Walking Shadow (9 page)

"Name's Yan," Herman said.

"He speak any English?" I said.

The room was cinder block painted industrial beige. The floor was brown tile and the suspended ceiling was cellotex tile that had started out white. The door was oak with yellow shellac finish.

There were no windows. Light came from a fluorescent fixture that hung from short lengths of chain in the center of the room.

"Probably," Herman said.

"But he won't let on."

Herman sat beside me on one side of an oak table shellacked the same yellow as the door. A lot of cigarettes had left their dark impressions on its edges. The kid sat across the table on a straight chair. He wore a white shirt buttoned to the neck, and dark, baggy trousers. His black hair was long, and it hung over his forehead and down to the corners of his eyes. He said something to Herman.

Herman shook his head.

"Wants a cigarette," Herman said.

"Tell him he'll get one just before the blindfold."

Herman nodded and didn't say anything. The kid stared at me.

His eyes were black and empty.

"How old is he?" I said.

Herman spoke to him. Yan answered. His voice was uninflected. His face blank. He looked bored.

"Says he thinks he's seventeen. He doesn't know for sure."

I nodded.

"Why do you ask?" Herman said.

"Just wondered," I said.

"He's old enough to kill you," Herman said.

"You let him."

"I won't let him," I said.

"What was he doing in my apartment?"

I waited for the translation.

"Says he wasn't in your apartment."

"We'll be able to make him there," I said.

"There'll be prints."

Herman translated. Yan shrugged.

"What was he doing on the fire escape?" I said to Herman.

Herman spoke to Yan. Yan answered.

"Says he was just climbing it for the hell of it, was coming down when you jumped him in the alley for no reason."

"How come he was carrying a.45-caliber automatic pistol?"

"Says he found it and was going to take it to the police."

I looked at Yan, and smiled. He stared back at me blankly.

"Tell him," I said, "that we've got him for carrying a handgun without a license. We've got him for breaking and entering."

Yan said something to Herman.

"Yan says you can't prove he was breaking in anyplace."

"He's on the fire escape outside my open window," I said.

"We'll lift some prints that will place him in my apartment. He's looking at a couple of felonies."

Yan smiled faintly and looked at Herman while Herman translated. His smile widened a little as he listened. Then he spoke very fast to Herman.

"Says you must be on something. Says his lawyer's going to show up inside of an hour and he's going to walk. Says the streets are crowded with people got busted on worse than what you got.

Says you're an asshole."

"What's the Chinese word for asshole?" I said.

Herman smiled.

"Loose translation," he said.

"He from Port City?"

"Says he's not from anywhere. Just drifting."

"He a Death Dragon?" I said.

"Says no."

"Who sent him to kill me?" I said.

Herman spoke for a while. The kid said a word. Herman spoke again. The kid shrugged.

"Nobody," Herman said.

"He have an ID on him?"

"No."

"How long has he been here?"

"He's not sure. He came when he was small."

"And he still doesn't speak English?"

Herman spoke. Yan spoke. Herman spoke. Yan almost smiled.

He looked at me and said something.

"Says nobody he knows speaks English. Says you're the first white person he ever talked to."

"Who better?" I said.

Herman looked straight at Yan as he spoke to me.

"He may know a few English words. He may know enough to follow our conversation. But it's no advantage to him to let you know. He's got no family, or if he does it works all the time, and has no control over him. He may be lying about his age. He may be fourteen for all we know. He's alone in a foreign land where no one understands his language. What he's got is the gang. If he's who we think he is, it's probably the Death Dragons in Port City.

The gang is who and what he is. He finks to you and he hasn't even got that any more."

I nodded.

"Plus they'll kill him," I said.

Yan looked at me silently. It wasn't a pose. He was like a feral child. His silence was visceral. Nearly inert, he was beyond threatening, or bribing, or scaring.

"Un huh," Herman said.

"What kind of life is that?" I said.

"It's the life he's got, Spenser. Don't get all gooey about it.

