Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense (51 page)

Ernie and I remained hidden. We could see each other from across the street, but the two MPs couldn't see us.

It took twenty minutes for three sailors, lost in their drunkenness, to wander down the road. They were little fellows, in uniform, hats tilted at odd angles. Two of them had beer bottles in their hands, and each had his wallet sticking out from beneath his tunic, folded over his waistband.

The navy's into tradition. Even if it's stupid. Or maybe especially if it's stupid. No pockets.

We let the sailors pass us. I was glad Ernie didn't warn them. Of course, he wasn't the type to warn them anyway.

They didn't see us as they passed. They were laughing and joking, and I doubt they would have noticed a jet plane if it had swooped down five feet over their heads.

What did swoop down was Budusky and his partner. Two of the sailors went down before the third even realized what was happening. He swung his beer bottle, but it missed its mark and he was enveloped by the two marauding behemoths.

Ernie and I slid out of our hiding places and floated up the hill, my roll of dimes clenched securely in my right fist. Ernie smashed his mallet into the back of the MP's head, and I knew all our problems were over with him. But just as I launched my first punch at Budusky, he swiveled and caught the blow on his shoulder. I punched again, but I was off balance from having missed the first blow, and he countered and caught me in the ribs. It was hard, but I've had worse, and then we were toe to toe, belting each other, slugging viciously. It could have gone either way, and I was happy to see Ernie looming up behind him. I jabbed with my left and backed off, waiting for it all to end, but then, as if a trapdoor had opened beneath his feet, Ernie disappeared. I realized that one of the sailors had gotten up and, thinking Ernie was one of the enemy, had grabbed him and pulled him down. Another of the sailors came to, and now the three of them were rolling around on the ground, flailing clubs and beer bottles at each other, cursing, spitting, and scratching.

Something blurred my vision, and Budusky was on me. I twisted, slipped a punch, and caught him with a good left hook in the midsection. He took it, punched back, and then we were wrestling. I lost my footing, pulled him down with me, and we rolled down the incline. I threw my weight and kept us rolling, I wasn't sure why. Just to get us into the light, I guess. Our momentum increased our speed, and finally we jarred to a stop.

Blind chance had determined that it would be Budusky's back that hit the cement pole with the full force of our rolling bodies. I punched him a couple of times on the side of his head before I realized that he was finished. I got up in a crouch and checked his pulse. It was steady. I slapped his face a couple of times. His eyes opened. Before he could pull himself together, I rolled him over on his stomach, pulled my handcuffs out from the back of my belt, and locked his hands securely behind the small of his back.

I heard whistles and then running feet. The shore patrol surrounded me and then a couple of MPs. The MPs stood back, as if they wanted nothing to do with this.

I lifted Budusky by the collar and pushed his face back to the pavement.

“Why? Why'd you kill Lockworth?”

His face was contorted, grimacing in pain. His eyes were clenched. I lifted him and slammed him back again.

“It was your dad, wasn't it? Your dad was a sailor. And he left you, you and your mother.”

It was an old story and didn't take a great leap of imagination. An illegitimate kid from Norfolk, growing up to hate the navy, joining the army as an MP, finding his opportunity to take his revenge. A few bumps, a few bruises, a few dollars, and a sailor would get over it. It was the least they owed him for what his dad had done to him and his mother. Until he went too far. And killed.

I heard Budusky talking. It was choking out of his throat.

“He left us, like you said. That's why they owed me.”

“And when you last heard from him …”

“Yeah.” The tears seemed to be squeezed out of his eyes. “When the last letter came, he was on the
Kitty Hawk
.”

E
RNIE AND
I
left the next day with the date for Budusky's courtmartial set for next month.

Back in Seoul the first sergeant requested that the venue be changed about a hundred miles north, to Camp Henry in Taegu. Ernie and I had to appear in court as witnesses, and it wouldn't be smart to give the MPs in Pusan a chance to get at us.

I could understand their feelings. They saw us as traitors to the Military Police Corps. Maybe we were.

But none of those MPs ever sat down to write a letter to the parents of the late Petty Officer Third Class Gerald R. Lockworth.

I did.

It was the
first case I took that I didn't want. My instincts were right, too, because it also turned out to be the first case that made me wonder whether I wanted to be a private investigator for the rest of my life.

“And she doesn't really even want me, either,” I fumed. I was ranting to my sometime partner, Bill Smith, at the Peacock Rice Shop on Mott Street. “Because I don't know Mandarin. She almost stomped out when she found that out. Stuck-up Taiwan lady! And she absolutely refused to speak Cantonese. She insisted we speak English. Can you believe that?”

“I always insist you speak English,” Bill pointed out. He lifted sauteed squid from the serving dish into his rice bowl.

“Don't start!” I speared my chopsticks into a mass of deep green watercress in glistening sauce. “You big coarse clumsy foreign characters are exactly what the problem is, anyway.”

Bill stopped a piece of squid just short of his mouth. “Foreign?”

I was feeling argumentative and crabby. “I grew up in this country.
Some
people spent their childhoods trotting around the world.”

“That was my adolescence, and you grew up in Chinatown, which you've always said is another
planet
. Listen, Lydia, how about we talk about the case before you stab me with a chopstick?”

“Let me eat first,” I said sulkily. I tried the squid; it was pungent and tender. It cheered me up a little, and the smoky, jasmine-scented tea cheered me more. Maybe my blood sugar was just low. “Actually,” I said aloud, “maybe I was just nervous.”

