Tears of the Dragon

by Holly Baxter

  He turned to the two men who had kidnapped them and gave their orders in Chinese. He pushed her toward one of them—the fat one who seemed so fascinated by Elodie. As the thug took her from the room, Father Anselm called out. “Be brave, Miss Browne. Do not be afraid.”

  She thought she heard the sound of a blow and a chair falling as the door closed behind her. She stopped, but the kidnapper jerked her forward again, out to the delivery truck which still stood in the alleyway. Again she was thrust inside, alone now, and the door locked behind her. Again she was driven fast, thrown from side to side, for at least twenty minutes. She could make no sense of the pattern of twists and turns, but knew from the sound of traffic that they passed through the Loop. Now that she was out of that room, she felt the fear overwhelm her, and she sobbed quietly to herself. Faced with the animosity of their captor, she had felt more anger than anything else, because he was so unpleasant, and because she had been trying so hard to keep up her pretense of being a student and an innocent bystander. She would deliver his message, all right. Whether she was brave enough to do anything else, she didn’t know. What if they did something to her, or to her family? “Always watching from the shadows,” he had said. She thought of Bernice, and trembled.

  The delivery truck screeched to a halt, footsteps came around from the front, and the rear door was opened. She could see Lake Michigan on her right, trees, a lawn. The driver gestured her out, and helped her roughly to the ground. “Go. Do.” He pushed her ahead of him, and she found herself at the end of the long drive that led to the Lee mansion. She started slowly up the drive, her legs weak beneath her. Was the fat thug watching her, now? If she waited until she got closer to the house would he see her and if she ran into the woods, would he shoot her? Step by step she approached the house. She hadn’t heard the delivery truck drive away. They must still be there, waiting for her to return. And to kill her? Elodie wiped her tears away, smoothed her hair, straightened up. She would deliver her message and then she would ask Mr. Lee to help her. That’s right, that’s what she would do. Once she was in the house, she would be safe.

  She went up to the big double front door and found the bell. After a minute one of the doors swung back, and Mrs. Logie stood there. She gave no sign of recognizing Elodie, and did not look at all welcoming. Elodie cleared her throat.

  “My name is Elodie Browne. I have a message for Mr. Lee. From his son, Harry.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Chef Alexander: Always they want something new. I make beautiful French cuisine, and they say they want chop suey. How can I make this? I will not kill a little dog for anyone!

  ***

  Sal looked over what she had just written and groaned. She was a team player—on her own it just didn’t have the snap that Drew provided, or the freshness that came from Ellie. I am a journeyman writer, Sal thought to herself, I can turn it out, reams of the stuff, but I need help. She had few personal illusions, she was long past that adolescent dream. But this time—this time—she thought it might just happen, the magic, the excitement, the sheer pleasure of doing something well that had for so long been missing from her life.

  There was a knock at the door. Hugh Murphy back again?

  “Come in,” Sal called, too dispirited to go to the door.

  It opened, and a very tall redheaded man walked in, his hat in his hand, a smile on his face. He glanced around the room and the smile disappeared. “I was looking for Miss Browne. Is this—”

  “This is where she should be,” Sal said. “But she isn’t, as you can see. Are you from the agency?” If he was, she would have to make up something fast to explain Ellie’s absence or the girl might be in trouble. “She had a doctor’s appointment.”

  “No, I’m not from the agency. A doctor’s appointment? When for?”

  “Uh…” Sal shifted uncomfortably on the leather sofa. “Just before lunch.” The sofa creaked beneath her, and she tried an encouraging smile. “She might be back any minute.”

  “Oh. Can I wait?”

  She hadn’t counted on that. “Well, she might be longer. She said something about them having to do other tests and…stuff like that.”

  The man came in and closed the door behind him. “You’re Sal, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Sal Schultz. And you?” She didn’t like the way he was looking at her, but he said he wasn’t from the agency so—another of Ellie’s “cousins”?

  “My name is Archie Deacon. I’m—”

  “—the cop.” She felt suddenly relieved. “Ellie has told us about you.”

