Lee’s face underwent a disturbing transition. His arm stopped pulling against my grip, and he turned to face me. I automatically relaxed my hold on him.
“To tell the truth, Joe Goodey,” he said, “Gabriel Fong isn’t in trouble at all. But you are.” His other hand came up fast with a white-metal .32 caliber revolver in it. It couldn’t have cost more than ten bucks and looked about as dangerous as a cap pistol. All by itself, my hand let go of Lee’s arm and started minding its own business.
I didn’t bother going through the what’s-the-meaning-of-this routine. I figured that if he wanted to tell me, he’d tell me. My police special, which I’d finally gotten around to putting on my belt, hung there as useless as an extra kidney.
“The wall,” said Lee, shoving his shiny toy gun up toward my sternum, too far away to grab but close enough to kill even if it merely exploded as he pulled the trigger. Up close, I could see that it was one of those Czechoslovakian imports that had been blowing hands off lately. I felt I ought to warn him, but somehow it didn’t seem appropriate at that moment. “Put your hands against the wall wide apart, Goodey, and lean,” he said.
I knew the drill. Lee had learned his lesson well from all those cop shows on TV. I leaned forward until my hands were touching the wall and only my toes were still on the ground. A deft hand plucked my pistol out of its holster, disappeared it and then delved into my left rear pocket for my palm sap. I had been hoping he wouldn’t do that.
“Very nice,” said Lee, admiring the sap.
“It’ll do,” I said. “How are you feeling this morning, Lee? A little stiff and bruised perhaps?”
I shouldn’t have said that. Suddenly my feet were swept out from under me and I fell heavily against the wall, absorbing most of the fall with my cheek—the unscraped one. I felt the sting of the sap against the back of my head, not hard enough to stun me but enough to hurt like hell.
For some time I didn’t say anything, just lay there in the dirt trying to hold the back of my head on and doing my best not to scream out with pain. I nearly bit my lower lip off and waited for the waves of stinging pain to recede a little. Finally they did, and I was left with a bleeding face, a stinking headache, and Lee standing there waiting for me to do something stupid. I didn’t do it.
“Do you think I could get up now?” I asked through a dry and dusty mouth.
“Of course,” said Lee, friendly enough, but he didn’t lend me a hand. When I got to my feet and turned around, he was standing a few feet away with the Czech special peeking coyly out of his club jacket. “We’d better hurry now, Goodey,” he said. “Somebody wants to see you.”
19
“Who might that be?” I asked Lee, well aware that he was walking behind me and just slightly to the left.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Lee said, but he wasn’t unfriendly. I liked that. It’s bad enough being roughed up without having rudeness thrown in.
“Do you mind if I have a guess?”
“Go ahead,” he said, “but just keep moving and don’t try anything funny. My boss won’t mind much if I leave you here dead instead of bringing you in.”
He was lucky to have such a lenient employer. Some would be furious. The conclusion that his tolerant chief was my roommate, Gabriel Fong, forced itself upon me. That hurt. But we weren’t going toward my apartment. My friend was prodding me through the back door to Chinatown, the drab and dreary side of the gaudy front that tourists think is the Chinese quarter of San Francisco. It was a nice morning for a walk, but I would rather have gone in the opposite direction toward Telegraph Hill for a look at the view.
We came out of the alley into a small street overhung with laundry which seemed to be mostly gray and black. All the faces were Chinese, and Lee passed a civil word with some of them. Nobody said a word to me, but then my Chinese isn’t that good. A ring of small boys playing marbles on the sidewalk declined to let us through, so we walked in the gutter among the rotten vegetables. Across the street, sober-faced locals listened passively to a strident speech by a hollow-cheeked boy standing on an empty vegetable stand.
“Gabriel Fong,” I said as we passed the gathering.
“Pardon me?” said Lee politely.
“Your boss, the man who wouldn’t mind if you brought me in dead, is Gabriel Fong. Am I right?”
He might have been about to answer, but just then a prowl car turned onto the street about fifty yards ahead and was closing on us fast. My gut tightened, and I supposed that Lee wasn’t exactly indifferent.
“Mr. Goodey,” he said calmly, “you may wave to your friends if you like. But if they stop, you’re a dead man.”