You'd walked into your place he'd have put half a dozen.45caliber slugs in your face. And liked it."

I nodded again.

"Any feeling is better than no feeling," I said.

Yan and I looked at each other. Between us was an immeasurable ocean of silence.

"Yan," I said, slowly, as if he could understand me, "I know, and you know, and you know I know that Lonnie Wu sent you and the other kid to clip me. I resent it. I am going to find out why Lonnie sent you, and I'm going to take him down for it, and you are probably going to go too."

Yan had no reaction. I nodded at Herman. Herman translated.

Yan had no reaction. The door to the interrogation room opened and a uniformed cop stuck his head in.

"Lawyer's here to get him," the cop said.

Herman looked at me.

"Want me to leave you two alone for a few minutes?" Herman said.

"While I stall the lawyer?"

I studied the kid in front of me for a moment. His wrists were slimmer than Susan's. He couldn't have weighed more than 130.

"No."

Herman shrugged. He pointed a finger at Yan, then at the cop.

He said something in Chinese. The boy stood and walked to the door. He stopped for a moment and stared back at me without expression. I aimed a forefinger at him, cocked my thumb, and dropped it like the hammer on a pistol. Yan turned and left with the cop. I looked at Herman.

"Lucky I was able to grab him," I said.

"Yeah," Herman said.

"Otherwise you'd never have been able to question him."

"And I wouldn't have known his name was Yan."

"I forgot that," Herman said.

"You did learn something."

"Unless he was lying," I said.

"You going to be fucking around with the Kwan Chang long," Herman said.

"You are doing some industrial-strength fucking around, you know? They got a hundred kids like Yan, be happy to kill you, and don't care if you kill them too. You got any backup?"

"I got some."

"Anybody I know?"

"Hawk's with me," I said.

Herman nodded.

"Figures," he said.

"And Vinnie Morris."

"Vinnie? I thought he was with Joe Broz," "They split, couple years ago."

"Well, he's good. Who else you got?"

"That's it."

"You, Hawk, and Vinnie Morris?"

"All three," I said.

"Doesn't seem fair to the long, does it?"

"Want me to shoot it for her?" Vinnie said. A.12-gauge pump gun was leaning on the picnic table.

"No," Susan said.

"She's gun-shy."

"What you got for load in there?" Hawk said.

"Fours."

"Won't leave much bird," Hawk said.

"I didn't load it for birds," Vinnie said.

Hawk grinned and pointed at him.

"Please don't misunderstand," Susan said.

"I think you're lovely company. But why are you here? With shotguns?"

Hawk and Vinnie looked at me.

"That's a rifle," Hawk said, nodding at the Marlin.30/30 leaning on the table.

"Need some range out here in the damn forest."

"Some Chinese people in Port City are mad at me," I said.

"Chinese people?"

"Specifically Rikki Wu's husband," I said.

"Lonnie?"

"Un huh."

"And you need Hawk and Vinnie for protection from Lonnie Wu?"

"Lonnie Wu is a mobster," I said.

"He's connected to the Kwan Chang long, which runs all things Chinese north of New Haven."

Susan stared at me.

"Rikki's husband?"

"Un huh."

"You never ask for help."

"Hardly ever," I said.

"This is bad," she said.

"Yeah."

"Have there been any, ah, incidents?"

"Two," I said. I told her about them.

Susan was quiet, listening, and when I got through, she remained quiet. Beyond the yard trees, and the meadow, down the slope, beyond the stream, the hardwoods had shed all of their leaves, as if simultaneously. Past them, in the distance, other trees had not yet begun un leaving and they remained bright and various behind the bare, gray spires, punctuated by the thick evergreens.

The crow flew away, and Pearl, after a brief dash in the direction of its flight, turned her attention back to our lunch.

"It's what you do," Susan said.

"I've always known it. And I've come to terms with it."

Pearl put her head on Vinnie's lap, her eyes rolled up looking at the smoked turkey sandwich that Vinnie was eating.

