Her voice brightened a notch as she read on, her interest slowly beating back her exhaustion. “The reason I’m pushing so hard for more on Chu is that I finally did get something interesting on Henry Lam. Remember the date-of-birth scam he pulled to cover his Massachusetts history? Turns out he hung out in Lowell a lot-there’s a big Asian population there-lot of bad apples. I want to cross-reference Chu and Lam and see if they connect, and if so, with who else. I know in my gut they have a mutual background… Makes it real frustrating.” Her voice tapered off as she flipped the page.
“Here’s an interesting one,” she resumed. “You’d asked J.P. to check out what happened to the team Johnny Xi led on that restaurant shooting in San Francisco. The PD there was a little faster getting back to us-they have a special Asian-crimes squad-and they said that, as far as they know, most of the team is dead.”
“Any common denominators?”
“Half of them got it execution-style. It’ll take time before the PD can send us the actual names and records.”
“How many were involved?”
“Witnesses said seven, all with automatic weapons. They drove up in two cars. I guess that makes nine, with the drivers. Anyhow, seven of them sprayed the place-all hyped up, screaming and yelling-and then they took off. Truong On Ha wasn’t the only bystander killed-it was a real massacre. The PD knew right off it was a Dragon Boys hit. Even lined up a few witnesses-that’s how they identified the shooters-but the witnesses faded overnight. One was found dead; the others got the message. The cops had to fold their tent.”
“But they don’t know why most of the team is now dead?”
“Not officially. They had their suspicions, but the whole thing’s history now. I tried out all our names on them-Truong, Vu, and the rest-but aside from Johnny Xi and Truong’s little brother, none of them connected.”
“You said most of the team is dead.”
She smiled at me. “Right. I noticed that, too. I’m having mug shots, prints, the whole caboodle forwarded to us. The two drivers were never made, I guess because nobody paid attention to them, so that makes five out of the nine who’ve been killed, and two out of the four survivors that’ve been identified.”
She extended her pad to me, her finger underscoring a couple of scribbled Chinese names.
She sat back and flipped to another page of the pad, resuming her narrative. “I didn’t get much else. I tried Henry Lam out on the Canadians. The name did come up on their computers, but all they said was that they’d get back to me. They’re pretty close-mouthed, and I got the distinct impression they didn’t consider us a high priority.”
I resisted telling her of my hopes to improve our prestige considerably. “I take it there’s nothing new on the pipe bomb?”
She shook her head. “Worse than that. Michael Vu disappeared, along with most of his soldiers. It’s been like finding fish in the middle of a desert. J.P.’s still hoping the bomb fragments might tell us something. I took the liberty of issuing a high-priority be-on-the-lookout for Vu, by the way.”
“That’s fine.”
We both heard the door to the hallway bang open, followed by a man’s heavy tread. Willy Kunkle rounded the corner, bearded, wrinkled, dressed in dirty jeans and a work shirt, and making Sammie smell like a rose by comparison.
He leaned against the edge of the soundproof partition and looked down at us, grinning like a contented wolf. “Hey, boys and girls.”
“Where you been?” I asked him, none too kindly.
Rather than answering directly, he reached into his breast pocket and held out his one good hand. Cradled in its palm, encrusted with dirt, was a small, delicate, jade-and-gold pendant, attached to a thin gold chain-exactly as Amy Lee had drawn it in my notebook.
“I been poking around,” he finally said.
18
I gently removed the pendant from Willy’s outstretched hand. “Nice work,” I murmured, “Where’d you get it?”
“Garage north of Horton Place, right next to a dark-green Trans Am with Québec plates and a smashed-in front grille.”
“Jesus,” Sammie muttered.
“I got a unit guarding the place till I get a search warrant,” Willy added, his eyes betraying his nonchalance, “so you’ll understand if I gotta go.”
“Call me when you’re ready,” I told him. “And take a shower before you meet with the judge.”
Horton Place is one leg of a semicircular street that attaches to the east side of Canal Street like one of those large, plastic horseshoe-shaped magnets. The other leg is named Homestead Place. What the back end is called-the part that connects the two legs-is anyone’s guess, but it was there that Willy Kunkle led Sammie, J.P., and me about two hours later.
The Horton-Homestead loop has no option other than to double back on itself. It is shoved up against a steep, fifty-foot embankment that looms overhead like a semi-forested cliff. Within the confines of the horseshoe are several beaten-up homes and two or three century-old, three-story wooden apartment buildings-all peeling paint and stacked, sagging balconies. Across a weed-choked backyard are two decrepit concrete garages. A squad car, its driver leaning against the fender, was parked in front of one of them.
The structure in question was free-standing, had two solid, old-fashioned pull-down doors on cantilevered hinges, and looked about ready to collapse. It had no windows that I could see.
“Round here,” Willy said, leading the way. He was still unshaven and wearing the same clothes, but he now smelled of too much deodorant.
On the garage’s west side was a narrow wooden door. Willy turned the knob, shoved it open, and stepped inside. We paused on the threshold, our eyes adjusting to the darkness. Before us was a single stall with an earthen floor; apart from some tires and a broken armchair, it was empty. There was a second opening, without a door, on the far wall separating this stall from its mate, but there wasn’t enough light to see through it. This last fact alone, coupled with the assumption that the Trans Am was parked in the second stall, set off my internal alarm bells.
“Hold it,” I ordered, as Willy was about to walk through to the opening. “How did you find this place?”
Willy looked back impatiently. “Last week, when we searched the flophouse Nguyen lived in, I noticed this guy hanging around outside, watching us. One of the residents told me he was called Chui. He was an obvious creep-tight pants, greasy hair, fancy mustache. I didn’t have any reason to trust him then, but,” and he tapped the side of his head, “I filed him away for posterity. After Dennis got whacked, I went back, staked myself out in one of the alleys across the street, and waited.
“Just like I thought, Michael Vu came and went, giving orders, and then all the boys in the fancy cars took off like rats from a sinking ship. But this guy Chui, he hung loose a while, cleaning up. I followed him around town, saw him visit all the Chinese restaurants, the Asian-run businesses. He was either telling everybody to sit tight, or squeezing them for one last payoff. In any case, he finally came here.
“This,” he waved his hand around him, as if showing off a prized piece of real estate, “was a new one on me. It had never figured in any surveillance reports, never come up in any of the dailies. Chui came in early this morning, spent about half an hour inside, and left carrying a big box. I let him go so I could take a look.”
I silently swore to myself, having suspected as much. If Willy had trespassed without probable cause, found the pendant and the car, and only then secured the search warrant, every piece of evidence in the place was going to be inadmissible in court. “You entered here?”