Neon Dragon mk-1

by John F. Dobbyn

  Mr. Devlin threw himself back in his chair. I knew he was eating up the uncomfortable pause on the other end of the line. I also knew that the “cocounsel” speech was to stuff Angela’s patronizing remark down her throat. It still felt good.

  I threw in a pleasant, “Good morning, Angela.”

  It seemed a nice complement to Mr. Devlin’s salvo to put her on a first-name basis with the errand boy. She handled it by ignoring it.

  “I have an offer. Do you want to hear it?”

  She was back in character, and somehow it actually reduced the tension. Mr. Devlin stretched back, but his receiver was fine-tuned.

  “What have you got for us, Angela?”

  “Voluntary manslaughter. He takes the maximum, twenty years with the possibility of parole. Right now he’s looking at life.”

  Mr. Devlin didn’t stir. He sat there with his eyes closed. I couldn’t believe he was considering it. Not this early in the case. I expected him to explode any second with a bit of well-phrased bravado that would put Angela in orbit and convey the message “no deal”-at least not yet.

  The seconds ticked, and I could see storm clouds gathering over Rushmore. A plea bargain is something you accept, reject, or bargain against. This time there was a fourth option.

  The fun of toying with the opposition was gone. Something heavy had settled in. I had an outside clue of what it was, and it jarred me more than anything that had happened the previous night.

  Mr. Devlin leaned forward and lifted the phone out of its cradle. There was anger and something I didn’t want to recognize in his voice.

  “I’ll be in touch with you, Angela.”

  The phone dropped into the cradle. He leaned back, and his eyes were closed again. Lex Devlin was an old warrior who bore the scars and the years on the inside. I had come to think of him as invincible. As I looked at him now, the age and the scars showed. The lines in that cragged face opened a glimpse of something I didn’t want to see.

  We both knew he could take on any prosecutor in the country and do it with a hopeless case and two hours’ sleep and take most of the rounds. We also both sensed that this one had slipped into a different plane, a different kind of fight. Ten years ago it wouldn’t have mattered. But it had been an expensive ten years on his resources, and I was embarrassed to be watching the old warrior taking a measure of what he had left.

  “We have to tell Bradley about the offer, Mr. Devlin. Judge Bradley, too.”

  I knew I wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t know.

  “Yeah. We’ll tell ’em. I won’t let him take it, though. Not till I know a hell of a lot more about this case.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t like it.”

  “I don’t either.”

  He looked over at me with a testing look. “Why not?”

  “It doesn’t fit with the characters. When I talked to the DA, she was practically salivating for Bradley’s blood. The only thing she wanted more than his head on a platter was the governor’s seat. This case could give it to her if she doesn’t blow it. If she drops it to manslaughter on the deliberate shooting of Chinatown’s favorite son, she’s blown it. She’ll have the Chinese community, the Globe, and all the law-and-order boys in her party ready to drop her. That offer didn’t come from her. This isn’t her call.”

  Mr. Devlin was out of his seat.

  “Which means we’d better damn well find out whose call it is. The first rule in a fight, sonny, is to know who stands behind the man you’re trying to knock down.”

  He grabbed the phone and punched the buttons with the old authority. He was back in the fight. I don’t know what drove them out, but the doubts were gone. I could feel a rush of adrenalin in my own veins.

  I heard a voice crackle on the other end of the line. Mr. Devlin seemed to be enjoying himself again.

  “Conrad. You old Yankee. What are you doing to stay out of trouble these days?”

  Mr. Devlin leaned back and laughed out loud at something that sounded like a crack about the Irish.

  “If I said what I’m thinking, I’d be in confession tomorrow.”

  Whatever was said brought another laugh before the tone became serious.

  “I want to chat with you, Conrad. I have a feeling the Indians have us surrounded. I want to know what tribe before I make a battle plan. Could you meet me for lunch?”

  He smiled, so I gathered the date was set.

