The Legend of ZERO: The Scientist, the Rat, and the Assassin
Page 29
"Two months."
"And you’ve been working this neighborhood for those two months?"
"Mostly, yeah." He said.
I nodded and said, "How’s that been working out for you?"
He sneered a little. "Y’know what, pal? I don’t really need any shit from you, alright?"
"What exactly do you need from me, Detective?" I said.
His face clouded. I couldn’t tell if it was anger, embarrassment, or, most likely, a little of both. Conflicted as he was, I figured it might take a while for him to spill it. So I carried my box over to the shelves of herbs and began unpacking.
"Look, the department doesn’t typically enlist the help of civilians but we’re a bit short on resources at the moment…"
I brushed Styrofoam peanuts from the packing list and gave it a quick once-over.
"…and we’ve got a situation right now… are you even paying attention?"
I looked up at him, hefting a bag of Siberian Ginseng, and said, "Absolutely, but you’ll excuse me if I work as we talk? I’m a little busy."
"There was a murder last night. A Chinese prostitute." He said the word slowly, with emphasis. Smartass. I was starting to like him a little.
"So?" I said.
"So nobody’s talking to us ‘white devils’, and we got nobody on the force who speaks Chinese."
I looked up. "How is that possible?"
"We only ever had a few to begin with. A couple joined Homeland Security, and Joanie - she was the last one – she’s on maternity leave."
"So… you need a translator." I said.
"Well, yeah, but we were hoping to find somebody they’d talk to. Y’know, one of them."
"I could show them my jade secret decoder ring." I said.
He frowned and said, "You’re kind of an asshole, you know that?"
"I get that a lot, yeah."
He stared at me for a minute.
He turned to leave.
As he reached for the door, I said, "Alright, Detective, my first appointment’s not till two-thirty. That gives us a couple hours."
Chapter 2
Knox drove a white, unmarked sedan. The big boxy thing may as well have had a giant speaker on the roof blasting the theme to Cops, though; nobody but a cop would be driving that thing around. The interior smelled. It reminded me of a time when I was a kid and somebody puked in the school bus.
"Your car smells like baked-in vomit," I said conversationally.
"Thanks," he replied. "Man, I could really use some coffee. You want some coffee?"
"I made some, actually…forgot to offer you any, though."
"Am I supposed to say that it’s the thought that counts?"
I shrugged and said, "So, what happened to her?"
"Who?"
"The girl we’re asking around about. You got ADHD or something?"
"We’re looking into it."
"The girl or the ADHD?"
"The hooker." he said. He wasn’t as amused as I was, apparently, with my wit. I was pretty used to that.
"I know I’m not a cop," I said, "but isn’t it usually sort of obvious how somebody was killed?"
"Yeah. Usually."
"But not this time?"
"No."
He stared out the window, presumably at a couple of kids playing in the parking lot of an old, boarded up Church’s Fried Chicken.
"Why not?" I said.
He looked at me. "Why you wanna know so much? All you have to do is ask the questions and tell me the answers. Just translation, that’s all."
I shrugged. "Hey, you came to me for help, detective. If I don’t know a bit about what’s going on I might not translate so good…"
He made a snuffly-sighing sound and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. "Alright, but you don’t say shit to anybody about this, got it?" he said.
"Sure."
"…She was blue."
"It’s my understanding that’s a time-honored tradition among corpses."
Knox glared at me and sighed. "I’m not talking about regular dead body blue. She was…really fucking blue."
Okie dokie.
"And naked, but no marks on her anywhere. No sign of struggle, no sign of sexual contact. Her hands were balled up real tight, fingers all bunched up like fucking claws."
"O.D.?" I said.
"No sign of a needle or anything else. Preliminaries say her blood was clean. Plus… and you tell this shit to the papers and I’ll kick your fucking ass… Her eyes were filled up with blood…from the inside, y’know? Same with her nose and mouth… it was like something inside her…popped. Coroner said he’d never seen anything like it."
