“Uh-huh, the one that’s diamond-encrusted. I told her I’d go knock over the Federal Reserve and see what I can do. No, she didn’t come up with anything we didn’t already know. Once the lab results came in, I thought we were writing her off?”
“I’m not writing off anything. Lab reports can be wrong, and they’re not infallible. You start believing in everything some crime scene tech brings to you, and you’re either fat and lazy—”
“Hey, I ain’t Cueball!”
“—or you’re just plain retarded,” Ryker continued. He started trudging up the last set of stairs, mounting the flight with substantially less than vigor than when he had started. His chest already felt tight, and his breath was beginning to sharpen.
Christ. Washed up at thirty-eight. Good thing I never wasted any money on a gym membership I’d never use.
Ryker pushed open the door to the fourth floor and stepped out, Chee Wei right behind and absolutely no worse for wear; the climb probably hadn’t even elevated his heart rate. Ryker straightened his red and blue striped tie and strolled toward the squad room. Cueball had beaten them, but only just; as Ryker and Chee Wei entered the room, the fat detective was just pulling out his chair. A bag of doughnuts from Winchell’s sat on the desk before him.
“Hey Cueball, those double-long cinnamon twists have about four times the amount of fat and cholesterol required to choke a whale,” Chee Wei commented as they breezed past his desk.
Cueball patted his crotch.
“The only thing that’s double-long and fat is what’s right here, and I have the testimonials to prove it,” the rotund detective claimed loudly.
“Yeah right, like I care what they say about you when you’re singing karaoke for the twinks over at the Midnight Sun,” Chee Wei shot back, referencing one of the Castro’s better-known gay night clubs.
Cueball grunted, and his small eyes locked onto Ryker.
“Hey, Ryker! Looks like your little pet here needs to go back and complete his sensitivity training—some of the gay guys here might get offended by his act. Either that, or he’s trying to compensate for some latent sexuality he’s been repressin’ for too long.”
Chee Wei turned, his face turning red.
“Hey Wallace? Fuck you,” he said, voice even despite his obvious anger at the jibe.
Cueball laughed and pulled lowered his big ass into his chair. It creaked beneath his weight.
“Punk,” he said, opening the bag before him and pulling out a sticky glazed doughnut. “You know what you remind me of? A little Chihuahua on a leash, barkin’ up a storm but not able to do shit.”
“You—” Chee Wei started, but Ryker put a hand on his arm, interrupting.
“Enough,” Ryker told the younger detective, pulling him away. “We’ve got work to do.”
Chee Wei allowed himself to be pulled off, but not before giving Cueball an award-winning case of Evil Eye. Cueball laughed and licked his fingers.
“Like I said, a little Chihuahua...and now, you’re bein’ led away on your leash.” The fat cop bit into his doughnut. Chee Wei tensed, but Ryker continued to pull him away toward their pod.
“Don’t worry about that piece of shit,” Ryker said. “He’s not worth getting all riled up over. Let him choke on his doughnuts.”
Once Chee Wei was settled down, Ryker had him go over the murder book. There was nothing to add, other than a few isolated tidbits that had very little bearing on the case, namely the latest lab results. More would find their way to Ryker’s desk over the coming weeks, each hopefully more detailed than the last. Nevertheless, Ryker wasn’t holding out hope for a bonanza of physical evidence that would identify the killer. But anything that might help would be certainly welcome, even though the chain of command wouldn’t be content to wait for all the results to come in. If ever there was a case that required the slam-dunk, this was it.
Ryker made some inquiries into the health of Raymond—she was at home, resting comfortably, and taking her meds. He called Morales on his cell phone to see how he was holding out, and found that all was well at the Zhu woman’s residence; there hadn’t been any indication the house was being watched, which didn’t surprise Ryker at all. If James Lin wanted Zhu Xiaohui, he wouldn’t need to resort to strong-arm tactics when one telephone call to the assistant chief could likely result in what he wanted being hand-carried to his office. Ryker promised Morales that Chee Wei would be over to relieve him within an hour or so.
