Neon Dragon (15 page)

He looked up, past me to the ceiling. I was right about the moisture. There was some despair in there, too.

“I guess my direction is pretty clear now.”

I caught his eyes and brought them back to mine.

“Anthony. Did you murder Mr. Chen?”

He seemed surprised at the question. “No, Mr. Knight. I didn't.”

“Then don't even consider giving up. Mr. Devlin and I can do everything for you except keep your spirits up. That's your full-time job right now. Maybe seeing your father would help both of you.”

I can't say that I made any inroads, but he looked as if he was thinking.

“Anthony, I'd like to have the luxury of being able to lead up to this slowly, but I've got to make every minute count. For your sake. I was over at Harvard. I talked to Gail and Rasheed.”

For the first time in the conversation I saw the lights go on. “And the Big Bopper, Abdul.”

I even caught the makings of a grin on that one. I regretted having to get heavy.

“They told me about the suicide attempt.” So much for the grin. “You don't have to explain it. I just feel terribly sorry about the pain you must have been in at the time. What I've got to ask you now is this. Is there any chance at all that you could be there again?”

The tears had dried. He was looking right at me, which helped with the belief factor.

“No.” He shook his head for emphasis. “Whatever pain my dad's going through, I won't put him through that.”

I had to make a judgment. I came down on the side of running the risk. “OK, Anthony. I haven't said anything to anyone here. I won't.”

He just nodded, but I think the trust meant something.

“Do you need anything?”

He shook his head. “I appreciate everything you're doing, Mr. Knight.”

You have no idea, Anthony.
I was thinking about Harry and Red Shoes.

I stood up and reached across to put a hand on his shoulder.

“I know that between the two of us, you have the tougher job, Anthony. But try to keep up your confidence. You might use some of that heavy time for praying.”

“I do, Mr. Knight. A lot.”

“Then you've got three of us working for you. And think about what I said about your father.”

He stood up, too. Before we went in opposite directions, I thought I'd double-check something.

“Last Sunday. You said you went into Chinatown about two. You wanted Chinese food?”

“Terry came by. He wanted to go in. So I went with him.”

“His idea.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you picked the Ming Tree Restaurant. Why?”

“No, sir. He did.”

For some reason it wrangled me that the two disagreed on the probably minor point of who suggested the Chinatown trip.

“Had you been there before?”

“Not that I can remember. It was just convenient to everything that was going on.”

“The New Year's business.”

“That's right.”

I toyed with the idea of confronting him with the disparity between their stories, but on intuition I decided to file it for another day. While I had him, I thought I'd get out a thought that had been making shuttle trips between my conscious and subconscious.

“Assuming you didn't do it, which I do, and there are two witnesses who say they saw you do it, it's got to be either a mistake or a frame-up. I have trouble with mistake. In that neighborhood, you don't exactly blend. That means frame-up. Why you?”

“Maybe that's why. I've been thinking about it. I stood out like a sore thumb. People would believe the witnesses if they said they noticed anything I did, even with everything going on. I was convenient.”

“That's true. But if someone were planning to murder the old Chinese man, they really lucked out to have you pass through the neighborhood at the right moment.”

“If it weren't me, I guess they would have picked someone else.”

“I guess.”
And someone else would be on trial, and I'd still be doing nasty little errands for Whitney Caster.

I REPLAYED EVERY CARD
, shuffled the deck, and re-replayed them again and again in my mind over a good scrod dinner at the 99 down by the
Boston Globe
offices. I was up to my eyeballs in nagging little questions and inconsistencies, like, Whose idea was it to go to Chinatown? Who picked the restaurant? And who cares? Except, why do they disagree on such a minor point?

ASSUMING ANTHONY WAS NOT GUILTY
, why would someone decide to frame him, when it was mere chance that brought him to that neighborhood, let alone to the right spot on the right street at the right time? Why in the world would anyone shoot the old man anyway? Was the old man the real target, or a means of getting at Anthony—or Judge Bradley? Another possibility was that the shooting was what Mike Loftus's column in the
Globe
intimated—another act of random violence. On the other hand, I've never seen random violence result in a carefully constructed, almost airtight frame-up.

Then there was the card I didn't want to turn up, but it was certainly there in the deck. What if Anthony were guilty? That would, in fact, simplify things by giving simple answers to most of the other questions, leaving only the question, “Why?”

Two eyewitnesses with no apparent reason to lie, plus Anthony's having the perfect opportunity in the middle of Chinese New Year's pandemonium, were on the side of “guilty.”

As I chased the raisins through a bread pudding for dessert, I realized that the only real argument on the side of “innocent” was the straight-up look in Anthony's eyes when he said he didn't do it. And even lie detectors can be fooled by a clever subject.

There was one other thing, and this was the itch I couldn't scratch. Why would poor, sweet, defenseless Red Shoes risk, and in fact give, her life to get me to help cool, together, unruffled Mei-Li, who seemed about as blissfully problem-free as Barney?

WHEN I GOT HOME
, I called Harry Wong.

He was slightly out of breath. I gathered it was not from jogging—more likely from getting to the phone while keeping his breathing as shallow as possible not to disturb the rib cage.

“How's the recovery? Those ribs must be painful.”

“I've seen healthier ribs with barbecue sauce. What're you up to, Michael? How's the case going?”

“Well, it's like this, Harry. I've got enough questions to keep
Jeopardy
on the air for a year. But there's one in particular. I have just a hunch that if I can find an answer to this one, a lot of other things will fall in line.”

“Mei-Li.”

“Bothers you, too.”

“That girl actually died to get that fortune cookie to you. And for what? It was certainly wasted on Mei-Li.”

