by Ed Lin
“A rolling pin?”
“Aw, dammit, forget I said that! It wasn’t disclosed to the public.”
“Why would a guy walk around with a rolling pin?”
“He probably felt more comfortable having some protection on him.”
“A rolling pin?”
The details of the case clearly weren’t coming together. Things seemed even more confusing now. But it was over already, right? Who cared if the pieces didn’t fit correctly? Lonnie was in the clear now, so I had no more personal interest in the case, which, for all intents and purposes, was closed now.
This city has more than four murders a day. I’ll bet more than half of them are of criminals who may or may not have been previously caught. The public thinks so, too. The victims reap what they sow, so to hell with most of them. To hell with Lincoln, too.
What was annoying, though, was Lincoln’s street address that I had written so long ago on the back of my left hand still hadn’t come off yet. I used up the squad bathroom’s Lava soap trying to get it off. Seeing the faded yet legible letters made me think of those heated discussions I had had with the guy and I couldn’t help feeling bad for him. It was true that I didn’t like him, but it was a horrible way for him to go, and he was young.
The pro-KMT newspaper tracked down his parents in Northern Jersey. They said it wasn’t fair that someone of his scholarly lineage should have to die like a dog in the street. They told Lincoln to come home after posting bail but he had refused. He had such a good heart, he wanted to stay in New York and continue reaching out to the lowly Cantonese youth.
His mother added that Lincoln couldn’t have killed Mr. Chen. The hands that played piano and the violin so well for so many years couldn’t be capable of murder.
The parents were photographed sitting at their kitchen table, holding Lincoln’s framed bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
On my day off, I asked Izzy if I could have a look through Mr. Chen’s effects.
“There’s nothing useful in there,” he said. “But you can have first bid on it when we auction it off.”
“I don’t want to buy it. I just want to see it.”
“What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know.”
“At this point, why the hell not?”
Mr. Chen’s belongings were crammed into a stiff, medium-sized black-leather suitcase devoid of characteristic marks. It seemed like something a Communist would have. I knew they had had someone fluent in Chinese go through it already, but I had to see for myself.
The property clerk was a snide skinny guy with a spotty mustache. “Something in this thing smells funny,” he said. “Well, maybe not to you.”
“And why not to me?”
“Because you’re probably accustomed to it. Are you not Chinese?”
I grunted and he handed me the clipboard to sign out the suitcase. “Aren’t we going to open this thing up and go through everything for inventory?”
“No, it doesn’t matter at this point. Maybe you should just take it. I won’t tell.”
The suitcase was on the heavier side. He had packed only two changes of clothing and only one pair of shoes, but Mr. Chen had jammed in as many books as he could fit. He might have been apprehensive about the long plane ride and being trapped with nothing to do. I understood because people get the same way about the subway. Platform newsstands that also sell books do very well.
Everything reeked of the camphor and menthol from Tiger Balm or a rip-off of Tiger Balm. It’s a well-known panacea among Chinese people all over the world. When labeled for the U.S. market, the packaging states that it relieves sore muscles. But Chinese people use it for all sorts of things—including hemorrhoids and swallowing something to treat sore throats—that would repulse the Singapore-based company that made the official Tiger Balm. Americans are shocked when they see it for sale because they think it’s made out of endangered tiger bones, but it’s not. Anymore.
I lifted out a stack of paperback books that particularly stank and found a smashed glass container of Tiger Balm underneath. The books were boring Communist reports of overly optimistic urban planning and overly optimistic harvest reports. In the next stack of books, I found something odd. It was a New York Chinese telephone book. Mr. Chen couldn’t have brought this book over from China. It was printed in New York and was thinner and smaller than what a cop would expect of a phone book. A non-cop Chinese interpreter might have missed it as a clue. Whoever packed up Mr. Chen’s belongings from the hotel room probably glanced at the Chinese characters and thought it was just another one of his books.
I thumbed through the phone book and tried to look up Lincoln Chin. The listings included the entire three- or four-character Chinese name, by surname, along with the English name that the person went by, if any, and the street address.
There are a couple of characters that could be “Chin” as a family name. The most popular one was a compound character that has the entire character for “east” incorporated on the right side, and this compound character was the same as “Chen” in Mandarin, as in Mr. Chen. The second most popular was the character for “gold.” Lincoln wasn’t listed for either character. I was about to try yet another variant of “Chin” when I realized something.
Lincoln was a loafer. He probably didn’t take care of the phone bill. Teresa did.
I looked up Teresa Lee, whose surname was a tree character on top of a child character. It’s a popular name. One story says the very first Lee was born under a tree, surprise-surprise.
Teresa was listed in the book and her name was underlined.
Mr. Chen had known Teresa!
I patiently flipped through the thirty pages of the residential section and no other names were underlined.
Mr. Chen hadn’t placed any calls from his hotel room because he didn’t want to leave a record. He had to have left his room to call from a public pay phone.
I looked at Lincoln and Teresa’s street address on the back of my hand.
