Riding the Snake (1998) (14 page)

Captain Verba looked down at a pad where he had written some notes. "This gang killer, Parnell Davis, called Li'l Evil. I
. A
. thinks you gave up a Crash case to him. When they rolled on Parnell's crack house, the place was clean as Crisco."

"Captain, that was a very sloppy bust. Crash was working half-a-dozen zooted-up informants for info. Any one of them could've given up the operation. I admit, I've known Parnell since I was ten. We went to junior high together. My baby sister died in his arms, but I didn't give up any case to him. This isn't about that anyway."

"What's it about then?" he said softly.

"Lieutenant Hawley in the Crash Unit couldn't get in my pants, so he sold me off to the Shooflies."

"If that's true, I'm sorry. It's also not my problem. I
. A
. wanted you out of commission 'till they could get enough on you to bring a hearing. They finally think they have enough. You need to get the police union into this. Either way, you're off the Wong killing."

"Who's going to work it?"

"Turn everything you have over to Ray Fong."

The LAPD had targeted her for extinction.

Tisha and Ray went to lunch. It was an awkward meal where not much was said. Ray told her he thought she'd been handed a raw deal. Then he followed her over to her house and she gave him the rat, which was still in her freezer.

"Really sucks. I'm sure you'll win the I
. A
. review," Ray said without much conviction.

"I have a girlfriend who's a homicide lieutenant. She's married to a patrol officer who beats her up. One night, a month ago, he's feeling particularly frisky, she's finally had enough so she calls the cops. They live in Santa Monica, so naturally the Santa Monica P
. D
. gets the squeal. When the responding unit found out her husband was in L
. A
. Patrol, they didn't arrest him, even though she's an LAPD loot, and she's standing right in front of them bleeding like a club fighter. The next morning, she got pulled in front of an Internal Affairs review board and chastised for calling the Santa Monica cops and bringing disgrace on the L
. A
. Department. This bullshit that's going on with me is just more dog pound protocol," she said.

"Y'know, from time to time, I'd like to swing by," Ray said unexpectedly. "Maybe we could go over the case. I could sorta keep you involved, so once you get through this I
. A
. thing, you'll still be up to speed."

"Who's gonna buy the wine?" she said sarcastically.

"Look, Tisha ... it wouldn't be so bad."

"You're a good guy, Ray. Let's not spoil it."

Finally he just smiled and shook her hand. "Good luck," he said and left her there. He moved down the walk, got in his car, and drove away.

That night, at a little past two A
. M
., Tanisha's phone rang. She rolled over and fumbled it out of the cradle.

"You okay?" It was Rick Verba calling.

"Yeah, Captain, why?"

"Just checking ... Go back to sleep."

"Captain . . ." But he was gone. She lay in bed trying to get her mind to work. A Division Commander didn't call you at two A
. M
. just to see if you were sleeping soundly. She rolled up and sat on the side of the bed. Then she called the office.

"Asian Crimes Task Force," the operator said.

"This is Tanisha, who's this?" she asked.

"Ellen," the operator said. Ellen was one of four Asian operators that worked the phones at ACTF. She was a civilian employee who spoke seven different Oriental languages, including the three most common Chinese dialects: Mandarin, Cantonese, and Fukienese.

"Is everything okay down there?" Tanisha asked.

"Not exactly . . ."

"What's up?"

"Somebody got Ray Fong. . . . He's dead. Shot in the head!"

"Goddamn," she said. A sickening feeling swept over her.

"I gotta go, Tisha. This place is going nuts."

Tanisha dressed without even looking at what she pulled out of the closet. Twenty minutes later, she was in the squad room getting the gory details.

Ray's car had been found on Hill Street, one block away from Chinatown, by a cruising patrol car. Ray had been slumped over, his face on the wheel. When the officer tipped him back, he had seen that the detective's forehead was missing.

