Death in North Beach (24 page)

‘I need your help. I hope I can count on it,' Gratelli said.

Stern and Rose went off with Stern still mumbling. Rose turned back, winked. West approached.

Gratelli nodded a hello.

‘You here about Lang?' Gratelli said, aware that Lang was West's prime investigator.

‘I am. He didn't do it.'

‘That's all I needed to hear. Let me get my key to his cell and I'll go let him out right away. Anybody else you want me to let out?'

Chastain smiled.

‘I think this is one of those two birds with one stone kinds of thing,' West said. ‘Somebody wanted to silence the girl and wanted someone else to go down for it, maybe put him out of business.'

Gratelli nodded. ‘That's how I have it figured.'

‘I'm a little wary of your sarcasm.'

‘No, I do have it figured that way. Lang's a little slippery. He bends the rules. I don't think he'd kill some girl. And he's too smart to leave his prints on the weapon and hide it in such an amateurish spot. Let's go talk to him. You have the time?'

Lang was surprised to see West and Gratelli together. Gratelli sat on what approximated to a bed. West stood, leaning against the bars.

‘You guys look like the Governor said no,' Lang said.

Gratelli might have grinned or he might have had a cramp, Lang thought.

‘What do you think happened?' Gratelli asked.

‘I was invited over to Angel's place. She told me that she was withdrawing her alibi on Mickey . . . that is, being with him the night his father was killed.'

‘Why you?'

‘I don't know. I had been trying to find Mickey and couldn't. In the process I discovered that he was a regular with Angel. I stopped by to see her. Maybe she thought we hit it off. Maybe she knew from the start that I was due for a set-up and didn't know everything about what was planned for her.'

Gratelli nodded, but didn't speak. West was quiet as well.

‘She's a sexy woman,' Lang said. ‘Was.'

‘What's the last thing you remember?' Gratelli asked.

‘Climbing into bed.'

‘You were doped,' Gratelli said.

‘A headache like that and no memory of what ought to be very memorable says you're making a lot of sense. I had one drink and part of another. I don't black out that easy.'

‘Who?' Gratelli asked.

‘The likely candidate is Mickey. He has a key.'

‘If Warfield and Wiley were killed by the same guy, then it wasn't Mickey. Young Warfield was in a San Mateo jail. DUI – driving under the influence.'

Lang didn't hide his surprise. ‘Well, all I know is he tried to frighten me off the case once before by hiring some dumb muscle to scare me.'

‘And you didn't scare?'

‘No. Maybe it was just that he didn't like me messing around in his business. Then again, I've been teasing the snakes.'

‘These snakes have names?'

‘All speculation.'

‘Speculate,' Gratelli said.

‘I picked up a tail after talking with Ralph Chiu. Seems as if there's some top-secret hotel being planned for North Beach.'

‘The
Fog City Voice
opened that up already,' Gratelli said.

‘But maybe not all the players. Maybe not the whole plan. I mean, I don't really know.'

‘Then there's the list,' Gratelli said.

‘Yeah. Sumaoang, Hawkes, Malone, Marlene Berensen. Something fishy with Berensen and young Warfield.'

‘You heard of a William Blake?' Gratelli asked.

‘The name's floated by now and then,' Lang said, hoping that he could dodge any extended conversation about Carly's client. ‘I never met him.'

‘We're going to let you out, Lang,' Gratelli said. ‘You think you can keep away from crime scenes and public spectacles?'

‘I'll try. What's with Stern?'

‘If you give him a reason, he'll shoot you. What did you do to that man, anyway?'

‘I seem like a lucky guy to him. He doesn't like lucky guys.'

Again the expression. Maybe that was Gratelli's smile.

‘Let's go talk to the DA,' Gratelli said to West. ‘Get Mr Lucky out on the streets again where he'll no doubt get into trouble.'

‘One more question,' Lang said.

‘You're not in a hurry to get out of here?' Gratelli asked.

‘What's the real reason you're letting me go?'

Gratelli didn't answer right away. Maybe he wanted to get the words right, Lang thought. Maybe he had to come up with something believable.

