City of Dragons (23 page)

Miranda nodded, her ankle throbbing. Paused for a moment, then said: “I’m on the Winters case. Hired by Mrs. Winters. I’d like to see the report on what was found at the scene.”

Phil stared up at her. “You can get that information from Inspector Gonzales.”

Their eyes met, briefly, and Miranda turned to go. Phil said, “Wait a minute.”

She looked back at him, surprised. His mouth was twisted in a grimace.

“And that’s all, huh? Betty’s dead, move on to the case that pays?” He shook his head, the sweat still beading in his hairline. “You’re a cold-hearted bitch, Miranda.”

She leaned forward, her hands on his desk, her voice low. “And you’re a hypocritical motherfucker, Phil. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with you. A little too close to the apron strings, and you never got over it. Betty was a friend of mine. And you’re telling me you can’t tell if she was raped because she was a whore. So maybe you can tell me why the fuck I should even bother with you anymore.”

His hand, the knuckles large and broken, splayed on the desk near hers, trembling. He was standing, his eyes focused on the typewriter.

“Get out of my sight. And God help you, Miranda, because I won’t.”

She looked at him, trying to find the man she used to know.

She said softly: “No one asked either one of you, Phil.”

Miranda walked away on awkward steps, trying to protect her ankle, favoring her left leg. The detective watched her go. One too many compromises, one too many nights with the gin bottle, one too many trips to Dianne, searching for a woman with auburn hair. He stank of it.

He put both hands over his face. And crossed himself.

Gonzales was at his desk, sandwiched in a corner. It looked too small for him. The uniform she’d asked had cocked a thumb and a sneer by way of direction, and she noticed his only company was an old cop from robbery detail who was sleeping at his desk.

The scarred wooden surface was clean, immaculate. No coffee rings, no pastry crumbs. No photos of smiling wives and small children at the summer house.

He rose as soon as he saw her threading her way through the wooden gate with a limp. By the time she reached him, he’d pulled a chair from somewhere, and helped her to sit.

Miranda was still too sore to cross her legs. The concern in Gonzales’s voice sounded genuine.

“What happened, Miss Corbie? Your face—”

“Won’t be advertising Max Factor any time soon.” She took out a cigarette, and he had the lighter, an alabaster desk model, waiting. She inhaled, thankful for the rush.

“The green sedan I told you about tried to run me down last night. I was out looking for Phyllis Winters and Betty Chow. Mrs. Winters hired me to find her daughter, that’s the second case I told you about. Betty left me a message to find her, sounding distraught. Phil came this morning and told me Betty was dead. We went to Laurel Hill, I came back to ID her. He mentioned she was working for Filipino Charlie, which I didn’t know. I want a full report on him, the examiner’s report on Betty and Winters, and a list of what was at the scene when you found him at the Pickwick.”

She took another deep drag on the cigarette, watching the end burn. Gonzales said softly: “Why are you now telling me so much, Miss Corbie? You normally like to play your cards closer.”

The old cop woke up, stretched, scratched his neck, stared at Miranda, and wandered over to find coffee. She kept her voice low.

“Betty’s dead. She knew something about Eddie Takahashi and it killed her. This isn’t about the Rice Bowl Party or Nanking. Something else, something with money in it, something to cause a couple of Italian boys from Gillio’s to scare me, and when that didn’t work, to try to kill me.”

She opened her purse and took out her billfold, removing the Gillio’s card. Handed it to Gonzales while she shook the last cigarette out of her pack of Chesterfields. He held the lighter for her while staring at the card.

“This is what they left in your apartment?”

She nodded, searching for the series of numbers Roy had scrawled on her own business card. She found it, and handed it to Gonzales.

“That’s part of the plate. Had a boy go down and get the numbers, sent him to the market to make it look natural. Somewhere along the way, one or more broke into the apartment—no noise—while I was in the shower.”

Color rose in Gonzales’s face. “If you had told me all this yesterday—”

Miranda stared at her fingers holding the Chesterfield. “Listen, Inspector. I’m not a child. I don’t need a tail or a bodyguard, and my legal duty is to protect my clients. I’m not required to tell you anything, unless you subpoena me. But I need information, and so do you. Betty was murdered. There’s a girl missing. Maybe two girls—no one seems to know where Eddie’s sister is. And an informant told me yesterday that Eddie owed somebody money.”