After that, Ryker paid a visit to the coffee machine and grabbed himself a tall cup of the extra-potent battery acid that the department called coffee, and lamented not stopping by a real coffee house on the way in. He dumped in a handful of Mini-Moo creamers to avoid suffering from a seared esophagus for the rest of his life, and plodded back toward his desk. He noticed a newspaper sticking out of his previously-empty mailbox as he walked past, and he altered course to grab it. Setting his coffee on the countertop, he pulled the publication from the narrow box and opened it up. He scanned the headline and groaned loudly.
“Ah, shit!”
Wealthy Chinese Industrialist’s Son
Slain in Hotel
By Emerson Loo
special to the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco - The son of wealthy Bay Area industrial magnate James Lin was found dead in a suite at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel at 222 Sansome Street. Cause of death was classified as a homicide.
Authorities are still trying to identify Mr. Lin’s assailant, but have not yet made an official statement regarding the cause of death. An undisclosed source within the San Francisco Police Department has confirmed on the condition of anonymity that Mr. Lin’s death was in part caused by ritual mutilation of his sexual organs...
“A real bummer, huh?”
Ryker looked up from the paper and slowly turned around. Cueball looked back at him from his desk, leaning back in his chair, fingers clasped across his protruding belly. Specks of glazed frosting dotted his lower lip, a few of which fell to his brown tie as he grinned widely.
“Yeah, that’s gotta be a real bummer for you and your team there, Supercop,” Cueball said. “I mean, here you are, your investigation depending on secrecy and all that, and then there’s a whole writeup on it in the Chronicle. Not that there was any way of keeping it quiet for long, but hey, another couple of days wouldn’t have hurt, right?”
Ryker felt his pulse rate increase. He rolled the paper up in one hand and lowered it to his side. His eyes bore into Wallace like laser beams. For his part, Wallace merely chuckled.
“Yeah, it’s got to suck to be you,” the fat detective chortled. He reached into the bag for another doughnut.
Ryker crossed the gap between them in three strides. One of the detectives in Wallace’s pod looked up at him in some surprise; at least one person in the room could understand body language. The detective rolled his chair back from his desk, either to put some distance between him and the brewing shitstorm, or to more easily jump in.
“You’re chickenshit, Wallace,” Ryker growled, towering over the fat cop. “You’ve always been chickenshit. Remember what happened to you yesterday when you thought you’d grown a pair?”
Wallace’s jocularity faded like a cold glass of water on a hot Arizona day.
“Yeah? So what’re you gonna do now, Supercop? You want to make this physical?” Wallace rose from his chair in a display of sudden agility that surprised everyone. All faces were turned their way, Ryker knew. There was no way this episode wouldn’t get some airtime inside the department.
Better dial it back a bit, a small voice inside him reasoned. You’re already persona non grata. You let this go much further, and it’s a suspension pending charges.
Ryker’s jaw clenched so tightly from the frustration that it made his muscles ache. He took a deep breath, and forced the tensed muscles in his shoulders and arms and hands to relax. It was a near-Herculean effort. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that Wallace had been the “undisclosed source”
cited in the article, and every part of Ryker wanted to extract vengeance. But vengeance would likely mean his badge.
Wallace apparently read it that way himself. He snorted, sneering.
“Yeah, not so tough after all, are you Ryker?” he pushed, trying to make it look like something it wasn’t. “Poor baby’s got his diaper in a bundle because some newspaper boy caught onto his case and blew it up in public. Boo-fucking-hoo, Ryker. Come back to me when your balls drop, and we’ll have ourselves a little talk, man to boy.”
Ryker took a sudden step toward Wallace and wound up for just an instant, with their faces only millimeters apart. That instant evaporated when Wallace reacted, almost stumbling backward over his chair. A quick titter of laughter went through the squad room.
