Jackie punches me playfully on the arm to get my attention. “Betty, you promised you’d be friendly.”
Despite all her advanced, first-world medical training, she still believes in the power of positive, intentional thinking. That’s why she’s in the business of bringing the human body back to health, and I’m in the business of picking up the pieces after scumbags have torn it apart.
We all sit together at one long picnic-style table, already crowded with buckets of coleslaw and potato salad, watching platters of scorched meat being presented by several waitresses at once.
I become aware that everyone is staring at me staring at the ribs, and it’s an uncanny reminder of the earlier scrutiny by the cops in Bender’s kitchen. The viscous brown sauce coating the ribs resembles too closely the dried blood congealing at Lana’s throat, and I have to tamp down a momentary gag reflex.
“Well, g’won,” Jackie’s grandfather prompts impatiently. “It’s not gonna bite ya.”
Jackie’s nephew Lonny has set down his iPhone, and, tired of waiting, he mutters, “Fuck this,” and reaches for a rib. He gets knuckle-rapped on the head by both his parents, and then we’re all wading into the meat. The caramelized flesh sets my mouth to burning almost immediately and I down, much too quickly, my beer. Soon we have built pyramids of stained paper napkins, and the food and the beer begin to put a thaw in the general conversation.
I’ve been placed at the far end of the table with Jackie’s great-uncle James Earle Walden, a Vietnam War vet who has struggled with alcoholism his entire life. He sits next to me with a prop of club soda beside his plate, white-knuckling his way through another family gathering. He smells of decades of nicotine, seeping through every pore, his overly long hair slicked back with combed-through layers of drugstore hair gel. His hands shake as he brings a rib up to his mouth, splashing comets of grease onto his shirt. But there is a quiet, wounded-bear quality about him, and his efforts to appear normal, to make polite conversation while trying to mask with cautious smiles the ruined state of his teeth, make me want to hold him and weep. He is, other than Jackie, my favorite of the clan.
Grandma’s carrot cake is served, alight with a battery of birthday candles, and James makes it through two bites before excusing himself from the table. I take two bites more than he does and follow him out of the restaurant. I find him on the front steps, smoking and slipping something silver and flasklike into his pants pocket.
“Hey, hold on a minute,” I say. “Mind if I join you?”
He hands me the flask and I drink deeply of some liquid that tastes like what I can only describe as paint thinner added to whiskey.
He takes the flask from me and toasts: “Here’s to the unclaimed.”
His voice is gravelly, like stones inside a cement mixer.
“That’s us,” I say. “The undesirables. It’s amazing they let us sit at the family table.”
“Except for Jackie, they’re all assholes. Even more than most people,” he says cheerfully.
“Jackie’s certainly been my guardian angel.”
“You’re lucky on that score,” he says. “But I think you’re equally Jackie’s angel. She told me that when you two first got together in New York, a crazy woman at a fruit stand tried to rob her, and you chased her away with your umbrella.” He regards the flask thoughtfully. “I’m pretty sure my guardian angel drinks.”
I laugh. “The woman was just a street crazy, but I thought she was threatening Jackie.”
“It’s a natural trait for you, protecting the ones you love.” He takes another drink, dribbling a bit of dark liquid onto his already stained shirt. A group of people leaving the restaurant give us a wide berth while moving down the stairs.
“Some people have to be taught to do the right thing,” James says, throwing a gawking kid the stink eye. He exhales a cloud of smoke sharply through his teeth and hands the flask back to me. “What are you working on now?”
“Big drug case,” I say. “But things are not going well. People have been killed.”
“That happens when you deal with bad people. You close to catching the bastards?”
“I don’t know. Something happened today. Really shook me up.” I tell him about Lana’s murder.
“Nam vets used to take ears from dead Vietcong. They were proof of kills. Some of the guys who stayed in-country too long kept them as trophies. So maybe the killer is a vet?”
“I don’t think so. But it just doesn’t feel like our boy. He has no problem wasting people, but it’s not his MO. At least, not one we’ve seen before.”
