by Todd Borg
“First I checked his background. Mr. Lee’s name has come up in over a dozen investigations over the years,” Billy Fong said. “But he has sat at the defense table in a courtroom exactly once.”
“Acquittal?”
“Not only that, he got the ACLU involved on his behalf in a suit against The City about civil liberties violations. He lost that, but the DA’s afraid to touch him ever since.”
“You see anything that would help me get to him? I don’t want to muscle him. I just want information.”
“I made some calls. Got an aunt who knew of him but wouldn’t say much. She thought the best way in to Lee and his guys is to invoke the competition. Be a friend or a foe, your choice. Gets their attention, either way.”
“Who’s the competition?”
“There’s a Japanese group run by a Bill Smith. He’s been pushing into Lee’s business for a few years. Had some success from what I heard.”
“An anglo running a Japanese mob?”
“No. He’s Japanese. He can’t even speak English. He looks like a Samurai warrior. The Bill Smith moniker is just part of the act. Good marketing. Everybody remembers the name, and it cranks up the fear factor.”
“What makes Lee and Smith competitors?” I asked.
“Part of it is the usual. They’re both hustling import contraband. But I heard there’s something else going on. Some kind of art dispute.”
“Asian mobsters care about art?”
“Right. Guy in the department said they’ve got some weird intellectual disagreement. Don’t ask me what, but I guess it’s got them cranked up.”
“Your aunt have any thoughts about how to contact Lee?”
“Lee owns a bunch of electronics stores. Some in Chinatown, a couple in the Tenderloin, one down in East Palo Alto. You could call around, see what shakes loose.”
“He speak English?”
“My aunt said Lee has a guy who translates at all meetings. But she says he speaks English.
“Is Lee from China?”
“Born and raised there, but moved to San Francisco in his late teens. Worked in the family bakery. Then he decided he wanted to make real money, so he went into business for himself.”
“How does your aunt know Lee?”
“Worked at the same bakery with him.”
FORTY-SIX
I thanked Billy Fong, then called Doc Lee at the hospital. I waited on hold, talked to a second person, waited again. Eventually, someone named Sue at the ER desk told me that if I waited she might be able to grab him after he finished setting a broken leg.
Five minutes of Mannheim Steamroller later he came to the phone.
“Owen,” Doc said. “Are the stitches in your face ready to come out?”
“Got me. Hey, Doc, how’s your Mandarin?” I said.
“Funny question to ask a health professional.”
“It could be critical to someone’s health. I need to talk to a Mr. Lee, no relation I’m sure. He’s in the Tenderloin. Mandarin would help me get through the layers he keeps around him.”
“The Tenderloin? This is a bad guy you want me to talk to?” Although Doc Lee had said that he once wanted to be a cop, he was small and sensitive and lived a quiet, thoughtful life in the mountains. He didn’t like commotion and noise and never even drove into the Bay Area unless a new boyfriend beckoned him there. Over the years of practicing ER medicine, he realized he wanted nothing to do with people who perpetrated some of the trauma he saw at work.
“Yes, he’s a bad guy,” I said. “But you wouldn’t have to have anything to do with him. I just need you to make some phone calls to some electronics shops and ask after Mr. Lee. I’m guessing that he may be more forthcoming if the inquiries are in Mandarin. You can do it from my phone. There’d be no way to connect you to anything.”
“Whose health is this critical to?”
“I don’t know their names. But the avalanches were set using the kind of electronic devices that Mr. Lee knows about and possibly sells. If we can learn more about them, maybe we can catch the killer. The health of the next victim is at stake.”
“I see. I go off my shift in twenty minutes. I’ll come to your office?”
“Thanks, Doc.”
Spot had shifted to his other side for the second stage of his nap, but was still in front of the door when Doc Lee knocked. He lifted his head and cranked it sideways to stare up at the closed door. He made a little pretend woof and kept his head in the air, his jowly lip swinging free from his mouth.
