Cocaine and Blue Eyes

by Fred Zackel

  Someone shouted not to shoot. Oh Jesus. They had guns. I had to get outta here.

  I slammed on the brakes, let go the wrist, slammed down again onto the accelerator. The car hesitated, almost stalled, then leapt forward like a startled fawn and howled down the street.

  I opened my eyes. My windshield was a huge hole. The rim looked like Jack Frost etchings, like fossil leaves. There was shattered glass on my seat, on my clothes, on my eyelids. I tried the rear view mirror, but I couldn't see. My face was lathered in glass, and blood was running through my eyes.

  The car screamed up the street, around the corner, onto Geary Boulevard. I moved into the right lane of the divided highway and kept the pedal on the floorboards. I started crashing red lights.

  I hoped the cops would stop me before the goons did. Or before I had an accident. I wanted a hospital more than a cop shop. My skin prickled with glass slivers, and blood makes a lousy eyewash. I was still too far in shock to feel anything.

  I had the streets to myself on the only day I could have the streets to myself. I crashed red light after red light and never slowed down. I couldn't see, but I didn't dare stop. I had to assume the goons were after me. Meanwhile, last night's amateurs were home in bed, hospitalized, or cold in the morgue.

  Two blocks from the hospital, I spotted a low-riding police cruiser stopped for a red light ahead of me. I hurtled towards them. Just as I came up behind them, they hit their siren and made a U-turn around the barrier and flashed back the way I had come. My neighbors had probably called them.

  I found a parking space in front of the hospital. I locked the doors, then noticed I had no windshield. Then I stumbled around and opened my trunk. I left behind Joey's stash, but took my gun and its holster. If a holiday couldn't keep the muggers from my door, should it hinder the car thieves?

  Wandering the hospital's corridors, I came upon a telephone booth. I found a dime, then couldn't remember my own telephone number. I pulled out the phone book and tried looking up my number. Blood droplets fell on the white pages.

  I remembered my number. It seemed to ring forever.

  Her voice was whiskey-throated with sleep. "Lover!" Soft and husky and eager. "But where are you?"

  "The hospital. I want you outta there. Right now. You're surrounded by killers. Get going. Right now."

  "Wha?"

  "Just grab your clothes and leave."

  She hung up when it sunk in.

  Maybe I was melodramatic. The goons had their wounded, too, and they had to expect the cops, so they were probably gone with the wind.

  The hospital was quiet. The walls were white and the lights were bright. My head hurt. The icicle had come back. I wondered why it didn't melt. I leaned against the booth. I watched my blood cloud my eyes. I felt it sliding down my face. It tasted salty on my lips. I thought I heard it fall to the floor.

  I heard someone shout. An intern was coming down the corridor with a security guard behind him. I felt my gun slipping from its holster. It fell to the floor, clattered like a dish. I stared stupidly at it. I think that's when I gave up.

  Chapter 15

  The cabbie dropped me by Washington Square. I gave him a buck more than the meter. Any cabbie who'd pick up a man with a dented face on a holiday morning needed the dough.

  I hiked across the mall towards Mama's of North Beach. A young Chinese boy, ten or eleven years old, stood outside. He had rifled the newspaper machine and was hawking half-price morning editions. I gave him a quarter for his enterprise and went inside the restaurant. A cute high schooler took my order. I found a seat by the window, spread out my newspaper and did my best to forget I was a private investigator. According to the paper, the New Year had started off like any other year. There was trouble everywhere in the world.

  Someone rapped on the window. I glanced up, set aside my paper and waited for the rolypoly teddy bear with rumpled fur to float in. I wasn't too surprised seeing Doug Lacjak this early. Not even in jogging clothes and canary-yellow sneakers. He'd always had this thing about long walks and hangovers.

  He slid opposite me. "You and your damn phone calls." His anger vanished. "What happened? You look like Frankenstein's monster."

  I almost touched my face. "I got thugged by some Chinese goons."

  He winced. "How many stitches?"

