci, they wanted more. Whether money, sex, or power, they wanted more. In spite of what the sociologists with all the initials after their names were saying these days, the basis of all crime was the same: more.

  He didn't think that could be said of the Chinese kid whose cell the jailer was unlocking. "You got ten minutes, Cleary. Yell if he gets smart, but I don't think he will. We pretty much kicked the shit out of him."

  "I noticed," said Cleary, looking at the bruised, exhausted boy lying on the bunk.

  The kid roused enough to look at Cleary, then turned his attention back to the ceiling, ignoring the private eye.

  "Your sister sent me," said Cleary, holding up the charm he too
k from Kai-Lee. The kid glanced at it, then looked at the ceiling again.

  Cleary felt tempted to shake the kid, or ask him what in the hell was so interesting about that ceiling. "She thinks you got a bum rap. She's hired me to prove it."

  "Tell her to save her money," the lad answered, without losing interest in the ceiling.

  "What's your name, kid?" asked Cleary, stowing the charm in his pocket and lighting a cigarette.

  "Tommy."

  "What's your real name?"

  That got his attention. He turned his head to look at Cleary. "You couldn't pronounce it," his voice revealing his surprise that a Caucasian would even know he had another name.

  "Try me," said Cleary, smiling a challenge.

  "San-Tsiang Tsien," said the kid smugly.

  "San-Tsiang Tsien," said Cleary pronouncing it perfectly.

  The kid sat up in the bunk and grinned in spite of himself. "Not bad."

  "For a foreign devil," offered Cleary.

  San-Tsiang grinned again. "Yeah, I guess so." Cleary leaned against the wall. "Give me something to work with. Help me prove you didn't do it."

  "I did do it," said San-Tsiang.

  Cleary was stunned. "What are you talking about?"

  San-Tsiang shrugged. "I lied before. But it was me all right."

  Cleary took a drag off his cigarette and considered the kid, his feeling of unease growing. "You weren't the guy with the shotgun. I looked in his eyes. You must've been the other guy."

  The Chinese boy nodded. "You got it."

  "The one with the Army-issue .45."

  "Yeah, that's right."

  Cleary flicked some ash into the corner, and took another drag. "That's funny. The other guy had a two-inch .38."

  San-Tsiang paled under his bruises and lay down on his bunk again, facing the ceiling.

  "Your jailer tells me you had visitors this morning. The merchants' association. They told you to take the fall."

  "Five years, ten years in the joint"—the boy shrugged—"there's worse things that could happen to a guy."

  Cleary stared at the boy, then deliberately snuffed out his cigarette in disgust and yanked him off the bunk. Dragging him to the cell door, he stuck his head against the bars. "You see those guys in the other cells? You think they're decent citizens waiting to lend a hand to a Chink kid trying to learn the ropes in the joint? They're gonna kick the shit out of you every time you stick your nose out of your cell. And that's the best thing they might do to you. You'll come out of your five or ten years in a lot worse shape than when you went in. If you come out at all."

  He turned the boy around and looked directly into his eyes. "Now suppose you tell me again about how you murdered Tao?"

  San-Tsiang's eyes were set and staring. And filled with infinite fatalism. "I did it," he repeated doggedly.

  Cleary pushed him gently back on the bunk. "That won't work with me, kid. I'm not letting them throw away a life this time."

  Cleary tucked in his shirt, stretched his arms out their full length, flexed his fingers like a musician readying himself for a concert, then picked up a stainless-steel Halliburton briefcase and placed it on his desk. Popping the lock, he opened it and extracted from the custom-molded interior an assortment of state-of-the-art electronic eavesdropping equipment: miniature bugs as small as his fingernail, transmitters and transistors looking like something out of a futuristic science-fiction movie. Cleary could almost imagine little green men from Mars every time he ordered new equipment.

  "Good luck if you're planning on bugging the tong, Cleary. You're gonna need it," Johnny said, picking up a transistor and gazing at it as if it were magic. "I mean, securitywise, those cats make the mob look like a Knights of Columbus open house. Besides, your eyes are the wrong color, and they squint the wrong way. So what are you planning? You got some ace up your boxers or what?"

  Cleary smacked Johnny's paw away from a particularly delicate device, then returned to checking out his equipment. "Let's just say I've worked those streets before."

  Johnny gave a jerk of a nod. "Okay, Cleary. Don't tell me. I mean I'm not going to lose any sleep, but unless you need a chaperone, I was thinking about trackin' down the Joe Boys. Feel them out on what they know about their boy in the slammer."

  Cleary looked up, surprised out of his preoccupation. "I appreciate your initiative, Betts, but what makes you think they'll even give you the time of day? Those kids fell between the cracks the day they were born. They're so disenfranchised, they're practically alien life-forms."

  Johnny pulled a comb out of his pocket and ran it through his pompadour. "I ain't exactly a Norman Rockwell poster, boss."