“Typically, your largeness, when someone knocks at the door you get up out of the way so they can come in.”
Spot didn’t move, an indication that our visitor was someone he knew. How he knew was a mystery to me. Spot was lying, legs outstretched, on the rug, which was on the slippery tile floor. So I grabbed one front leg and one back leg and pulled. The rug and Spot slid away from the door. He never changed position, still held his head up at the funny angle.
I opened the door and Doc Lee walked in.
Spot smacked the floor with a single tail wag, then put his head back down. Doc Lee gave him a pet, and sat down.
“You never said how your Mandarin is,” I said.
“Pretty fluent. My parents don’t speak English. If I want mom to keep sending me her homemade eggrolls, I have to communicate in Mandarin.”
“Are they good? I love eggrolls.”
“Too many mushrooms, but good. I’ll bring you one.” He gestured at my desk phone. “Isn’t it late to call?”
“These numbers are electronic stores, Chinatown style. They stay open late. Mr. Lee owns several of them, some in Chinatown, some in the Tenderloin.”
“The Tenderloin is a tough neighborhood for those kind of stores, isn’t it?” Doc Lee said.
“I’d think so. But Lee is probably a tough guy. Word on the street would be enough to scare the petty thieves.”
“You mean, break my window, I break your neck?”
“Yeah. Anyway, all I want is to talk with him and get some information. I thought calling in English would get me nowhere. But you would have better luck getting through to him.”
I handed him a list of stores and phone numbers I’d gotten off the Internet. “Start at the top. Say you’re calling for Owen McKenna and that I wish to speak to Mr. Lee.”
Doc said, “If the person who answers says they don’t know of a Mr. Lee, I won’t be able to tell if they’re telling the truth,” Doc said.
“Correct. If that happens, say that McKenna has something very important to discuss with Mr. Lee and if either McKenna or Mr. Lee finds out that the person on the phone was obstructing this discussion, the repercussions will be severe. That should at least bring a manager or a supervisor.”
“What do I say if I get Mr. Lee or his representative?”
“Say I found Mr. Lee’s name at Paul Riceman’s house. I have evidence that Paul Riceman used some kind of electronic detonator device to set off avalanches. You can stress that I have no interest in pursuing Mr. Lee. I only want confirmation that Riceman used such a device, what kind of device it was and that it would work at a distance of one mile.”
Doc Lee frowned. “What if Lee or his subordinates refuse to confirm or even discuss this with you?”
“Tell him Bill Smith is willing to partner with me to bring him down. Then remind him of Dong Wang. Tell him I was the inspector who caught him. Tell him this is a personal thing with me and I’d be happy to do a repeat performance for anyone peddling illegal detonators or stolen electronics.”
“Who’s Dong Wang?”
“Gangster from the same neighborhood, a dozen years ago. Well-enough entrenched that he thought I couldn’t backtrack an execution-style murder to him. But I scraped up enough evidence to get a warrant. He had so much protection that I couldn’t go in with a team without alerting him and giving him time to get out through one of his underground tunnels, so I went in at night by myself. He had two bodyguards who resisted, and when I got past th
em to Dong, he resisted as well. It got physical and someone flashed pictures when I pulled him out of the building where he had his penthouse. He was still alive, but he was a mess. The neighborhood rag printed them on the front page.”
“I thought the police department frowned on Dirty Harry showmanship.”
“Hell, yes. They dragged me through every kind of public humiliation and disciplinary action. I was the Chronicle’s headline two days in a row.”
“But they didn’t fire you?”
“They held a private thank-you party for me up on Russian Hill at a house that belonged to one of the mayor’s golfing buddies.”
Doc Lee nodded and swallowed. “Okay, let’s do it.”
I dialed the first number and handed Doc the phone.
Someone answered and Doc spoke in Chinese, and I noticed as always how it wasn’t just the words that are different, but the tonal quality changes as well. I can recognize a familiar voice speaking an unfamiliar language, like when Street speaks French. But with Chinese, it is as if the speaker changes the shape of their throat and the sounds move up into the back of their sinus cavity. It didn’t sound like Doc Lee’s voice until he hung up and spoke to me in English.