  "A couple of dozen." I tried to smile. "You ain't so hot yourself."

  He smelled of stale cigarettes and stale alcohol. There was a purple bruise over one eye, and his left cheek was puffed like a pigeon's chest. There was tobacco or marijuana in the scruff of his beard, and the whites of his eyes were red. His mouth was so slack, I doubted he could swallow coffee.

  He shook the beard. "Yeah, it got a little drunk out last night," he confessed. "I don't even remember passing out." He'd been staring at the stitches. "Do they hurt?"

  "The doc's got me on codeine."

  "Lemme have one," he said. After he used my coffee to drink it down, he remembered I was here. "What did they use on you? A Waring blender?"

  "Nunchukas. Karate sticks." The waitress brought my breakfast, and I settled in to devour it.

  "You know what you oughta do." Doug leaned forward. The chair bitched about that. "File with the state for damages occurring during the commission of a violent crime."

  "You think I could."

  "Sure. One of our caseworkers got drunk and tried picking up a hooker down in the Tenderloin. The hooker was a drag queen and got upset when he got upset. She pistol-whipped him and took all his money. Now he's filing for damages."

  "Will it pay for fixing my car?"

  "You were inside your car?"

  "They got the windshield, not me."

  "It's just for personal injuries."

  "Too bad. The VA covers that."

  "File anyway. Compensation above and beyond." He noticed the bulge beneath my jacket. "You're carrying heat?"

  "I never said I was smart."

  "Chinese kids." His brow went up. "Any connection with that phone call?"

  "There's gotta be," I said. "I might know one of them. A character named Lim Song."

  "No shit." He was impressed. "You picked a good one."

  "What do you know about him?"

  Lim Song was born in Taiwan. He got his green card when he was ten. He was purse-snatching before he was twelve, joyriding before he was thirteen, mugging B-girls coming off the night shift before he was sixteen. For his sixteenth, he joined with some other kids and expanded into the stolen car racket. Their favorite haunts were the automotive garages after closing. They'd hot-wire the cars left outside, drive them behind Telegraph Hill, and strip them for parts.

  If Lim Song and his boys hadn't gotten greedy one night, they might've grown wealthy. But they rolled a drunk tourist walking the wrong way back to his hotel. Some other tourists saw it and took pictures. The SFPD busted the boys in less than a week. Lim Song was sent away until he was twenty-one. He came out with a high school diploma and a barber's license.

  The Sixties were a boom time for higher education. Uncle Sam wanted everybody to go, and he helped anyone with the guts to try. Lim Song's parole officer helped the boys enroll in a local junior college. Like a lot of street punks, they majored in Bonehead English and other remedial courses. And they learned it was easier filling out National Student Defense Loan forms than rolling drunks or snatching purses. They decided to stay in school.

  And they were good students, too. Not the best grades maybe, but better grades than anybody ever expected. And they were good students because somebody gave a damn, or maybe because no one gave a damn. Some even took Asian studies. They read about the railroads, the vigilantes, the massacres, the Exclusion Acts and the Anti-Queue Laws.

  Then graduation rolled around, and the boys found out they'd been short-changed. They had degrees but they were obsolete. Uncle Sam forgot to compute when the labor market was glutted with college kids.

  But the boys had always expected the worst. They went back to the streets of
Chinatown and their old ways. At least the streets were predictable. What went down went down every day.

  They had changed, too. No more boosting cigarettes. No more stripping cars. They'd been politicized by Kent State, SF State, other campus turmoil. With their heritage, they found their own reasons to become Maoists. They turned their backs on tradition and went after the Chinese Mafia. Like modern Robin Hoods, they'd hit a fantan parlor or a mah jongg house, shoot a few holes in the ceiling, then skedaddle with the loot. Unlike Robin Hood, they'd also shake down the hookers for protection money and freebies for everybody in the gang.

  I set down my coffee. "He's Robin Hood, and I'm the Sheriff. Great."

  "Maybe you need a beer." Doug swiped more bacon.

