Touch of the White Tiger

by Julie Beard

  My foster sister, Gigi, would always start the trouble, but when Henry demanded to know who was at fault, I was invariably the one who would break the stalemate with a false confession. Henry would look at me doubtfully and ask me if I was really to blame. Yes, I’d insist, but please don’t send me away. Never, Henry would reply. Then he’d create some chore as penance and send me on my way with a wink. Gigi would be happy and that meant Sydney was happy. Little Hank would call me a sucker, but he was on my side. Yes, I could take anything but Henry’s rejection.

  “Henry,” I said, willing my voice not to shake, “please look at me.”

  When he finally did, I winced at the sadness I saw.

  “I’m sorry, Henry. I’m sorry I had to drag you into this.”

  “Victor…” His voice faded and he shook his head.

  “Yes, Victor was killed. It’s a horrible tragedy. Have you talked to his father?”

  Henry nodded, then looked at me in a way that turned my blood cold—as if I were a stranger. “Did you do it, Angel?”

  All breath vanished from my lungs. How could he even think such a thing? “Did I do it?” I repeated incredulously.

  He leaned forward. “I know what you do for a living. It’s a risky business. Did you have a contract out on Victor?”

  “Christ, Henry!” I shouted at him, which was a first. I pounded the table three times with my fist until I was sure it was bruised. “Christ! I can’t believe you just said that. You make it sound like I’m an assassin. I didn’t shoot Victor! I’ve never killed anyone. Henry, please! Sydney, tell him!”

  “Calm down, Angel,” Sydney crooned.

  He nodded and leaned back, his face regaining some color. “Of course you didn’t.”

  I turned my head away from him so he wouldn’t see me struggle with tears. The one thing I’d had to see me through my trying life was Henry’s faith in me. Now even that was gone.

  “You and I know you’re innocent,” Henry said, the numbness fading from his voice. “But the police think you are guilty.”

  “I’ve been set up for a fall,” I said in a low voice, sniffing and turning back to my foster parents. It was time to get down to business. “You know I have lots of enemies. Roy Leibman called me and asked for help, but someone has erased all traces of his call from my phone records. If I can find out who did it and why, I’ll be able to prove my innocence. But I need to get out of here so I can investigate.”

  “Of course,” Sydney said. “We’ve already made arrangements to post bail and have retained the Levy and Berkowitz law firm.”

  My jaws tightened like rubber bands stretched to the breaking point. “How much?”

  Sydney blinked several times, then said quietly, “Ten million for bail and ten million for the retainer fee.”

  I choked out an incoherent reply. “You don’t have that kind of spare change, Sydney.”

  “We’re going to mortgage the house,” Henry said.

  I blanched. “I won’t let you do that. It’s absurd. I should be released on my own recognizance. And what kind of lawyer would ask for that much money?”

  “A very good lawyer,” Henry replied sternly. “A lawyer who is risking his reputation taking the side of a retributionist in such a high-profile case.”

  Humbled, I nodded. Henry continued.

  “I talked to the mayor and gave him my word you wouldn’t jump bail. So he put in a call to the judge handling the case. The judge threw out Lieutenant Townsend’s decision to override the D.I.V.A.S. test results. If I wasn’t a close friend of Mayor Alvarez, you wouldn’t have gotten bail even if we had a billion dollars. He’s in pain, but he knows I’m in pain, too. And he wants you to have a fair trial, even though he thinks you’re guilty. Just be grateful it worked out this way.”

  My shoulders slumped, and I pressed a hand to my nauseous stomach. Henry had really gone out on a limb for me. But at what price? Henry was a former television news director and college journalism dean who had always told us that his only retirement fund was the house, a beautiful lakefront mansion. If he lost that because of me…

  “Don’t worry,” Sydney insisted, reading my thoughts, and smiled. “We know you’re good for it.”

  “But you’ve got to clear your name, Angel,” Henry said. “Don’t let us down.”

  Don’t let us down. At least I was home. I hadn’t let Lin down. Not yet, anyway. I had to prove my innocence. Sure, I wanted to clear my name and avoid prison. But even more I wanted to make sure I was here for Lin.