James takes back the whiskey and pats me on the knee. “You know the last thing a murder victim prays for before lights-out? A smart cop. You’re a smart cop. You’ll figure it out.” He drains the flask and shakes the empty container dejectedly. “Did you know I was an MP? I was in Saigon during the last days. Sunsets like bloody ribbons across the sky, from the fires in the jungles. The stench of smoke and gasoline together to this day makes me puke.”
My heart rate accelerates and I look at him, startled. “The red streak,” I tell him. I remember Lana’s ragged, blood-matted hair as she lay on the kitchen floor. “When I first saw Lana, she had a bright red streak in her hair. But today it was missing. Somebody did a rough job cutting it off. I only just realized it.”
“You think it’s another trophy?”
“There would be no other reason to take a piece of her hair. Removing it wouldn’t hide her identity.”
“Well,” he says, using the railing to pull himself painfully to his feet. “My training sergeant used to say that anything added to a crime scene was a clue. Anything missing was a direction.” He looks at the restaurant door and then at me. “Will you take my good-byes back inside? I think it’s time for me to go home, and your telling them I’ve left will soften their disappointment at your returning.”
“Thank you, James. I owe you one.”
He rubs a hand over his mouth and scratches his chest. “Invite me to dinner sometime.”
I nod. “Absolutely. You okay to drive?”
“What time is it?”
“About eight.”
“As long as it’s before nine, I’m good.” He gives me a pat on the arm and I watch him shambling toward his car, an old Crown Vic, and then I return to the table, where no one but Jackie seemed to notice I was gone.
As soon as we get home, I put on my sneakers and go running along the jogging trails close to our apartment. I run for half a mile before I thrash my way into some bushes and relieve myself of the burden of the barbecue extravaganza I had eaten earlier. I thought the ribs had burned going down, but it’s nothing compared to what comes back up. All the toxic energy of the evening, all the hate and fear, all that fire.
I wipe my mouth and continue the course for another four miles, squeezing Tabasco sauce and bad juju from my pores. We’ve had a tough start to the case. But we now have Bender’s money and weapons and some of his meth. I try to believe that Lana’s will be the last civilian death before we have to deal with Ruiz.
The Saint Michael’s medal knocks rhythmically, comfortingly, against my sternum as I quicken my pace, offering the possibility that maybe higher forces are already handling El Gitano. I hear Benny’s voice, as I often do while settling into the vacant mental space that a long run gives.
Betty, he tells me. None of them know what you’re worth. They’ll always start you in the outfield. But that’s why God gave you those long legs. So you could run the bastards down.
When I get back to the apartment, Jackie is waiting for me under clean linen sheets.
10
I stand staring at the whiteboard in the station’s task-force room, and then I take up a red marker, cross out Lana’s name. I informed the team earlier about Lana’s hair being cut, the red-dyed section removed, and got only puzzled looks from the men.
I called Maclin to tell him about realizing the hair was missing, and he’d thanked me by sharing the crime scene photos.
br />
Ryan has been studying the board and the photos as though they are ancient texts to be translated. There’s a constant furrow to Ryan’s brow that makes him appear earnest and contemplative. Surprisingly, Ryan has never seen a dead body, even though he’s been on patrol in Dallas for five years—plenty of insensible drunks and passed-out junkies, but never a victim of a violent homicide.
Having gotten his shield only a few months ago—fast-forwarded in his career by being consistently the best marksman in the department—he hasn’t yet absorbed what Uncle Benny used to tell me were the hardest lessons in detective work: how to tolerate frustration, fight boredom, resist apathy, and inure oneself to the evil that men do.
I also suspect that I scare the shit out of him.
“Ryan,” I bark, startling him. “Where’s Ruiz?”
“Umm,” he says, his color rising. Adjusting his shoulder sling and cracking the knuckles on both hands, he offers, “Mexico?”
Craddock snorts. “Good guess. I guess we can all leave early today.” He peels back the wrapper on an oversize Texas Moon Pie, a chocolate-and-marshmallow-stuffed cookie, and takes a mouthful.