  “No, not the Union League this time. I need neutral ground. Let’s meet at the Marliave. I’ll ask Tony for something upstairs. Noon?… Done.”

  He hung up and turned back to me.

  “I want you there, sonny. This could be your head on the block, too. Conrad Munsey is chief clerk of the Mass. Supreme Judicial Court. He knows where every body’s buried in this town and who put ’em there. We’ve swapped some favors over the years.”

  I nodded.

  “So tell me what you found yesterday.”

  I filled him in on my bilingual chat with the woman in the restaurant. He wanted the details of everything said and every tone of voice. I told him about the fortune cookie from Red Shoes and the promise of help if I helped the prostitute who seemed to be doing very nicely without my help. When I finished, Mr. Devlin was wearing a scowl that seemed out of proportion, even given the bleakness of my report. I found it slightly unnerving.

  “I’m willing to learn. Did I blow it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He flipped the Globe to my side of the desk, opened to a story on page two, right opposite the men’s suits ad for Filene’s Basement. I read the headline over a Mike Eagan byline.

  “BODY OF W OMAN DISCOVERED IN CHINATOWN.”

  I scanned it quickly, picking out words like “Asian” and “discovered before dawn” and “not yet identified.”

  I could feel a rock growing in the pit of my stomach. I was out of the chair and standing beside the desk while I asked Mr. Devlin if I could use his phone. He nodded, and I dialed police headquarters. It took a few seconds for the duty officer to transfer me to Manny Morales in the computer section.

  “Manny, this is Michael Knight. I was in yesterday about the… virus in the…”

  He cut me off before I got too far into it on a phone line that could have other ears.

  “Right, Manny. You didn’t tell me anything. You’re a good cop. Or whatever. Listen, I need you not to tell me something else. This is a big favor. I owe you twice, hermano. ”

  By this time I was full-pitch into a Puerto Rican accent, which raised Mr. Devlin’s eyebrows halfway to his hairline. Meanwhile Manny was telling me to cut the PR crap and get to the point.

  “I need you to play that computer and tell me about the dead girl they found in Chinatown early this morning. Anything you can tell me from the police report. Like who was she?”

  All I heard was the click of the keys in the distance. The vision of the rigid, scared old lady in the restaurant stabbed at my conscience until it was replaced by the beautiful features of the prostitute, MeiLi. Maybe she needed help more than she thought.

  “There’s not much here. She was beaten to death. Officer found her back in an alley off Beach Street by Harrison.”

  Mei-Li’s territory.

  “What did she look like, Manny? Young? Pretty?”

  “Can’t tell. She was beaten too badly to recognize. It was done by pros. They mutilated everything that could give an identification.”

  The rock in my stomach felt as if it was coming up.

  “Where’s the body now? I might be able to help with the identification.”

  “Not likely. She’s at the morgue on South Street.”

  “Manny, can you get someone to get word down there that I’m on my way? Get me permission to see her. I mean it. Maybe I can help. This could be good for you.”

  “The best thing you could do for me is stop trying to lose my job for me.”

  “Manny, this is the last. I might have seen her last night. You don’t have to mention t
hat around the precinct. Just get me clearance to see her.”

  I hung up before he could destroy my assumption that he would make the contact for me. I was running by the time I passed through the door. I was nearly at the elevator when Mr. Devlin’s voice boomed through the corridor.

  “Marliave! Noon!”

  The door of the elevator almost closed on the words, “You be careful, sonny!”

  10

  I was tasting the acid generated by the four sips I had taken of that barely remembered coffee, when I climbed the steps of the Suffolk County morgue. The burst of speed out of the gate at Mr. Devlin’s office had trickled down to a crawl. Any morgue, to an outsider, is as pleasant as an IRS interviewing office. But this one in particular held the promise of an overwhelming cloud of guilt. The lining of my stomach ached at the thought of recognizing some aspect of the body that would tell me for the rest of my life that my dumb blundering had gotten Mei-Li killed.