Bearing that well in mind, I let my feet move me along automatically while I watched the squad car come nearer. When it was close enough, I forced my mouth into a broad smile and waved in a subdued but very friendly manner. This may have come as a shock to the two cops in the car, because I soon recognized them as John Barnett and Glynn Mapes, not two of my favorite people on the SFPD. Nor I theirs. Mapes’s pointy jaw dropped, and from the corner of my eye I saw John’s woolly head whip around. But there was no screech of tires, no shouts, no nothing. Maybe they thought I was drunk.
Perhaps I was walking in a disappointed way, because Lee said: “It won’t be long now. Turn into that small opening just past the herb shop on the right.” Schooled by nearly twenty years of army and police discipline and a lifetime of cowardice, I did as I was told and found myself in a narrow, high-walled passageway about the width of two bowling alleys. Half a block down at the end of the passage was a dirty green door in a brick wall nearly black with age.
“Straight ahead,” said Lee. “Just keep going,” he added reassuringly. “There’s only one way out of here.”
Once inside the green door, Lee said, “All you have to do is keep climbing until I tell you to stop.” He was right. The route was clear enough: a thin set of steep and well-worn stairs leading straight up to a small landing. As I climbed I made the mistake of continuing to breathe. The building had the aroma of a linebacker’s sweat socks, but it didn’t seem to bother Lee, who continued to pad softly behind me. At the landing I paused, but Lee prodded me again, directing me to yet another steep set of stairs.
This time the landing was long, narrow, and murky, and voices were coming from behind a door at the head of the stairs. Keeping the revolver leveled at my chest, Lee darted around me and did a little fancy knuckle-work on the door. With a rustling of chains, the door cracked open, revealing a young, worried-looking Oriental face. Then it opened a lot wider and Lee shoved me into a small room containing half a dozen Chinese youths and someone else I knew.
“Hello, Joe,” said Lum Kee. “I’ve been expecting you.”
Lum Kee was sitting at a small table with yet another ledger book open in front of him. He had a smudge of dried ink on his round cheek. Lounging about on hard chairs were the youths. One of them had a new bandage over his left ear. Another had a splint on the middle finger of his right hand. Several others wore attractive facial bruises. None of them said hi.
I did what I could to straighten out my clothing, but I knew I didn’t look my best. Lee received a nod of approval and went over to lean against the door and pick his teeth.
“Hello, Lum,” I said, trying not to look too surprised. “I don’t want to sound stupid, but are you the someone Lee said wanted to see me?”
“That’s right, Joe,” he said. “But from the look of your face and clothes, you weren’t too eager to come. I hope Lee wasn’t too rough with you.” He didn’t seem all that concerned.
“Oh, no,” I said, fingering the lump at the base of my skull. “I was a little reluctant at first, but Lee persuaded me. He’s a very persuasive boy. But it wasn’t really necessary, Lum. If he’d said it was you, I’d have come without any persuasion at all.” I looked at Lee, but he was communing with nature. The Czech popgun was stuck in his waistband.
“Would you, Joe?” Lum Kee asked. “Somehow, I doubt it
. I seriously doubt it.”
He had me confused there. “What are you talking about, Lum Kee? I know we’ve never been the best of buddies, but why the hell wouldn’t I come see you?”
He gave me a look that would have scared a debtor to death. “You know the answer to that as well as I do, Goodey,” he said. “Let’s drop all the pretense. Who did you think you were fooling with that silly act of getting kicked off the police force, leaving town, and then suddenly turning up again? I’m not a fool, you know.”
I’m afraid I just looked dumb and said: “Act? Lum, you know—”
“I know only that you’re getting to be a nuisance, Goodey. You and your fat friend were beginning to—”
“Seymour,” I said. I may be a bit slow on the uptake, but nobody has to draw me a picture. “Is that why you had Kroll killed, Lum? Because you thought that he and I were working together and getting too close—too close to something you had going on? Was that it?”
“Your friend was killed,” Lum Kee said, eyeing Lee as a teacher looks at the class dunce, “because someone didn’t make sure what he was doing before he struck.” Lee looked embarrassed.
