Riding the Snake (1998) (36 page)

"Now!" Tanisha shouted as the Chinese stood, and Verba spun, gun hand outstretched. Wheeler and Tanisha dove right and left, firing. Simultaneously, seven guns barked in the over-lit coffee shop. The waitress screamed, running for cover.

The Chinese assassins didn't expect a simultaneous counterattack from their "unsuspecting" targets, and hurried their initial volley. It was a costly mistake, as their first rounds went wild, breaking a bad Chinese brush painting on the wall behind their intended victims. Tanisha, Wheeler, and Verba got three of the four with their first shots. The three gangsters went down, raking the far side of the room with automatic gunfire as they fell. The fourth man turned and ran. Verba pulled down on him and hit him between the shoulders, blowing him out into the lobby, where he landed and slid on the polished floor.

The suddenly quiet coffee shop was filled with the lingering memory of gunfire and the coppery smell of blood and cordite. Only one of the Chinese gangsters was still alive, croaking like a hooked flounder, his mouth opening and closing, barely audible sounds coming out.

"Call an ambulance," Verba said to the waitress, who was still screaming hysterically.

"Call a fucking ambulance, dammit/" he bellowed at her, and she ran to the phone.

Tanisha looked at Verba, who had been nicked in the ear by gunfire. Blood was running down his face. "How preposterous does it seem to you now?" she asked.

Chapter
31.

The Smart Monkey

It was ten o'clock in the morning before Tanisha, Wheeler, and Captain Verba were through with the Major Crimes Investigators from Parker Center. They had all filled out field shooting reports and given statements. The four dead Bamboo Dragons were now parked on gurneys in the morgue, next to the three who had died in the car accident in South Central. A Chinese gurney traffic jam. The lone survivor of all of the carnage was in the L
. A
. County Trauma Unit with one of Rick Verba's 9mm half-loads still buried in his back. His condition was critical and doubtful.

All the dead Chinese Dragons had been fingerprinted, but the print run had failed to turn up anything. They didn't exist in the LAPD computer files and were being listed as John Does. They had been further categorized as probable illegal immigrants.

Tanisha, Verba, and Wheeler were now back in the Captain's office at Asian Crimes, with strict instructions from the Investigators at Major Crimes to let Parker Center handle the follow-up investigation.

"They couldn't find shit in an elephant's asshole," Verba said bitterly, pulling the blinds in his office to cut out the stares of the other Asian detectives. Everybody out there knew that Rick and Tanisha had just washed out four Bamboo Dragons, and that Tanisha had DOA'd three others in a South Central car chase.

As he sat in Verba's office, Wheeler's mind felt sluggish. He was still on Hong Kong time and he had cooked too much adrenaline. His muscles felt burned-out and unresponsive, his mind running at quarter-speed.

Rick Verba reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out the document taken from the Red Flower Pavilion. He set it down on the desk. "Now, how the hell do we get these signatures verified?" he said.

"You kept it? I thought you were supposed to give everything over to Lieutenant Miller, downtown," Tanisha said.

"This is my beat, our case. Those Parker Center cowboys aren't going to run the maze down in Chinatown," he said. "So how do we prove this paper?"

"Xerox it and I'll fax it to Willard Vickers," Wheeler said. "He'll get it verified."

Tanisha nodded and gave Wheeler a smile that turned into a yawn. "Sorry," she said.

"Go home, get some sleep," Verba ordered.

"I don't think she should go home. And I don't think I should, either. This makes two attempts on our lives since we landed," Wheeler said, "and, as long as we're on that subject, how did those Bamboo Dragons know we were going to be at that hotel restaurant in the first place? How the hell did they find us there?"

"Good question," Tanisha nodded.

"Maybe they followed you from South Division," Verba speculated.

"Not unless they were in a chopper," she said. "We took every precaution. Nobody was tailing us."

"Then I don't know," Verba said.

"Did you tell anybody?" she asked him.

"No. I came right from my house."

