“I’m just asking,” Carver said. “What about the morning? How’d you feel when you woke up?”
“Like hell.”
“Like you’d been in a fight?”
Jenner looked up, taking his hand away from his face.
“A fight?” He lifted his shoulders, then dropped them. There was a shiny patch on his dress shirt where his holster strap usually rode. Right now he wasn’t wearing it; the gun was on his desk. “Maybe it was just a delayed thing. Reaction to the kid, to getting shot at. I don’t like seeing it, kids like that.”
“You remember going to bed that night?”
“What are you driving at, Ross?”
“I’m just trying to figure it out. Six weeks, we’ve been trying to get Patrick to sit down.”
“You’re saying it like I don’t know. Like I’m not trying.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Carver said.
“What?”
“We’ll get my car, ride over to Chinatown,” Carver said. “Grab a booth in the San Lung Lounge and see if Patrick Wong’s around. If he showed his face on Thursday, maybe he’ll do it again.”
“All right.”
“Find us a couple coffees first. I need one. I’ll log in, make sure I’m caught up. Then we’ll go.”
Jenner nodded and stood. After he left, Carver waited until his partner’s footsteps went all the way down the empty hall, and then he went to the desk and lifted Jenner’s gun from its holster. He brought it to his nose, closed his eyes, and breathed in. It smelled so strongly of burnt iron and bleach that there were only hints of gun oil and spent powder from firing on the range.
Jenner had been with him that night. Whatever it had been, they’d seen it together.
He put the gun back where he’d found it, then sat at his computer and went through the motions of logging in. He entered his password and then leaned to the pin-sized camera for the retinal scan, but he was thinking of Jenner, and remembering waking up with Mia by his side. He was grabbing at the swishing tail of his own lost dream. The Fairmont Hotel, wrapped in silk, candlelight, and fog. That had been real: he had photographs of it, newspaper articles about the Black Aria Ball. It could be that Jenner’s dream had been real too. But Jenner couldn’t account for all his time between Thursday night and Friday morning. Maybe he’d been with Carver outside the Fairmont Hotel, maybe he’d been poisoned somehow and brought home by the same group Mia had seen. If that was the case, then Jenner had gotten back on his feet a lot faster than Carver had. That wasn’t too surprising—Jenner was younger, and more cautious with himself. He didn’t end up in the hospital once or twice a year.
Carver leaned back and stared at his computer screen. He didn’t know if there were cameras in Jenner’s building, wasn’t sure he’d be able to casually get the video feeds if they even existed. There had to be some other way into the case, a path that would lead straight to its heart.
“You sure you’re up for this?”
He looked up. Jenner stood in the doorway, holding two cups of coffee.
“I was ready five minutes ago. You get lost or something?”
Jenner handed him one of the coffees, then stepped to his desk and strapped on his gun. He pulled his jacket off the back of his chair and eased into it. Then he unsnapped the holster and put his hand on the gun’s grip, tugging it halfway out to be certain there was nothing catching it, slowing his draw. He looked up and saw Carver watching.
“Patrick won’t be jacked to see me again,” Jenner said. He reseated the gun in its holster but left it unsnapped.
“Maybe he doesn’t remember either.”
“That’d be good.”
Carver parked in front of a fire hydrant at the corner of Grant and Washington. It was raining again, but that didn’t seem to bother the crowds of people walking deeper into Chinatown. Vertical signs clung to the buildings, advertising stores and wares in calligraphy Carver couldn’t read. He looked at Jenner and caught him staring at the strings of red paper lanterns crisscrossing Grant Avenue. His hand was still on the car door and his throat was working like he was holding something in.
“See something?”
Jenner shook his head and turned to Carver.
“Nothing,” he said. But he turned back once more to the lanterns before he closed his door.
“All right,” Carver said. “Let’s go see this place.”