“Mrs. Lee made you nervous?”

I hated to admit it, but it was true. “She's a very powerful woman in Chinatown. She owns four big factories here.”

“Factory” was Chinatown for “sweatshop,” but Bill knew that. “My mother was terrified I'd offend her. It would have humiliated my mother if Mrs. Lee hadn't approved of me.”

“But you say she didn't.”

“No, but she hired me. She won't criticize me publicly while I'm working for her. That would make her look foolish, you see. Hiring someone as obviously inadequate as I am.”

“I think you're adequate. I think you're way beyond adequate. Don't glare at me, tell me about the case. You're hiring me. What are we doing?”

“Following a woman. I figured you'd be good at that.”

“Only if she's gorgeous and small and Chinese and furious like you.”

He drank some beer, and I glared at him.

“I know why you're mad.” He put the bottle down. “You hate this woman for making you nervous. You wanted to turn her down, but you had to take her case so your mother wouldn't lose face, and now you're stuck. Boy, you really hate being told what to do, don't you?”

“You should know.” I finished the squid. The stainless steel teapot wasn't empty yet, so I poured another cup.

Bill waited until I'd finished before he took out his cigarettes. “Is it all right?”

I didn't know if he was asking me if he could smoke now, or if I felt better. “Go ahead.” Then I sighed, ran my hand through my hair. “I guess you're right.”

“Well, that's rare enough.” He dropped a match in the white ashtray with the red peacock on it. “Then the case is okay, it's the client who bothers you?”

I shook my head. “I don't like this case.”

“Why? What's it about?”

“Mrs. Lee wants us to follow her son's fiancée. A woman named Jill Moore.”

“She doesn't sound Chinese.”

“That's sort of the point. She's tall and blonde and according to Mrs. Lee completely untrustworthy. Mrs. Lee thinks she's cheating on her son.”

“Does her son think so?”

“No, and Mrs. Lee doesn't want him to know what we're doing until we have proof.”

“Do you know him? The son?”

I nodded. “Lee Kuan Cheng. Kuan Cheng Lee to you. He's a few years younger than me, but when you grow up around here, you sort of know everybody.”

“What's he like?”

“When he was twelve he took on my twin cousins in the schoolyard because they beat him out on a math test. He's very competitive. They fought like weasels in a sack; I had to separate them. I think I still have a scar.”

“Can I see it?”

“Not a chance.”

“Sounds like your cousins were sort of competitive, too.”

“In my family? Don't be ridiculous.”

Bill tipped the ash off his cigarette. “So what don't you like about it?”

“She wants it to be true.”

“Mrs. Lee does?”

“Yes. She was sitting there with an I-told-you-so smile, as though she'd already proved it. ‘Jill Moore like rice,' she said. She looked like—what is it you people say? The cat that ate the canary?”

“That's what we people say. What does that mean, to like rice?”

“Yellow fever. Whites who are attracted to Asians just because we're exotic, or whatever it is your people think we are.”

“Paranoid.”

“Is that attractive?”

“On you it is. Go on.”

I sighed, but I went on. “Jill Moore and Kuan Cheng are both NYU students. Kuan Cheng is getting an MBA so he can go into his mother's business. Jill Moore's in Asian studies.”

“That's suspicious.”

“Mrs. Lee thinks so. Kuan Cheng took Jill over to Mrs. Lee's apartment about six weeks ago, trying to make a good impression on the future mother-in-law. It was the first and only time they've ever met. She got Jill alone for twenty minutes, and based on that conversation, she's sure Jill Moore is only interested in Kuan Cheng for some perverse white-creature sexual reason.”

“Don't knock white-creature sexual perversions until you've tried them.”

“Oh, drop it, will you?” Sometimes I'm in the mood for that sort of stuff from Bill, but not always. “Anyhow, when I asked Mrs. Lee what made her suspect that, she gave me this superior look and said, ‘Just, mother know. You follow, you see.' I wanted to sock her.”

“Sounds to me like she wants to break up what she considers an unsuitable match for her baby. That's not admirable, but it's not unusual.”

“Yeah, but I like happy endings. If Jill Moore and Kuan Cheng Lee love each other, what business is it of his mother's? I mean, who
asked
her? But if I can't get proof that he's being cheated on, she won't believe it's because she was wrong. She'll go around telling all of Chinatown what an incompetent detective I am. That would be terrible for my mother.”

“So,” Bill said, “you can't win either way. If she's right, you'll be disillusioned. If she's wrong, you'll be in trouble.”

“That's it,” I sighed. “Exactly.”

The waiter appeared, smiling shyly. He brought us the check and two glass bowls of quivering maroon gelatin, each crowned with an almond cookie.

“What's that?” Bill eyed his bowl suspiciously.

I looked over to the door where Mr. Han, the proprietor, smiled broadly at me. I called to him in Chinese; he answered.

“It's a bean paste jelly his new chef makes,” I told Bill. “He says even white people like it.”

“At least he admits I'm a person.”

“Well, he didn't exactly say that.” He put his cigarette out, and we tried the jelly. It was sweet, tasting delicately of lychee and orange.

“Tell him I like it,” Bill said.

I called to Mr. Han again. From his post by the door he smiled and bowed.

“What you're speaking with him,” Bill said, “that's Cantonese?”

“Uh-huh. Only spoken by peasants like Uncle Hun-jo and me. I'm sure Mrs. Lee understands it, since she's lived in Chinatown twenty years, but she wouldn't stoop to speak such a harsh, nasty-sounding language.”