“I don’t have anything to say to you except there’s a two-for-one special at Allstar Donuts,” he hissed. “Just think about it—for the price of twelve, you could get twenty-four of those heart plugs, and you might do us all a favor if you ate them all at once and vapor-locked right here at your desk. Of course, no one would notice, since you almost never haul your ass out of your chair except to get something to eat, take a dump, or go to lunch. I mean, what the hell, all of your clients are already dead, so why bother breaking a sweat trying to figure out the whodunit part, right? At the end of the day, they’re still dead, and you have some food to find.”
“Hey, fuck you, Ryker! I clear my cases—”
“Yeah, only after one or two generations of next of kin have either died or gone to a home for managed care,” Ryker interjected. “You make me sick, Wallace. Die, already. Please.”
“Am I interrupting something?”
Ryker glanced over his shoulder for a moment. Spider was standing behind him, a cup of Starbucks in one hand, a newspaper in the other. Furino’s narrow nose tracked from Ryker to Wallace and back again, like a weapon system trying to evaluate which target to engage first.
“I was just giving Cueball a tip on Allstar’s new two-for-one promotion,” Ryker said, before spinning on his heel and stalking toward his pod. Chee Wei was on his feet, face expressionless, but he’d been watching the whole thing.
“Next time, send him an email,” Spider said, walking along behind Ryker. “When you get a second, come in and talk with me.”
Oh, outstanding.
“You got it, lou.”
CHAPTER 18
The day went as desultorily slow as the one that had preceded it. Manning spent most of the time poring over Lin’s calendar and examining the list of invitees for his dinner party later in the evening. There were of course a host of names which were entirely unfamiliar to him, and a precious few who were. One of those names was Senator Testaverde, a moneyed Democrat who represented California in the Senate. The Senator was chairman of the Finance Committee, which seemed just like the political power someone like Lin would wish to ally himself with. Like Lin, Testaverde was more than just slightly well off; unlike Lin, he was the scion of a California real estate and entertainment magnate, now long since dead. Manning knew precious little about the Senator beyond what he had read in the newspapers: he was a Liberal with a capital L, which made him the party’s pet viper to sick on the GOP; he loved getting in newspapers and on television; he had a flashy lifestyle that was at times at odds with that of a member of the United States Senate; he was twice-divorced; and while he portrayed himself as a champion for the Common Man, he had as much in common with the majority of the vassals he represented as Manning did with Liberacé. If Lin had successfully managed a leech-grab onto Testaverde, then it had to be a two-way street.
The other name that leaped out at Manning was one that would be entirely overlooked in America. Ren Yun was a former member of the Chinese Communist Party, a functionary of the politburo, and an important one. He’d stepped down years ago when Jiang Zemin transitioned power to his replacement, and had avoided the spotlight ever since, as most Chinese politicians did when their reign came to an end. That the old man still had influence in some quarters of Chinese society was to be taken for granted, though Manning had no understanding how he and Lin were connected. Clearly, Lin’s time in the Chinese government had come to a close not long after Mao’s death, where Yun had managed to hold on for decades afterwards. No doubt his hand helped shape present-day China, though to what degree was anyone’s guess.
The rest of the names were players Manning didn’t know. It was a group of about twenty or so...a pretty damned big gathering, even if it was at a mansion in Sausalito. Would there be other individuals present as well, supporting the bigwigs? Manning felt that would be a certainty, though in what capacity one could only wonder. Security, for sure. At least the Senator would have a Secret Service escort. This didn’t make Manning nervous, though he presumed he would have to submit to a background check of sorts. He was certain his activities were off the Secret Service’s radar; he’d been cautious and adroit when it came to covering his tracks, and any events that might have triggered any alarms happened overseas. It was unlikely anything had made it back to the States.
Just the same, Manning cornered Baluyevsky when the Russian returned from whatever mission Lin had sent him on earlier in the day. Baluyevsky didn’t seem to be in much of a mood to chat, but Manning didn’t particularly care. They both answered to the same chain of authority.
“What is it, Manning?” Baluyevsky asked tersely when Manning entered his office. Like the man himself, it wasn’t exactly expressive; to say the room was merely Spartan might have been a drastic overstatement. The Russian’s bulk was so large that his desk looked too small for him, even though it was the same size as the desk in Manning’s own office.