“No reports of Ruiz in El Paso,” Seth tells us. “Or in any of the other usual crossings. Both Homicide and FBI are running fingerprints from Bender’s house, but it’s going to take more time to get IDs. Path reports on the body will take longer. All Forensics will say is that Lana’s throat was cut with a large, very sharp knife, and it looks like the killer sat on her chest and arms to do it. The witness, Tony Ha, is saying nothing; he’s totally lawyered up. He’s been pretty much ruled out as the murder suspect, though.”
“As tiny as Lana was,” Hoskins says, “she could have beaten the bejeezus out of Ha if she’d wanted to.”
“Maybe Ruiz is dead too, lying in a ditch or in the desert somewhere,” Craddock says. “It’s just plain creepy how quiet it is on this guy’s whereabouts. No one on the streets of Dallas has seen or heard from him.”
I try returning my focus to the whiteboard, wondering if our attention to Lana’s murder is pulling us away from Ruiz or leading us closer to finding him. Last night I had a nightmare, prompted by the thundering footsteps of the Russian woman upstairs. Believing that I was awake and certain that someone was making pounding noises in the bathroom, in my dream I had disentangled my legs from the sheets and walked cautiously to the door. After pausing to listen to the sounds of someone knocking erratically on the baseboard, I opened the door to witness Lana lying on the floor, bleeding profusely from the upper body. The gaping slash in her throat opened like a ventriloquist’s dummy, and a voice came from the wound, saying, “What is taking you so fucking long?”
“Maybe she just cut her hair,” Hoskins adds now. “Women do that, you know.”
“Not usually by a butcher,” I say.
“It signifies something.” Ryan says this so softly that I almost miss it.
“What did you say?” I ask.
Ryan clears his throat, gesturing at a photo with a close-up of Lana’s contorted, bloody face. “The missing red hair means something.”
James Earle had said last night that things missing from a crime scene give direction. “Okay. Go on,” I prompt.
“He could have taken the hair from anywhere on her head, but he took only the dyed part. So maybe she broke some code or taboo or something by dyeing her hair, and the killer removed it.”
“That’s good, Ryan,” I say. “You just got yourself a project for the next hour. I want you to do some research on whether any of the cartel enforcers in the recent past have taken these kinds of trophies, locks of hair or body parts.”
“Oh, great,” Hoskins says, standing from his chair, restless and obviously irritated. “More tail-chasing.”
When the team disperses I sit with Seth and stare at the board. “What’s this feel like to you, Riot?”
“What it doesn’t feel like is Mexican cartel,” he says. “It’s weird. Sadistic. This does not seem like the work of Ruiz. Possibly Asian-gang retaliation?”
“You still got any gang connections?”
“As my Lamesa grandma used to say, ‘Hell, yeah.’” He tells me to hold tight for a few minutes, he has an idea. He leaves the room to make a call and I go searching for Hoskins.
Things have been strained between us ever since the Bender shooting. Hoskins takes every opportunity to bait me, to nip at my heels, testing my patience. I could put the hammer down on him, but I need his cooperation. My mother used to have a saying that, spoken in Polish, ran on like the Gettysburg Address. The gist of it is this: Tough beef twice boiled is as soft as an egg. Or, as Jackie would advise, kill him with kindness.
I find Hoskins hunched over his desk, frowning in concentration at his phone, which he’s maneuvering like a hovercraft to better catch the light so he can read his texts.
“Detective Hoskins,” I say.
Hoskins looks up at me in a way that tells me he’s bracing for a rebuke or a reprimand and he’s already mentally forming his comeback, telling me how miserably I’m managing the Ruiz case. Itching to say how even finding Bender’s hidden cache of money does not make up for all the trouble of sorting through the bodies and missed arrests.
“You know, Detective, I think the way you handled yourself yesterday at the crime scene was really admirable.”
