by Rhys Bowen
He shoved his way back through the crowd, clearing a path for me. While he had been giving his orders, I had been taking a long look at the corpse and I’d noticed something else. I moved closer to Captain Kear. “He’s got a wound on one side of his head,” I said, this time in a low voice so that nobody else could overhear. “He couldn’t have received that during the fall.”
“He could have hit something on the way down,” Kear said.
I looked up at the building. There was a succession of balconies, but they didn’t project in any way; in fact his descent would have been smooth and swift.
“I think somebody killed him first,” I said, “or at least knocked him out.” Even as I said it I could hear a voice in my head yelling at me to shut up. If he was lying where he landed on the street, then there was the possibility that he tripped and fell, however strangely he had landed. If, on the other hand, he had a large dent in one side of his head, then it was obvious that somebody knocked him out before throwing him over the edge.
“I’d keep that to yourself if I were you,” Captain Kear muttered. “For the moment the official line on this is going to be accidental death. If I get word that On Leong is going to blame it on Hip Sing and we’re about to be back in a full-flown tong war, then I’ll have to come up with a suspect pretty damn quick.”
I had observed that he was not toning down his language in the presence of a lady. This surprised me until I realized that he was not treating me like a lady. I was a detective, a professional. That made me feel a certain sense of satisfaction.
We turned the corner back into Mott Street with Constable O’Byrne leading the way.
“Is it possible that it was committed by Hip Sing?” I asked. “I understand that Mr. Lee was very thick with On Leong.”
Captain Kear shook his head. “It doesn’t seem like their method of operation at all. Gunning down someone in the street, a quick stab in the back—that would be normal tong tactics, not a death made to look like an accident. They actually want the other side to know when they are killing someone. Besides, it’s in Hip Sing’s interest to keep the peace right now. They suffered far worse in the last round of violence than On Leong did. They need to build up to full strength again before the next round begins.”
“You think it will break out again?”
“Bound to. While you’ve got struggles for control of the Chinese community they’ll keep on at it until one side wins.”
“I understand that On Leong pays you to turn a blind eye to their activities,” I said. “What about Hip Sing?”
“You mentioned that before,” he said sharply. “Are you talking about bribes? Bribes are not allowed in the police department. Who told you that?”
“It was old Mr. Lee himself,” I said, realizing that once again I’d let my mouth run away with me and this wasn’t the wisest thing to say. “He said he had the police in his pocket.”
Captain Kear’s face was flushed. “Well, he might have made a donation to our benefit fund, in return for which we kept an eye on his businesses and saw that nobody robbed them or firebombed them, but that’s another thing entirely.”
So he’d just confirmed by his guilty bluster that Lee Sing Tai had been bribing the police—which might have given someone else a motive for killing him. What if Mr. Lee had threatened to spill the beans at police headquarters? It seemed to me that given the diverse nature of Lee Sing Tai’s business ventures, any number of people might have wanted him dead.
“And another thing,” Captain Kear said. “How the hell could Hip Sing gain entry to Lee Sing Tai’s home? He always had bodyguards lurking on the street nearby. He kept servants around him. They’d never have admitted a Hip Singer. The tongs always meet on neutral turf at the Port Arthur restaurant.”
I gave myself a facetious reminder never to go and eat there in case a gun battle broke out around me and I grinned. I suppose one has to make light in the middle of tension. But then I considered what he had just said.
“If Mr. Lee was sleeping on the roof, might it not have been possible to gain access from the roof of a nearby building?” As soon as I said the words I realized that once again I should probably have kept quiet. Now I was actually putting into his head a way to pin the crime on Bo Kei. And if he did, I couldn’t save her without admitting that I knew that she was safely in the settlement house. I’ve always liked to appear clever, I suppose, or at least to prove I’m equal to any man. It’s one of my failings.
He looked surprised. “You think that’s possible? That never occurred to me. You might be right. You hear that, O’Byrne. The young lady suggests it might have been possible to access the roof from another building.”
“Have to have been a darned good jumper,” O’Byrne said.
I knew it could be done, but this time I said nothing.
“Let’s take a look, anyway,” the captain said. He paused outside the Golden Dragon Emporium and looked up and down the street, which still remained unnaturally empty. “Where is everybody, for God’s sake?” he demanded. “O’Byrne, go and round up someone who can interpret for me. I want to question the old woman and also the servants when Hanratty brings them in. They’ll sure as hell all claim that they can’t speak English.”
“I’ll do my best, sir,” the constable said, looking dubiously at all those closed and shuttered doors.
“Start with On Leong headquarters,” the captain said. “There has to be someone inside and they’d lose face if they didn’t come to the aid of a top man like Lee Sing Tai. Remind them of that.”
O’Byrne sighed as if he suspected it wasn’t going to be an easy task. Captain Kear turned and stomped up the steps to Lee’s apartment. The wailing had stopped and the place was now eerily silent. The old woman was no longer on the sofa. Captain Kear started up the next flight of stairs and I followed, having not been told I couldn’t. This flight opened onto a landing with several doors. One of them was open, revealing a large and ornate bed beyond.
