Riding the Snake (1998) (17 page)

Wheeler was now restacking, in order, the twelve leather
-
bound volumes of John L. Stoddard's History of California. John Stoddard had been a Dominican monk who published this historical work in 1898, and he had an undoubtedly cloistered view of the debauchery and death surrounding the California gold rush. Also ready to be put back on the shelf was the Complete History of the World, by Henry Smith Williams, L
. L. D
., twenty-five dust-covered first editions, published in 1904. Prescott was a history buff.

Wheeler had actually given his brother three of them. A Christmas bargain at five hundred a copy. Money spent on historical thought was not deemed to be pretentious over-spending, and beat the shit out of rings and watches in Cassidyville.

Wheeler had just started sliding Henry Smith Williams back onto the shelf when his mother arrived.

"Arrived" was sort of an understatement. She flew through the door, tears streaming off her high cheekbones, and immediately started to rail at all of them and at none of them. "How can they say, how can they even hint that he . . . that he was . . ." Unable to finish, she started to cry. Both Wheeler and Liz rushed to her and helped her across the living room to the sofa, where she sat and continued sobbing.

"What is it, Mother? What happened?" Wheeler said, assuming this wasn't about Prescott's death. That had been three days ago, and this hysteria was over something recent, something that had just happened.

"What is it, Kay?" Liz echoed.

Both Liz and Kay looked drawn and sleep-deprived. Wheeler was holding up better. Except for the bullet hole in his leg, he had weathered the emotional storm of his brother's passing with the least visible strain.

"The police. The police say . . . they say . . . that Prescott was . . . that he was killed!"

"Murdered?" Wheeler asked.

"The autopsy. The police just called. They said somebody stuck an acupuncture needle into his heart. They want us all to make appointments to come down and talk about what Pres was up to. They want to take our statements," she said, finally looking at Liz and Wheeler, as if they would somehow magically know how to avoid this.

"That's ridiculous," Liz said hotly. "What he was up to? He wasn't up to anything!"

Wheeler held his silence.

"How could he even be dead?" Katherine wailed. "And now they say killed . . . murdered. I'm not going to be questioned like a common criminal. That Negro detective . . . she'd love to find something horrible. You just know it."

"Mom," Wheeler heard himself saying, "I think we should cooperate." He'd long ago learned to overlook his mother's slightly racist Southern upbringing.

She turned on him, venom and anger mixed with extreme loss. "You think . . . you . . . ?"

'Nuff said. It was clear to all of them, even Hollis, that she meant: You have no say. You're not good enough to even be part of this. All you do is drink and hold this family up to ridicule, blah
-
blah-blah.

"Mother, the police think--"

"You've been talking to them!" she all but screamed. "You've been talking about our family? Good God, Wheeler, this is a time to band together, to put up a front. We need to put family before everything. Do you want to read about this in the L
. A
. Times'? Do you want us treated like that Ramsey family, for God's sake?"

"Mother ... I had no choice . . ."

"You always have a choice."

"I found Angie Wong's body. She was murdered. Cut to ribbons. It's some kind of Chinese punishment murder. I reported it. The police questioned me. Then I shot two Chinese gangsters right here, in this house, two nights ago. The police think it's all connected. How am I not going to talk to them?"

"Connected? Connected to what?" She had stopped crying and was now alert, feral, and fiercely protective. Wheeler was the problem now, not the police. They were back on familiar ground.

"Connected. Just . . . connected," he stammered.

"How . . . ?"

"Mother, c'mon . . ."

"No, you come on. I demand an answer. Tell me what they think. I don't like that colored detective. She can't wait to cause trouble. In the hospital ... she indicated Prescott was involved in something. Why are they saying this?" This last sentence shot out with force and venom.

"Mom . . ."

"What are they thinking, Wheeler? At least tell us that, for God's sake."

"That Pres . . . maybe was . . . that he could've been involved in illegal Chinese immigration. That perhaps he was fixing I
. N. S
. visas, buying off politicians." He watched an expression of utter disbelief cross his mother's features, distorting her high-cheek
-
boned beauty. The room was unnaturally quiet. You could almost hear dust settle.

Then, unexpectedly, Liz took a few steps closer to her mother-in-law, and Hollis followed, leaving Wheeler in the center of the room to hold his vile, traitorous position alone.

"Did you hate your brother that much?" Katherine finally whispered.

"No, Mother, I did not hate him. I didn't always understand him, and sometimes I wished he would've understood me, or dealt with things differently. But I didn't hate him. How could I? I loved him. He was my little brother."

"Deal with things differently?" his mother said, seizing on just that one statement. "Deal the way you do? Take a permanent seat at the bar? Thank God that wasn't his solution."

"No, Mother, I didn't want him to do that. I wanted him to ... understand. He was the only one who could see things from the same place as me. If he got talked into some bribery scheme to gain influence, so he could live up to Dad's impossible expectations, then maybe it wasn't completely his fault."

Katherine's mouth actually fell open. Then she stood and took the two steps across the room to him. "God damn you," she said softly. "If you try to balance the scales for your miserable performance on your dead brother's back, I'll never forgive you for it."

"Doesn't it matter to you that Prescott was murdered? That somebody drove a needle through his heart? They killed him, and now, because of some mistaken sense of family loyalty, we're going to let them walk away from it? Don't we need to stand up for him in death? Can we let him get murdered and then turn away just to save the family's reputation?"

"To save his reputation. To save your brother's reputation," she shrieked.

"He's dead! He's gone to the next level. Let's deal with what's here."

"What you want, Wheeler, is to bring Prescott down to your level. You want to find some made-up crime against him to soil his memory, to take the heat off so you won't stand out as such a monumental and colossal fuck-up!"