‘I believe you. You wouldn't be that stupid. And, keeping you here is counter-productive. I want the killer to know that we're not buying it – that he . . . or she . . . is in trouble. Not only are we still looking, but so are you.'

‘You're poking at the snakes too.'

‘Lang, listen.' He leaned forward. His face was hard as stone. ‘We were working together, you and I?'

Lang nodded.

‘Now you're working for me. You're not a free agent. Legally, because this is a murder case and you are a PI, you shouldn't have been involved anyway. There's more. You are still a suspect. Even if you weren't a suspect, you're a material witness. So we proceed carefully, under my direction. You have less than nothing. I want to see your partner right away.'

‘Same little heart-to-heart.'

‘Yeah. You don't have a problem with that, do you?'

‘No,' Lang said.

‘If you screw with me, you're back in here in a heartbeat.' It was a matter-of-fact statement. No huffing and puffing. No macho attitude. That's when Lang understood. Gratelli was a helluva lot tougher than Rose or Stern. And the old inspector was right . . . for the most part.

West hung back.

‘You didn't say much,' Lang said.

‘It's my famous silent strategy.'

‘You'll have to fill me in on how that works.'

West laughed.

‘We liked what he was saying, didn't we?' West said. ‘Why interrupt him?'

‘We're not home free,' Lang said.

‘But you're going home.'

Thanh agreed to meet her, but asked if they could get together at Quetzal, a coffee house on lower Polk. He was working on his bike – a vintage motorcycle of undetermined brand identity – and pieces of the machine were scattered about.

He had to live somewhere in that area, Carly surmised. It didn't matter. Quetzal was fine with her.

As usual, she didn't know who or what to expect. What she got was a handsome fellow in battered jeans and a grease-stained sweatshirt. It amazed her that this sometimes delicate flower could take engines apart and do whatever needed to be done. Thanh, she concluded, would be much handier on a deserted island than anyone at her former employer's firm and better equipped to deal with reality than either William Blake or Noah Lang.

Thanh smiled when he saw her, his hair disarranged and a cheek smudged with black. He explained that Lang had asked him to do a couple of things. But not much had been done yet.

‘I couldn't get a line on Mickey Warfield,' Thanh said, sitting down. ‘I called around. Called Marlene, pretended to be a friend. Called again, pretended to be a bartender with a message. Nothing. No bite. As far as I know, he could be in Sweden.'

‘Why Sweden?'

‘First country to come to mind. I like Swedes. Not when they talk, but when they look at me.'

She smiled.

‘I wanted to go out there, but my bike wouldn't start. I'm fixing it now, which is why I look so butch. Anyway, Ralph Chiu is a member of a business association, a Tong. That's not uncommon and it doesn't mean anything really. Not all of them are criminal. No one's real sure how much of that kind of crime still exists in Chinatown. And as a Vietnamese, I have no special access. We're not generally loved by the Chinese.'

Carly's cell played out its tune. She checked it. It was Lang. She pushed the screen and said hello. He said hello.

‘You're out?'

‘Yep. Free as a bird,' Lang said.

‘That was quick. Is it over?'

‘Dunno. But you are supposed to go see Gratelli.'

‘Why?'

‘He wants to read you the riot act.'

‘Why?'

‘Just to scare you. Mostly because you're hanging out with me, so he wants to make sure you're not contaminated with the wild ass virus.'

‘The wild ass virus?'

‘I have a mind of my own and he thinks that might have rubbed off on you.'

‘I'm insulted. I have my own wild ass virus.'

‘Go see him. We have to keep him happy or my wild ass will land back in jail.'

‘When?'

‘Now.'

Twenty-Four

Gratelli didn't scare her. He could have been one of her father's skinny brothers. But she knew the man had spent decades in homicide. He wasn't a sweet, harmless old man. A smart person wouldn't try to play him.

‘You have to clip his wings,' Gratelli said. ‘At least for a while. I appreciate your help. But since last we talked seriously there are two more bodies. You are connected with one and he is unfortunately very intimately connected with the other. We're no longer operating subtly below the radar – anybody's radar.