“He definitely slept on the roof last night, did he?” I asked. “Not in his bedroom?”
“How would I know?” the captain said shortly. “When I got here the front door was open as you see it and there was only that hideous old crone making a racket on the sofa. There was no way of getting through to her.”
So the wife was already wailing when Captain Kear got here. He wasn’t the bringer of the bad news. That meant that the whole neighborhood had heard about Lee’s death and everyone was lying low before the police arrived. And where did Bobby Lee fit into this? Had he been around and also quietly slipped away when he heard the news?
As Captain Kear started up the next flight of stairs, I nipped across the hall to take a look at that bedroom. It was as overfurnished and as ornate as the living room downstairs had been—the huge carved mahogany bed, cabinets, a vast wardrobe, and in one corner a shrine, containing a statue of a goddess with more arms than necessary. There were sticks of incense in holders around it and a strange, cloyingly sweet smell lingered in the room, making me want to sneeze. I backed out hastily and hurried to catch up with the captain.
Seventeen
A strong breeze was blowing as I came out onto the roof, bringing in more ominous clouds from the south. It really did seem as if it was going to rain and spoil Sid’s party decorations. There was a flat area of roof ahead of me, bordered to the right by a brick wall where it joined the much taller On Leong building. A brass bedstead was the only item of furniture on the flat part of the roof, and the bedsheets flapped in the wind. Captain Kear was prowling the perimeter, moving distinctly warily and peering down at intervals.
“Couldn’t access it from here,” he was muttering. “Nor from here.”
He made his way down the edge of the roof that overlooked Pell Street, where Lee had fallen to his death, then reached the back of the building where there was a gap between this building and the next. He paused. “I suppose it would be possible for a fit person with plenty of guts to jump across here,” he said,
“or to have brought a plank to walk across. Okay, when O’Byrne gets here, I’ll have him find out who owns that building and how easy it is to get up to their roof.”
While he peered down and muttered to himself, I was noticing something quite different. The tar on the roof had become soft in the heat. There were distinct footprints near the edge of the roof—some of them small and dainty, but another set larger, and with deep indentations, like a workingman or laborer’s hobnailed boots.
The small feet could be explained, of course, as Bo Kei had told me herself that she had fled this way. But I could detect that same print facing in both directions—coming and going, so to speak. Had she reached the edge, changed her mind about attempting that formidable leap, retreated, thought it over, then finally plucked up courage to do it? All possible, but for a policeman looking for clues it would spell out that she came, killed Lee, and then left by the same route. Of course I knew that she had a perfect alibi for the crime—she was safely locked away in the settlement house on Elizabeth Street.
And as for the large hobnailed boots—who could they possibly belong to? Most of the Chinese I had seen wore soft cotton slippers, and they worked in laundries or restaurants or apparently cigar factories—no place where heavy boots would be needed. And the footprints were large too—when the Chinese men I had seen had been smaller than me. There was no way of knowing when the big prints had been made, but it would seem to be recently, judging by the lack of dust and grime over them, compared to other areas of the roof.
I joined Captain Kear and peered down over the edge. It was a long way down, but I’d developed a good head for heights, clambering on clifftops on the Irish coast as a child. I could see the fire escape on the next building. That was the way Bo Kei had escaped. She must have felt desperate to have attempted it. Even the climb from the end of the fire escape to the ground looked daunting to me.
“There doesn’t seem to be a door opening onto that roof over there,” Captain Kear said. “I don’t see how anyone could get up there. And as for taking that leap across—well, those Chinese with their little short legs would have a hard time doing that. And I wouldn’t want to try it myself. No, let’s assume that our killer gained access by another means—maybe climbed in via one of the balconies. I expect they keep the windows open on hot nights, and if the bodyguards down below weren’t completely vigilant or they don’t work at night, then maybe a daring kind of guy could climb up the carving on the side of the building and in through the balcony.”
“Then that would rule out the missing bride, wouldn’t it?” I said. “A woman out alone on the street—especially a Chinese woman—would surely have been noticed.”
“That’s true enough.” He paced around the roof, head down like Sherlock Holmes, hoping to find a clue of some sort. He straightened up and pointed excitedly. “Look at those small footprints. Your runaway bride, huh? She did come this way, after all.”
“If she lived in this house, then she might have been up on the roof at any time,” I pointed out. “She probably slept up here and she might have wandered around at times.”
“Not near the edge like that. It’s not natural.”
“She might have been looking for a way to escape.”
“Hey, would you look at that—I was right!” He pointed excitedly at the adjoining rooftop. “See that. It looks like a scrap of white fabric, caught on the brickwork. What’s the betting she tore her dress when she jumped or climbed across.”
“That could just as easily be a scrap of laundry that blew away in the breeze,” I said. “Besides, this doesn’t make sense. If the young woman fled and can’t be found, do you really think she’d risk coming back to the place she fled from? And do you really think a delicate little Chinese girl would climb up there and make that leap? I know I wouldn’t.”