  He sat down on Drew’s couch and put his hat on top of the papers scattered over the table. “She didn’t have a doctor’s appointment.” It wasn’t a question. “She went to talk to that priest, didn’t she? With her cousin?”

  “No.” Sal wasn’t sure what to say. He was a cop, after all. “That is, she went to see a priest, but her cousin wasn’t with her. He came here looking for her hours ago. He—”

  Alarm crossed Archie’s face. “He wasn’t with her?”

  Sal assessed him carefully. How much did he know about all this? Ellie had said he was working on the case, but she also said she didn’t like him. Mind you, that might have been just because he was so irritating. He didn’t look irritating—he was pretty good-looking, as a matter of fact, in a kind of rugged, smart-ass way.

  “Well, yes…he was kind of worried about her, apparently. He’d told her not to go, and she went anyway.”

  Archie cursed under his breath. “The little idiot—that’s just what he should have expected her to do.”

  “I think he did, really. That was why he was worried.” Sal felt more and more confident about this Deacon guy. He might be a cop, but she sensed he was genuinely concerned about Ellie, which wasn’t a very cop thing to be. At least, not like any cops she’d ever met. “They went to get her.”

  Archie had been looking down at his clenched fists, and his head came up, fast. “They?”

  “Drew went with him. Drew is our writing partner. I think he just wanted to get out from under the work. Drew isn’t exactly dedicated to it. More to the bottle, to tell the truth. But he has his moments.”

  “I know—Ellie told me about him, too. Does he always lie down on this couch and make sarcastic remarks?”

  “You got it.”

  “And is he a nice, big, strong guy, lots of muscles and brains?”

  Sal had to smile. “Afraid not. About as skinny as you and usually hung over. But he does have brains. Her cousin looked pretty strong. Why—do you think there’s trouble?”

  “Do you know what time her appointment was for?”

  “Ten.”

  He looked at his watch. “Almost six hours ago?” He stood up, agitated, and grabbed his hat. “Where is this place?”

  Sal scrabbled among the papers and came up with a scrap on which Hugh had written the priest’s address. She handed it to Archie. “They’ve probably gotten her by now. Maybe she went home?”

  He went to the phone and dialed. He knew Ellie’s home phone number without having to look it up, Sal noted. “Hello—may I speak to Elodie, please?” Pause. “Okay, thanks.” He put the phone down. “According to her sister, Elodie is still at work.”

  Sal leaned back wearily. “For such a bright young girl, she can be awful dumb.”

  “Not dumb, just stubborn and overconfident. I’m going after them. If they aren’t there, I’ll ring back here.” He leaned over and jotted down the number on the phone dial. “If they aren’t here…” He looked bleak.

  Sal spoke encouragingly. “This could just be one of those coming and going things, you know. She leaves before they get there so they miss her. She decides to stop somewhere for lunch or to do some shopping…”

  “Have they rung back to see if she’s here?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  Archie moved toward the door. “Miss Schultz, if she shows up, will you do something for me?”

&
nbsp; “Sure.” She liked this guy, no matter what Ellie had said about him.

  “Will you tie her up to the leg of this table until I get back?” He clapped his hat onto his head and slammed the door behind him.

  “Sure,” Sal said faintly, to the empty room. “I was going to do that anyway. We got a script to write.”

  ***

  “Mr. Lee doesn’t have a son named Harry.” The housekeeper’s expression was as dour as ever. She was a tall but bulky woman, her hair drawn back so tightly it almost gave her eyes a Chinese slant. Maybe that was what she was trying to do, Ellie thought.

  “Yes, he does. Bernice told me about him. Small, nasty, with a bad case of acne. I think he killed Bernice because she recognized him.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” Mrs. Logie wasn’t going to move.

  “Look.” Ellie produced the piece of paper from her jacket pocket and held it out so the houskeeper could see it. “I have to give this to Mr. Lee. If he doesn’t do what they want, they are going to kill two perfectly nice men, one of them a priest and one a general.”

  Mrs. Logie’s eyes widened. “The General?” she gasped.