“We need to go over this.” Manning put the list of invitations on Baluyevsky’s desk. “Not just who’s on it, but those who aren’t on it.”
“What do you mean, those who aren’t on it? Ah, you’re worried about the Secret Service, yes?” Baluyevsky smiled broadly, and the skin around his eyes crinkled. “You needn’t worry about them. As far as anyone knows, you are not an entity they would be interested in.”
“It’s not the Secret Service I’m worried about. It’s other folks. Who will be supporting these people?”
“Mr. Lin’s staff, of course.”
“Not what I meant. Who will be supporting Yun, for instance?”
Baluyevsky crossed his arms and laughed.
“You must be joking, Manning. Mr. Yun and Mr. Lin have been friends and allies for decades. If you think that Yun is somehow involved with—”
“Of course not. But someone on his staff? May be.”
The humor drained out of Baluyevsky slowly.
“You think someone on Yun’s staff would pose a threat to Mr. Lin? An interesting idea, but all are vouched for. All have either the approval of Mr. Lin or Mr. Yun. That was something I insisted on in the first place.”
“Don’t get lazy,” Manning advised. “A Chinese killed Lin Dan.”
“Really. And you couldn’t have done it?”
Manning snorted and shook his head.
“Not that way, no.”
“Ignore the sexual aspects,” Baluyevsky said. “If not for those, you could have committed the murder, and left the writing, correct?”
Manning considered it for a moment.
“Perhaps—though I’ve never tried to write Chinese characters in someone’s blood. But I don’t know that much about Lin’s past, so I couldn’t leave the message, from that aspect.”
Baluyevsky cocked his head.
“What do you mean?”
Manning sighed inwardly. Apparently, Lin hadn’t seen it fit to take Baluyevsky into his confidence completely. There were obviously things Lin did not want Baluyevsky to know, and one of those was the linkage between the scrawled message left on Lin Dan’s hotel room wall and Lin’s own past.
“The message must have some sort of relevance for Lin,” Manning said. “Otherwise, it’s a complete non sequitur.”
“Mr. Lin advises m
e he has no idea what the threat means,” Baluyevsky said. “Do you believe differently?”
Manning shrugged, wondering if he should even worry about trying to cover his tracks in this matter. Baluyevsky should know all about it anyway; how else to plan a defense?
“You’ll need to talk with Lin about that,” Manning said.
“As I’ve told you, I already have. Do you know something I do not?” Baluyevsky demanded.
“Talk to Lin about his past,” Manning recommended. “And do it soon.”
Baluyevsky stared up at Manning from behind his desk. His face was impassive, but Manning was certain the wheels were turning behind the cliff-like façade of his brow.
“If you know something,” he said after a time, “it would be in your best interest to tell me.”
“But apparently, it would not be in Mr. Lin’s. You and he need to discuss this, and leave me out of it. I’m not here to play any political games in this organization, nor am I angling for anything other than the salary that was promised to me. Once this mission is over, I leave. Understand that right now, Alexsey. I don’t want your job.” Manning tapped the list. “And that’s why I’m asking for the other names. If you want my opinion, leaving stones unturned at a time like this isn’t the wisest course of action. But you’re Lin’s security chief, you make that assessment. Me, I’m just going to keep the old man alive, because otherwise, I don’t get paid.”
“You truly are a mercenary,” Baluyevsky said distastefully.
And you’re not, you Russkie piece of shit? Manning wanted to shoot back, but he clamped down on his temper. Arguing over their philosophical differences wasn’t going to make things any better.
“What I am isn’t really important, Baluyevsky. What I do is. You want to start filling in the blanks as far as the supporting characters go, or do I need to do it myself?”
Baluyevsky looked down at the list before him. After a long moment, he nodded.
“I will attend to this, and I will present you with another list of names. From there, perhaps you and I can go over them together.” Baluyevsky hesitated for a moment, then grudgingly added, “You know much more about Chinese culture than I do. Perhaps you can see something I might have missed.”
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