He sucked in a breath and nodded, grudgingly. “Yeah, you have a point there, Miss Murphy. I’d sure like to make her the one who killed the old guy. Perfect motive. Shipped from her homeland against her will. Doesn’t want to marry him, so the only way out is to kill him. That would satisfy the tongs nicely.”
“I’m sure there are other people with a good motive,” I said.
He looked at me strangely. “You seem mighty keen to prove it’s not a girl you’ve never even met.”
“I’m just trying to think things through logically,” I said, trying to keep my face from turning red and my expression suitably distant. “And logic tells me that a delicate young girl wouldn’t want to come back here once she’d fled and certainly wouldn’t have the strength to kill a man and hurl him down to the street.”
He paused long enough to take this in; then he said, “We need to find her anyway. Maybe she can shed some light on this business.”
“She’s been gone a week now,” I said. “She could be anywhere—miles away.”
“When O’Byrne gets back, he can take down her particulars. And we have her photograph downstairs. We’ll put out a bulletin for her. It should be easy enough to spot a Chinese woman. Not too many of them in New York, are there?”
“If she hasn’t already left New York,” I said.
“Then someone will have spotted her on a train. We’ll find her, don’t you worry. Ten to one she paid someone to do the dirty deed for her—those bigger footprints, maybe.”
“Paid someone? She’d just arrived from China. How would she have gotten her hands on any money?” I demanded.
“Stole it from the old guy. Stole something and pawned it.”
“I’ve already tried all the pawnshops,” I said. “She hasn’t pawned anything.”
“You’re a thorough little thing, I’ll give you that,” he said. “Too bad you’re not a man. I could use you at the precinct.”
“You already have some female detectives,” I said. “Mrs. Goodwin is a friend of mine.”
“They are just glorified matrons,” he said. “They might be useful at times, but the last thing we want is women on the force.”
I was wise enough not to pursue this subject. Captain Kear and I were not going to see eye to eye about women.
“Where the devil is O’Byrne with that interpreter?” he snapped. “Surely he can find one damned person who can translate for us?”
Again I was about to chide him for his offensive language in front of a woman, but thought better of it. I had been so used to Daniel, who always watched his language in front of me and apologized if he uttered a curse word by mistake. Clearly this captain was not Daniel’s equal in refinement or intellect. Standing on that windswept rooftop in this alien part of the city, a feeling of longing for Daniel swept through me. I was so glad this case was over and I wouldn’t have to deceive him when I saw him again.
Captain Kear had gone ahead of me to the stairwell and began to descend. I hurried to catch up with him. As we went down into the darkness, we heard feet coming up from the floor below.
“Ah, that will be O’Byrne now,” he said. “Up here, man,” he called. “Have you got us an interpreter yet?”
Instead we heard loud commands barked in Chinese and Bobby Lee’s face appeared, coming up the stairs toward us.
Eighteen
Bobby Lee recoiled in surprise when he saw the policeman.
“Wah! What happening here? What you doing in my father’s house? You got search warrant?”
“Hello, Bobby. Haven’t seen you around for a while,” Captain Kear said pleasantly. “I take it you haven’t heard the news yet?”
“News? What news? I just came from Brooklyn. Is this a raid?”
“No raid, Bobby. I’m sorry to have to tell you that Mr. Lee is dead.”
“What? How he die? Heart attack?”
“He fell from the roof.”
I was watching his face. He seemed shocked enough, but the moment I saw him, it struck me that he, of anyone, had a good motive for killing Lee Sing Tai. He might well be able to convince an American court that he was the rightful son and heir. And if the bride was returned to
Mr. Lee and had produced a real son, then he’d stand to lose everything. As Frederick had pointed out, he could even be sent back to China.
“He fell from roof?” He shook his head violently. “Not possible. He don’t like heights. He would never go near the edge of roof. Never look down.”
“His bed is up there,” Captain Kear said. “Maybe he walked in his sleep and tripped over the edge.”
Bobby Lee considered this, then shook his head again. “Walk in sleep? No! He not fall,” he said. “Someone push him. Someone kill him. Hip Sing do this. They been waiting to get even.”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions, Bobby,” Captain Kear said. “We don’t want to start another tong war unnecessarily, do we? If there’s out-and-out fighting, then your businesses suffer as much as theirs. And you’d be high on their list to be assassinated first.”
Bobby was scowling. “You are supposed to look after us. How this man get to my father, huh? How come police no see? He have servants. He have bodyguards. And his wife—what about wife? Or new bride? What does this bride say, huh? Ah, so. I see now. Maybe she kill him.”
“What makes you think that?”
“She don’t like it here. She don’t want to be his concubine. She want to go home.”
“His new bride is missing and until a few minutes ago we couldn’t get any sense out of the old wife,” Captain Kear said with a note of superiority in his voice.
“New wife missing? When this happen?” Bobby asked.
I realized with some satisfaction that Lee Sing Tai had kept this news from his paper son. Maybe wives were supposed to keep to their own quarters, so Bobby hadn’t noticed anything was wrong—which would make his motive even stronger. He thought the new wife was still around and might conceive a son at any moment.