The Gumshoe Diaries (7 page)

“
I KNOW JEW WHEN I HEAR IT,”
Angelo
barked!

“Besides, Chinatown is the next block over,
and Johnny and me hear Chinese all the time,” he added as a matter
of fact in a much calmer tone.

“
Alright, alright, don’t bust a vein
.
Do you remember anything that he said?”

“How many times I gotta tell you, I don’t
understand Jew talk!”

“Come on Angelo, you don’t remember anything?
It’s your old pal Whitey you’re talking to. Everyone knows that
you’re the unofficial gatekeeper for gossip and secrets in this
town,” I said, laying it on thick as I stroked his ego.

“Why the Bella Terra is where all the A-list
come to let their hair down and
mangiare
in the dark while
they ping on one another over bottles of vino.”

A smile spread across Angelo’s gigantic
cranium, apparently that line stroked his ego hard enough to jog a
memory.

“
Un minuto
, there is something else.
He said the same Chinese word many times on both calls,” Angelo
added.

“I thought you said he was speaking Jew,
your words?
”

“Yes, yes he was, but he used this one
Chinese word over and over?”

“Well, what was it?”

“
Femmina
, you know, bitch,” he said a
little louder than he meant to, drawing a little attention from the
next booth.

“Really, and the Chinese have a word for
bitch,” I asked stifling a grin?

“Yes, yes, bitch, that’s what he said.”

“How do you know that word in Chinese?”

“It’s no mystery. We get our tiramisu from a
Chinese bakery down the street. The delivery boy is always yelling
at his girlfriend on his cell phone. Bitch comes up a lot in their
conversations,” Angelo explained. Actually, I don’t think there is
a word for bitch in Chinese, but I decided not to make a big deal
about it lest this conversation linger longer than need be.

“Maybe bitch is a term of endearment, did you
think of that? You know how kids are today, homes are cribs, bad is
good, up is down, and sometimes bitch just means honey or sweetie,”
I explained.

Angelo thought about that for a minute and
then shook his head as he finished his second glass of wine. He
made a face like he had just bit into a lemon and then replied,
“
madre di dio,
these children, this world!” He waived at
Marco who was standing at the host station sipping a club soda. The
lean head waiter took a big sip of his drink and then fast walked
over to our table.

“Si Senori,” he said.

“More wine Marco,” Angelo ordered.

“Si Senori,” Marco replied. He turned to
leave but Angelo stopped him before he got too far.

“Wait, Marco wait,” bellowed Angelo!

“Si Senori?”

“You were here this morning, yes?”

“Si Senori.”

“Do you remember the little Jew, the one from
the deli uptown, he was arguing with his telephone, you remember
that?”

“Si Senori.”

“What do you remember exactly,” I asked
butting in.

“The little man was angry with someone on his
cell,” Marco answered.

“I see, what else,” I replied, giving him
more time to remember?

“Um, he mentioned the polizia a couple of
times, that’s about it” he answered.

“What about em?”

“Nothing really, He said they were
stupid
, and that they deserved whatever happened next,”

That got my attention. Jai didn’t strike me
as the violent or threatening type, and I was pretty sure he didn’t
socialize with any of the boys in blue?
Blue
boys maybe, but
not any of the blue crew. I pressed a little harder.

“Come on Marco, what the hell? I know you
fella, you speak four languages, including Hebrew, and you’re the
eyes and ears for the tabloids around town. There isn’t a paparazzi
worth his salt that doesn’t grease your palm weekly for what you
see and overhear, so what gives?”

Marco smiled thinly and considered my blatant
kowtowing. He would have blown me off if it weren’t for the lethal
stare he was receiving from Johnny.

“Well, he didn’t name names, but he was angry
at a cop I think, referring to him as sarge or something like
that,” Marco added.

“
Sarge huh?
You’re certain it wasn’t
lieutenant,” I asked, suspecting Celaya?

“I’m positive, and he was nearby too because
Jai said he saw him and looked out the window. I looked when he did
and saw one of those unmarked cars across the street. You know the
kind that are even more obvious then the black and whites.”

“Did you see what the driver looked
like?”

