“We’ve got to know where it came from. What business did they send the money for?”
“If you let us go, we’ll give you more when this business is over.”
“What business?”
The Chinaman was silent. García grabbed his earlobe and started twisting it. A few drops of blood oozed out.
“What business?”
“You already know. I know you. You’re with the narcotics police. . And the other two are probably from across the border. It won’t be the first time we arrange things with money, here and on the other side.”
García let go of his ear. The Chinaman’s face was still expressionless.
“Opium?”
“Morphine and heroine. We’re buying it here to take to the States. Villegas was one of our contacts.”
“How big?”
“Big. But Villegas told this woman everything and when you killed him last night, she wanted in, in exchange for keeping quiet.”
“So you had her killed.”
“That’s how this sort of person is usually dealt with.”
“True. And the money was sent to you from Hong Kong?”
“Yes.”
Graves, next to the window, spoke:
“Why did they bring the money from Hong Kong? The Mafia has enough money. .”
“We aren’t with the Mafia in the States. We’re working against them,” the Chinaman said.
“Your colleagues, have they got names?” Graves asked
“One of your poets asked: ‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’ Our colleagues, no matter what their names, would stink just as bad, Mr. Policeman.”
Graves spoke without taking his eyes off the street:
“It’s unusual to find a drug trafficker who quotes Shakespeare.”
“Yes, Mr. Policeman. You people are used to dealing with coarse, uneducated men, men from the unions and the Mafia.”
“The money comes from Peking?” Laski suddenly asked.
The Chinaman smiled, surprised:
“Yes, we’ve dropped several hints that this money might have come from Mr. Mao. It would be inconvenient if the authorities in Hong Kong and Macao were alerted, or the Mafia.”
“All this money, it’s for opium?” Graves asked.
“That money and a whole lot more. The opium business, and a lot of other ones.”
“Like the assassination business,” García threw out.
The Chinaman looked at him scornfully:
“That kind of business, Mr. García, can be carried out with local money and local talent. You should know that better than anybody.”
The Chinaman smiled. Fucking Chink. Cheeky bastard. Trying to tell me that all this mess is just about drugs being moved across the border. Could be yes, could be no, the only sure thing is, we don’t know. And we just keep investigating.
Graves said:
“I think Mr. García is talking about a different kind of assassination, one of greater magnitude, we could say.”
“If you’re talking about members of the Mafia, when they have to be dealt with, we arrange things in the States. It’s not expensive to kill there.”
“He was talking about something else,” Graves said.
“You see, Mr. Policeman, we’re going to take over the Mafia’s entire business. And to do that, we need that money, and a whole lot more.”
“My colleague here was talking about much more important targets than Mafia capos,” Laski said. “Among your various projects, might there be one to assassinate the president of the United States?”
The Chinaman burst out laughing.
“What an odd notion. What would we gain from the death of the president of the United States? No, gentleman, no. We’ve always left that kind of business in the hands of the Americans. Or maybe you think we planned the attack in Dallas? No, no. Mr. García has worked before in cases of drug trafficking across the border.”
“I’m from the FBI,” Graves said. “Not from the Bureau of Narcotics. And this gentleman is from the Soviet secret service. As you can see, this is much more serious than you think.”
The Chinaman sat in silence. He looked surprised.
“Now I understand,” he said finally. “That’s why we’ve been feeling so much pushback. Who told you that we were planning to assassinate the president?”
“You did,” García said. “I’d just been given my assignment, and you sent someone to my house.”
“I won’t deny we hired Villegas to watch you, Mr. García. You came to Café Canton last night and were watching us. We know you’ve worked with drugs and the conclusion was obvious, and we thought it wise to watch you. Unfortunately, Villegas was clumsy, very clumsy And he has paid for it with his life. We had to employ local talent, quite inadequate, because there was nobody else available, and because, forgive me for saying so, Mr. García, we didn’t consider you very important. It looked to us like a quite routine problem.”
“Have your operations in the United States already begun?” Graves asked.
The Chinaman turned to look at him and smiled:
“Mr. Policeman, we are going to give you money so that you won’t talk about this ever again, about this business that is so terribly unimportant compared to what you are investigating. .” Suddenly, he became very serious, as if he had understood something. “But now I think that you are not going to accept our money, and that this is a trap. If you are investigating something so important. .”
“Someone’s coming. He’s entered the building,” Graves said.
García quickly gagged the Chinamen and stood next to the door, his gun in his hand. Laski stood on the other side. Graves hid behind the dining table. The three Chinamen remained sitting in front of the door. What am I going to do with the dough this Chink is bringing? Who knows what these fellows are up to, but they must like dough. Five thousand bucks wouldn’t be bad. And then they can continue their investigations. And the bad part is that I think this guy is telling the truth, at least part of the truth. That was too much money for an assassination. Fucking Russians! Fucking Outer Mongolia!
The door swung open and a round of machine gun fire exploded into the room. It looked like the three Chinamen leapt up, chairs and all, then landed in a pile next to the window. Then the man entered, machine gun in hand, looking around. Graves, from the dining room, fired one shot. The man tottered, then fell to his knees as he was trying to lift the machine gun to fire again. García stepped forward and smashed him over the head with the butt of his gun. The man fell to the floor. García turned him over with his foot.
“He’s not Chinese,” he said.
“Let’s get out of here,” Graves said.
He took off running, followed by Laski and García. Pandemonium had broken out in the building: people shouted out to call the police, doors opened then slammed shut. García, Graves, and Laski ran down the stairs. One man tried to stop them, but when he saw them all with their guns drawn, he immediately backed off. They got to the street. Someone shot at them. They piled into Graves’s car and sped off.
“We need a telephone,” Graves said.
“At Sanborns,” García said.
When they got there, they each went to a separate phone.
“Sorry for waking you, Colonel.”
“You didn’t. Someone else did a few minutes ago with a report of a shootout on Guerrero Street, 208, apartment 9.”
“Yes, Colonel. There are five dead.”
“I told you I wanted that woman alive.”
“I didn’t kill anybody.”
“I wanted to talk to that woman.”
“She was already dead when I arrived. And there’s something else. .”
“More dead?”
“No. Something important.”
“What?”
“I think we’re pissing outside the pot.”