The Ying on Triad (6 page)

I pondered his account of the incident. One thing puzzled me. "You said it was October 3. How can you be so
certain after all these years?"

He laughed, "Are you married, son?"

I glanced at Janice. A light blush colored her cheeks. "I
used to be, but not now."

"Well, if you was, then you know how wives can get if
you forget a birthday. My Ruby's birthday, rest her soul,
was October 4. I completely forgot about it puzzling over
what on earth had come of Red" He shook his head. "She
sure gave me blazes" He grinned at Janice and me. "That,
young lady and young man, is why I remember the date
so clear."

We laughed along with him. Despite being near the end
of October, the day was hot, and the cool shade was a
pleasant relief. I looked around. "Have you lived out here
long?"

He grew somber. "Five years or so. Ruby and me bought
it so we could retire. We'd been together forty-one years"
His forehead wrinkled and his brows knit in grief. "We
always figured we could hit fifty, maybe even sixty years
together. She passed away our first year here, sudden-like.
We never had the chance to enjoy our retirement"

I regretted having asked the question. I glanced at Janice, then rose to my feet. "Thank you, Mr. Holloman.
You've been more than helpful"

In the pickup, I jotted my notes on the ubiquitous
three-by-five cards. When Janice asked about them, I
explained, "They help me keep things straight.
Sometimes when I rearrange the cards, I see the issue
from a different perspective"

When I finished, I slipped them in my pocket and
turned the ignition key. The engine roared to life.

We rode in silence for several moments. "I feel sorry
for him," Janice whispered.

"Yeah," I replied, wondering how I could handle losing
Janice after forty years. I pushed the thought from my
head, returning to our present conundrum. I couldn't help
wondering if the assertion that an Asian shot Hastings and
the fact that Red Tompkins disappeared in a Chinese
funeral home was more than coincidence.

I bounced the idea off Janice.

She looked up at me hopefully. "Do you think there's a
connection?"

"Think about it. Red goes to Bobby's uncle and claims
he had a film showing the real killer was an Asian. For ten
thousand, Bobby can have the film" I hesitated as my
brain pulled off a Sherlock Holmes. "Obviously, since
Red had something valuable, he wanted to get the best
price. And what better way than to play two involved parties against each other?"

"You mean, he was trying to sell it to some Chinaman
at the funeral home?" Her voice reflected her surprise.

"Why not? He asked ten thousand from Packard. Maybe he thought he could raise the ante at the funeral
home" I paused for a moment, trying to sort the myriad
thoughts tumbling through my head.

Janice gave me the next little nudge. "But how would
he have known to go to the funeral home?"

I studied the highway ahead for several moments
before answering. "It stands to reason, if you want to sell
someone a tape of a murder, you'll go to the one most
likely to be hurt by the tape, right?"

She nodded, her eyes lighting up in understanding. "I
follow you. In other words, Red Tompkins must have recognized the Asian on the tape and knew that either he or
someone who knew him was at the funeral home"

I winked at her, "Yeah, yeah, I think you might have
something there"

A big smile played over her face, dimpling her cheeks.
"Now what?"

Glancing at my watch, I replied, "It's just after four.
Let's go see Danny and bring him up to date."-

She caught her breath. Her eyes narrowed. "Danny?
O'Banion? The mob boss?"

I chuckled, "Alleged mob underboss"

"Why him?"

"I didn't tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"Robert Packard, the guy on death row is Danny
O'Banion's cousin. Danny O'Banion is a legitimate client
of Blevins' Investigations."

Janice frowned at me in disbelief.

I gave her a gentle smile. "Don't worry. He won't bite"

Her frown deepened, "I don't know if I want to meet
him"

I teased her. "Why? Afraid of your reputation?"

Fire shot from her eyes. "Of course not. It's just that
he's a criminal"

"Maybe, but a charming criminal. You'll see. Like I
said, he won't bite"

"He'd better not. I'll bite back. But, I can tell you now, I
won't like him," she snapped, her clipped words sounded
like the staccato of a machine gun.

I arched an eyebrow. "At least be gracious"

She sniffed that inimitable, patented little-rich-girl
sniff. "Oh, I'll be gracious. Don't worry about that. I've
had plenty of lessons on being gracious, and I'll probably
need every single one of them tonight"

All I could do was roll my eyes.

Danny agreed to a 5:30 meeting at the County Line
Barbecue on Bee Tree Road. It was a rustic establishment
that served the most mouth-watering, juicy barbecue in all
of the South, with the exception of that cooked by my
uncle Patric Thibodeaux in his famed converted freezer
chest over in Louisiana.

On the way to County Line Barbecue, I stopped by a
telephone booth and thumbed through the yellow pages.
There, on Balcones Drive I found the Chinese funeral
home of which Hollomon had spoken, the Kwockwing
Funeral Home.

When we turned into the County Line Parking Lot
sometime later, I spotted Danny's black Lincoln Towncar
at the back of the lot. Gargantuan Huey stepped from the
Lincoln and opened the rear door as we climbed from the
Silverado.

Janice gasped when she saw Huey. "Tony," she whispered, her voice strangled.

Chuckling, I whispered, "That's Godzilla. His favorite
hobby is pulling legs and arms off people Danny doesn't
like"

She looked around sharply, her eyes scolding me. "I'm
not that dumb," she muttered.