  God Almighty, help me, I thought as I trudged my way up my apartment steps late in the afternoon. That I’d even gotten in the door without injury was amazing enough. The tranquillity of my wide, somewhat decrepit north side street had been replaced by a block-party atmosphere.

  Television camera crews had staked out my two-flat. Neighbors from nearby redbrick apartment buildings had wandered out to see what was going on. I was shocked to see a young couple who looked like they belonged to the sons and daughters of the American Revolution holding signs that read, Down with the Retribution Movement.

  I didn’t realize I was part of a movement, I thought with a touch of irony as I shoved my way through a pack of reporters who swarmed around me like killer bees. One of them—Rob Keiser from Channel 3—was doing a live shot and I decided I’d better turn on the digivision system to see what he was saying.

  When I reached the top of my building’s inside stairwell and swung open the door to my living quarters, I shivered with relief. Thank God I was home. The bad news about being fast-tracked through the criminal justice system was that you could find yourself accused, charged and bonded out for an alleged crime before you knew what hit you. That was also the good news. At least I wasn’t going to rot in jail waiting for the rusty wheels of justice to churn.

  I saw a note on the living room coffee table from Lola. She and Mike had taken Lin to the Lincoln Park Zoo. My knees nearly buckled when I imagined having to tell them that I was now a murder suspect. But I couldn’t think about that now. I flipped on the digivision and a flat projection of the Channel 3 reporter appeared in the middle of the room.

  “I spoke earlier with Mayor Alvarez,” Keiser said, looking officious and concerned as he spoke directly to the camera, “and he admits using Angel Baker’s services for a prior retribution job. Here’s what he had to say.”

  The mayor appeared in what was obviously a prerecorded interview. “I hired Angel Baker a couple of years ago,” he said. He was a fit and vital man in his late fifties, but now he looked gaunt and grim. “I employed Angel Baker after my niece, Carmella, was raped. Her rapist was convicted, but only served two years because he was clever enough to leave no DNA evidence behind. I was frustrated by the lack of justice. This is a problem many victims must deal with.”

  I gasped, unable to believe the mayor had exposed his niece’s violation before the entire world. When he’d hired me, he had been so adamant that he wanted the rape and retribution to remain secret out of respect for Carmella’s privacy.

  “With all due respect, Mr. Mayor,” the reporter said, “that’s why the retribution profession came into existence. Victims want justice. Are you saying you will throw your support behind the Certified Retribution Specialists, even though their tactics are coming under increasing criticism from traditional law-enforcement groups?”

  Mayor Alvarez hesitated only a moment before replying, “No, I can no longer support the CRS profession. Not after the death of my son. We cannot tolerate any group, no matter how well-meaning, if it turns into a rogue force of assassins.”

  “Do you agree with prosecutors who say that Angel Baker was motivated by professional jealousy? She was allegedly envious that your son had passed her over when he hired Roy Leibman.”

  “I will not speculate on the matter, nor will I comment on the case until it’s settled.”

  “One last question, Mr. Mayor. If Angel Baker were here right now, what would you say to her?”

  Hatred fill
ed the mayor’s brown, hooded eyes. “I have nothing to say to her. I hope I never have to see her again.”

  I flipped off the digivision with a remote control and sank down into a couch, burying my face in my hands. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take. But a little voice of logic inside my head wouldn’t allow me to wallow long in pity.

  “Something’s not right here,” I said, trying to jump-start my resolve with logic.

  The door flew open and Lin bounded in, her flip-flops slapping the blond wood floor. “Angel? Are you back?”

  “Lin!” I called out and threw open my arms. She ran into them, and I hugged her as hard as I dared. I didn’t want to scare her with the depth of my need for this particular hug.

  Lin was a petite seven-year-old, nimble and graceful, with bangs and shoulder-length hair as dark as night. Her lovely almond-shaped eyes always lit up when she saw me, which I considered the eighth wonder of the world.