“A young woman answered. She sounded sincere when she said there was no Mr. Lee connected to the store. Same for when I told her there’d be repercussions if she was lying.”
I nodded.
Doc picked up the phone and dialed the next number. His next conversation seemed a little longer before he hung up. “A guy said they have a kid who works stock and gopher and garbage and his name is Lee, but they have no other Lee. I believe him.”
I nodded.
It was the same for the third and fourth and fifth store Doc Lee called. The sixth store was different.
Doc spoke on and off several times, then listened for a long thirty seconds. Then Doc raised his voice, irritated and intense. Someone shouted something in Chinese loud enough that I could hear it from five feet away. Doc Lee stood up and paced back and forth at the length of the phone cord, shouting back. He yelled my name and the name of Bill Smith and Dong Wang all in a Chinese accent. He stopped, then shouted a blistering barrage of Chinese that included Paul Riceman’s name and lasted most of a minute.
In a moment he stopped and sat back down, still holding the phone at his ear.
I raised my eyebrows at him.
Doc Lee held up a finger. “I’m holding.” In a minute he telegraphed that someone was talking, then he handed the phone to me. “Mr. Lee wants to talk to you.”
“Owen McKenna,” I said.
“This is John Sun. I am Mr. Lee’s translator. Mr. Lee will see you tomorrow after lunch. Will one o’clock work for you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know Turk Street?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll give you the number.”
I wrote as he gave it to me.
“The doorway has a metal gate over it. If you reach up high, you’ll find a concealed doorbell button just to the side of the upper right corner of the gate.”
I told him I’d be there, and we hung up.
FORTY-SEVEN
The next day I once again left Spot at his favorite place for interesting odors, Street’s bug lab, and was in San Francisco a little after noon. I parked off Geary and walked through the Tenderloin, the one neighborhood that doesn’t show up on the Things-To-Do tourist maps that show off the most beautiful city in the world.
In four short blocks I had to step over two homeless people who were passed out and lying across the sidewalk. Nearby, a large group of Asian teenaged boys wearing T-shirts that showed their muscles and tattoos gathered around a boombox blasting a rap, and two of them were doing an athletic street dance so inventive they maybe moonlighted as Cirque du Soleil performers at night. On the next block a trio of what I guessed were Guatemalan women sat cross-legged on a spectacular woven blanket with Mayan designs in shades of red and orange. The youngest one was nursing a baby. All three were singing a soft song in a language that sounded like a Native American language. Along one edge of the blanket were rows of handmade silver jewelry. My first thought was that they belonged on Union Square where they could actually make good money. But I realized that the Mayor’s troops had probably scoured the shopping and theater district and pushed out all vendors who weren’t licensed, scheduled on The City’s calendar, and carrying proof of liability insurance.
But the police didn’t like to venture into the Tenderloin. Even illegal alien jewelry makers could ply their wares.
A red-faced man with waist-length dreadlocks had pushed his grocery cart full of belongings up so close to them that the cart’s dirty wheels had tracked mud onto their perfect blanket. He was lecturing them about public access.
I tapped him on the shoulder.
“Wassup, man?”
“Your cart is dirtying their blanket.” I pointed.
“They’re on the public sidewalk, they gotta expect some dirt.”
“Not your dirt,” I said. I took the cart and dragged it off the curb. “Respect their beautiful work. If you ever did anything beautiful, they’d respect it.”
“My speech is my work. I sing the praises of public access for all layers of society. I’m beautiful at it.” He began to pull his cart back toward their blanket.
“You touch their blanket again, I’ll put your cart over your head.”
“So you’re an Injun savior, huh? The government gives them all that free land, but still they come to our city and take over the sidewalk. Makes you feel like a real man picking on people like me, doesn’t it?”