A1 Katsukura had the case. He didn't have much time to talk to Tanisha, saying only that the shot appeared to have come through the driver's side window. Ray had apparently rolled down the glass to talk to his killer and had been shot in the face. She told A1 that Ray had been working a trace on one of the dead Bamboo Dragons. His possible street name was "China Boy." A1 nodded, made a note, and hurried out the door. That was it. Ray Fong was E
. O. W
.--End of Watch.

She stood in the squad room while detectives streamed in with their hair badly combed. It was three-fifteen A
. M
., but they stood around in the corridor and leaned on the walls. She'd seen this kind of thing before when cops were shot. Everybody came to work and just hung there, hoping somebody would get lucky and bring the killer in. All of them stifling fantasies of being allowed to walk into a holding cell while the rest of the watch was magically off getting coffee, then slowly and efficiently kick the doer's nuts up between his eyes. It was powerful hatred.

Tanisha was one of them, but then again, she was not. She felt like she did at Zadell's every Saturday. So after about a half
-
hour of playing eye-tag with the complement of Asian cops, she went down and got in her car and drove over to Hill Street. She knew she'd have no trouble finding the crime scene. It would be taped off and guarded. There would probably be half-a-dozen lab techs and some TV news crews hovering.

She drove past the spot where Ray Fong had gone E
. O. W
. As she imagined, there was a lot of police and news activity, despite the hour. She cruised on by and rolled slowly into Chinatown. The neon was off, the streets eerie and quiet. She wondered what Ray had been doing down here.

Two blocks from where he was killed, she saw something that made her put on her brakes and pull to the curb.

It was a Chinese "social club," local headquarters of the Chin Lo Triad in Los Angeles. It was an unimpressive stucco building with a red door. The shabby, plain architecture revealed little about the activities inside, but Tanisha had done her research. She knew it housed the L
. A
. branch of a huge international criminal Triad, also known in Chinatown as the "Neighborhood Welfare Society." A misnomer if ever there was one. The Chin Lo certainly didn't have neighborhood welfare as a goal. Again, as she'd been taught to do at the Academy, she tried to arrange the facts to construct the story.

Known facts: The three men whom Wheeler Cassidy surprised in his brother's house were undoubtedly Snake Riders, illegal Chinese immigrants. The Chin Lo Triad was one of the largest smugglers of immigrants from China to Hong Kong to America. They also used their influence over frightened Chinese businesses in Chinatown, forcing them to employ the Snake Riders. Then the Triad would collect the immigrants' wages as payment for travel services rendered. The one clue Ray had was "China Boy" tattooed on the dead boy's arm.

Now some suppositions: She wondered if Ray had gone to the name file database. In the Crash Unit, cops would enter gang-bangers' street names into the system so they could pull up a real identity from the colorful gang handles. ACTF also had a street name database. Questions boiled in her mind. She wondered if Ray had found out who China Boy was. She wondered if the Chin Lo Triad had brought China Boy to America and if China Boy had figured out that he would never pay off his Triad Snake Rider loan working in a restaurant. All his earnings there would barely keep him even with the vigorish. She wondered if, like so many before him, China Boy had joined the Bamboo Dragons and had begun committing more dangerous crimes to pay off his debt. She questioned if that was why he might have been in Angie Wong's basement and Prescott Cassidy's bedroom and then finally had become a guest of honor in Dr. Death's canoe factory. Lastly, she wondered if Ray had come here to ask questions, parking a block and a half up the street, and if he'd come away with something--something big enough and scary enough that somebody inside had followed him back to his car and pulled the trigger, sending the Asian cop off to be with his sacred ancestors.

She wondered all of this and more as she sat there looking at the unimpressive front door of the Los Angeles branch of the most dangerous criminal organization in the world.

Chapter
12.