  "Maybe after breakfast." I wasn't feeling my best. I watched his darting fingers. "How about saving me some bacon?"

  "Sure." He downed my orange juice. "I need a favor."

  "More orange juice."

  He fished in his pockets and tossed me his house-keys. "I'll be gone a week, so how about watering my plants?"

  "Sure. How come?"

  "Oh, a couple of guys are driving down to Moro Bay. One of our caseworkers got busted for abalone poaching."

  "That's gonna take a week?"

  "We're gonna do some diving, too."

  "Okay. Sure, I'll water 'em. Hey, I got your car keys, too."

  "Oh, I'm not driving. I'm drinking."

  "Well, okay then." I pocketed the keys, then realized what they meant. "I'm gonna use your car while you're gone."

  "What happened to yours? Oh, yeah, the windshield." Doug didn't mind. "Where're you going to?"

  I stopped at the door. "I gotta see a man about a charm bracelet," I said. "Enjoy my breakfast."

  Chapter 16

  Like most peoples, the Chinese will celebrate any holiday they're offered. But, unlike the round-eyes, they don't sleep them away. Everyday is Market Day, and, though the rest of the world might be hung over, the streets of Chinatown bustled with crowds of shoppers. Like barnyard hens, fat matrons in babushkas and slacks haggled over fresh fish and vegetables, while their husbands, weary-looking men who had forgotten how to smile, sat in their cars, practicing the ancient oriental art of double-parking.

  I found a phone booth on Stockton Street. Tan Ng wasn't listed in the SF book, so I borrowed the Chitown directory from a harried shopkeeper. The white pages gave Ng's home address on Nob Hill and his law offices on Jackson Street just above Grant Avenue. I wrote both down, then tried calling my own apartment. There was no answer. Not that I expected one. If Ruth had any more brains than a sand flea, she'd be long gone.

  Ng's law offices were one flight above the Chitown draft board. The door at the top of the stairs was unlocked, but no receptionist was on duty. A large oil painting of Sun Yet-sen behind the desk gave me a dirty look any receptionist would approve.

  An interior door opened. "Is someone here?" Tan Ng's voice, shrill and wavering, came from inside. Tufts of snowy hair appeared around the door frame, followed by his pale face. "Oh, Mr. Brennen, I am so surprised to see you." He opened the door for me. "Won't you please come in?"

  "So this is where you work."

  You could park a car in his office. For a minute, I thought I was in the city council chambers. The ceiling was almost as far away, and the ornamentation was just as dreamy. A huge crystal chandelier hung over a mahogany conference table.

  "May I ring for some tea?" he wondered.

  "This isn't a social call."

  The old man actually smiled. "Then you have decided to accept my proposition." He had a smile like Godzilla.

  "Why don't you cut the bullshit?" I snapped.

  His body had a spasm. "I do not understand." He gave me the Chinatown Faker look. A peculiar expression the Chinese use when they suddenly don't understand the English language as spoken by round-eyes.

  "Sure, you do. You tried to hire me to track down Lim Song and a missing necklace. I told you I wouldn't because Song was a juvenile delinquent. Well, I was wrong there. He's no juvenile delinquent. He's not even a juvenile. He's a raving Maoist maniac with his own private army."

  "Who told you this?"

  "That crazy sonovabitch tried to strangle me this morning."

  Ng sat down abruptly. "Oh no."

  "I walked right into an ambush. And one of his goons shattered my windshield and put these dents in my face."

  His dull black eyes leapt upward to the cuts and bruises, seeing them for the first time. "He did that to you?"

  "Him and his Red Guards," I stated.

  His skull tightened. "I am so very sorry." He didn't look sorry. He looked like he wanted to sue.

  "Why don't you tell me why you tried to get me killed?"

  "I had no idea this would happen."

  "You wanted me to follow him."

  "I didn't think you would."

  "Then why try to hire me?"

  He sucked his gums a while. "I'm a lawyer," he began. Then he stopped and ruminated over that.

  "I know what you do for a living."