"But it scares me."

"Sure," I said.

"And I want you to be as careful as you can be… and not let them kill you."

"None of us want that to happen," I said.

Hawk seemed not to be listening which was an illusion. Hawk always knew everything that was going on around him. He was looking at the road, and then at the meadow, and down toward the woods, and back at the road.

Vinnie was staring down at Pearl as he chewed his sandwich. She stared back up at him. He scowled at her. She continued to stare at his sandwich. Finally he pulled off a corner of the sandwich and gave it to her. She raised her head, swallowed it, put her head back in his lap and continued to gaze at the sandwich.

"Swell," Vinnie said.

"Do you think that Lonnie is connected to Craig Sampson's murder?" Susan said.

"He could be connected," I said.

"Or it could be something else."

"Like?"

"Like he's running some rackets in town and he doesn't want an outsider coming in, stumbling across them, and causing trouble."

"But isn't trying to kill you the wrong way to do that?" Susan said.

"If he's covering up something, wouldn't that just cause more attention to be brought?"

"I've thought about that," I said.

"And I've got a couple of conclusions."

Vinnie got careless with his sandwich, and Pearl snapped the rest of it out of his hand and sped away to finish it off. I pushed another sandwich toward Vinnie.

"Ever occur to you maybe I don't like dogs?" Vinnie said.

"It has," I said.

"Isn't she quick?" Susan said.

"Quick," Vinnie said, and unwrapped his new sandwich. Pearl came back to the table and looked at Susan and wagged her tail.

Susan bent over and gave her a kiss on the muzzle.

"Good for you," she said to Pearl. Then she looked at me and said, "Conclusions?"

"The first time they made a run at me was in Port City, in a public place, middle of the day," I said.

"Like maybe they weren't sweating the Port City Police Department," Hawk said, his gaze moving comfortably over the landscape.

"And the second time," I said, "they were in Boston, and if they'd have succeeded, who would tie it to Port City?"

"And even if somebody did," Hawk said, "maybe they still not sweating Port City Police."

"Hawk has reached the same conclusions," I said to Susan.

"I still say if it were me, I'd just lie low and await developments."

"Sure," I said.

"But a guy like Lonnie, he's used to doing what he wants to. He's an activist. And, he may have people to answer to. Maybe he gets a call from the head guy at Kwan Chang 'get the white guy out of our town." Say Hawk's right and he's wired with the cops. There's not a lot of risk. And he doesn't know I'm stubborn. So he warns me, and it doesn't work. How's he look now? He can't run Port City the way they want it, then the long will replace him. And he's going to run the Death Dragons, he can't lose face by letting me ignore him."

Susan nodded.

"So it makes sense from Lonnie's point of view," she said.

"But we still don't know whether he's involved in Craig's death."

"No, we don't."

"And we have no idea who was shadowing Jimmy?"

"No, we don't."

"And Jocelyn."

"About her I've got an idea."

Susan smiled at me.

"Oh, good," she said.

"Yes," I said.

"It's a start."

Pearl scrambled up on the bench seat between me and Susan and sat at table hopefully. Susan put her arm around her.

"You went to Harvard," I said.

"If I needed a translator, you think you could find one?"

"I imagine so," Susan said.

"I don't want a specialist in ritual folk poetry of the Tang Dynasty," I said.

"I need someone who can talk to street types."

"I sort of guessed that," Susan said.

"Wow," I said.

"You did go to Harvard."

Hawk speared two bread and butter pickles from the open jar, gave one to Pearl, and ate the other one. Pearl swallowed hers and waited. Nothing happened so she bounced up onto the table and put her nose in the jar. The mouth of the jar was too small and she couldn't get it all the way in, but she was able to put her tongue in and lap a little pickle juice. Vinnie watched in silence.

"Fucking dog's up on the fucking table eating the pickles," he said.

Susan smiled at him patiently.

"She likes pickles," Susan explained.