“No. Jai left abruptly and trotted across the
street and spoke through the window for a couple of seconds then
went around and got in the car with whoever was driving. And that’s
about it. So if you’ll excuse me I’ll go fetch the wine,” replied
Marco. He turned on his heel and left, this time uninterrupted by
the boss.

I sat there and stared out the same window
Jai had looked through and I tried replaying what I had just heard.
It didn’t make sense at the moment. What was Jai doing at the Bella
Terra? What was he doing with an LAPD sergeant? What about the blue
threads that Looney Tunes was analyzing over at USC, would they
somehow lead back to this mystery cop, and why? What was Jai doing
at the Bella Terra, he hated this place, it was so downtown! I was
getting a headache thinking about it and decided I needed a drink.
The wine was a good start but after supper I would head over to
Casey’s and do some real thinking with my Old Grandad! I smiled at
Angelo who was studying my face.

“Okay Angelo, bring me Johnny’s special,
it’ll help me think,” I said with a wink.

****

(“I would give everything I own, just to have you
back again…”)…David Gates…1969

Chapter Nine

Nanjing, China 1999

I’m told she was a precocious child, not a
bad little girl really, but one could easily describe her as
naughty. It amazes me how early females learn to use their sex to
manipulate the male world.
Men
, they are so easy. It was
here where I first laid eyes on Mei Li Teng. She was ten years old,
soon to be eleven. It was here when I first decided to kill her.
Not right away mind you, one likes to savor a meal before devouring
it. I remember studying her as she laughed and giggled through her
everyday. I remember her sweet voice, the voice of a child on the
cusp of puberty, completely unaware of the changes she would soon
experience. I watched her interact with family and friends, as they
trod through life in their tenement neighborhood. Their apartment
building was a very modern high rise structure, but it could not
mask the adverse effects of a communist society. Not even with
McDonalds and KFC franchises scattered around town, as they were in
the larger cities, like Shanghai and Beijing.

Such a droll and dreary existence was her
life. I could see straight away that there was little hope of her
ever escaping the future planned for her by proxy as wife, mother,
and shrew, a common fate in much of this sad world. Not to worry
though, she had me to save her from that maudlin destiny. I would
see to it that she never live a life like that. I am puppet master
now, until the moment of her death, I will guide her on a path of
my choosing. How many times have I played this role? How many souls
have I sentenced to purgatory? I stopped counting long ago. It’s
not important.

--

Japanese Village, San Pedro St, Los
Angeles…Tuesday, Feb 17, 2009…2:30pm

--

Any cop will tell you that stake outs are the
worst! Unless you are Lon freaking Chaney, everybody, and I mean
EVERYBODY knows you’re on the job, most likely even the perp. That
is if he or she isn’t completely mental. Sitting in an unmarked car
swilling black coffee and noshing on Krispy Kremes or a dog and
chips from a street vendor is strictly Hollywood sweetheart. If you
want to blend in you have to do your homework. You just can’t show
up in a handyman
onesie
with a fake mustache and expect to
be invisible. Good police work, specifically good detective work
requires a balanced equation: (i + p + g) / l, that’s equal parts
of
instinct, planning, and guts
divided by LUCK, the
normalizing element.

Having said that, I adjusted my JETS cap and
walked across 1
^st
street with a small crowd as the light
changed. I know what you’re thinking, a New York JETS cap in LA, so
much for blending in,
right?
Well you’d be wrong! It turns
out Little Tokyo is lousy with transplanted New Yorkers, so, a
little Kelly green would likely go unnoticed. It was a minimal risk
at the most. My only real concern was whether or not
Lt.
Wanker
had any goons tailing me. Now
that
would be down
right embarrassing,
staked out while on a stakeout!
Wouldn’t
exactly be a testament to my qualities as a gumshoe. But I digress.
My guy was sitting in a window seat at a popular Shabu Shabu joint
about thirty yards ahead of me. The place was popular with the
locals because the food was good and it was cheap! Of course the
young girls working the hostess station in their Geisha outfits
didn’t hurt any either. You could count on waiting in line twenty
to thirty minutes at this time of day, which worked out perfectly
for my task at hand which was to watch and wait. I was certain that
I wouldn’t have to wait long as I was pretty sure that I was
staking out the right fella.