  Cleary looked at him: thirty-weight, gravity-defying hair, black boots, black leather jacket worn in ninety-degree weather, speech consisting of English words found in any dictionary, with meanings found in no dictionary. Betts had a point. Set a thief to catch a thief; set an alien to catch an alien. Actually Betts qualified as both, but in a good cause, he reminded himself.

  The intercom buzzed, and Cleary hit the button while still studying his streetwise employee. "Yeah?"

  "There's someone here to see you," said Dottie in between popping her gum.

  "Not now, Dottie," he said, snapping off the intercom, and handing Johnny a slip of paper. "The stakeout'll be set up in room 220, the hotel across the street from the herb shop."

  "That fleabag?"

  "Not many four-star hotels in Chinatown," replied Cleary, thinking that that fleabag actually complimented his quarters. He would be lucky if fleas were all that shared space with him.

  Johnny nodded and turned to leave. "See you later, alligator."

  "Betts?"

  "Yeah?" said Johnny, turning back around.

  "Be careful. These Chinese gangs don't take prisoners."

  Johnny opened his mouth to reply, when Dottie opened the door, a pencil stuck through the mass of curls anchored at the crown of her head.

  "Dottie, I told you—"

  "You'll want to see this someone," she said, overriding his objection.

  Cleary debated spelling out the words, "not now," but judging from the letters Dottie typed for him, spelling and Dottie had only a nodding acquaintance.

  Before he had a chance to formulate some subtle way of convincing Dottie that when he said no he meant no, Kai-Lee stepped through the doorway. He lost track of what he was trying to say, lost track, too, of what he had been about to do, or had been doing, for that matter. Kai-Lee looked completely exotic in the narrow definition of the word: completely out of place, foreign, and completely outside time, timeless. Faintly he heard Dottie and Betts shuffle out the door and close it. He was alone with her.

  Rounding the desk, he approached her with the same care he would use approaching any rare and beautiful object. But Kai-Lee was not an object: she was real and warm and intensely feminine. And he wanted to touch her.

  She stepped away just as he raised his hand, a determined look in her eyes. "I want you to stop."

  He was disoriented again, lost on a personal, sensual plane of thought, and she was obviously speaking professionally, as his client. He had been disoriented so much during this case, he wondered if he might be developing a split personality.

  He cleared his throat, the tone of her voice finally sinking in. "You came prepared with that little speech, didn't you? It sounded memorized. Now suppose you tell me what caused this change of heart. What's happened, Kai-Lee?"

  Her lashes fluttered, but Cleary knew it had nothing to do with flirtation. Long lashes were useful for veiling eyes when you didn't want anyone guessing your thoughts.

  "I made a mistake. Tommy says that he is guilty. I'm sorry."

  "What does San-Tsiang Tsien say? Does he say he's guilty, too?"

  Her lashes whipped apart and she looked at him. Cleary knew he had scored a body blow, because her eyes had a stunned look. "I can't walk away from this, Kai-Lee. Nobody's gonna take your brother's name."

  She backed away
from him, her arms crossed in front of her face, palms outward, like a woman warding off an assailant. "Don't come back to Chinatown, Cleary. Please. Just leave us alone."

  Cleary watched another night descend on Chinatown, sparkling with neon, scented with incense, and melodious with the singsong sounds of Chinese voices. Her citizens came out to greet her: the gamblers, the pimps, the prostitutes, ready to begin their night's work; the weary laborers, freed from theirs and wending their way back to the flophouses; the homeless, searching for discarded food in the gutters and alleys. It never changed, this endless cycle of Chinatown.

  He shifted his feet, leaned more heavily against the Eldorado, and watched Charlie Fontana work on a dim sum order from a nearby vendor. "He was winning, Charlie. This guy was just standing there and for the first time in his life he was winning. He had a chance to make things different."

  Cleary stopped to light a cigarette and looked out over the streets until he regained control of his voice. "Now he's pushing up grass. You tell me that's the way it was supposed to be."

  Fontana chewed silently, his face scrunched up in lines. He swallowed and looked at Cleary. "Trying to make sense of things that happen in this part of town's a good way to drive a person crazy, Jack."

  Cleary inhaled deeply, the acrid smoke matching his mood. "His last few hours in America and he was gambling like a madman, trying to make money for his family back in China. That's why he robbed the grocery store. He wanted to bring his wife and daughter over."

  "A tough break," said Fontana in a tone of voice that said cops saw lots of tough breaks. "But we got the guy that did it."

  Cleary flipped his cigarette in the gutter. "I'll believe that when the Easter bunny leaves me a chocolate egg."

  "Come on, Jack. The kid says he did it, the sister says he did it, and the tong says he did it. What do you want? An affidavit from God?"

  "Yeah, maybe I do, Charlie. Because I think everybody's lying. The kid and his sister because they're afraid of the tong, but why is the tong lying? Who the hell are they afraid of? These gangs of kids? I don't think so. The tong is selling San-Tsiang Tsien down the river because it's one way to restore order in Chinatown. Well, to hell with the tong."