Stealing the Dragon (2 page)

Chapter Three

“It’s big, ain’t it?”

Howard McClosky had been asking his wife Betty the same question for the past five minutes. It was a question he usually asked in the bedroom, a thought that almost made her smile, but she kept her mouth shut and gritted her teeth. She knew Howard got a little touchy about their private life and besides, she was trying her damnedest not to puke.

“And it’s getting bigger,” was all she said, glancing at the huge container ship and trying not to turn green. She turned away after a second and locked her eyes on the deck between her feet.

They were squeezed alongside the starboard rail of the
Alcatraz II
, a twin engine powerboat that ferried people from Pier 39 to the infamous island prison. They’d come all the way from Lubbock, Texas, and stood in line for three hours with thirty other people who were now crammed aboard right next to them, holding on to the rails for dear life. The tour guide had warned them San Francisco Bay got pretty choppy this time of year, but Betty thought he could have been a little more specific with the folks from out of town, which was pretty much everybody. Either that or hand out Dramamine on the dock. The sky that day might have been blue through the breaks in the fog, but the currents were hellacious. As far as Betty was concerned, it was
The Perfect Storm
out here. She expected to see George Clooney float by any second.

“It’s funny how your whole perspective changes once you’re on the boat,” mused Howard, totally oblivious to the rolling of the deck. Last time Betty checked, he was the only one onboard not staring at his shoes. She figured it must be all that spicy food he ate—the jalapeños fucked up his stomach so bad he couldn’t feel a thing. Probably why he farted so much, now that she thought of it. She started humming to herself to keep her mind off the waves.
Howard, my husband, the flatulent sailor
.

But to Howard, she just nodded dumbly as he continued his monologue.

“Like that big one there,” he said, jutting his chin at the massive container ship cutting across the bay. “A few minutes ago, it looked like we were a couple of miles away from Alcatraz and that ship was just coming under the Golden Gate. Now you’d swear we’re gonna hit the island any second and that ship is gonna meet us there, even though you gotta figure the captains would keep us at least a couple hundred yards apart. It’s gotta be a code or regulation, don’t you think?”

Betty looked up at the big ship, sensing Howard needed some kind of response. Even at home he needed at least an “uh-huh” or “I see what you mean” to egg him on, not satisfied asking a purely rhetorical question. Hard enough being married to such a talker, but to provide constant feedback, well, being a woman was never easy. Not wanting Howard to get pouty, Betty tore her eyes away from the undulating deck to verify Howard’s insightful observation about optical illusions.

Howard was right. The freighter looked as tall as a skyscraper, blotting out the sun, looming so close she thought she could touch it. She looked past Howard and saw the captain’s face as he shouted against the wind at one of the crew standing near the bow. Whipping her big hair back toward the freighter, Betty saw the rivets in the hull, the dull scratches in the paint, even smelled the sour tang of oil from somewhere in the boiler room. Her eyes glued to the black ship, Betty reached out, grabbed Howard’s hand, and started screaming.

A second later, the impact knocked the smaller boat right out of the water. The sound of metal hulls colliding drowned out the passengers, the wind, and the churning water below. The powerboat bent nearly in half, shooting twenty feet into the air before landing against the rocks at the base of Alcatraz. The passengers and crew flew off the deck like ping-pong balls shot from a cannon, splashing into the water a good thirty yards from the island.

Betty and Howard, still hand in hand, hit the water hard and sank a good fifteen feet before their natural buoyancy brought them to the surface. Betty’s hair broke the water first, followed by Howard in the midst of a sentence he’d started just before Betty got her scream out, something to do with relative distances at sea.

Betty gasped. The water was ice cold, the current yanking them and twisting them around. She tilted her head back and tried to keep her mouth above the waves, her eyes glued to the mammoth black hull just fifty feet away. The container ship had run aground on the banks of Alcatraz, the sharp metal prow digging into the coarse sand, the giant vessel listing sharply sideways.

Betty thought she heard a Klaxon somewhere in the distance, but she couldn’t be sure. As the waves lapped against her ears, it sounded like a large group of people were singing, or maybe screaming, a muffled chorus somewhere nearby. She saw spots and figured she was losing consciousness, but she still clung to Howard and figured she’d be all right. All that hot air should keep them bobbing on the surf till the Coast Guard arrived.