“Make sure?” I said. “Make sure of whom he knifed? Lum, are you trying to tell me in your obscure way that it was supposed to be me bleeding all over the cheap carpet outside my apartment instead of Seymour Kroll?”
Lum regarded me as if I’d asked him today’s price on bean sprouts. “You could say that, Goodey. But believe me, it was nothing personal. I didn’t really want to do it.” He waved a plump-backed hand near his head like a man warding off mosquitoes. “But these are difficult times for a businessman. Even without the competition I face…”
I cut him off. “Spare me your miseries, Lum. I cry easily. I hate to puncture any illusions you have about my powers of detection, but I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about. Aside from peddling overpriced Communist-made canned goods, I don’t know what you’re up to. I always thought you were some sort of crook, but what kind I never knew. And I certainly haven’t been investigating you. With Kroll or with anybody else.”
Lum looked as though I’d spiked his soy sauce.
I tried to seem sincere. “Have I ever lied to you, Lum? In our long and honorable friendship?” I was pushing it a bit. “Have I ever even been late with the rent?” If I knew my man, that should weigh in my favor.
Lum put on his “credit, yes? credit, no?” face, and I knew I’d have to wait him out.
In the meantime I occupied myself looking over his coven of young thugs and calculating my chances of bulling my way out of there. They didn’t look good. One of the lads, the one with the bent ear, caught my roving eye and looked as though he’d like to kick it into the next block. My no-hard-feelings smile didn’t have much impact. The rest of them eyed me the way a duck watches a June bug.
Then Lum’s voice snatched me back from my reveries of survival. “I think you must be telling the truth, Goodey,” he said. “I gave you credit for being much smarter than you really are.”
“That’s okay.” I forgave him. I could see a flickering light at the end of the tunnel. Just barely. “It’s a mistake anyone could have made.” I pretended to relax, although it probably looked as if I were going to collapse. I asked, “Do you mind if I sit down?”
“No,” said Lum absently. “Go ahead.” He nodded toward a chair at the side of his desk, and I pulled it toward me. It wasn’t much better sitting down. The back of my head still ached, and my face felt as if I’d shaved with a handful of gravel.
Lum Kee interrupted this personal inventory by looking up at me and saying, “Joe, I’m afraid we’re going to have to kill you.”
20
Lum Kee sure had a way of getting a fellow’s attention. He had a hundred percent of mine, anyway.
But what can you say to an announcement like that? “Oh, really?” I couldn’t think of a thing to say. Or maybe it was because just at that moment somebody dumped a barrel of sand down my throat. My mouth was drier than a hangman’s sense of humor.
Then a strange, high-pitched voice came from somewhere: “Do you—uhhhh—do you think I could have a drink of wa—water?” It must have been me speaking unless the lad behind me was a ventriloquist, a bad ventriloquist. The last word barely squeezed out like the last of the toothpaste, and I knew how the tube felt.
“Of course, Joe,” Lum Kee said. He snapped at the boy with the finger in a splint, who quickly left the room. I thought of volunteering to get my own drink. Hell, I’d have gone to get them all a drink. But I sat there waiting—nobody said a word—until there was a cryptic knock on the door, and the boy came back, carrying a bottle of Chinese beer.
Warm Chinese beer. If Lum was trying to weaken my will to live, he was going about it the right way. Chinese beer tastes like Neolithic swamp water. But just then I’d have lapped the dew off the Lone Ranger’s saddle. I forced down a long gulp of the beer and showed most of my teeth to Lum Kee.
“That was great,” I lied. “Now, what were you saying, Lum?” What the hell, he might rephrase his statement to my advantage. He didn’t.
“I really am sorry, Joe,” he said somberly, “but you know too much. I don’t see how we can let you go now, do you?”
I did, but I think that was a rhetorical question. I gave it a try anyway. “I don’t know anything, Lum,” I said. “I don’t even know what sort of racket you’re running. And even if I did, I’m not even interested. I’m not a cop anymore.” That was true enough.
“Aren’t you, Joe?” Lum Kee peered gravely over his ledger at me. I’ll say one thing for him as a villain: he didn’t gloat. “Then why did you visit the mayor yesterday? How was it that you were drinking with his brother last night? That doesn’t sound like an ex-policeman to me.”
