I was just starting to move away from the chaise; the words stopped me, brought me around. I gawked at her the way I had out in the hallway.
“Oh, yes,” she said in the same matter-of-fact voice, “I know who you really are. I recognized you right away. The photograph in the papers wasn’t a very good likeness, but photography is my profession. So is journalism, and you’ve been a major news topic in recent days.”
I sat down again, slowly. “Why did you keep up the pretense?”
“I wanted to find out why you’d come. And why you’re so interested in Carl. It seemed easier to follow your lead.”
“And now? What do you think?”
“I think Carl is involved in the shooting somehow. Or you believe he might be. That’s it, isn’t it? I can’t imagine any other reason why you’d be investigating him, asking questions about his Chinese connections.”
I stayed silent.
“If you’re worried about me telling him or anyone else,” she said, “you needn’t be. I wouldn’t do that.”
“No? You’re a journalist.”
“Not that kind. Why do you suppose I was so open with you about Carl?”
“Why were you?”
“Because if he is mixed up in the shooting, I’d like nothing better than to see him caught and put away. I don’t consider myself a vindictive person, but the idea excites me. After all I’ve told you, I’m sure you can understand that.”
“I guess I can,” I said. “But I don’t know that he is involved.”
“But you do believe he is?”
I hesitated. “Maybe.”
“In what way?”
“I’d rather not say. It’s only supposition at this point.”
“Are the police investigating him, too?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Okay, I won’t press you anymore. I’m sure you know what you’re doing. You’re a good detective; you’ve proven that. The police gave you a raw deal when they suspended your license and I don’t blame you for working independently of them. Just tell me this: Do you think it’ll be long before you know for certain if Carl is involved?”
“No,” I said, “it won’t be long.”
“Good. If there’s anything else I can do, just let me know.”
I nodded. “There is one other thing. I’ve never seen Emerson and I don’t know what he looks like. A description would help.”
“I can do better than that,” she said. “I can show you a photograph of him. I kept one, for my portfolio. Not because of any sentimental reason; only because I took it and it’s rather good.”
She got up and left the room for a couple of minutes. When she came back she handed me an 8x10 black-and-white glossy. It was a head-and-shoulders portrait of a tall blond man with aristocratic features, a heavy underlip, and eyes that were both shrewd and petulant. He was handsome, and he was smiling, but there were shadows on his face, an unmistakable sense of weakness and cruelty in his expression. I wondered if it had been a conscious effort on her part to capture his negative aspects. If so, she had succeeded — and maybe that was another reason why she’d kept the photograph.
“You can borrow it if you like,” she said. “But I would like it back.”
“No, that won’t be necessary. I’ll remember him. He’s got the kind of face you don’t forget.”
“Yes,” she said. “No matter how hard you might want to try.”
She went with me to the foyer, and when she opened the door she gave me her hand. Her eyes seemed to linger on my face. “I’d like to see you again when this is finished. And not just because of Carl.”
“Why?”
“You’re an interesting man. And you’re also a victim of the system. I think I’d like to do a piece on you for one of the magazines.”
“Are you serious?”
“Very serious. Would you be agreeable?”
“I don’t know. I’d have to think it over.”
“Do that. Meanwhile, good luck.”
“Thanks.”
“And good hunting,” she said.
Out in the hallway, I stood looking at the door for a few seconds after she closed it. I had never met a woman quite like Ms. Jeanne Emerson before, and she’d left me feeling a little nonplussed. She was some lady.
But I felt more grim than anything else. If I could believe everything she’d told me, and I thought I could, I had a stronger case than ever against Carl Emerson. I also had a pretty good hunch as to what lay behind this whole thing — the reason why he had bribed or tried to bribe Eberhardt, the reason why he’d hired Jimmy Quon to blow Eb away. And I did not like it worth a damn.
The hunch was a dead hooker named Polly Soon.
Fifteen
On the way over to North Beach, I kept thinking about Emerson’s probable motives. My hunch was based on three things. First, the revelation that he was a Chinaphile, had a penchant for Chinese prostitutes, and owned a violent temper. Second, the fact that Polly Soon had fallen to her death from a fifth-floor walkway at the Ping Yuen housing project a couple of weeks ago; both Ben Klein and Richard Loo had told me it was a case Eberhardt had been working on. And third, bits and pieces of what Eberhardt had said to me before Jimmy Quon showed up with his .357 Magnum that Sunday afternoon:
“I hate my goddamn job sometimes. It’s a hell of a thing being a cop, you know that?”
“Somebody’s got to do it. And you’re one of the best.”
“Am I? I don’t know about that.”
And:
“You don’t know what I’m liable to do; neither do I.”
And:
“Whores are better off dead anyway. Who cares about a damned whore?”
Put all of those things together, juggle them with a few other facts I had learned about Carl Emerson, and they added up this way:
Emerson picks up Polly Soon at a Chinatown bar — either that, or they’ve had an ongoing relationship — and takes her back to the project. Something happens after they arrive, maybe an argument of some kind, and Emerson loses his temper. Polly Soon tries to get away; Emerson goes after her, out onto the walkway that runs across the front of the building. There’s a scuffle, and she either falls accidentally or Emerson pushes her over the railing. Then he manages to get away without being identified by any of her neighbors.
When the initial police investigation doesn’t turn him up he thinks he’s got away clean. But Eberhardt is a tenacious cop; somehow he gets on to Emerson, with enough proof of Emerson’s guilt to confront him. Emerson’s only out is to offer a bribe lucrative enough to keep Eberhardt from arresting him and filing an official report. Only something goes wrong with the scheme; maybe Eberhardt has second thoughts, maybe Emerson decides the stock-transfer payoff wasn’t such a good idea after all because it leaves him vulnerable. In any case, he opts to take the big plunge into premeditated homicide and hires Jimmy Quon. Emerson knows his way around Chinatown, has probably done some gambling at Lee Chuck’s; it wouldn’t have been difficult for him to find out which Hui Sip body-washer was willing to waste a cop for the right price. Lee Chuck himself might have acted as the go-between; that would explain how he knew it was Quon who pulled the trigger, and why.
A nice, tight little scenario. And I hated it because it meant Eberhardt had not only taken a bribe but done it to cover up a homicide.
The thought gave me a sick, ulcerous feeling in my stomach. You go through life believing in certain things, certain people; they’re central to your outlook, your whole philosophy of right and wrong, good and bad; they’re what you hang on to when the going gets tough. Take them away, one by one, and what did you have left? Nothing, an existence without meaning. That was what was happening to me. Six weeks of erosion, of psychic crumbling, that had reduced my little corner of the world to a pile of rubble. All I could do was to poke around in the ruins, try to rebuild this or that place of meaning so I could go on living there. Only with most of them it seemed to be too late; they kept on crumbling when I touched them, disintegrating into handfuls of dust.