She lifted her head, and tilted it back, looking toward the window, dragging on the cigarette until the ash devoured itself and dropped to the floor.

“Filipino Charlie is involved somehow. Betty worked for him, knew something about Eddie. I want to know why Italian hit men are fucking around with dime-store Chinatown hoodlums, why they’d kill Eddie, why they’d try to kill me. Why they raped and killed Betty.”

Gonzales leaned forward, his chair squeaking.

“You can’t be sure the two are connected, Miss Corbie. Your friend may have been killed by a—”

“—customer. Yeah. I know the line, Gonzales. Bullshit. Betty was a professional. And she was choosy. And if she was a nice white girl from the right side of town, you wouldn’t have any trouble calling a rape a rape.”

He stared at the floor for a moment, then looked up. Spoke quietly. “All right. I’ll look at you as a partner, if that’s what you want. Unofficially, of course. Officially you are a pariah.”

“Nothing new. What can you tell me?”

“About Filipino Charlie? Not much. I can do some searching and call you later. He seems to be, as you say, a minor hoodlum.”

“And the Winters case?”

Gonzales scraped his chair back across the wooden floor, opening a drawer. He searched for a few seconds, while Miranda took a last drag on the cigarette, watching it burn almost to her fingers.

“I admire your ambition. For most detectives, one murder case would be quite enough.”

“Not if I can prevent more. What’s the toxicology report?”

He opened a gray-green folder, removed a typewritten sheet, and handed it to Miranda.

“Take a look. Winters died from an overdose of cocaine, injected intravenously into his neck. We missed the hole on the first round.”

“Forcibly?”

“Not that we can tell. We think he was already intoxicated.”

She nodded, looking over the rest of the papers. “So a woman could have given him the shot.”

“Yes.”

Miranda pointed to the paper. “This isn’t very specific—keys, laundry tag, three dollars and forty-five cents, matchbooks … any way I can see the contents myself?”

“Certainly. I’ll take you when we’re finished.”

“Thanks.” She took out her notebook, penciled in the list of items found with Winters and a brief note on the percentage of cocaine and the state of his body when found. She handed the files back to Gonzales.

“Helen Winters made a report about Phyllis yesterday?”

He nodded. “Not my case, though. Johnson is handling it. He’s been squawking about bringing in the FBI, thinks it’s a kidnapping.”

“Doesn’t give us much time before he fucks things up. Do you have a cigarette, Gonzales? I’m all out.”

He reached into his drawer, pulled out a pack of French cigarettes, gold-tipped. Miranda took one, leaning toward him while he lit it for her. Then she leaned back, her leg in pain, savoring the sweet, strong tobacco. She stared at Gonzales, and he stared back, his dark brown eyes warm and appreciative.

“Can I ask you something, Inspector?”

“Certainly, Miss Corbie.”

“Where the hell do you get your money?”

He threw his head back and laughed, drawing the eyes of the old man, who’d come back from the hunt with a chipped cup of black coffee. The brown skin of his throat was smooth.

“I admire your directness. My family owns property in San Diego, where I was born, and in Mexico. I spent most of my time there as a boy, on a ranch. Cattle and real estate, Miss Corbie. They paid for me to go to Stanford, and made it easier for San Francisco to hire someone with brown skin.”

The French cigarette didn’t burn as fast as a Chesterfield. She gulped it, holding the smoke, before blowing it toward the window.

“Why be a cop, then? Why not go back to your property and your cows?”

His smile was easy, the wall she hit much harder. “Some other time, Miss Corbie. If you don’t mind, I need to get back to work. May I escort you downstairs?”

She stood up, her ankle wobbly but holding. “Sure. How silly of me. I thought this was work.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Yeah, yeah. I know.”

She allowed him to take her elbow, and he gently ushered her off the floor, through the wooden gate that separated the desks, and out the door into the hallway. Neither of them spoke for a few moments while they walked to the elevator, jostled by plainclothesmen and uniforms, drunks in wrinkled suits smelling of urine, and teenagers with round, terrified eyes.

They stepped into the elevator with a couple of chatty cops and a morgue attendant. They got off on the basement, the cops following the white-suited attendant to the right, Miranda and Gonzales heading to the left.

Miranda spoke first. “Can you get me a copy of the report on Betty?”