They sat in silence.

"Could your car have a tracking bug planted on it? Or your suitcases? Or clothes?" Verba finally asked them.

"It's possible," Tanisha said.

"Okay, we'll go through everything, luggage, clothes, the works," Verba said. "I'll get the Jag swept in the garage downstairs. If that comes up clean, I don't know what to tell you."

After they left Verba's office, Tanisha ran into A1 Katsukura in the detective squad room.

"You okay?" the Japanese detective asked her.

"Yeah, thanks for asking. How you doing with Ray's murder?"

"I'm nowhere. It's sitting in my casefile. Meanwhile, I'm back on Snake Patrol. Operation Dry Dock now."

"What the hell is that?" she asked.

"Some Chinese guy tried to rent the Hornblower down at Marina Del Rey. It's one of those big party boats you can charter for a wedding or office party. Only he wanted it stocked with enough fuel to go over thirty miles. The guy at the boat company thought that was a weird request, like maybe they wanted the boat for some drug deal, so he called us. We put an undercover in there. We're playing along with it. Looks like they're going to use the Hornblower to off-load some Snake Riders from a mother ship outside the three-mile limit. Only this time, I finally convinced Verba to play it smart. We're gonna be set up to follow them. Trace 'em all the way to the end user. Throw a net over the whole operation."

"Good way to play it," she said, yawning again.

The bug detectors went through their luggage, their clothes, and the car, but found nothing. Tanisha and Wheeler watched as they put the carpet back in the trunk, and when they were finished, Wheeler hooked his cellphone back inside the car.

"We gotta find a place to go where we won't get dead," he said.

"My grandmother's house," she said. "My grandmother still lives there with my niece. It's south of Crenshaw. Not the most scenic neighborhood in L
. A
., but you can't beat the hood for keeping out off-brand G-sters."

"Sounds good to me as long as it's got a soft pillow and a dark room."

"Let's go then."

They got into the Jag and left the safety of the Asian Crimes parking lot. Wheeler drove onto the freeway, but instead of going south, he took the turnoff heading west toward Bel Air. She looked over at him in wonder. "I've got one stop I want to make first," he said.

Liz Cassidy stood in the entry hall of Prescott's Bel Air house and glared at Tanisha until Wheeler finally returned from the den with volume ten of John Stoddard's History of California.

"Where are you going with that?" Liz asked.

"I'll bring it back, Liz. I promise."

"We missed you at Prescott's funeral." Her voice was brittle in the air-conditioned foyer.

"I'm sorry."

"Are you and your policewoman friend here having a nice time?" she asked coldly. "Have you managed to destroy Prescott's reputation yet?"

"Liz, I'm sorry. I know you can't understand what I'm trying to do. I don't expect you to."

Tanisha felt like a spectator at a family hanging.

"I understand, Wheeler. Oh boy, do I understand," Liz said, her shrill voice filling the entry. "Prescott tried to help you. He tried to explain your hopeless lifestyle to your mother. He stood up for you when nobody else did, and in return you're hell bent on destroying his legacy. You are the most pathetic excuse for a human being I've ever seen."

"I'm tired of this. . . . I've had it, Liz. Consider what would have happened if this 'pathetic excuse for a human being' hadn't been here a week ago and stepped up. You and Hollis might be dead too. I didn't start this. It wasn't me who invited this tragedy into our family, but I'm gonna for damn sure get it out. I'm going to find out who killed my little brother. . . . I'm doing this for Pres. He wanted it. He asked me to." Then they turned and left Liz standing there, speechless.

As they got back on the freeway heading south, Wheeler was thinking of the last time he had seen Pres alive, sitting across from him in the Westridge Country Club dining room. It was one sentence that had made no sense back then, but now gave him the strength to go on: "Whatever happenshis brother had said, "promise me you'll do the right thing."