I knew there was a reason I married you
, she thought happily, squeezing his hand beneath the waves.

Chapter Four

San Francisco Bay looked like the freeway at rush hour.

The container ship listed drunkenly on its keel: the bow stuck in the loose shoal around Alcatraz, the stern braced by two tugboats commandeered by the Coast Guard. Two cutters idled on either side of the huge vessel while a harbor patrol boat circled Alcatraz Island to maintain a secure perimeter.

Just beyond this tenuous ring of authority, chaos reigned. Sailboats, powerboats, and even a few rowboats jockeyed for position as tourists, locals, and reporters tried to get a closer look at the spectacle.

Overhead, a Coast Guard helicopter hovered noisily, its rotors blowing foam off the already choppy water. Within an hour of the accident there had been almost eight helicopters in the sky, most of them from television news bureaus. The choppers from Channel 5 and Channel 7, two stations in a fierce ratings war for the right to call themselves “The Bay Area’s Favorite News Source,” almost collided directly over the ship. That prompted the Coast Guard to establish a no-fly zone the rest of the day.

Onboard, the scene was no less frenetic, the deck crowded with the Coast Guard, INS, Customs Service, Harbor Patrol, FBI, and the San Francisco Police. It got so jammed that uniformed cops were sent to keep order after an FBI agent took a swing at a guy from Customs when the two men bumped into each other.

The almost two hundred refugees and what remained of the crew were taken ashore and held in a makeshift command center on Treasure Island, the former naval base. Interpreters were already there, trying to figure out what happened.

Back on the ship, it was obvious something had gone terribly wrong.

The area immediately outside the main cabin was cordoned off with yellow tape, which caused an eddy in the foot traffic across the deck. Two homicide cops stood just inside the tape watching the forensics teams go to work.

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Vincent Mango announced, bracing an arm to compensate for the slant of the deck. He was dressed immaculately, an Italian sport coat offset by pleated slacks cuffed over Ferragamo shoes. His tie was a subtle shade of green, which, at that precise moment, seemed to match his complexion.

“It’s all in your head, Vinnie,” said the man next to him, voice booming like the surf. Almost six-eight and built like a defensive lineman, Beauregard Jones looked enormous even against the backdrop of the ship. He wore jeans, a black T-shirt, and a leather shoulder rig holding a Beretta stretched taut across his chest. He wore no jacket, smiling broadly at his partner as if he were immune to the cold, his ebony skin shining from the spray off the water. He said, “You can’t be seasick if you’re not at sea.”

Vinnie tried to focus on a spot between his feet, the only part of the deck that didn’t seem to be moving. “I hate boats.”

“It’s a ship, Vinnie,” replied Beau, “not a boat.”

“Whatever.”

“Nah, this shit’s important,” Beau insisted. “You tell those guys with the Coast Guard you’re on a boat, just see if they keep takin’ you seriously. Next thing you know, we won’t get a ride off this thing.”

The prospect of staying onboard got Vinnie’s full attention. “OK, it’s a ship.”

“That ran aground,” said Beau. “It’s like standing on a pier.”

“Don’t tell me how I feel,” snapped Vinnie, who risked raising his head to glare at his partner. “The deck is rolling.”

“Aye-aye,” said Beau amicably. “But I’m tellin’ you—we ain’t movin’. The boat’s stuck.”

“I thought you said it was a ship.”

“Whatever.”

Vinnie leaned over and spat between his feet. “Let’s change the subject.”

“Fine.”

“So what do you think?” Vinnie jerked his chin toward the cabin.

Beau squinted against the wind and frowned.

“This is a freak show, Vinnie.”

Vinnie nodded slowly. “That’s what I think. You sure this is gonna be ours?”

Beau shook his head. “Hell, no. At best, we’re gonna have to share.”

“You must’ve dealt with the feds before, when you were in Narcotics.”

“Lots of times,” replied Beau. “Mostly DEA, but the boys from the bureau showed up once or twice.”

“How was it?”