Jenner reached beneath his jacket again to check his gun. Then he and Carver walked down Grant Avenue to the San Lung Lounge. Three women were taking shelter from the rain beneath the bar’s awning, their faces lit by the paper-thin glowcard advertisements they held. Every few seconds, one of the women would tap a glowcard against her cell phone to consummate a purchase. Discarded screens pulsed like LED embers around their feet, twinkling with soft music and looping videos. The ads were hawking perfume and jeweled watches. Vacations to artificial islands built on the ruins of bleached reefs. The women stood close together, but each had fallen so deeply into her collection of screens that it occurred to Carver he might be able to carry one of them off without the other two noticing. He hadn’t bought anything since he’d woken on Sunday night. He hadn’t even felt the urge. Now he recalled, with shame, how often he’d looked like this. Standing on a sidewalk between home and nowhere, lost in the cold glow while everything else slipped by.
They stepped past the women and came up to the San Lung’s door, which was rimmed by three stone dragons curled into a half-circle. The steel gate was closed and padlocked. Behind the gate, a crack of light came from between the twin doors.
Jenner put his hand on the gate and gave it a hard shake.
“Patrick!”
“No way he can hear you.”
Jenner shook the gate once more.
“Patrick Wong! Get your ass out here!”
Carver looked over his shoulder. One of the women had roused herself. She looked at Carver, then nudged her friends into the rain. They went up the sidewalk in a huddle, but only until they reached the next awning. Jenner didn’t pay any attention to them. He was focused on the door behind the gate.
“You hear that?” he whispered.
Carver stepped closer, leaning against the gate’s wet bars. He heard the slap-thud of a heavy cardboard box hitting the floor. Silence spread like a bloodstain. On the sidewalk, the glowcards the women had dropped began to dim out, their music fading along with the light. They were programmed to save themselves in the absence of human touch. Then, from behind the door, there was a shatter of glass. A wet-hollow pop, like a beer bottle falling from a shelf.
“They’re cleaning the place out,” Jenner said.
“There’s an alley, runs past the back.”
“You want to watch this door?”
Carver reached behind his back and pulled the spare set of handcuffs from his belt. He locked them above the gate’s padlock.
“It’s covered. We’ll stay together.”
They walked back to the intersection, turned left, and then hooked into the alley that ran parallel to Grant. There were storefronts even there. A furniture repair shop, a half-dozen jewelers. Carver could only guess at the trade of the others because he couldn’t read the signs. The windows were dark and gated, and there were no people moving through the alley. But there was a white delivery truck parked at the curb in front of the San Lung Lounge’s unmarked back door.
“I’ll get the plate,” Jenner said.
They paused while Jenner used his phone to snap a picture of the truck’s rear bumper. Carver looked along the alley beyond the truck. One of the buildings had a recessed doorway next to its main entrance, probably leading up to second-floor apartments.
Jenner scrolled through a menu on his phone and hit a button.
“It’s a rental, from Serve-All. That dump by the airport.”
“We can hang back over there,” Carver said, pointing at the sunken doorway. “Watch a bit, while you make the call.”
“You okay, Ross?”
&nbs
p; Carver nodded. “Could stand to catch my breath, maybe.”
They hadn’t walked more than five hundred feet, but he was winded. He thought of Mia. If she were here, she’d take his arm. She’d tell him it was time to go home.
Carver watched the back door of the San Lung Lounge from the sheltered alcove on the other side of the alley. Jenner stood farther back, where the light from his phone would be invisible as he spoke to the night clerk at the Serve-All Rentals desk. Beneath them, the shadows stank of urine. There were flattened cardboard boxes and blankets against one wall, where someone had built a nest. But that person was gone. Carver leaned against the wall and watched the back door, waiting for the spots to leave his vision. If this had been any kind of ordinary sickness, he’d have stayed at home another day or two.
Behind him, Jenner ended the call.
“Rented this afternoon. Guy’s license said Joseph Lin. Same name on the card he paid with. One night only, returns it tomorrow.”
“Nice,” Carver said. He didn’t turn away from the door. “You know someone down there?”
Jenner shook his head.
“But I can fake it.”
