Changes -- A Randall Lee Mystery Read online

  Then there was the body. Knox hadn’t been kidding. The girl was really fucking blue. Not the typical pale bluish cast that most corpses had. She looked like a smurf.

  "Most dramatic case of cyanosis I’ve ever seen." Childerson said, seeming to read my thoughts, "Comes from a lack of oxygen in the blood."

  I leaned in for a closer look.

  The girl was young… maybe twenty. She was fine-boned, with big eyes and full lips. Delicate hands, long fingers. She must’ve been quite beautiful in life. I felt guilty looking at her.

  "What’s her name?" I asked.

  Childerson looked at me like I’d just asked him if I could have sex with her corpse. He glanced over at Knox, who shrugged and waved a hand impatiently.

  "All we managed to get from Madame Chong was that she called herself ‘Mei Ling’. I kinda don’t think that’s her real name, though."

  Knox asked about the cause of death. Childerson turned his considerable bulk toward the detective. I took the liberty of grabbing a pair of rubber gloves from a box on one of the steel trays, and I slipped them on.

  "Early evidence would suggest asphyxiation." Childerson said. "From her skin tone and the state of her eyes, I’d say it’s looking like it’s probably from a crushed larynx. Probably her pimp that did it. Same old bullshit."

  I put a thumb lightly on her closed eyelid and slid it upward, exposing her eye. The pale green iris swam in a sea of red - every blood vessel had burst.

  "I’d place the time of death at sometime early yesterday morning." Childerson continued. I had just opened her mouth to examine her tongue when he turned and screamed, "What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Don’t fucking touch her - you’re fucking up the evidence, you asshole!"

  I ignored him for the moment. Mei Ling’s tongue was a bloated black slug that barely fit inside her mouth. I pulled up her upper lip; her gums were the same – blackish, swollen almost to the point of bursting.

  I stood and faced Childerson. "Your evidence? The astounding amount of evidence to suggest that she suffocated from a crushed throat? That evidence?"

  Childerson puffed up like an obese blowfish and got up in my face. "That’s right."

  I looked at Knox. He watched us with a sort of detached interest.

  "You asked for my help. Do you care about how the girl really died, or are you content with this asshead’s throat crusher theory?"

  Asshead protested.

  "You got something he hasn’t got?" Knox said skeptically.

  "Yeah. I’ve seen something like this before."

  Childerson said, "Oh, bullshit."

  I turned to him and said, "Did you actually examine her? She’s been here since early this morning, and you don’t know anything about her, do you?"

  "She's a fucking dead whore. Case closed."

  "She's somebody's daughter," I said.

  He tried to stare me down, but a drop of sweat rolled into his eyes. He blinked the sweat away and sighed loudly. "Alright then, let’s hear your theory, fucko."

  "Tell you what: I’ll lay it all out for you. You do your tests. Fifty bucks says I’m right and you’re an idiot."

  Childerson crossed his huge arms and said, "You’re on, asshole."

  I stepped to the other side of the table, allowing them access to the body as well.

  "Knox, you said there were no marks on the body. That’s not true. And this is not cyanosis."

  Childerson laughed. "She’s fucking blue… what else could it be? Too much time at Willy Wonka’s?"

  "No. She’s bruised. From head to toe."

  They looked at each other and Childerson laughed again. I held up a latex-clad finger and said, "Let me explain."

  Childerson sneered at me; Knox frowned but waved me on.

  "I want you to press lightly inward," I said, "here and here." I pointed to the ribs directly beneath Mei Ling’s breasts. Childerson reached out a hand, rolled his eyes at me, and pushed on the girl’s chest. The color immediately drained from his face and his eyes widened. Knox looked from the M.E. to me and back, and then felt her ribs for himself.

  "Jesus Christ…what the hell happened to her?" he said, pulling his hand back quickly. Human chests shouldn’t be squishy.