  When Lin had first come to live here, she’d been understandably reserved, but she’d thawed a little with each passing day. And though it would probably take years for her to fully accept me as a mother, we’d bonded in new, unspoken ways during the past week.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” she said, beaming up at me with a resilient smile, minus one front baby tooth. “Was your trip productive?”

  I laughed to hear such a sophisticated word from her little mouth, but I quickly sobered and felt cold inside. How and when would I tell Lin that I was a murder suspect? After my disastrous interview with the Diva, I’d called Lola from P.S. #1 and told her my retribution job was over and that I’d decided to spend the night with Marco. I wasn’t prepared to admit to my ex-con mother that I, too, was now in trouble with the law. Lola had decided to tell Lin that I’d unexpectedly gone on an overnight trip.

  Lola, of all people, didn’t want Lin to think I was sleeping with a man. When I was a kid, I’d lost count of her lovers, but I couldn’t fault her for trying to be better at grandmothering than she’d been at motherhood.

  I pressed Lin’s head gently between my hands and positioned her for a loud, smacking kiss on the forehead. “Yes, my darling girl, I had a productive night.”

  Lola tromped up the stairs, fanning herself. Her frazzled red hair had obviously revolted in the late blast of summer heat. Her cheeks were flushed and, beneath her voluminous red polysynthe gown, her double-D breasts heaved in her bid for air.

  “Hello, Lola,” I said.

  “Honey, you got problems down there. Some idiot reporter just asked me if you’d ever threatened to kill anyone when you were growing up. I said, ‘Other than me? No.’” She laughed and I groaned.

  Lola was the only person I’d ever known who could catch her breath and expend it without pause at the same time. Suddenly remembering my alleged sleepover at Marco’s, she raised her brows with prudish disdain. “Did you enjoy your trip?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said, combing Lin’s silken black hair with my splayed fingers.

  “I have all the time in the world,” Lola replied as she headed for the couch. “Lin, honey, fetch Grandmama a glass of iced tea.”

  “Grandmama?” I repeated.

  She flopped down on the couch and leaned her head back so she could mouth at me: mind your own business. Nothing Lola did was my business, yet everything I did was hers. But now wasn’t the time to get in a mother-daughter spat.

  “What’s wrong with Grandmama?” Lola asked petulantly.

  I held up both hands in surrender. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  “What is the matter, Baker?” Mike came up beside me.

  I hadn’t heard him coming up the stairs. His calm, accented words washed over me like warm, soothing water. “Oh, Mike, am I glad to see you.”

  I put my arms around him, craving his strength. He held himself upright and firm, yet I felt his affection in the light embrace he gave me in return. “What happened, Baker?”

  While Lola and Lin played cards in the living room, I joined Mike in his renovated coach house in the back of my garden. I ended up drinking an entire pot of green tea while I told him all that had happened. Fortunately, I had a twelve-foot wooden privacy fence around my oblong garden, so I didn’t have to worry about snooping reporters.

  Sitting on the futon on Mike’s floor, gazing at his small stone fish pond through the open French doors of his one-room haven, I began to unwind and restore a sense of inner peace.

  Mike listened to my incredible tale and took it all in stride. That was easy to do because he was a former Chinese Shaolin monk who had survived three years of indentured servitude in the poppy fields of Joliet, Illinois, before finding a place to call his own in my backyard. Opium production was legal as long as the harvest was sold only to legitimate pharmaceutical firms. But the poppy farms kept a low profile, preferring to hire foreign immigrants. Mike was such a one. He’d naively signed away his freedom when he signed up to work for the Red Fields opium plant. I’d rescued him and he’d been devoted to me ever since, saving my butt on numerous occasions. Nothing could shock or defeat Mike.

  “Who do you think did this, Baker?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that, but can’t say for sure. Lots of petty criminals I’ve hauled in for retribution might want to harm me or my friends. But none of them has the power to alter phone records or get into my safety deposit box.”

  “What about one of the mobs?”

  “That’s more likely.”

  There was so much governmental and corporate corruption and the various criminal syndicates had so successfully infiltrated the establishment that sophisticated crimes were hard to trace.