Danny greeted us with his trademark grin, a roguish
smile that made you think you were the only one in his
presence. "Tony, boy, good to see you"

We shook, and I introduced him to Janice. Charm
oozed from his pores as he turned on his Irish magic.
"You said she was pretty, Tony, but you didn't tell me
she's an angel"

I lifted an eyebrow. I'd never mentioned a word to him
about Janice, but I grinned at that old Irish blarney. And
naturally Janice blushed, and naturally Danny kept it up.
He took her elbow and guided her into the restaurant and,
obviously ignored by the two, Huey and I brought up the
rear, a portent of the evening to come.

Danny was in rare form.

Occasionally dropping me a tidbit of the conversation,
he monopolized Janice until the platters of barbecue
arrived.

Janice frowned when she noticed Huey did not have a
plate in front of him. "Huey's a vegetarian," Danny
explained with a jocular lilt in his words. "And he never
eats dinner. It causes him to gain weight. Isn't that right,
Huey?"

Janice looked around at me, as if asking whether she
should believe Danny or not. I simply shrugged.

And Huey simply grunted. "Yeah, Boss," he answered,
which, while it paled next to Hamlet's, was for him an
effusive soliloquy.

The juicy barbecue was served with ice-cold beer in
frosty mugs. A couple years earlier, I had joined
Alcoholics Anonymous. Since then, I might have tottered
once or twice from the wagon, but mostly, I had kept the
pledge.

While Danny put the barbecue away and washed it
down with gulps of cold beer, I sipped at my mug and
brought him up to date. "When you suggested an Asian
triad might be behind the murder, I was skeptical, Danny.
But now, along with the allegation that the gunman was
Asian and Tompkins disappearing in that Chinese funeral home, I'm beginning to think along the same lines. Can
you and your connections give me any help with the triads around here, in Austin?"

Danny hesitated. He dabbed at his lips with his napkin.
The blithe tone in his voice grew serious. "Look, Tony.
My people deal with the triads. If I start nosing around,
I'm begging for an unmarked grave under an expressway.
Understand?"

Clearly puzzled, Janice glanced back and forth from
Danny to me, but she remained silent.

Drawing a deep breath, I released it slowly. "I understand"

He cut his eyes to Huey, then Janice, sending me a message. Reverting to his blithe chatter, he said. "I knew you
would, buddy." Then he turned his attention back to
Janice. "You look like the kind of person who would
enjoy the gambling tables in Monte Carlo," he purred.

"Oh, I've been there," she exclaimed. "Have you?"

"What a small world," he remarked, focusing his full
attention on her. "I was there just two months ago, on
vacation" I kept quiet. Danny's vacations were all moboriented.

"Me too," she gushed, "but it was last summer."

"Which was your favorite casino?"

She clapped her hands. "The Casino de Monte Carlo. I
loved the Bohemian glass chandeliers and the rococo
ceilings"

"The belle epoque architecture impressed me most,"
Danny replied. "And in an aesthetic sense, I especially appreciated the twenty-eight Ionic columns running
across the Renaissance Hall to the main gambling hall"

I wanted to gag. Danny wouldn't know an Ionic column if one sat down at a poker table with him, I told
myself.

For the next few minutes, they reminisced over the
glamour and intrigue of the little principality, of restaurants such as the Cafe de Paris, and hotels like Loew's
Monte Carlo. She fawned over his every word, and the
truth was, I was growing jealous.

During a lull in the ooh's and aah's of their experiences
in Monte Carlo, Janice excused herself to the powder
room. As soon as she left the table, Danny turned to Huey.
"Get the Lincoln, Huey. Time to go. I'll be right out. I
want to tell Miss Coffman-Morrison good night"

You bet, you jerk, I thought to myself. You just want her
to fawn over you once more.

When Huey closed the door behind him, Danny turned
abruptly to me. "Lei Sun Huang heads up the Ying On
triad in Austin. There's a tong also, the Sing Leon. Joey
Soong runs it"

His sudden burst of information caught me unexpectedly, but I managed to ask, "Do you know anything about
them?"

Danny's eyes narrowed as he rose quickly to his feet
and whispered harshly, "No one knows anything about
Lei Sun. He's the original mystery man. Joey Soong is all
right. The Asians around here are just like everyone
else-some good, some bad. In fact, most of the secondgeneration Asians are just as much corn-fed Texans as
you are a crawfish-eating Cajun"

He glanced over his shoulder. "Now, listen to me. I told
you nothing, you hear? Figure out some way to explain
how you came up with those names if someone should
ask, but don't involve me"

My resentment toward him melted into gratitude. He had
stuck out his neck for me big-time. "Thanks, Danny. I-"

He cut me off with that cockeyed grin of his spreading
across his freckled face. "And tell the little lady she's quite
a stunner. If she gets tired of you, she can look me up."

"Get out of here," I growled with a grin.

Janice was disappointed when she returned and found
Danny had departed.

"He had to run," I said, sarcasm dripping from my
words. "He had a guy to rub out."

She just glared at me.

Clouds had moved in, obscuring the starlight. As
always, traffic was heavy on Bee Tree Road, but I managed
to sneak into a slot in the middle of a line of raging lunatics
heading for the Daytona raceway called Loop 360.

The oncoming headlights lit up the interior of the
pickup like strobes, with flashes of brilliant light.

I glanced sidelong at Janice. "Well, what did you think
about Danny O'Banion?"

"Despite everything I've heard about him, he is
charming-handsome too. And he's traveled"

Jealously flashed its green eyes when I heard the trace
of awe in her voice. I wanted to say he wasn't that handsome or charming, but I held my tongue.