  "Certain martial arts have very specialized, almost legendary, strikes. As Mei Ling here realized what her client really wanted, she would have inhaled to scream for help. The killer then struck," I extended both of my palms slowly outward in a pushing gesture, "both sides of the ribs, simultaneously. With sufficient internal energy and body coordination, this compresses and shatters the ribs. The lungs pop like balloons and crush the heart. The blood - with no place else to go - shoots outward, and temporarily soaks into the muscles and tissues. This girl died within an hour of being discovered; by tomorrow morning the blood will already start pooling on the underside of her body."

  I slid the gloves from my hands and tossed them in the trash. Reaching in my pocket, I took out my wallet, slid a business card out of it, and handed it to Childerson.

  "Business hours are on there. Feel free to drop off my fifty bucks any time."

  I headed for the door.

  When I realized Knox wasn’t following, I checked my watch and said, "My first appointment’s in twenty minutes. I gotta go."

  Knox nodded absentmindedly.

  "I rode with you, man." I said, hoping to jog his memory.

  He looked up at me as if he’d just woken up.

  "Let’s. Go. Please." I said.

  As we headed out, I looked over my shoulder at Childerson. He was still staring at my card.

  ‘Fucko,’ indeed.

  4

  Once we were in the car, Knox said, "How the hell did you do that?"

  "What?" I said. Coy as a schoolgirl, that’s me.

  "How did you know all that?"

  "It’s part of my job. Knowing things. It’s what separates me from somebody like Childerson. There are other things I think I know, but I wasn’t positive…and I wanted my fifty bucks…" I was mostly guessing about all of it, but there was no way I was admitting that to Knox, and certainly not to Childerson.

  "What other things?" he asked.

  I slipped a plastic bag from my pocket, drew a decent-sized slice of ginseng from it, and popped it in my mouth. The root tasted earthy, slightly bitter, and a little sweet.

  "Well," I said, "I’m pretty sure Mei Ling was pregnant, for one thing."

  "No shit?"

  "If Childerson would get on with the exam, we’d know soon enough. Also, I think it’s pretty clear this wasn’t a random thing…"

  "Right. This was planned… an assassination?"

  "Seems so. Which would suggest certain things." I said, "Bad, bad things."

  He was silent for a minute. I kept on chewing.

  "Okay, I give up." he said.

  "What?"

  "What things? What did you mean?"

  "You’ve got a dead Chinese girl, a hooker. Probably a contract killing. The killer is proficient in martial arts, specifically, a Chinese martial art. Are you seeing a pattern?"

  Knox slipped a cigarette in his mouth and muttered, "It’s all way fucking Chinese…"

  "True. So you’ve got prostitution and murder for hire. Who’s likely to be involved?"

  Knox’s face lit up. I half expected him to raise his hand and say, "Oh! Oh! Me! Pick me!"

  "Triads," is what he did say. Give the man a cookie.

  "But look," he said, "this is St. Louis...there’s very little Triad activity around, and they’ve always kept things quiet, always handled things themselves. So why attract all the unwanted attention over some hooker?"

  He parked in front of my shop and turned to look at me.

  I chewed the ginseng some more and said, "That's an excellent question. I'll leave that to you to figure out. I get paid to poke people with needles, so this is all way above my pay grade. But this was all very interesting, and I’m glad I could help out. See you around, Detective."

  I got
out of the car and fished my keys out of my pocket.

  Knox rolled down his window and said, "Hey, Lee… you busy tomorrow?"

  "Why?"

  "Might need some more translating." He said.

  "I’ll be around." I said.

  5

  The girl sucked air through her teeth and hissed, "Ow!"

  "Tender?" I said.

  She squirmed on the table and said, "Uh, yeah."

  "What happened?"

  She lifted her head to look at me and said, "Let’s just say that platform boots and cobblestone streets don’t mix."

  My hands slid from her swollen knee down her smooth, shapely calf to her ankle. I moved her foot gently.

  "Sore?" I asked.

  "Yeah, but nothing like the knee… I landed right on it when I fell."

  "The good news is that it’s not that bad. The bad news is--"

  She winced and said, "You’re gonna turn me into a pincushion?"

  I nodded and went to the cabinet for my supplies.