Interesting.
"Still," I said, "you called it murder… if you can’t even tell how she died, how can you be sure?"
"She was laid out."
"What do you mean?"
"You’ll see," he said.
It was the last thing either of us said before we hit the east side. Knox had to swerve to avoid hitting a pair of feral dogs fighting over a scrap of garbage in the street. An eighty pound crack whore shambled along the sidewalk, weaving like a zombie. Paint peeled from an ancient billboard that proclaimed that Jesus was the answer. I felt like I must’ve missed the question.
"You ever see that movie Escape from New York?" Knox said. "Kurt Russell, John Carpenter...y'know that one?"
"I don't really see a lot of movies," I said.
"It's one of those post-apocalyptic deals. New York’s a big prison. Anyway, parts of that movie were filmed right along here."
I can't say I was surprised. Post-apocalyptic was right. We passed a block of abandoned buildings, collapsed structures, and burned wreckage. The ‘Taste of Asia’ spa sat wedged between a strip club and a porn shop. A pervert’s oasis. It was a squat, shoebox-shaped building, decked out with neon and amateurish paintings of half-nude geisha girls on the door. A painted sign on the side of the building proclaimed that, "This establishment is not responsible for damage to your property or person. Enter at own risk."
We decided to risk it. We went inside.
The place smelled like cheap cherry air freshener, but underneath was the stink of sweat, cigarette smoke, mildew and mothballs. I recognized the madam despite her caked-on face paint. She’d been in to see me a few times about her arthritis. She spotted me with Knox, looked at the floor, clasped her hands, and bowed.
In Cantonese, she said, "Doctor Lee? What a surprise… what brings you?"
I told her.
She nodded, wiped an invisible tear from the corner of one pasty eye, and turned to walk away. She gestured for us to follow.
A few cops milled in and out of the various rooms. I caught curious looks from some of them. I felt the irrational urge to smile and wave, but I refrained.
The madam led us to one of the back rooms. The bitter tang of ammonia stung my nostrils. I covered my nose with my hand - for all that helped - and followed Knox inside.
"They took the body early this morning, but we’ve kept the rest of the scene the same." He said.
The massage table, the only furniture in the small room, was covered with white silk. The floor surrounding it was blanketed in single bills of Monopoly money. Yellow scraps of paper painted with red ink hung from the walls. I read the characters on several. They were mostly insults, gross descriptions of bodily functions, that sort of thing.
Several small jars lay around the room. I knelt by one and realized that the smell came from them: they were filled with piss.
Lovely.
I wondered whose piss it was and whether there was a way to fingerprint waste products. Then I realized that I was wasting time. Sometimes I annoy even myself.
I called to the madam and asked what she knew about the scene. Her observations weren’t much different from my own. Her theory on the girl’s death, however, tripped me up momentarily. I disagreed with her, but she kept on repeating herself. I turned to Knox.
"Could I see the body?" I asked.
"No. Why?"
I stared at him and blinked.
He shrugged uneasily and said, "Is it important?"
I kept on staring.
"You can stare at me all day, but that’s not going to get you in to see the body."
"What if I told you that I might be able to give you the cause of death?"
He shrugged again and said, "Alright, alright…Why the fuck not? It’s all a clusterfuck anyway. I’ll call ahead, make sure they know I’m bringing you."
We went outside. I took a deep breath of the (relatively) fresh air. We got in the car and headed for the morgue.
Knox said, "What’d the madam say? The point of you being here, y’know, is to translate. So fucking translate."
I took a deep breath and said, "She didn’t have much to say. Superstitious nonsense, mostly. But listen, detective, whoever killed this girl set everything up like a mock funeral. They did it as an insult. Taoists believe that if a person isn’t properly buried their soul cannot rest. Whoever did this… they didn’t just want her dead. They wanted her damned."
-End Sample-
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