As I walked away, the two older women lifted their hands, palms together, and touched their thumbs to their noses. They bowed their heads to me.
Mr. Lee’s building was half a block down. The ugly gated door was centered in a narrow run-down building that sat between a flophouse and a liquor store with month-to-month apartments above.
I reached up and felt around the upper right corner of the steel gate. I found the concealed button and pushed it.
Ten seconds later a voice came from a hidden speaker. “You are too tall for the camera. Please move back so we can see you.”
I stepped back, looking but not seeing the hidden camera.
“Your name?”
“McKenna.”
The door buzzed. I pulled open the gate, squeezed the door latch and pushed the door inward.
I stepped into a hallway that was an art piece. The floor was a mosaic of tiny tiles showing a vivid mural with scenes, I guessed, from Chinese history. The Great Wall was featured in some, charging armies on horseback in others. There were dragons and maidens and a large Buddha in the center.
The walls looked like dark polished ebony or mahogany. Every five feet were recesses in which were displayed magnificent hanging scrolls, Chinese landscapes, ink on silk, just like in my book. From the ceiling hung huge paper globes that radiated a warm orange-yellow light. On the globes were ink-wash paintings of inland seas reaching back to improbably steep mountains.
Two men stood waiting for me. They were small but their athleticism reminded me of Bruce Lee in his iconic martial-arts movies. I had the thought that I should make no sudden movements.
“I am John Sun,” one of them said. “Your shoes, please.” His English sounded American like he’d been raised on an Iowa farm. He pointed at a mat with other shoes on it.
I kicked off my shoes.
He then pointed to the wall. “Morris will pat you down.”
I turned to the wall and put my hands on the wood. Morris was quick and efficient, paying special attention to my ankles as if I might have thin throwing knives hidden under an ace bandage.
“Please come,” Sun said.
I followed him, and Morris followed me. We turned through an opening draped with fabric and went up a wooden stairway with a hand-carved railing. Two flights up he led me into a huge room that looked vaguely like the banquet rooms in elegant Chinese restau
rants.
There were no walls, but there were several arrangements of furniture defining a sitting area, a bedroom, a kitchen and an office. I took the banquet room to be Mr. Lee’s house. A house with invisible walls.
The room’s perimeter walls had tall ornate windows with long elegant patterned drapes held aside with velvet pulls. Out each window was a different scene, and were I not in a building that was surrounded by other buildings, it would be easy to be fooled by the realistic murals painted to look like the Chinese countryside. The windows seemed to light the room, and I couldn’t tell how the illusion was done. I decided that there must be lighting all around the windows, hidden beneath the drapes and shining on the painted surfaces.
In the area that the furniture defined as the office, sat a man I assumed to be Mr. Lee. He was behind a desk.
“Mr. McKenna,” Sun said. “Meet Mr. Lee. Mr. Lee, Mr. McKenna.”
Mr. Lee nodded at me but remained seated. He was thin like a sword is thin and the edges of his face were sharp enough that if you hit him on the edge of his jaw you’d expect to cut your hand. His eyes didn’t gaze so much as they burned. And his eyebrows were angled and chiseled like cuts made in wood by a sword.
“Please have a seat, Mr. McKenna,” John Sun said.
He pointed me toward the two chairs in front of Mr. Lee’s desk.
“I am Mr. Lee’s assistant,” Sun said.
I sat. Sun sat next to me.
In an effort to ingratiate myself with Mr. Lee, I said, “You have beautiful hanging scrolls, Mr. Lee. I’ve been reading a book on Asian art and I’ve come to love those monochromatic Chinese landscapes. Something about the brushwork. Very detailed, but still soft.”
Mr. Lee looked at me without expression. Lee, Sun and Morris were all silent.
“I also like the way the earlier Chinese painters used the silk itself to represent the mist in the mountains.”
More silence. It occurred to me that I might be violating a basic custom. Maybe commenting on a Chinese person’s art collection was unforgivable presumption.