“I keep wondering what kind of help the fortune-cookie waitress was promising me. She knew I was there about the murder of Mr. Chen. She was listening to my conversation with the witness through the interpreter. Three-quarters of it was in Chinese. I think there's only one way to find out.”

“We go back to Mei-Li.”

“One of us does. I don't think you're ready for another round.”

“Really, Mike? How're you going to talk your way past the Dragon Lady?”

“I haven't worked that one out yet.”

“I think I have. It's going to take nerve. I know you've got plenty of that.”

“So tell me the plan. I'm open to suggestion.”

“It's also going to take a knowledge of Chinese. How're you fixed in that department?”

“Less than adequate. You're still on the bench, Harry.”

“There's no way you can do this without me, Mike. You're stuck with me.”

I thought about the way Harry looked the last time I saw him. He'd have had to improve to die.

“I don't think so. Out of curiosity, what's the plan?”

“Here it is. You pick me up here tomorrow morning about nine.”

“Yeah.”

“That's it. You pick me up about nine.”

“And then what?”

“And then I tell you the rest of the plan.”

“You could tell me the rest now.”

“That's right, I could. Then I could pick up the
Globe
in the morning and read about how parts of some unidentified Puerto Rican–WASP were found in six different places. When they put the jigsaw puzzle together—guess who?”

“I'll pick you up about nine.”

THE
GLOBE
HAD A SPREAD
the next morning covering half a page in the city section devoted to the funeral of Mr. Chen. The silent procession of mourners through Chinatown gave testimony to how deeply a quiet, good soul can move the heart of an entire community. I found myself wishing that he could feel the outpouring of love. The funeral mass was said by the auxiliary bishop for the Chinatown area. It was an honor, but I think he would have been even more deeply touched by the tears on the faces of the line of children that extended the length of Tyler Street.

HARRY WAS ON THE SIDEWALK
outside of his apartment house at nine sharp, as advertised, bundled up in layers of clothing until only his eyes showed below the fur cap. As he got into the car, I watched him move to see how much mobility had come back. If I were a scout for the Patriots, I'd be more likely to draft Barbara Walters.

He muffled a groan as he slid his rib cage into the front seat as if it were Ming dynasty porcelain.

“So how're you feeling, Harry?”

He turned his head three degrees. “Terrific. You want to wrestle?”

I sat there looking at him. “This is crazy.”

“Just drive, Mike. It's early. I get better as the morning goes on. Drive to Chinatown. Come at it from the South Station side. Just park as close as you can. I want to get to that place on Beach Street without walking past the no-name coffee shop.”

I put the car in gear and looked for a way to make a U-turn on Memorial Drive.

“Harry, what's with the outfit? Is it that cold? You look like Na-nook of the North End.”

He squinted crosswise at me. “You're saying I look Italian?”

I took another look and had the first good laugh I'd had since I gave up laughing—around the time this case began. He was referring to the fact that the North End of Boston is the domain primarily of people with more vowels in their names than Harry could buy on
Wheel of Fortune.

“What you look like is Outer Mongolian.”

“It's partly disguise. The idea is to get through to the Dragon Lady for five minutes before the boys come out to play. Actually, three minutes would do it. Do you have a hat with you?”

“In the back. I only wear it if it's below zero.”

“Why?”

“Because it makes me look like Henry Osterwald, Harvard, class of '94. You remember our classmate, the king of hats?”

He managed to look at me sideways. His neck had loosened up a good ten degrees. “Is it that bad?”

“I don't wear it until everyone else's eyelids are frozen shut.”

“How about when a Chinese street gang would like to separate your ears by about six feet?”

“Then, too. Tell me the plan.”

Harry didn't start right away. He seemed to be checking the extent of ice that rimmed the sides of the Charles River.

“I think it's time you knew a little more about the culture you're invading, Mike. This goes back a ways. You've heard of the tongs.”

“Sure.”

“You know much about them?”

“No.”

“A tong was like a club, an association. The word ‘tong' means ‘hall,' ‘gathering place.' They were first set up in San Francisco. There was a wave of immigrants that came over to work on the railroads and the gold mines. They were pretty close to slave labor. They had to look to each other for protection. Some of the large families banded together for mutual support. Anyone with a name like ‘Lee' or ‘Liu' had plenty of relatives to form a family association. But the ones who didn't belong to a large family were out of luck. They formed the first tongs. They grew pretty fast, because they could recruit anyone, regardless of family name. You've heard of the tong wars.”

“Long time ago.”

“Right. Originally, the purpose of the tongs was pretty good. Mutual protection and help. And heaven knows they needed it. They were in a strange country, and not exactly embraced with open arms.

“Then some years later there came a time when the tongs were taken over by leaders who got them almost exclusively into organized crime. The biggest moneymaker was gambling. Probably second was prostitution. Everything from shacks to ‘parlors' were supplied by the open buying of girls from age two to twenty. They were smuggled in from China, usually through Canada first. Then, of course, there were drugs—opium being the big one. This goes back to the late nineteenth century.”

“Is this what we're playing with in Boston?”

“Bear with me, Mike. I want you to know it all. You have to know where it came from. You drive, I'll talk. At different times, there were wars among the tongs, especially in San Francisco and New York. Sometimes it was over a killing, sometimes over control of territories, particularly in New York and San Francisco. The warriors
were usually the professional hit men of the tong called the
boo how doy.
In the early days they used to use ceremonial hatchets to split skulls. That's where we got the word ‘hatchetmen.'

“There were so many killings over the fifty or so years of the wars that the tongs got a bad name. You almost never hear the name used by the Chinese. That doesn't mean the organizations are gone.

“Many of the tongs are controlled by leaders from triads back in Hong Kong. Some of them are actually American branches of triads.”

“You've got a new word there, Harry. By the way, do you want the heat on, or would you fry in that get-up?”