  “Yes. General Cohen his name is. Listen, there is someone watching me right this very minute. I have to come in. I have to see Mr. Lee. I have to.”

  After a moment, Mrs. Logie stood back and let Ellie into the entrance hall. She stood for a moment in the open door, her eyes flashing around the grounds outside. “I don’t see anyone.”

  “He said they were invisible. He said they would be in the shadows. He said they would kill me and my family—please.” Ellie heard the desperation in her voice, and apparently the housekeeper did, too. She closed the door and turned to face the frightened but oddly angry girl.

  “What did he look like? This man you called Harry? Did he have—” She paused, and swallowed.

  “What? Did he have what?”

  “A scar on the back of his hand—almost star-shaped?”

  Ellie thought back to the room and the man holding a gun almost in her face. “Yes,” she said. “Like a splash.”

  Mrs. Logie’s face went pale and she sagged a little against the door. “So,” she hissed. “He’s back.”

  “It is Harry, isn’t it? I was right?”

  Mrs. Logie nodded and seemed to pull herself together. “I gave him that scar. It was an accident. In return, he gave me this.” She pulled down the front of her dress as far as she could, revealing a wide area of cruel scarring. “It goes all the way down.” She gestured down the front of her body as far as her abdomen. “Boiling oil. I splashed a little on him while I was cooking, and he picked up the pan and threw it all over me. It was the last of many straws, and Mr. Lee disowned him. He went to China. We thought we’d seen the last of him.”

  “He belongs to ming dao. He wants Suzy’s jade. Or—”

  “Come with me. You’d better see Mr. Lee right away.” Instead of going to her employer’s private office, she led Ellie through the dining room and opened the French doors. The glass-lined passage stretched before them. Outside the light had begun to fade, and the tops of the trees beyond were lit by a pinkish glow from the setting sun. At the other end of the passage a guard sat beside a heavy door. Seeing them, he stood up, warily watching.

  “Is that—” Ellie hung back.

  “A new guard, don’t worry.”

  “Is Mr. Lee in there?”

  “Yes. He’s packing up T’zu-hsi’s jade.” Mrs. Logie looked grim. “He’s found a buyer.”

  ***

  “I saw your car outside.” Archie Deacon stood beside the booth where Hugh Murphy and Drew Wilson were drinking whiskey out of coffee cups. Two obviously stale and untouched sandwiches sat on a plate on the table between them, further camouflage, should anyone be interested. In a place like this, nobody was. Archie knew it and knew the owners paid their dues to both the Syndicate and the police. But art for art’s sake.

  “How did you know my car?” Hugh was tight—it was obviously not his first cup of “coffee.”

  “I’m a cop, I’m observant,” Archie said, not bothering to remind Hugh that he had seen the car many times when the reporter covered a crime scene. And after driving all over the neighborhood near St. John’s House it was not difficult to see the big card on the visor marked PRESS. He pulled a chair over from one of the tables and placed it in the aisle beside the booth. He glanced across. “Drew Wilson? I’m Lieutenant Archie Deacon. Where’s Ellie?”

  Drew looked clear-eyed and intelligent—obviously the whiskey had released him from his hangover, but he was not as far gone as Hugh. Only when he spoke could a slight whisper of a slur be heard in his words.

  “Want some coffee?” he asked. “Good coffee here.”

  “I know all about the coffee here. Where’s Ellie?”

  “Gone,” Hugh said, owlishly. “Little Red Riding Hood has disappeared into the woods. Like a pork chop.” He drained his coffee cup and looked around for a waiter. Archie pushed his hand with the cup back down onto the table, then looked at Drew and raised an eyebrow.”

  “Tell me,” he demanded. “Fast.”

  Drew told him about the Chinese men and the priest and some other man leaving with Ellie just before noon. “We talked to the neighbors. Nice neighborhood. Nice people. Ellie was taken away in a butcher’s delivery truck with a pig on it.”

  “Oink,” said Hugh.

  “If they saw that why didn’t they call the police?” Archie demanded. Drew eyed him.