He regards me with a surprised, wide-eyed expression, as though I’ve slammed a crowbar down on his head. It is absolutely the last thing he had expected to come out of my mouth.
“Seth tells me you stood your ground at the Bender house, shadowing Homicide until we showed up. I just wanted to say good work, Bob.”
Sometimes a kind word is more effective than a crowbar. At that moment Seth signals to me and I walk away repressing a grin, knowing that Hoskins will spend the rest of the morning trying to figure out what exactly I meant by my little speech of support.
We drive in Seth’s car south on the Tollway, and he tells me we’re going to Little Korea, a place known locally for massage parlors and small industrial office complexes housing various legit and nonlegit businesses. There is also a mah-jongg parlor and social club nestled among the office buildings that, Seth informs me, is a front for the gangs responsible for most of the Asian sex- and drug-trafficking trade in Dallas.
“You heard of Operation Flaming Dragon?” he asks me.
I nod. “Yeah, of course.”
Operation Flaming Dragon was the largest sex-trade bust Texas had ever seen. Dozens of massage parlors in and around Dallas had been shut down following a two-year undercover operation, supported by local police, a special Vice task force, and the FBI. The arrested were women, most of them Chinese, who had been lured into the sex trade, along with some of their handlers. The bosses at the top, however—many of them working from the East and West Coasts—remained untouched. Blue Heaven, where Lana had worked, was a satellite operation that was lucky enough to have escaped being shuttered.
“My buddy Brant was one of the undercovers on that operation. He’s aware of the Lana Yu case, and I told him we needed some inside help to determine if her murder was in any way connected to the Asian-gang activity. He told me one of his contacts owes him a favor.”
The mah-jongg parlor is a one-story, windowless stucco building with a small plaque by the door inscribed with Chinese pictographs.
He parks his car in a spot close to the entrance and turns off the motor.
“They’re still going to be a tad resentful about the most recent arrests, so we need to be eyes wide open. You okay with me taking the lead on the questioning in there?” he asks.
“Absolutely,” I tell him. “But, Riot, you know we’re edging into a Homicide investigation.”
“Yeah, I know,” he says, showing teeth and slipping on his sunglasses. “Ain’t it fun?”
We walk through the unlocked door without knocking and pass through a narrow foyer into a large, dimly lit open room with pool tables on one side and card and mah-jongg tables on t
he other. A long bar lines the far wall, covered with neon beer signs. The only people in the place are four old ladies playing mah-jongg and languidly smoking.
They pause in their game and look at us briefly but then pointedly ignore us and resume expertly slinging their tiles against the green felt.
Almost immediately a young teenager with a black helmet of carefully coiffed hair enters the hall from a back room.
“I’m here to see Mei,” Seth tells him, bringing out his badge.
The guy signals to me to show my badge as well and then motions for us to follow him into the back. The room we enter is paneled with fake wood and smells of decades of nicotine and mold. In an expensive leather office chair sits a Chinese man, perhaps in his thirties, wearing tight jeans, a pearl-snap Western shirt, and pricey Nocona boots, which are propped up on the desk. Singer K. D. Lang, piped in through high-end Bose speakers, is singing about constant cravings.
Eyes closed, head nodding to the music, he pretends we’re not in the room until the song stops. Then he opens his eyes and smiles, but with his mouth only.
“We need to talk to Mei,” Seth tells him. “I think you were notified we were coming.”
“Mei’s not here.”
“And you are…?” Seth asks.
“I’m Mr. Lee,” he says, lighting a cigarette.
Without being asked, Seth and I sit on the two chairs facing the desk. Lee quickly pulls his legs off the desk and opens a drawer just wide enough to put his hand inside.
“I like your coat, Detective,” Lee says, referring to Seth’s aged denim jacket. “You a real cowboy?” He giggles and grinds his teeth as though he’s leveled a deadly insult.
My partner gives the grin he saves for careless, posturing perps who mistake his good looks for dim-wittedness, not realizing that a shiny package can hide something that can both tell time in a calm and relentless way and explode, taking most of your face along with it.