“A cluster fuck, usually,” replied Beau. “They didn’t share information, got in the way during the investigation, then took credit after the bust went down.”

“Swell,” said Vinnie. “I can hardly wait.”

Beau smiled at his partner. “This one’s gonna be worse.”

“How you figure?”

“Remember all those news choppers were here earlier?”

Vinnie nodded but didn’t say anything, his gaze returning to the spot between his shoes.

“We’re gonna have reporters up our asses till this is over. And since the nice Chinese folks down in the ship’s hold probably didn’t have green cards, visas, or even a get-outta-jail-free card, you just know the fuckin’ State Department is gonna stick their noses in. That makes it political, which means the mayor’ll get involved.”

Vinnie moaned. Beau couldn’t tell if it was because of the jostling of the ship or the mention of the mayor.

“Guess we don’t get a lot of choice in the matter,” muttered Vinnie.

“To serve and protect,” intoned Beau solemnly. “Or is that just the motto of the L.A. police?”

“I think it’s ‘protect and serve’ in San Francisco,” said Vinnie. “We serve later than they do.”

“That sounds about right,” agreed Beau. “But either way, we’re stuck out here till the next chopper arrives to take us back to dry land.”

“When are they gonna fly the stiffs out?” asked Vinnie.

“Guy from forensics says it’ll be at least another hour,” replied Beau. “I just hope we’re not in the same chopper.”

Vinnie risked standing upright and took a deep breath. “What was the count?”

Beau took a small black notebook from his back pocket and gave it a cursory glance. “Four.”

“That include the guy in the hold?” asked Vinnie, grimacing. “The one who fell?”

Beau frowned. “We both know he wasn’t killed by no fall.”

“Yeah,” Vinnie shrugged. “So that makes five?”

Beau glanced again at the notebook. “Just eyeballing it, I’d say we’ve got a broken neck, at least one crushed larynx, one ‘no visible causes,’ and one extremely fatal stab wound.”

Now it was Vinnie’s turn to flinch. “Want another look?”

“Not really,” replied Beau, shaking his head. “But we probably should, before it gets cleaned up.”

The two men walked around the side of the cabin to a heavy steel door set between the round glass of the windows overlooking the deck from the bridge. Slumped against the bottom of the door was a Chinese man in his early thirties, a scraggly growth of beard at the very base of his chin. The rest of his face was long and narrow, his almond-shaped eyes staring vacantly at the two cops.

Embedded in his chest was a knife approximately eight inches long, the blade an anodized black material that seemed to absorb all surrounding light. A rusty trail of dried blood ran from the center of the door to the back of the man’s head, tracing the path of his collapse. Still clutched in his right hand was a gun, a small-frame automatic. Less than a foot away, a brass shell casing gleamed dully in the afternoon light.

Written just above his head on the left side of the door was the number “49.” It had been scrawled using the same dark paint that once flowed freely through the dead man’s veins.

“Jesus,” Beau muttered under his breath.

“This wasn’t the refugees,” said Vinnie.

Beau nodded. “Most didn’t look strong enough to walk without help, let alone kill someone holding a gun,” he said, adding, “But they did a number on that guy who fell.”

Vinnie grimaced again. “Don’t remind me.”

Beau turned to look along the length of the deck. “The others were clean, Vinnie,” he said into the wind. “Really clean.”

Vinnie followed his gaze, then looked at the windows of the cabin. They were streaked with grime but otherwise unremarkable. He knew there were three more bodies inside, but you couldn’t tell from where they were standing. There had been no signs of a struggle and almost no blood.

“After this guy out here, it happened fast,” mused Beau. “Not a lot of people know how to kill like that.”

“That could narrow the field.”

“That’s what I’m thinking.” Beau’s eyes drifted out of focus as he stood facing the Golden Gate Bridge in the near distance. The wind picked up and Beau hunched his shoulders, seeming to feel the cold for the first time that day.

Vinnie noticed the expression on his partner’s face. “You’re not thinking of someone in particular?” he asked incredulously.

Beau shook his head, his eyes shifting their focus to Vinnie. He forced a smile before answering.

“No, not necessarily.”