  This was Tracy’s first visit. Well, as a patient, anyway. I’d seen her once before, when she came through the neighborhood with a friend. There are a few semi-touristy locations down the block from me: a rundown chop suey shack, a video rental store trying to cash in on the success of Jackie Chan and Jet Li, and HK Trading, a small grocery that carried incense, hell banknotes, and the sort of silly, mass-produced crap that westerners think of when they think of "the Orientals" - soapstone Buddhas, tiny gongs, that sort of thing.

  Tracy and her friend had been amazed to find that I wasn’t selling any lucky bamboo kits, but they were more amazed to see that I was not Asian. I remembered her smile, her funky hair and clothes, and the way she snatched one of my business cards with her black nail-polished fingertips. I couldn’t tell you a single thing about her friend.

  When Tracy called to make an appointment, she made it very clear that she hated doctors, and that she really wasn’t too keen on needles either, but I was used to that. Needles, I’ve heard, lie somewhere just below public speaking and death on the list of most feared things.

  When I returned to her side, I said, "I promise you this won’t be nearly as bad as you think it’ll be… nothing ever is."

  She bit her lower lip and nodded. I tried not to notice the lip-biting, because Tracy was a very attractive girl… outstanding facial structure, big, dark eyes, full lips, a figure that a pinup model would kill for, long, long legs. Really cute feet. And I’m not into feet at all. In fact, I haven’t paid any attention whatsoever to any part of a woman in a long time.

  I haven’t wanted to.

  A lot of that is because of Miranda, I know, but the rest of it is that I’m mostly used to dealing with elderly people. They love to inform me of their bowel issues. That is no fun. But being paid to attend to this young lady’s legs? Hell, I would do that for free.

  I opened an amber jar, poured its smelly contents into a basin, and soaked some thin gauze strips in the liquid.

  "What’s that stuff?" she said, wrinkling her nose.

  "It’s an herbal mixture that’s good for joint pains. I’m going to send some home with you and I want you to use it, even if it does smell like cat pee, alright?"

  She laughed and nodded.

  "On the bright side," I said, "unlike some of the prescription stuff you could get, this stuff will not cause weight gain, projectile vomiting, or persistent rectal seepage."

  She giggled again. I felt this absurd swelling in my chest, this ridiculous, almost overwhelming giddiness because I made her laugh.

  It was probably heatstroke.

  I took a strip of gauze, shook out the excess fluid, and laid it on her injured knee. I crisscrossed several more wet strips around the joint before wrapping her leg in a fresh, dry bandage.

  "How’s that?" I asked. "Not too tight?"

  She shook her head and said, "It feels neat… and all cold inside."

  I nodded and took a packet of needles from the glass jar at my side.

  "Shit," she said with a frown, "I was hoping you’d forgotten that part."

  I unwrapped the packet and tossed the paper in the trash. With my left hand, I measured out the cun distance, from her kneecap, toward the outside of her leg. I held the needle lightly in my right hand and looked up at Tracy; her eyes were squeezed tightly shut and she was biting her damned lip again.

  I situated the tip of the needle directly over the spot, and held my left hand up a few inches from her face. Simultaneously, I snapped the fingers of my left hand as a diversion and lightly tapped the needle home.

  "You okay?" I asked.

  Without opening her eyes, Tracy said, "Yeah. Just tell me before you do it okay, because…"

  "First one’s in, kiddo."

  She opened her eyes and looked. "Oh… Oh, wow."

  "Cool, huh?" I said.

  She watched as I inserted the other needles. Once she’d convinced herself that it really didn’t hurt, she allowed herself to relax. As I worked, she said, "So… do I call you doctor, or mister, or, like, master, or what?"

  "You can call me Randall." I said, twirling the first needle a little.

  "Okay, but what’s your title?" she said.

  "Well, I'm a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, but that doesn’t mean much here in the good ole U.S."

  She cocked her head sympathetically and said, "I guess the powers that be want that whole medical school thing… seven years of schooling or whatever it is."

  "Maybe," I said, "but, I spent ten years with my teacher before I was ever allowed to even sit in with a patient."

  "Jeez," she said, "did you start when you were a little kid?"

  I grinned and said, "I’m older than I look."

  She flashed a quizzical look and grinned back.