  Manny had done his thing. The man at the desk had my name. He gave me directions to the vault, a badge, and a slip of paper with numbers on it. I thanked God for the good brother. I have no idea what he told them, but it got me in without a police escort.

  A man in green surgical clothes met me at the entrance. He took the slip in his latex-gloved hand and smiled. I smiled too. That was the extent of the conversation. I figured in his line of work he was used to the company of the less than chatty. He led the way into a room that looked like a bank vault, except that the safety deposit boxes could hold a sofa.

  He checked the number on the slip against the numbers on the individual vaults until he found a match. He grabbed the handle and pulled. My heart went from one-twenty to two hundred. In the chill of that room, I was drenched.

  I steeled myself for what I was about to see. I walked over beside the drawn metal pallet and looked down at what it held. I thought Manny’s warning about the condition of the body had me prepared. I wasn’t.

  I hadn’t eaten anything since the night before, so the only thing that could come up was pure stomach acid. It burned as I held my head over the stainless-steel sink that by some miracle I found in time. I wasn’t sure my legs were not going to buckle, so I just hung on for a couple of minutes, trying to think of each piece of furniture in my apartment.

  My silent guide held out a plastic cup of cold water. It helped. I could begin to focus on the reason I was there. In a few more minutes I could walk back to that disfigured, mangled body. If I had to identify it as Mei-Li or the old lady from the Ming Tree, or any female I had seen in a lifetime, I’d have had to say it could be any one of them. Most of the face was beaten into a nondescript mass of what I assumed to be flesh, and the body was the same. I couldn’t even estimate the age.

  I forced myself to look for any clue until I had to get out of there. I remember sitting in the outside room finishing the cup of water. There was the relief of not having made an identification of anyone whose life I’d touched on Monday, but it was soured with uncertainty.

  The green-clad smiler was still there beside me.

  “I know it’s tough. I don’t suppose you can make an ID?”

  I shook my head. “Who could?”

  His voice was soft and had a trace of unexpected compassion. “Who, indeed?”

  He jotted something on a form and handed it to me.

  “Give this to the man at the desk on the way out. Can you find it?”

  An idea that I didn’t want grabbed me before he cleared the door.

  “Excuse me, do you have the clothes she was wearing when they brought her in?”

  “Sure. Can you walk?”

  I said, “Yes,” but I wasn’t all that sure till I tried it.

  We came to another series of small lockers. He opened one of them. Everything was bagged and tagged in clear plastic baggies. He took the items out one by one. I was doing allright until he hit the bottom. My legs nearly buckled under me when I saw through the haze of the plastic a pair of bright red shoes.

  Outside, a series of deep breaths of that cold sea-air that blows in from Boston Harbor when the wind’s from the east helped clear the fog inside. I needed to think through my next move, because I could see myself on the witness stand trying to defend it sometime in the future.

  It was pure instinct that told me to keep the identification, such as it was, to myself until I could put some thought behind it. If I had mentioned that the dead girl was probably the waitress from the Ming Tree, the next question would be, “How did you meet her?”

  “I went there for dinner last night.”

  “What brought you there?”

  “I felt like pork lo mein.”

  “Did you go there to see anyone in particular?”

  I could bluff a “no,” but it wouldn’t hold up. They’d check and find out that I went there to see Mrs. Lee, their hidden witness. That could only lead to one question.

  “How’d you find out about Mrs. Lee?”

  Dead end. I couldn’t turn in Manny for the tips he gave me, and our crusading DA could put me before a grand jury. My next appearance would be as a roommate of Anthony Bradley in the Suffolk County jail for contempt of court for refusing to answer the question.

  My thought processes confirmed my instincts.