Sometimes Willy thought about dragons. He had read books on the mythic Chinese power symbols. Dragons were the chief lizards of the 360 scaly reptiles that lived on the planet. Dragons had four legs but often walked on two. The Imperial Dragon had five claws on each foot, other dragons only four. The dragon was said to have nine resemblances: Its horns resembled those of a deer, its head that of a camel; it had the eyes of a devil, the neck of a snake; its abdomen was like that of a large crocodile; it had the scales of a carp, the claws of an eagle, the feet of a tiger, and the ears of an ox. The small dragon was like the silk caterpillar with many legs and little to protect it. But the large dragon filled both Heaven and Earth.

Willy sat in his magnificent jet, thinking of dragons while the U
. S
. Customs officials made their final entry marks on his visa. He was traveling on his British passport, so entry into the United States was still quite easy.

His jet was parked in front of the LAX Executive Jet Terminal. Finally, Customs and Immigration signed him off, stamped his passport, and left his plane without checking the luggage hold where Willy had a secret compartment containing a deadly suitcase.

Willy walked down the ramp and got into a gray Lincoln Town Car. He waited while his pilots retrieved his luggage from the plane. The last suitcase came from the secret compartment and had Russian writing on its side. It was placed in the trunk with his other belongings.

The man behind the wheel of the Town Car had introduced himself as Lee Chow, saying his American name was Danny. Danny Lee put the car in gear and drove Willy off the tarmac. Willy said nothing to him, choosing his own thoughts over meaningless conversation.

As they drove toward Chinatown, Willy remembered "The Legend of the Foolish Dragon." The way the story went, the Foolish Dragon had a very sick wife. They lived at the bottom of the ocean. The Dragon's sick wife said to him, "I must eat the heart of a Smart Monkey to survive."

The Foolish Dragon then said to his wife, "But how will I get such a heart?"

His wife said, "I don't know, but you must try or I will surely die."

The Foolish Dragon left the bottom of the sea and went up onto shore, looking for a Smart Monkey. He finally found one, sitting on the highest limb of a huge willow tree.

"I will take you wherever you want to go," the Foolish Dragon said. "Just climb on my back. It is much easier to ride than to walk."

"But I don't need a ride," the Smart Monkey said. "I can swing from vines."

"You can go much farther and faster on my back," the Foolish Dragon coaxed.

So the Smart Monkey climbed down onto the Dragon's back and the Dragon rushed back into the sea. As the Monkey's eyes and mouth filled with water, he cried out, "Why are you taking me into the sea?"

"Because my wife is very sick and if she can eat the heart of a Smart Monkey, she will not die."

"Oh, this is terrible," the Smart Monkey said. "Your wife will die, for I have left my heart back in the tree. If she needs to eat my heart, we must go back and get it."

The Foolish Dragon turned and lumbered back onto land, then the Smart Monkey grabbed the limb of the tree and scurried back to safety.

"What are you doing, my little friend? You must come back. Bring your heart, my wife is dying."

"You must be a very Foolish Dragon," the Smart Monkey said, laughing at him from the highest limb of the tree.

Willy had been a Foolish Dragon. It was now time for him to be the Smart Monkey.

Chapter
32.

South of Manchester

The house was an old, run-down two-story that was trying hard to look Victorian. A wooden porch and circular corner turrets should have helped the effect, but somehow only managed to look like add-ons. The house was located south of Manchester Boulevard, in the Leimert Park section of South Central on Bronson Street. They pulled up the drive and parked behind a '63 Impala bomber, known as a "glass house" because both front and back windows were wrap-arounds. The Chevy was dripping oil like an Italian gigolo.

The red Jag had been drawing street-corner attention ever since they passed La Cienega. "Pull around on the grass in back," Tanisha said. "Your car will be a duck in half an hour if you park it out here."

They drove down the drive under an exposed telephone wire that went from the phone pole at the street to the eave of the house. Hanging by their laces over the wire and visible from the street were a pair of old tennis shoes. Tanisha glared up at them as they drove underneath. "Shit," she said to herself softly.