‘We understand.'

He gave her a long look, measuring, it seemed, her sincerity.

‘We understand. We do,' she said, trying to stop short of overdoing it.

‘Paladino,' he said. ‘Your family from here?'

‘Yes. Restaurant in North Beach.'

Gratelli nodded. ‘Paladino's?'

‘That's the one.'

‘I'm quick. Used to eat there, when my wife was alive and when my kids were young and at home.'

‘I probably brought you glasses of water.'

‘Family style. That whole thing is pretty much gone now.' He shook his head. ‘Times change. I don't know why it continues to surprise me. What do you have on this thing?'

‘We're down to Mickey Warfield, Sumaoang, Marlene Berensen, Malone and Hawkes. Oh and Ralph Chiu.'

‘We're trying to find Mickey to talk to him about his girlfriend's death. He's not an easy man to find.'

‘We know,' Carly said. That would be Lang's top priority, Carly thought.

‘Don't let Lang rough him up too much. OK?'

He was reading her mind.

‘He's top of the list, don't you think?'

‘He is a person of interest. What's the angle on Chiu? Anything?'

‘Don't know,' Carly said. ‘A little research. He is influential in a Tong. Maybe Whitney Warfield was going to reveal a little secret, maybe who killed Allen Leung.'

‘Don't get ahead of yourself,' Gratelli said. ‘First, many of the Tongs are legitimate business associations. Second, aside from Leung's murder in '06, there's not a lot of violence there anymore. Crime has moved from women, drugs and guns. It's white-collar now. Identity theft, credit card fraud . . . things like that. And with the change, a lot less bloodletting.'

‘Leung's murder is still unsolved, I'm told,' Carly said, pressing it.

‘I don't think either one of us knows enough about that,' Gratelli said. ‘Correct me if I'm wrong, there are those who believe he was killed in order for someone else to move up the ladder or maybe revenge for some real or imagined slight. A number of people, important people, believe that Leung was killed at the request of the Chinese Communist Party. Leung was a staunch believer in democracy. He put his money and his energy where his mouth was, as I understand it. He didn't want the Chinese mainland to have any influence here and was a mighty thorn in the CCP's side. That's a story anyway. One of the many. But who knows? We don't.'

Gratelli looked at her and continued. ‘All I'm saying is don't get caught up in the stereotypes.'

‘At the moment all we can do is list the names and speculate on possible connections so we can run them down. Just like you do. We don't know that much about Chiu except that he's also involved in the hotel project in North Beach and that Lang picked up a tail after his meeting with Chiu. Asian guys in the front seat. Angel was Chinese.'

‘So's a third of the city's population,' Gratelli said.

‘Again, we're just seeing what matches and what doesn't. Seems suspicious.'

‘It does.'

‘A white Toyota Cressida. Old.'

Gratelli stood. ‘Can you guys be a little less visible in your work?'

‘We will.'

‘You hear anything about a William Blake?'

Carly couldn't tell if there was something other than kindness in Gratelli's eyes. Did he know something?

‘A poet,' Carly said.

‘Not that William Blake,' Gratelli said.

‘I'm sure I heard the name somewhere. Wasn't he with Warfield the night he died?' She answered a question with a question.

Gratelli didn't answer. His face was stone.

Lang understood Gratelli's concerns. If the circumstances were better for the police department, the pragmatic investigator would force Paladino and Lang to back off completely. But the timing couldn't be worse. Murder rates continued to bounce at all-time highs and the future was unclear, not to mention the additional bodies popping up. Gratelli, pragmatic and professional but short on staff and under pressure from superiors, needed the help.

Lang's money was still on Mickey Warfield's involvement though the guy's alibi for the night of Wiley's death was ironclad. Mickey hung around questionable women and down-and-out private eyes – Lang mentally acknowledged he was the pot picking on the kettle. Mickey was likely to be having an affair with his father's mistress. Some sort of strange Oedipal notion that Lang didn't want to understand, except that he bore no similarity to Mickey on that one.