Now there was an explanation for Mr. Chen’s missing index finger. He had written down Teresa’s phone number on it. Maybe her address, too. Teresa had wanted to destroy the evidence that literally fingered her as the killer.
My next stop was The Plaza Hotel.
I packed everything back into the suitcase and zipped it up. The property clerk looked dismayed when I handed it back.
“You’re bringing that stinky thing back?”
“I sure am,” I said. “Take deep breaths. Tiger Balm’s good for opening up your nasal passages.”
I took the subway to The Plaza at the southeast corner off Central Park.
At the front desk I showed my shield to a mousy white girl who looked like she was still in high school.
I asked her, “Do you have a Chinese phone book here?”
“Yes, we do,” she said, stepping back. She fingered a button on her uniform and then crouched down, holding on to the edge of the desk for balance. I watched the flesh under her fingernails pulse white and pink. “That’s funny,” she called out. “It’s not here.”
“I thought it might be missing.”
She popped back up and straightened out a skirt I couldn’t see. “Why would anybody steal it?”
“It hasn’t been stolen. It was borrowed and then mistakenly collected as evidence. Say, Mr. Chen—the Chinese official who was murdered—he didn’t make any outgoing calls, did he?”
Her eyes widened for a second. “No, he didn’t. That was one of the first things that you people—the police—asked. No calls were placed from his room over the three nights of his stay.”
“And you’ve turned over the surveillance tapes of the lobby, as well?”
“That last night, yes.”
“No, I meant his first and second nights, too!”
“I don’t believe we have, but I also don’t believe the police have asked for them.”
“Do you have a pay phone in the lobby?”
“No, we don’t
. We try to keep people traffic to a minimum for the convenience of our guests.”
“May I use your desk phone, please? This is official police business.”
She brought me to the end of the counter and handed over a handset to me. I gave her the number to call, all the while suspecting that she wouldn’t let me dial it myself because she thought I’d try calling Asia.
“Yeah?” said a gruff voice at the end of the line.
“Izzy. It’s Robert Chow.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m bringing more lobby tapes from the hotel.”
“What! We already saw what we needed to.”
“No, you haven’t.”
I practically ran into the audio/visual room of Manhattan South to get to the videotape machine. It took a while for me to get used to the controls, but when I was able to find what I was looking for, I called up to Izzy’s office and told him to come down.
“I thought he was under twenty-four-hour guard,” said Izzy.
“They were in the next room with a panic-button setup,” I said. “If he buzzed them, they’d kick the door in. But he didn’t. It was meant to protect his privacy.”
“Weren’t the guards FBI?”
“They were contractors. Mr. Chen was a private citizen of a country that the U.S. doesn’t officially believe exists.”
We watched the playback of Mr. Chen calmly stepping out of The Plaza the first night close to midnight and returning half an hour later. The second night he did the same. It was creepy watching the image of a dead man walking around like everything was fine.
I went back to The Plaza at about midnight and circled the block. I wanted to see what Mr. Chen would have seen. Amazingly, or not, none of the street pay phones worked. The surrounding businesses across the street were upscale but had closed hours ago.
Then I noticed that the southwest corner, Fifty-eighth Street and Sixth Avenue, was a little scruffy. I saw a cheap newsstand on the diagonal corner and a little farther down the block was a diner.
There were too many mirrors and lights in the diner and as I walked in I had to shield my eyes from the glare. It was on the smaller side, with only about ten tables and a short counter. Only a few people were there. A family of tourists who were underdressed for the fall weather and a cabbie doing a crossword puzzle. I saw a wooden New York Telephone booth in the back and headed straight for it.
“You wanna seat for one?” the counterman asked me. He had on a wrinkled but clean white uniform with a T-shirt collar visible at his neck. He was about forty and some gray had crept into his crew cut black hair.
“I’m not gonna stay,” I said. I got in the booth and shut the door, triggering a dim overhead light and a chugging fan. I couldn’t see too well, but the phone number in the center of the dial was scratched off.
I picked up the handset and didn’t hear a dial tone. I played with the cradle but it didn’t help any. If the phone worked I could have easily asked the operator what number I was calling from.
The phone looked in good shape but who knew why it wasn’t working.
I swung open the door and stepped out.
“It’s broken. Broke this morning,” said the counterman.
“You could have told me before I went in there,” I said.
The right side of his mouth curled up. “I could’ve.”
I slid on to a stool at the counter. “Can I ask you a favor, sir?”
“You sure can.”
“What is the phone number to that booth?”
“I don’t remember.”
I sighed and reached for my wallet. I opened it up and laid it flat on the counter. I tapped on my shield and said, “Remember now?”
The counterman lost his smile. “The numbers kid doesn’t come around here anymore, I swear to God.”
“I’m not investigating bookies. I only want to know the phone number.”
“I really don’t remember. Previous owner warned me never to pick up that phone.”
“I guess I can get the number later. One more pain-in-the-ass thing for me to do. Are you usually here this time of night, sir?”