  “It could be anybody,” I said. “But the person who comes to mind is Corleone Capone.”

  That was the ridiculously archetypal alias of the head of the Mongolian Mob. He’d chosen Capone because he was obsessed with the notorious Prohibition-era gangs that became rich through bootlegging. As for Corleone, he’d supposedly chosen the name in homage to Don Corleone, the main character in the novel and movie The Godfather.

  His alias notwithstanding, Corleone Capone dressed like an eighteenth-century Mongolian warlord and spent most of his time trying to outdo the neo-Russian syndicate.

  I’d majorly pissed him off last month when I’d negotiated the release of the Chinese orphans from his archrival, Vladimir Gorky. Gorky had kidnapped the girls from Capone for the sole purpose of foiling the competition. Gorky knew that Capone had spent seven years preparing the girls for sale. For Capone, losing the girls permanently to loving, adoptive homes was humiliating and financially devastating. I had been waiting for him to get back at me in some way. Maybe this was it.

  “Yes,” I agreed. “It was probably Corleone Capone. But why didn’t he just kill me? Why did he involve me in a bizarre and pointless double murder?”

  “Maybe he wants to make you suffer.”

  “Well, he succeeded.”

  “Do not worry, Baker. We will prove your innocence, Baker,” Mike said with his usual lack of expression. He didn’t need histrionics to prove his points. Not when he could down three men at once with fei mai qiao, “the leg flying like a feather,” or gang jin juan, “the diamond fist,” or any number of the other amazing kung fu moves he used so effortlessly. “You need rest now.”

  I nodded and stretched out. Mike pulled a sheet up to my chin and tucked it around my shoulders with great care. I felt safe and loved. Why could I feel that way with a friend but not with a lover?

  “Marco betrayed me,” I said with cool detachment that belied the pain I wasn’t prepared to deal with.

  Mike exhaled and assumed a lotus pose, sitting next to the futon. “Perhaps he had a reason.”

  “He could have given me a character reference to Q.E.D., but he didn’t even admit to the lead investigator that we knew each other. And I believe he planted my gun at the scene. He was the only one who knew I’d put it in the bank.”

  “Did you ask him about it?”

  I shoo
k my head. “I didn’t have a chance. I’m not sure I want one.”

  Mike mulled this over silently, and I felt a prick of irritation that he didn’t immediately condemn Marco. A breeze softly buffeted the wind chimes hanging outside. They tinkled soothingly.

  “You should get your crystal ball,” Mike said at last. “Find out why Detective Marco betrayed you.”

  I could do it. Marco himself had forced me to accept the fact that I’d inherited Lola’s psychic abilities. I’d used them to help us find Lin’s missing friends. I suppose I could use my talents to help myself as well. But the very thought of learning any more about Marco made me feel queasy.

  “The less I know about Marco the better,” I said, closing my eyes for much needed sleep. For now, ignorance would be my only bliss.

  Chapter 5

  Date With Destiny

  Detective Riccuccio Marco had an inbred devotion to truth, justice and the American way. Granted, all three lived in the shadows of his own crimes and guilt, but he’d learn to compartmentalize his life, and so far the positives still had his dark side on a tight leash.

  Two years ago he’d entered a new program to streamline the training of solo detectives to replace those killed by the R.M.O., the Mongolian Mob, and other crime syndicates. His colleagues in the psy-ops department of the Chicago PD assumed he’d been motivated by the desire to learn more about the drug-related shoot-out that killed his rookie-cop kid brother, and in part that was true.

  Handsome, articulate, sensitive to emotions and bred into a lifetime of nuance, Marco had easily excelled at crime-fighting propaganda campaigns, psychological profiles on seriously twisted suspects and media appearances. None of his superiors would guess that he’d majored in psychology so he could understand his own horrific crimes. R.M.O. attorneys had illicitly wiped his record clean.

  Prior to his long years of study at the University of Chicago, he’d been a sgarrista—a foot soldier—for the Russian Mafiya Organizatsia. And before that, he’d been an innocent kid. Everybody started out in life innocent. Few were lucky enough to die that way.