He threw a glance at her, his fingers tightening slightly on her elbow. “I can try.”

“Thanks.”

They arrived at the evidence locker, a bored uniform about forty-five guarding the repository and reading a pulp magazine.

“Good morning, Peterson.”

“Morning, Inspector.” The uniform stared at Miranda. “You want to check something?”

“Effects of Lester Winters. Here’s the case number.”

Peterson looked over the paper Gonzales had brought, shoving a clipboard toward him while he read. “Sign in.”

Gonzales scrawled his name, said: “Bring it over to the table, Peterson. That way you can watch me in the open.”

Peterson opened his mouth to protest, and Gonzales brushed him away. “That’s your job. And Miss Corbie is a civilian, a private detective. We’ll wait over here.”

He took her by the elbow, and directed her toward a wooden table to the left and behind Peterson’s desk. Then he found a chair in the corner, sat her down. The French cigarette was done. She reluctantly dropped the butt in a rusty metal ashtray on the table.

They could hear Peterson, searching for the right box. He finally emerged, out of breath, and set it on the table.

“Here you go, Inspector. Take your time.”

The gray carton was large, about two feet by three feet. Inside was a nearly empty quart of Four Roses, another empty pint of vodka.

Miranda took a handkerchief out of her jacket pocket, looked at Gonzales. “May I?”

He nodded, and she carefully lifted the bottles, searching for the price tag. “I assume these have been dusted.”

“No prints.”

“I didn’t think so.”

The name of the store had been scraped off the tag on the Four Roses, but the price was still legible: $1.75. There was no tag on the vodka.

“Winters didn’t come in with the whiskey, the killers did. He wasn’t a lush—the vodka, maybe, but not a quart of bourbon, even if he was expecting company. And that’s last year’s price on the Four Roses. Which means discount, which in this city means Martell’s Cut-Rate Liquors. Three locations. The one on Powell would be closest to the Pickwick.”

Gonzales raised an eyebrow. “Thank you.”

Miranda said nothing, replaced the bottles carefully, and drew out a smaller gray box.

“This holds the pockets?”

“Yes.”

She lifted the lid, poked a finger at the change, noticing the way the three dollars were folded, crisp and clean. She looked at Winters’s wallet, noting the same care and precision in how he had his driver’s license and NYK shipping identification displayed. A picture of a younger Mrs. Winters stared up at her, standing uncomfortably near a plumper Phyllis, still an awkward teenager in saddle shoes. Then she put it aside, and examined a torn cleaners’ receipt.

The faded stamp read HERBERT-ROBERT CLEANERS. The address was 775 Jackson Street, in between Stockton and Grant. Chinatown. Miranda took out her notebook and a pencil, and jotted the information down while Gonzales looked on.

“We’ve already checked on that, Miss Corbie. It was found in his left trouser pocket. No one there knew Lester Winters or his wife, and we haven’t found their mark on any of his clothes.”

“Then why the hell did it wind up with him when he died?”

Gonzales shrugged. “Probably an accident. An old piece of scrap paper he picked up to write a number on, but didn’t. Coincidence.”

“I don’t believe in coincidence.”

There were three matchbooks, face down, in the bottom of the small box. Miranda picked up the first one. It was from Forbidden City. About half of the matches were used. The next one was from a club in Alameda. Nearly empty. The third booklet looked new. She turned it over.

It was from the Olympic Hotel. Where Joe Gillio owned a club.

_______

She jotted down information about all three matchbooks, keeping her face even. Then she smiled and thanked him, sitting down again while Peterson got up from his magazine and waddled back to the storeroom with the large box. And she let Gonzales help her up, and walk her back to the elevator, up to the entrance, down the long, marble hall, and down the steps to the street.

Thick fog made the horizon line blend into the sky. A fishbowl of white. Normally fog invigorated Miranda, but now she felt trapped, standing in place. Lights in her eyes.

“So you’ll work on Filipino Charlie? And see about the report on Betty?” She was shielding her eyes with her hand, fog-blind from the glare.

Gonzales nodded. “I’ll do my best. And you’ll let me know if you discover anything about the money Eddie owed, or information on his sister. And if you uncover any leads on the Winters case. I’ll pass along any information about Phyllis to Johnson. I’ll also run through those numbers on the green sedan, see what we come up with. Call your office later.”