“Call me Walt. I’m here sixteen hours a day, rain or shine.”
“I’m Robert. Nice to meet you, Walt. You remember seeing an older Chinese guy using that phone around midnight for a couple nights?”
“How old?”
“In his late fifties, but probably looks younger than that to you.”
“I can always tell, buddy,” he said. “I got magic eyes. Yeah, some guy was using the phone.”
“Have you heard on the news about a guy from China who was killed in Chinatown? He was named Mr. Chen.”
“I did hear something about it. I guess I missed most of the story.”
“I think that was Mr. Chen who was using the phone.”
“No shit.”
“Have a look at this picture. Was this the guy?”
He opened his mouth and licked his bottom lip. “I think so.”
“Or did he look like this guy?”
“No, more like the first one.”
“Now, how about this one?”
“Damn. I don’t know.”
“Are you sure? Use your magic eyes.”
“It’s either the first one or the third.”
“That’s not going to do it.”
“Which one is right, though?”
“The right one was the first one. That’s Mr. Chen. The second is a random government Chinese official. The third is an American World War Two veteran.”
“You people fought in World War Two?”
“We sure did.”
He leaned on the counter and whistled. This was mind-blowing for him. “That’s great. Really.”
“Now, about Mr. Chen.”
“I did feel good about the first picture.”
“Good enough to swear it was him?”
“Maybe not.”
“The Chinese guy that you did see, was he alone or was there anyone with him?”
“No, he was definitely alone. He came in three times. The first two times, he used the phone and left, and the third, he sat alone in a booth and all he had was a cup of tea.”
“You remember anything else?”
“When it’s not too busy, I like to imagine stories about the customers. If someone looks sad, I’ll make up some hard-luck story. That sort of stuff. Your guy sat there with a sort of blank look, trying not to look conspicuous. His eyes were excited, though, that third time, darting back and forth and everywhere.
“So I came up with a story about him. I know now that he’s Chinese, but I imagined that he was a Japanese soldier, one of those who refused to surrender and stayed in the jungle for two decades. Then he comes out and becomes a cabbie in New York. One day this young Japanese guy gets in the cab and stares at him. The ex-soldier looks up in his rearview mirror and stares back. Then the young guy says, ‘Dad?’”
“You have a mind for making movies.”
“You like the rearview mirror thing? It’s less confrontational than two people staring at each other. I took that from the mirrors in here. You wouldn’t believe what people do when they don’t think anyone’s looking.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” I said, standing up.
“I’m sure I don’t! You’ve seen ’em all!”
“Can you make up a story about me?”
“I’m going to put you in the story I told you. You’re the young Japanese passenger in the cab.”
“I’m Chinese, too. It wouldn’t work.”
“Hey, it’s moviemaking. We could pull it off with the right director.”
In the early afternoon I came to Vandyne in the squad room with the information I had from the diner the night before.
“So you probably want to get the phone number of the pay phone in the diner,” he said. “That’s easy.”
“Yeah, that part is,” I said. “But I also need a record of the outgoing calls from it. In a way that will stick in an affidavit.�
��
“How sure are you that Mr. Chen used that phone?”
“I’m fifty-fifty. Maybe a little less.”
“Aw, shit.”
“What?” asked English, immediately on alert. He was on the phone and I had my back to him. “Do I want to know?”
I turned my head slightly to him and said, “No, you don’t.”
“Good.”
“Bad Boy could help you on this,” said Vandyne.
“Are we talking about using tools out of the black bag?”
I was referring to the extra-legal measures the old cops used to resort to.
“It’s like dynamite,” said Vandyne. “If you’re careful with it, then everything will be all right.”
I crossed my arms and looked up at nothing.
“This doesn’t make you a dirty cop or anything,” said Vandyne. “You’re not doing this for money. You’re doing this to cut red tape. If you find out Mr. Chen didn’t use that phone, you just drop it. No harm done. But if it works, we are only helping along a happy coincidence.”
“Okay,” I said. “Where’s Bad Boy?”
“Try Happy’s.”
I walked into Happy’s on Baxter Street, one of the few non-Chinese restaurants south of Canal. It was run by Happy himself, a grossly overweight man who took little pleasure in anything, not in the food his restaurant served and certainly not in the company of others.
Happy would “greet” you with a sad little clown smile and talk about how he was going to die soon and nothing would fucking matter, anyway.
He was a little less jovial when he saw me, which meant that he looked thoroughly depressed.
“I’m looking for Bad Boy,” I said.
Happy swept an arm back and pointed to a corner near the back. Then he disappeared as if he were swept out to sea. The place was crowded with elderly patrons who had been eating here since the block was a part of Little Italy. Coughing was louder than the conversation.
I eased my way to the back brick wall and through an arch to a small alcove that held a private booth. The curtain was usually closed, but Bad Boy wanted the smell of his cigar to waft out into the dining room.
He glanced up and tapped the cigar into his empty soup bowl. “Chow.”
“Hey.”
“Have a seat. I know you don’t drink. Guess you want a steak.”