She went back into the other room, sat on the mattress, and listened. She heard the sounds of several men walking and speaking some tonal language, but could not make out what was being said. The Vo boys, she presumed, and maybe the Chinese guy. The talking became louder, turned into an argument. She heard stomping, slammed doors. From outside came the sound of car doors. A car started up and pulled away. Could they have left her here alone? No, she heard steps above. Sighing, she drew out the book and rolled over onto her belly. She translated:
Since time out of mind, cried Kieu,
harsh fate has cursed all rosy faces, sparing none.
As I see her lie there, it hurts to think
Of what will come to me hereafter
An unpleasant thought; she wished Tran would hurry the hell up.
Chapter 10
Karp was dining in Columbus Park behind the Criminal Courts Building, using the twenty minutes he had to spare between his briefing of Jack Keegan and his appointment to address the incoming class of ADAs. He sat on the edge of a park bench, leaning over his spread knees, head down and slurping noisily, a position necessary if one wished to eat a sausage, fried onion and pepper hero laden with hot sauce and oozing grease without collecting souvenirs of the meal all over one’s immaculately pressed suit. An occasional pigeon darted in between his shoes to sample the dropped bits. Karp noted that the birds always dropped these after a taste, and took an odd comfort in the fact that his normal lunchtime diet would gag a New York pigeon. There appeared now in his restricted field of view a pair of gleaming faux crocodile loafers decorated with gold-colored clasps, above which were black silk socks, above which were the legs of a brown pinstripe on tan wool suit. A deep voice said, “Nice day for a picnic, Stretch. They said I’d find you out here, and here you are.”
Karp carefully deposited the ragged and soggy sandwich on a square of waxed paper and looked up. He saw a smiling solid man in his early fifties, broad-shouldered and half a foot shorter than Karp himself, with a brush mustache and graying sideburns on his mahogany face. Captain Clay Fulton was Karp’s first and best friend on the police force. A dozen years his senior, Fulton was the first black college-educated detective captain in the department’s history, highly decorated, feared and mistrusted by the department grandees, and hence left pretty much on his own. Officially, he ran the D.A. squad; unofficially, he was more or less Karp’s private police force, which amused him, and kept him virtually free of the cop bureaucracy he despised.
“It is,” Karp agreed. “Get yourself something from the wagons and sit.”
Fulton made a face and sat down. “I used to eat like that when I still had a stomach. You know, Stretch, when you’re a big shot you’re supposed to have lunch in a restaurant, the waiter brings you the food, the kitchen got a health permit, you bask in the admiring glances of lovely women. .”
“I’m practicing for when I get fired. You got any good news for me?”
“About this Lie character? Not to speak of. The prints came back zilch. Not known on NCIS. We’re trying Interpol, but that’ll take awhile.”
“Try the Hong Kong police.”
“You think he’s from there?”
“It’s a good guess. All these Chinese bad boys check in there sooner or later. Where did he go after I threw him out?”
“Downtown, an office building. His lawyer’s place, but they didn’t stay there long. They hopped a cab back up there.” Here he jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the federal building. “They went in, and about an hour later the lawyer came out alone.”
Karp nodded. “So they did a deal. Lie probably went out of the garage in one of those black-window vans with a couple of FBI guys to keep him company. He’s eating his chow mein in a U.S. government safe house as we speak.”
“They definitely did a deal. The feds rousted Joe Pigetti out of the La Roma restaurant twenty minutes ago.”
“See, that’s what we get for being honest guys. We get to finish our lunch.”
Fulton said, “You thinking now you should’ve grabbed him when you had him, maybe.”
“Not on the terms he was offering. Next time I grab him, he won’t be doing the bargaining.”
“You’re mighty sure of that, considering you got jack shit solid on the man.”
Karp resumed his lunch, leaning forward, saying between bites, “Clay, the guy’s dirty. All you got to do is find the dirt.”
“Oh, we’ll look, all right, but it’s Chinatown. And I thought I taught you to avoid betting on the come.”
“I have perfect faith in your talents,” said Karp, balling up his waxed paper and napkin and tossing it ten feet into a trash basket.
A shadow fell on them, and they both looked up to see a ragged, ashy black man pushing a shopping cart full of stuffed plastic bags. “Spare some change, brother,” the man said to Clay.
Fulton pulled a money clip out of his pocket, peeled a single off, and gave it to the man. “Take care, pop,” he said.
“Pop yourself,” said the man. “You old enough to be my daddy.” He rolled his establishment away, grumbling.
“No good deed goes unpunished,” said Karp.
“You said it, man, and to think that at one time that guy was an assistant district attorney. The man just wouldn’t stop betting on the come.”
Karp laughed and pointed with his chin across the park. “No, there’s the lawyer. See her legal pad?” It was the old woman Karp had met previously, sitting in the shade of a tree, scratching away with her pencil. She raised her head, peered across the dusty lawn, made getting-under-way motions, and waved to Karp. Who rose hastily and said, “Clay, I got to go before she comes over here and starts bending my ear. She’s got me confused with the court of appeals. Keep in touch.”
The call from Freddie Phat’s watcher came in at a little past three, and about five minutes later Tran got the word that the Vo gang had dragged a blanket-wrapped bundle into their Brooklyn house. It took him forty minutes to drive his motorcycle from Manhattan to Avenue J in Brooklyn, via the Battery Tunnel and Ocean Parkway. He parked across the broad boulevard, crossed it, and walked up to the door of the modest two-story semidetached house. He rang. He saw part of a face looking out through the slats of a venetian blind in the front window. The door opened, and the large Vietnamese who opened it scowled and said in halting Cantonese, “Fuck! Where you been, man? They went looking for you.”
“The girl is here?” asked Tran.
“Yes. I must go page my brother now. Wait here.”
He turned to go, but Tran did not wait. Instead Tran slid his great big Colt.45 Commander out of his waistband and slugged Sharkmeat over the head with it. The man grunted and dropped to his hands and knees. Tran kicked him hard in the short ribs, and he fell over onto his side.
Tran quickly knelt and jammed the muzzle of his pistol into Sharkmeat’s ear.
“Where is she?” he asked in Vietnamese. Blood seeped up around the grinding muzzle, covered the front sight blade, and filled the little channels of Sharkmeat’s ear.
In a while, Sharkmeat told him where, and also that he was alone, even volunteering that the door was locked with a padlock, the key for which was hanging on a nail by the basement door. Tran whipped out a pair of heavy-duty plastic cable ties and trussed the man up hand and foot.