Tape

When he was released from the hospital the next morning, Wheeler went directly from Cedars-Sinai to the W
. C. C
. grill. Two reasons: First, he needed a drink and some company to calm his nerves, which were pretty damn jangled; and second, he had made all of the network news feeds, often being referred to as a neighborhood hero. He didn't think it would hurt his precarious situation at the club to make a show and "aw shucks" his way through a few hours of complimentary bullshit. Shallow reason, but there you have it.

He hobbled in there on crutches at around ten-thirty, his left leg bandaged like a mummy's, waving and smiling at people who hated him. He eased himself down on Home Plate, leaned his crutches in the corner, and told Ramon to "hit the gas."

An hour later, he was still accepting compliments.

Dr. Clay "Rusty" Collins and Luther Harrison were his current hero worshipers, sipping beer and commiserating enthusiastically.

"I tell you, Wheeler, the way things are going in L
. A
., you can't drive your car without some asshole trying to take it away from you at gunpoint, or make a freeway lane change without dodging gunfire. Our wives and daughters aren't safe. The cops are so compromised they don't even try and catch the criminals anymore. The courts are a joke, the prisons overflowing. The whole L
. A
. basin's a war zone." This paralyzing social complaint from Dr. Rusty Collins, a plastic surgeon whose own hold-up weapon was a number ten scalpel, which he wielded maniacally, doing nose, tit, and tummy-tucks on Beverly Hills housewives who didn't need them.

"Just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time," Wheeler aw-shucked.

"God, and right after your brother dying. Pres was such a first-rate guy . . . talented, unassuming, brilliant. First that, now this. Tough break, Wheeler," Luther commiserated.

"Yeah," Wheeler said, feeling both sadness and relief over his brother's death.

Why should there be any relief?

" 'Nother Scotch, Ramon," he said, trying to drown his self
-
contempt.

By noon, he was alone at the table in the dining room. He'd had plenty of offers to join members for lunch, but had already grown tired of his own humble hero bullshit and his leg was killing him. The morning's pain pills had worn off and, like a moron, he'd left the bottle of Percocets his surgeon had given him at the hospital.

That was where she eventually found him. Tanisha arrived at the club dressed in a rayon blouse and two-year-old mini-skirt. It was what she had grabbed at two-fifteen in the morning when she heard Ray had been killed. She was carrying an imitation leather bag and had on her old sling-strap faded red shoes. Older women in expensive dresses and single-strand pearls played bridge in the lounge to the left of the door. They turned to study the apparition in the club lobby.

"Can I help you?" the W
. C. C
. Assistant Manager said, rushing out from behind his desk near the entrance to cut off her vile intrusion. He was thin and geeky, with glasses.

Tanisha turned to face him. His narrow face showed consternation.

Homegirl alert! We have niggers in the entry!

"I'm Detective Williams. I need to talk to Wheeler Cassidy. I understand he's here." She badged him.

"Oh, I see ... of course . . . about the shooting."

"Right," she said, wishing she'd gone home to change before coming up here. She had a few really great designer knock-offs that looked stunning on her.

"Mr. Cassidy's sitting in the dining room. Allow me to escort you," he said politely, but with a subtle ring of accusation, as if he suspected she was going to swipe an ashtray unless he herded her in personally.

As they walked into the dining room, Tanisha saw Wheeler sitting alone at a corner table. The Assistant Manager led her to him, then left, and Tanisha put her purse on the adjacent chair.

"I'd stand but my leg might buckle. Have a seat, Detective."

She looked around. More than half the faces in the room were turned toward her. "Did I do something?"

"Yeah," he said, going back to his salad. "You had the balls to come in here without your maid's uniform on."

It was a racial remark, but she could detect no racism in it. He sounded more hurt by that fact than she was. It was usually impossible for Whites to enter this emotion-filled terrain. Only those who were truly color-blind could avoid the subtle potholes. Again, there was such self-loathing in his delivery that it made her wonder about him. He was a boat full of tippy emotions. "I'm sorry to intrude on this enclave of upper-class American gamesmanship, but I have a few more questions," she said.