“It stands for Chinatown Gang. They operated briefly in the Bay Area, and then were either absorbed by the bigger groups or dispersed. Now that you mention it, in fact, they were sort of like the gang you’re involved with-freelancers. They were trying to carve out some territory for themselves-make a name, gain some respect. That’s why the tattoo-they had big ambitions to become the next Born to Kill. But if you want to find out what really made them tick, talk to Nicky Tai. He used to run with them. He’s straight now-joined an uncle in the restaurant-supplies business. You’ll have to deal with him gently, though. He’s not a squealer. He left because Chinatown Gang collapsed and he had nowhere to go. Between you and me, he’d run out of gas, but whether he still has a sense of loyalty to that life, or he just knows that talking to cops is an unhealthy pastime, your profession will not be an asset to you.”
“All right,” I said as I wrote down the phone number and address he gave me.
“One last thing,” Brown added, his voice full of good humor. “Just to prove there are such things as miracles. I seem to remember that, as a little kid, Henry Lam used to hang out with Chinatown Gang. He was too young to merit a tattoo, and he moved with other gangs as well, but that’s another connection you might be able to use.”
I took one last shot, my eagerness overriding good manners. “Do you know if one of the other gangs he hung out with was the Dragon Boys?”
“I believe it was.”
I sat back in my chair, for the first time flushed with the feeling that I might be getting somewhere with all this. Michael Vu had been with the Dragon Boys also-back in the old days.
“Thanks for the information, Mr. Brown. You’ve been a glass of water in the desert.”
There was a telling pause at the other end. “Don’t make any assumptions, Lieutenant. You’ll never really get a handle on all this-no more than any of the rest of us.”
13
Before she left to return to law school early the next morning, Gail had persuaded me not to call Nicky Tai right off, as I’d been inclined to. She felt that Tai’s possible reluctance to talk to a cop should not be too quickly dismissed. Considering the potential value of the information I was seeking, she’d cautioned, a little time spent plotting the right approach might be a wise investment. I unhappily took her point and thus arrived at the office both impatient and hopeful, an attitude that was only somewhat alleviated by the discovery that two of the TV trucks had vanished overnight, and that the building’s central hallway was back to its usual abandoned self.
What J.P. Tyler had to tell me as I was finishing the night’s “dailies,” however-the reports filed by the graveyard shift-improved my attitude immeasurably.
“You got a second?” he asked, poking his head around the edge of my door frame.
“Sure. What’s up?”
“I got the blood analysis back from Waterbury. Most of it’s definitely a match with Benny-except for what we found on the counter, under that broken glass cabinet door. That belongs to somebody else.”
I matched his pleased expression, recalling how dour the entire squad had been only last night. “Which means somebody’s running around with a pretty nasty cut.”
“And probably stitches,” J.P. finished for me.
Nicky Tai was suddenly bumped from first priority. I reached for the phone to call Billy Manierre, speaking to J.P. as I did so. “Round up all the free hands you can and put them onto every doctor, ER, and clinic you can think of. We’re looking for a young male Asian with a bad cut, probably on the hand or arm, but maybe the head, who came in the day Benny died or shortly thereafter. I’ll tell Billy you’re on the way over to raid his manpower. And find Kunkle. I want an update on what he found out about Alfie Brewster.”
One hour into our telephone survey, Dennis DeFlorio appeared before my desk.
“Got something?” I asked him.
He looked at me quizzically for a moment, then shook his head. “No, I’m still phoning. I just got a fax from that cop in California. It’s nothing much-what they had on Michael Vu and Henry Lam.”
“I thought they didn’t have anything on Lam, as an adult, I mean.”
He looked down at the sheets in his hand. “No felonies. He did some misdemeanors. Most of it’s technical junk-date of birth, an address, a description-nothing much.”
“Okay. Give it to Sammie. And, Dennis?” I added as he turned to leave, “I found out last night that the tattoo and the CTG initials on the shooter called Ut probably come from California, too. Locate every anti-gang squad you can out there, especially the ones specializing in Asians, and get them copies of both the tattoo and of Ut’s mug shot from his autopsy file. CTG stands for Chinatown Gang. They operated in the Bay Area, so you might try San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland first. You seen Willy, by the way?”
“Nope.”
A shouted, “Yesss,” from the squad room suddenly drew our attention. Sol Stennis, who was working Ron’s phone, stood up and announced generally, “Keene, New Hampshire-the Cheshire Medical Center. They treated somebody late on the night of the murder. A deep cut to the back of the right hand-eight stitches. He even said he’d cut it on a broken window.”
“When’re the stitches due to come out?”
“Tomorrow.”
I stepped into the squad room and spoke loudly enough that they could all hear me. “Okay. Contact everyone you’ve either called or will call and tell them to be on the lookout for a young Asian male wanting those stitches removed-just in case he decides not to go back to Keene. Sol, you go to Keene with the Ident-i-kit and our mug-shot album and either get a description or find a match, along with any paperwork they’ll volunteer to hand over. If they hedge at all, get a subpoena. Once you’ve done that, have J.P. generate copies and have ’em delivered to everyone on the phone list. Stress to these people that all we want is a phone call, though. They are not to do anything beyond what they’d normally do, and they are not to let on that we’re interested in this man.”
I headed back to my office and then called out to Sol.
He turned, his phone already in hand. “What’s up?”
“This is probably a long shot, but when you’re over there, find out if they took any blood samples. If they did, and if they kept them, we can get a subpoena for them, too, and try for a DNA match with what we’ve got.”
Stennis nodded and began dialing. Satisfied I’d done all I could for the moment, I returned to my cubbyhole, closed the door, and dialed the phone number Jason Brown had given me last night.
It was, as he’d mentioned, a restaurant-supplies company, so it took me a few minutes-and a few extra seconds for reflection-to reach Nicky Tai.
Gail had been concerned that if Brown’s character sketch of Tai was correct, then the only reason the ex-gang member would speak to me was if he had something to gain. In my little world of Brattleboro snitches, that meant either money or leniency, but as Gail and I both knew, neither applied here. Unfortunately, that’s where our brainstorming session had stalled and why Gail had hopefully concluded that a few hours’ thought on the matter would probably yield results. I wasn’t so sure.
When he got on, Nicky Tai’s voice was cautious, almost wary. Clearly he was a man who didn’t much enjoy surprises. “Mr. Gunther? How may I help you?”
I dove right in. “It’s Lieutenant Gunther, actually, from the Brattleboro Police Department in Vermont. I’m calling on the recommendation of Jason Brown.”
The voice didn’t soften any. “Oh?”
“I called him last night to ask him something about his past experience with Asian teenagers.”
“Uh-huh,” Tai said dryly, making me sound blatantly disingenuous for having skirted the word gangs, which is what we both knew I was talking about.
“I better get straight to the point here,” I hurried on. “We’ve just had a shooting-a home invasion that went wrong. Three young men tried to extort money from one of our local businessmen-an Asian also-and happened to bump into a couple of our officers. All three were killed in a gunfight.”