He'd known her for thirty-seven years, he'd watched her in times of extreme crisis, he knew every side of her layered, complex Southern personality . . . yet, this afternoon was the first time he'd ever heard her swear.

He left without saying another word. . . . Their stares burned holes in the back of his jacket. He stood on the front porch of his brother's beautiful house, looking out at the maple trees lining the expensive street. His emotions boiled. He felt like a traitor to his little brother. He felt like he had turned on him, and yet, somebody had killed Prescott. Wheeler was beginning to feel rage about it and a need for revenge. And he also felt something else. For a moment as he stood there, he couldn't pin the feeling down . . . then it hit him. In this tragedy, there was opportunity. It could be a second chance for him. Maybe it was his last opportunity to reclaim his wasted life. Maybe Prescott had died so Wheeler could be reborn.

"Will you teach me how to throw a football, Wheel?"

"Will you get her to go out with me?"

(iWill you destroy everything I stood for?"

"Would you? Could you? Should you?"

Chapter
15.

Tea Money

Using latex gloves, Tanisha made a copy of the tape from Prescott's Mercedes on her home recorder. She typed a transcript of it on a groaning Selectric typewriter that had a sticking ball element. Then she left her cluttered Baldwin Park apartment and headed to Parker Center, where she left the original tape off at Symbols and Hieroglyphics with instructions to have it dusted and then analyzed. The Cryptology unit was in the neon
-
lit, white-walled basement at Parker Center. It had a computer link with the FBI, which had a large database on numerology and cryptology patterns. Tanisha had read up on cryptanalysis deprogramming at the Academy and knew that certain letters in the English language appear more frequently. It is possible to assign a frequency index to each of the twenty-six letters in the alphabet. By keying on this, a number could get assigned a letter. The problem was that the sample in Prescott's dictation was pitifully small. It would be a slow, tedious process, without much chance of success. She also put in a request to find out what the significance of 1414 might be.

She filled out the paperwork and returned to Asian Crimes to check in. She ran her magnetized I
. D
. card through the slot. The door lock clicked and she entered; then she took the old elevator up to the eighth floor and walked out into an empty squad room. It was six P
. M
. She hadn't been at her desk long when A1 Katsukura entered carrying a surprisingly thick case folder which she assumed was Ray's murder investigation. Thick folders didn't necessarily mean progress. They just meant the Department had thrown a lot of "blue" at the investigation and twenty cops were out interviewing everybody within a mile of the crime. A1 moved to his desk, glancing up at her without giving her much expression. It was obvious he didn't want her to come over, so she got up and moved to his desk.

"Did you get an address on China Boy?" she asked.

His expression seemed to say, Gimme a break here. Then A1 glanced at the Watch Commander's office. Captain Verba's blinds were still pulled. "I thought you had your Internal Affairs hearing tomorrow."

"Nobody told me," she said, and no one had, but that didn't surprise her. They would probably spring it on her. She had met with her police union legal adviser once, but since Tanisha was only guilty of visiting her grandmother's house and getting her hair done in South Central, they had decided to go to the hearing and find out what was being alleged before mounting a defense.

"Did you get an address?" she asked A1 again.

"Look, Tanisha, you're supposed to pull off this."

"I'm just interested. Ray was a friend. We were working together. Don't freeze me out, Al. I just want scuttlebutt."

After a minute, the Japanese detective nodded. "Okay, but you didn't hear it from me. The address on Bobby Chin's arrest file was bogus, but it looks like Ray got lucky on a field shake before he died. A restaurant in Chinatown where Bobby Chin once worked had an address. They told Ray where Bobby really lived. It musta been yesterday afternoon, shortly after he left your house."

"He sure got there quick," she said.

"Ray had great contacts in Chinatown. Anyway, the address they gave him was an old metal fishing barge tied at a dredging dock down at the marina. We rolled on the place. The barge was a rat hole--hot, no toilets, but empty. Everybody had left. It'd been used to house a lot of people. It stank like nothing you ever smelled. Old chicken bones, piss in mayonnaise jars, a real Third World jackpot. I've got half the off-duty guys canvassing the two blocks down there by the docks . . . it's all commercial boat yards. So far, nobody saw Ray or his car Thursday night, before his murder."

"My guess is, after the restaurant gave him the address, he probably went there," she said. "Something happened ... he saw something or somebody, or got something. Then he got tailed back to the Chin Lo headquarters off Hill Street and one of the Chinese O
. G. S
did him." A1 Katsukura nodded, without commenting. "You know anybody at I
. N. S
. who'll pass a scratch and sniff test?" she added.

"Tisha, leave it alone. Verba's gonna go tits-up if he catches you messing with this."

"Is that a 'no,' Al?"

"Stay off it. We're gonna cover all those angles. Don't freelance the investigation--you'll just fuck things up."

Solid advice from a seasoned professional, but not what she intended to do. He looked up at her, his jaw set. His information window had just slammed shut. She moved back to her desk, picked up her stuff, and went back to the L
. A
. Public Library. She'd decided to find out more about the Chin Lo Triad.

That night at home, she went through half-a-dozen new books and printouts she had found. At almost midnight, she was deep into a report written by somebody named Willard G. Vickers, who was head of a private think tank called the Pacific Rim Criminal Research Center in Cleveland. She had found him in the Nexis computer at the library when she cross-referenced the Chin Lo Triad with U
. S
. crime. He had been to Washington half-a-dozen times to testify before both the U
. S
. House of Representatives and the Senate. She had printed out his Congressional testimony and was hardly able to believe what he had told Congress under oath.