  When we’d finished up, there was a part of me - the bad part - that was thinking about telling her that part of her treatment involved taking her out to dinner, but luckily I was spared that moment of impropriety by the arrival of my next client.

  Mrs. Lhung.

  A sixty-eight year old Cambodian woman.

  With bowel issues.

  Christ.

  6

  That evening, after the rest of my appointments, I settled in to dinner. My dining room consisted of a folding card table and chair, but I made the most of the evening – microwaveable Ramen noodles and Miller Genuine Draft.

  I like to keep it classy.

  As I ate, I thought about Mei Ling. I wondered why anyone would’ve wanted to kill her. I wondered how a girl like that got into the life to begin with. How had life failed her? No answers sprang to mind, so I thought about Tracy, and her exquisite legs, instead. That carried me through the rest of dinner. I finished my beer, rushed through a little Tai Chi, and went to bed.

  I only woke up a few times during the night.

  Only twice did I scream.

  Thank heaven for small favors.

  In the morning, I got up, threw some cold water on my face, and did some stretching. Once I was loose, I practiced the form - slow to make up for the hurried practice from the previous evening. I focused on releasing the tension from all of my muscles. It was a struggle not to fight against gravity, to let go and allow the movements to happen. I don’t know if it worked, but it kept my head quiet, and sometimes that was good enough. I finished up, showered, and was getting ready to go downstairs to the shop when the phone rang.

  It was Knox. He asked if we could meet in the park across the street. I said sure. I didn’t have much else to do - only two appointments, later in the day, and neither of them were with attractive young women, so I could do with a little diversion.

  I walked down to HK Trading, picked up breakfast, and strolled over to the park. Knox was messing up his nice suit sitting on a park bench. As I approached, he said, "Didn’t know what you’d want, but I brought you some Dim Sum or whatever, just in case."

  "Yeah? I brought some of your native cuisine, too," I said, tossing him the bo
x of donuts I’d bought.

  "Nice." he said. "Did you think about bringing coffee?"

  I opened the paper sack I was carrying, took out a Styrofoam cup, and handed it to him.

  "Well, damn. I feel special."

  "You should," I said.

  He opened the box and took a glazed donut as I sat down.

  "So what’s up?" I said. I popped a ground pork dumpling into my mouth. It was chewy, undercooked, and packed with enough MSG to make my brain bleed. He must’ve picked them up from the chop suey shack.

  Knox took a bite of his doughnut, dabbed at the corner of his mouth daintily with a napkin, and said, "Childerson checked out the girl…"

  He took a fifty-dollar bill from his inside coat pocket and handed it to me.

  "He also said the girl was pregnant. Oh, and a special message just for you… he said, ‘Go fuck yourself.’"

  I pocketed the money, blew on my coffee to cool it, and said, "Classy."

  Knox nodded and said, "So, you want to tell me what that shit was that you and the madam were arguing about yesterday?"

  "What? Oh, right. It was nothing."

  "Bullshit. She kept repeating that shit to our boys all night… ‘Deem mock, Deem mock.’"

  I took a jelly donut from the box and said, "Dim Mak."

  "Whatever. What’s it mean?"

  I shrugged and said, "It’s hocus pocus, nothing but an old Chinese superstition. ‘The Death Touch’… supposed to be some secret deadly art. Y’know, where you touch certain energy points and cause a person to die hours later… they say that’s what got Bruce Lee… Madame Chong said that’s what killed Mei Ling. I already showed you how she died, though. So it’s crap."

  Knox seemed to think about that as he popped the rest of his donut in his mouth. He dabbed his mouth again, tore open the plastic lid of his coffee, and took a sip.

  "Why?" I asked.

  "Got the call this morning. Chong’s dead. Heart attack, we think."

  "…Shit."

  "Yeah. And it looks like the case dies with her."

  "What? Why?"

  "These massage joints… they get girls fresh off the friggin’ boat in California. Ninety percent of ‘em are illegals. They stick ‘em in a parlor and rotate ‘em out to another place whenever a new group arrives. Keeps things moving, keeps the girls from getting any kind of criminal record in any one spot, and keeps things more or less anonymous."