The door opened and a man emerged. He wore pinstriped black pants and a white dress shirt, and was walking backwards, pulling a dolly loaded with cardboard boxes. He was built like a bantamweight boxer. A very young woman in a slim black dress came next, her hands steadying the top boxes, her high heels unsure on the broken pavement. They came to the back of the delivery truck and the man jumped up on the bumper and lifted the rolling door. Then he leapt down and started heaving boxes into the truck. He was done in less than a minute, and the two of them went back into the building without saying a word. When the door closed, Carver turned to Jenner.
“Recognize them?”
“The boy,” Jenner said. “He tends bar. The girl I’ve never seen. Would’ve remembered her if I had. Too bad we don’t have a scope. It’d be nice to see who else they got in there.”
“Yeah,” Carver said. He’d put the thermal scope in his glove compartment so Jenner wouldn’t see it. He wasn’t ready for questions he couldn’t answer, and the thermal scope was near the top of the list of things he couldn’t explain. “I think we’re looking at a two-person job. A girl dressed like that? If Patrick Wong had a whole crew waiting inside, they’d have sent someone else to load the truck.”
“All right,” Jenner said. “You ready?”
“No, but I’m coming.”
They crossed the alley and went to the door, which stood slightly ajar on a wooden wedge. Jenner pulled the door back and stepped through, his hand inside his jacket on the butt of his gun. Carver followed, letting the door slide shut against his shoulder blades so that it wouldn’t make any noise.
They were standing in a storage room. There were empty metal shelves against the walls, dead cockroaches and rat traps on the floor. Everything that had been here a day ago was probably in the back of the truck now.
Ahead of them, in the bar’s main room, the young woman spoke in Chinese. The kid answered her in English.
“Just shut up and hold the light.”
She said something else in Chinese. Her whisper was sharp and quick, like a blade in the dark.
“I’m sorry. Duibuqi. Okay?” the kid said. “Please just hold the light. Hao bu hao?”
“Hao ah,” she answered.
Jenner and Carver stepped out of the storage space and into a short hallway. The door to the men’s room was propped open with a yellow mop bucket. Someone had used a crowbar or a claw hammer to rip out the drywall and tiles behind the urinals. Debris was scattered across the floor. They moved past the restrooms and came to the end of the hall. A curtain made of bamboo beads separated them from the bar. Jenner went through it and Carver followed.
A line of booths clung to the wall. In the center of the barroom were high, round tables. Some of the stools were knocked over, and others had been pushed aside to make a clear path for the dolly. Carver and Jenner scanned the room in opposite directions. The light came mostly from exit signs, and from a string of white Christmas lights wrapped around the empty liquor shelves. No one was in sight, but the voices had come from this room. Jenner glanced toward the bar and Carver nodded. The kid and his girlfriend must have been kneeling behind it, out of sight.
Jenner went up and leaned against it, like a man about to order a whiskey. He rapped his knuckles twice on the bar top.
“This place open, or what?” he said. “Patrick told me to come by. Said y’all make a mean mai tai. Real pineapple slice and everything.”
The girl cried out and the kid stood up and whirled around, reaching for something behind the bar. Carver took three steps to the left and drew his gun.
“Don’t,” he said.
“That’s right,” Jenner added. He took out his pistol and laid it on the bar, his hand on top of it. “Easy now.”
The kid raised his hands and looked at the ceiling, his eyes closed. After a while, the girl stood up and raised her hands, too. She was looking at the kid, and her face was burning. She was holding a flashlight in one hand. Its beam shook across the paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling.
“You see what he was reaching for?” Carver asked.
“Crowbar. In the sink.”
“Right.”
“Why don’t y’all come out, have a seat at a table?” Jenner said, his voice as low and as reasonable as ever.
But neither of them answered, and neither of them moved. The kid looked at Jenner. The girl never stopped staring at the kid.
“Come on,” Carver said. He was holding his badge in one hand and his gun in the other. “I know at least one of you speaks English.”