  “Nice neighborhood,” he repeated. “Mind your own business, you see. Too many strange sights in this town these days. Keep your head down. Anyway, she was with a priest, right? So they thought it must have been okay. Sorry.”

  “Well, why didn’t you call the police?”

  “We did.” Hugh was gazing sadly down at his empty cup. “They said you were out. We called three times and you were always out.”

  “Well, why didn’t you speak to someone else?” Archie could hardly contain his exasperation.

  “We spoke to a Captain Brett and he hung up on us. I think he thought we were pranksters. A lot of that around, you know.”

  Archie put his elbows on the table and covered his face with his hands. “What did you tell Brett?”

  “That a girl named Elodie Browne and a priest had been kidnapped by a bunch of Chinese in a delivery truck with a pig on it,” Drew explained carefully. “He didn’t believe me, he didn’t believe Hugh, here, either. He seemed kind of stupid for a captain, if you ask me.”

  Archie took his hands away. “He’s not stupid. I wish he was. He’s just…” He stopped. How bad was Brett? Ambitious? Devious? Corrupt? How far had it gone with him? Was he even now calling people he shouldn’t be calling, or had he really dismissed it as nonsense?

  “What? What is he?” Hugh wanted to know. “Is he Chinese, too?” Hugh shook his head slowly and sadly. “Damn Chinese are everywhere, it seems to me. Poor Ellie. All gone. My fault, my fault, my most grievous fault.” He thumped himself on the chest.

  Archie just managed to stop himself from slugging Hugh, and turned to Drew. “How long have you two been here?”

  Drew shrugged. “Time flies when you’re having fun.”

  “Listen—” Archie started to rise, but Drew took hold of his sleeve and pulled him back down. He was suddenly serious and his voice was flat.

  “It’s a dead end, Lieutenant. I looked up the name on the butcher’s delivery truck in the phone book and called them. They said it had been stolen yesterday while doing deliveries.”

  “What did the driver say?”

  “He was inside with a lamb carcass over his shoulder. When he came out, it was gone.”

  “Where was this?”

  Drew sighed and said exactly what Archie did not expect him to say. “Cicero. Pershing Avenue.”

  Archie stared at him. “But that’s Capone’s territory.”

  Drew nodded. “Cheeky Chinks—you g
ot to hand it to them.”

  Archie stood up. “No, we don’t.” He looked down at the two of them, disgusted by their failure to grasp what was going on, and by their retreat into booze instead of action. “If it turns out that Ellie is dead because you’ve been sitting on your asses, you have no idea how sorry I’ll make you. Now, sober up and listen.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  It was, indeed, a treasure house.

  The heavy door thudded shut behind Elodie and Mrs. Logie. After a moment, they heard the guard thrust the outer lock home. Mr. Lee, who was bending over a large table littered with battered old boxes and packing materials, looked up in surprise. For a moment, Elodie could not even speak.

  Like Lee’s office in the Gower Building, the square room was lined with glass shelving—but here the objects were almost all either jade or gold, and the glitter was dazzling. In one corner stood a massive gold and red enamel altar of some sort, decorated all over with the most elaborate curling patterns, set off with crystals or—could they be real jewels? High on three walls, above the glass shelves, were wide-sleeved robes framed to show off their exquisite embroidery, the colors rich and warm. The glass shelves themselves held bowls of the most delicate carving, others plainer, but so thinly wrought they were translucent and seemed to glow. Closer to her were small figures that appeared to be a group of musicians in pale yellow with brown mottling, and they were certainly jade. There were other figures, animals, birds, in many colors, ranging through a deep rich green down through paler greens to a caramel shade that looked almost good enough to eat. There was a dark green cow lying down beside what looked like a solid gold dragon, an oddly shaped rectangular vase with a round center, flat circles and half-circles of jade and others of bronze or gold and many many small boxes of varied design. Some things were simple in shape, others were elaborately carved. The room smelled of flowers and something else Elodie couldn’t place, presumably some kind of incense.

  “What is wrong?” Mr. Lee asked Mrs. Logie. He didn’t seem angry, merely curious. “Why have you brought this girl here?”