  On the other hand, what could I do about the dead girl? How could I begin to unravel the ball of twine that tied together poor, dead Red Shoes, the prostitute she led me to, the Harvard student who happened into Chinatown and became a pawn of the Chinese Mafia, and the unfortunate old man who got caught in the line of fire? I needed a game plan more than the Boston Celtics, and nothing brilliant was coming to mind.

  I let the thoughts bounce off each other in the back of a Checker cab while we cruised at the speed of morning traffic back toward the office.

  The cabbie took Boylston Street up toward Washington. Last night’s snow gave a peaceful, slumbering aspect to the Public Garden. I wondered where they kept the swan boats during the winter. I could see some of the webbed footprints of Canadian geese.

  The cabbie was swinging into the right lane to continue up Boylston, when I came out of the seat and pounded on the glass.

  “Hook a left on Charles! Over the bridge! I’ll give you the lefts and rights. Let’s move!”

  Those damn goose prints in the snow. They brought back something I must have been too tired to understand, but not too tired to notice.

  I had the cabbie up to fifty over the Longfellow Bridge. I rode him from behind the window all the way. I even appealed to his dark complexion in Spanish until I read his license and realized the dark complexion came from Beirut.

  All the way I kept seeing what had never registered on my dream state the previous night-those three sets of fresh footprints in the snow coming out of the no-name coffee shop and tracking in Harry’s direction.

  I doubled the fare for a tip. He earned it, and I had no time to wait for change. I jumped out as he almost came to a stop at Harry’s apartment house.

  I took the stone steps in flying triplets in front of the brick-faced, four-story building. The whole layout was neat and precise enough to appeal to the MIT engineers who populated it. I’d have bet my life that the intercom was in perfect working order.

  I hit the “Dr. Wong” button and prayed while waiting.

  Nothing.

  I pushed the button again and prayed a little harder.

  The speaker system came on, but I couldn’t understand the words.

  “Harry, it’s me. What’re you saying?”

  I heard the door buzz and grabbed the knob before it stopped. I double-timed the steps to the third floor. The door to Harry’s apartment was standing open halfway down the hall, but there was no one behind it.

  I walked into the well-laid-out living room. It was replete with white leather furniture, a stereo system that would have served Stevie Wonder, and a wet bar. Everything but Harry.

  “Harry? Where the hell are you?”

  A sound that made my skin crawl c
ame from the sofa with its back to me. I looked over the back and saw a meatball sandwich.

  The Harry I knew had a yellow-cream complexion with smooth, regular features. The face of the man on the couch looked like a Mr. Potato Head in the hands of a warped child. The colors ranged from raging purple to sallow. The stitches under the eyes looked vicious. It was the second identification that morning I couldn’t make with certainty.

  I gagged out, “Harry?”

  One hand came up in a limp wave.

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  He mumbled a few syllables, but I wasn’t getting information.

  “Harry, let me guess. Those three goons from the coffee shop caught up with you. Dear Lord, what did they hit you with?”

  Something came out that sounded like “steel pipe” or “sledgehammer.” I’d have believed either.

  “Who sewed you up? Did someone get you to Mass. General?”

  He nodded slightly. What came out sounded like “cab driver.”

  I came around and dropped into the chair beside him.

  “I’m not cut out for this line of work, Harry. So far I got one girl killed…” His eyes came up. “The little waitress from the Ming Tree. I just saw her at the morgue.”

  The eyelids came back down in internal pain.

  “And now you.”

  When I said, “I’m sorry,” it reached a record level of inadequacy.

  “Can I get you something? Water, Scotch, hemlock?”

  The cracked lips barely parted in a smile, and I had a feeling he might live.

  He started to move, and I could tell from the contorted features that they had given equal attention to the ribs. In spite of the pain, he sat up against the pillows.

  “I’m sorry I sucked you into this thing, Harry. I guess you were right about this white skin being insurance. The only ones who are getting it are Chinese.”

  “Don’t count on it, Mike.”

  He was still mumbling, but I was learning to pull the words through.