He aimed his gun at the young man’s chest.
“What’s your name?”
“Joe.”
“That sound right to you, Jenner?” Carver asked. “His name’s Joe?”
“Don’t know. Maybe we’ll have to run his thumbprint. Get this incident into the system.”
“You know we can do that, right, Joe?” Carver asked. “Run it in a couple seconds, make a permanent record?”
The kid didn’t answer.
“Come out and take a seat,” Carver said. “And tell her to come with you. Or doesn’t she speak English?”
“She speaks it.”
“Just not to me, huh?” Carver said. He looked at her. “Ma’am, you can put the flashlight on the end of the bar when you come through. You don’t want anything in your hands right now.”
The bar was a U-shape that cut into the middle of the room. There was no swinging gate in the bar top, so to get out, Joe and the girl had to duck and crouch through a passageway near the wall. The girl went first. She chose a table near Carver and sat with her hands folded together. Joe came and sat next to her, but she leaned away from him and looked at Carver. Carver spoke to Jenner without taking his eyes off the girl.
“Want to check what they were doing back there?”
“I’m on it.”
Jenner came around the bar and went through the tunnel. When he stood, he picked up the girl’s flashlight. He aimed it at the floor, gave a whistle, and ducked out of sight for a moment. When he came up again, he shook his head and looked at Joe.
“What you got?” Carver asked.
“Kid pried up some floorboards with the crowbar. There’s a safe underneath, set in concrete.”
“That right, Joe?” Carver asked.
The kid just looked at the tabletop.
“Looks like he wanted to open it but didn’t know the combination,” Jenner said. “Got a stethoscope on the floor. Some steel wedges and a hammer.”
“Really, Mr. Lin?” Carver asked. He saw the way the girl’s eyes shifted and knew he’d scored a point on the name. “You can open a safe with a stethoscope? That’s a neat trick.”
“He can’t,” the girl said. When she looked at Joe, her nostrils flared and her face flushed red again. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
>
“Stop it,” Joe said.
“I don’t have to stop it. I don’t have to do anything.”
“That’s right,” Jenner said. “You work here, ma’am?”
“He does.”
“What’s your name?” Carver asked her.
“Samantha.”
“What’d he do to get you into this?”
“Sam —”
“Shut up, Joe,” she said. She turned back to Carver. “His boss left. Disappeared. Joe ran the bar without him, for as long as he could. He called tonight, asked me to help him pack it up. I came over, soon as I got off work.”
“What else was I supposed to do?” Joe said. “I can’t pay the vendors. I can’t schedule anything. No one’s paying me. Customers buy drinks with their phones, and the money goes straight into the boss’s account. I had to shut down two nights ago. Let our cook and the waitresses go.”
“Why not go cash only?” Carver asked. “Run everything straight out of the till?”
“Why not just hang out a sign that says ‘Drink Somewhere Else’?” Joe said. “Who carries cash? How much cash do you have on you?”
“So you decided to clean it out,” Jenner said. “You own this place?”
“Not him,” Samantha said. “His boss.”
“That’d be Patrick Wong,” Carver said.
She looked at Joe, and Carver caught the question on her face. She didn’t know his boss’s name. That was good for her. Good for Joe, too: if he wasn’t talking about Patrick when he was out with his girlfriend, then he was either very cool or he didn’t know anything about the man who paid him. Carver looked the kid over and knew which way he’d bet if he could roll the dice on that.
“Yeah,” Joe said. “Patrick.”
“When’s the last time you saw him?”
“Four—I don’t know—maybe five weeks ago.”
“You worked every night since you last saw him?” Carver asked.
“Yeah.”
“That includes Thursday night?”
The kid nodded. Carver glanced at Jenner and then looked around the room. There was a booth in the back, near the fish tank. The koi were floating upside down at the top, and the glass surfaces were nearly opaque with green algae. They’d been dead a lot longer than a few days, but Jenner had mentioned them when he’d talked about his late-night Thursday chat with Patrick.
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