“I can explain all that,” I said, “if—”
“And besides, there’s the death of Seymour Kroll, whom I believe you called Chum. You know how he died.”
“It was Chub,” I said, “with a b.” But he had me there. I did know how Chub died. But only because he had told me.
“Yes, but…”
“And he was your friend,” Lum Kee continued. “Certainly you’d have to try to see that his murderer was punished.”
Lum Kee had me in a dilemma. How could I disavow Seymour as a friend and pretend not to care whether anybody got done for his murder? Easy. And I was just about to start when Lum rattled off something in Chinese, and I found myself being lifted from the chair by several pairs of willing hands.
“Lum!” I said with a certain amount of alarm. “Lum, can’t I…”
“Goodbye, Joe,” Lum Kee said, and, believe it or not, he dived back into his ledger. Talk about devotion to business. And I was being propelled toward the door with Lee in front of me, pointing his pistol at my wishbone.
With his eyes still on me, Lee half turned to slip the chain and was opening the door when he was saved the trouble. The door seemed to explode into the room, followed by a mob of Chinese teenagers led by Gabriel Fong. Lum Kee’s boys quickly lost interest in me and began trying to fend off the Christian horde. Things got confused in the jammed doorway, what with all the yelling and slamming of fists into faces. So I backed off and looked for someplace a little less busy.
There was an oasis of calm behind Lum Kee’s desk, and in the middle of it that successful businessman was reaching deep into a side drawer with an intent look on his face. I went over the top of his desk as his hand came out full of something black and ugly. It was an automatic pistol of some bastard make—probably Japanese or Russian. I don’t know what he intended to do with it—perhaps scare us to death—but my kick to his wrist spoiled that plan. I put an arm around his thick neck and started to pull his head off.
He didn’t like the idea much. “Stop, Joe Goodey,” Lum Kee croaked. “I surrender.” I gave his head a couple more twists just for the fun of it.
Things were calming down considerably in the little room. The resistance of
Lum Kee’s little band had quickly turned into a fight for survival, and Fong’s muscular missionaries soon had them driven into a corner.
Fong was in the middle of the room, overseeing surrender terms. I put a hammerlock on Uncle Lum and was taking him over for a family reunion when a newcomer appeared in the doorway. It was Mickey, the sawed-off kid from my apartment. He was breathing hard, and in his right hand was the longest, sharpest-looking knife I’ve ever seen. His eyes were bright and glassy.
“Mickey,” said Gabriel Fong, moving toward him, “it’s all over. We’ve won.” Fong held a gentling hand toward Mickey and toward the knife he held. I wouldn’t have done that. But I don’t think Mickey even saw him. The boy had his eyes fixed on Lum Kee and was moving toward him—and me. He held the knife at belt level as if he knew what he was doing.
Lum Kee was between me and Mickey, and I was about to do something to change that position when the boy lunged swiftly, and about four inches of the knife went soundlessly into Lum’s stomach. I could feel every inch of it.
I let go of Lum Kee, and he brought both fat hands around to grip the blade, to push it away. But by then Mickey had released the handle, and the bloody knife slipped out of the wound and fell to the dirty linoleum. Lum Kee’s grasping hands closed over the gushing wound as if to hold in the blood.
“Gabriel,” he said. His eyes were on Fong. “Please help me.” His face was almost placid, and didn’t belong with the words or with the blood, dark and viscous, welling up from under his folded hands, running the obstacle course of his fingers and dripping onto his ancient black trousers. Lum took a step toward his nephew, then stopped. His knees broke in a strange, twisted way, and he fell heavily onto his left shoulder and flopped face down on the grimy floor.
Gabriel Fong, already moving forward, fell on his knees beside his uncle. I was moving toward the desk and the telephone on it. I gave the ambulance service the address, how to get there and the information that we had a heavy bleeder on our hands. When I looked up, Fong was doing a good job of comforting his uncle. Lum Kee lay neatly on the floor with his beetle’s eyes open but not looking at anything in particular. The janitor wasn’t going to be happy about all that blood on the floor.
The Triple Shot Box (Goodey's Last Stand, Not Sleeping Just Dead & Fighting Back): Three Gritty Crime Novels Page 18