  He nodded his old head. "One of my clients called me yesterday afternoon," he said. "My client said a private investigator had been to see him. You were that investigator and you made references to creditors."

  "You mean Riki Anatole, right?"

  "He wanted me to find out about you. You see, this is a critical time for his company's finances. He thought you might be a forerunner for a take-over bid. He asked me to see what I could do."

  "So you came to buy me off."

  "That was merely an excuse to meet you. I came to investigate you. To find out whose interests you represent. To find out who your clients are. My nephew suggested that we hire you."

  "The missing necklace was never missing."

  "We never expected you to take our proposition seriously. I knew I was not fooling you. We both knew that, Mr. Brennen. But it could have been an effective way to gauge you. We thought the jade necklace would be a harmless diversion."

  "What if I had taken it seriously? What if I had agreed to try and locate the necklace?"

  "We would have found something much safer for you."

  I swore beneath my breath. Sure, they'd found something safer. Like maybe wrestling junkies to the floor of City Hall. The little weasel was just trying to sound humble, contrite, sorrowful.

  "What about Lim Song? Where did he come in?"

  "Believe me, Mr. Brennen, I had no desire to involve you in any serious trouble. Lim Song is well-known in Chinatown. We felt you would know him through his reputation. I felt satisfied that you knew who he was. You acted as if you knew him when you talked about Chinatown gangs."

  "Who told him about me?"

  "No one did."

  "Somebody told him. Look at my face."

  "I can't believe that," he said firmly.

  "You think these stitches are a lie?"

  "Please forgive me. I do not question your honesty. Merely that I believe no one informed him about you."

  "Then how did he know about me?"

  "I can only assume I was followed to your apartment." He splayed out his fingers on the table. They were all knuckles and bones, and they had more than their share of liver spots. His fingers were long and thin, sheaves of wheat on wood.

  "You were followed. Sure."

  "I am followed everywhere these days," he told me. "When Lim Song discovered I had been to see a private investigator, perhaps he saw you as a threat to his security. Perhaps he felt he should take some measures to guarantee that security."

  "Why should you be any threat to him?"

  "I represent many interests the Maoists wish to discredit. I am legal counsel for many elderly Chinese. I try to help them live within the white man's world. The Maoists reject that. They preach radical change and violence. I am opposed to violence in any form."

  "And that makes you threatening?"

  He gave me a wry smile. "They think so."

  He might've been the disillu
sioned patriarch with that blast of white hair and his ancient features. He might be happier waiting for his monthly pension check. It seemed plausible. Yet I had to go slow.

  "Are you a threat to the Maoists?"

  He shook his head. "I am a very foolish old man who should have retired long ago. My clients will not let me retire. They will not listen when I say I am too old."

  I was right. He thought he was indispensable. I wondered what time warp his clients were in. And remembered the Anatoles were clients.

  "So what are you going to do about this?"

  "About what?" Confused again.

  "That madman tried to strangle me. One of his goons used karate sticks on my car. The same clown who put these marks in my flesh. Take another look at what he did."

  He went to his desk and started rummaging through it. "I accept full responsibility for any trouble you have had." He came up with a business checkbook. "I will make amends for any damages done through my foolishness." He paged through his checkbook for the last check he had written. "I should never have listened to my nephew."

  I told him to stop.

  My anger startled him. "I must make amends."

  "I don't care about that," I told him. "I want to know what you're going to do about Lim Song."

  "I do not know what I can do."

  "I don't want that maniac camping on my doorstep."

  "But what can I do?" he appealed.

  "You can't call him off?"

  "He does not listen to me." Tan Ng struggled for words. "There is little I can do. He is like the rain, everywhere. How can I stop the rain? If I approach him, he will become violent. I am no match for him. I am a very old man."

  "Try a little harder."

  He tried. "I can loan you some bodyguards. I can urge you to move elsewhere." His words tapered off like a junkie's heartbeat. They didn't start up again. Maybe it was my cue.

  But I'd had enough. I walked out on him.

  I went looking for Doug's car.

  Chapter 17