Now, Marco may not have seen Jai Lai’s cop
friend’s face earlier at Bella Terra, but he did manage to catch
enough of the license plate for me to make a few calls to a buddy
on the job. He didn’t take long to put a name with the squad car in
question. LAPD dispatch is positively anal when it comes to
accounting for city property. Raymond Abernathy, Ray–Ray to his
friends, looked like he was really enjoying his meal, at least from
my cat-bird seat out front as I waited my turn to enter and be
seated. Clearly he wasn’t very worried about being seen since he
was making an absolute spectacle of himself. He had the tablecloth
tucked into his shirt right underneath his chin (both of them), and
I swear I think I could hear him slurping his Miso soup from out
here! Ray-Ray was a fifteen year veteran, spending most of that
time in bunko. But the last two years he’d been assigned to
Hollenbeck’s homicide task force. Now that’s not the usual path to
the big time, most homicide shields came through the narcotics
ranks. He must have been living right or maybe he caught a “higher
up’ in a compromising position with one of the working girls? Who
knows for sure? Regardless of how he got from there to here, he’d
landed a plum spot with an elite group. Well, elite except for the
leadership, he was working under Lt. Celaya after all. I shouldn’t
pass judgment I guess, but
I calls em like I sees em!

I blended in with the lunch crowd as best as
I could. Most of them were Wall Street types in thousand dollar
suits; and I couldn’t exactly stand around reading the Wall Street
Journal in my blue collar get up, now could I? So I covered my
bases with a copy of Sports Illustrated, the swim suit edition of
course. Hey, no working man should leave home without one, am I
right? At one point Ray-Ray looked up from his meal and made eye
contact with me, just as I was about to finally enter the
restaurant. He didn’t seem to recognize me and judging by his
expression he was looking right through me anyway. I let the
hostess seat me on the opposite end of the joint, far enough away
to go un-noticed but close enough to listen in on any conversation
that might occur. I knew that Jai would arrive any time as I had
contacted Lu on the way over. He had mentioned that Jai had a
pressing lunch date and armed with the G2 from my cop buddy I knew
where and when that meeting would take place. What I didn’t know
was why? All I had was a gut feeling that Jai was more than Lu’s
partner in love and life. Like I said earlier, when my gut talks I
listen! I took my seat and thanked the kimono clad teenager who was
grinning at my choice of reading material.

“Thanks sweetheart,” I said with a wink.

“Don’t mention it,” she replied, pointing at
the Sports Illustrated.

“Is that this year’s swimsuit edition,” she
asked?

“As a matter of fact it is, why? Are you in
here somewhere kid?”

“Oh no, of course not; I was just wondering
why guys get all worked up about that magazine is all. I mean it’s
a sports periodical, right? What do half naked women have to do
with sports? I guess I just don’t get it,” she replied in a huffy
tone. I chalked it up to a hard day on her feet. Or, she was
PMS’ing, either was a plausible guess I guess.

“Because we’re guys silly,
duh
,” I
answered just as quick.

She giggled and walked away. What a
bubblehead I thought as I watched her warm young form make its way
back to the hostess station. I scolded myself for my wicked
thoughts and turned my attention back to Ray-Ray. He was on his
cell now and from the looks of things not particularly happy with
whoever was on the other end? His pink face was turning red and he
looked as if he was about to slam a fist through the table top when
Jai Lai walked in. Jai walked up to the table, snapped his flip
phone shut abruptly and sat down in a heap. No need to continue
wondering who Ray-Ray was talking to, mystery solved! The two men,
well, one man and one male, instantly fell into a heated but
controlled conversation. Ray-Ray was clearly upset and Jai seemed
to be doing his best to calm him.

For a second there I thought that the big cop
was going to pull his piece and shoot the little homo right there
in front of God and Country. And then, just as suddenly, Ray-Ray
leaned back and burst into an attention grabbing belly laugh. Jai
looked stunned and relieved at the same time. He must have been
thinking the same thing I was. What ever he said seemed to have
done the trick, and the two of them eased back into a more normal,
much calmer conversational posture. To quote George Thoroughgood,
“Lord, they were lovey dovey.”