Changes -- A Randall Lee Mystery Read online

  "I’ll be back as soon as possible."

  She nodded and said, "When do you leave?"

  "In about an hour."

  She looked away from me. When she finally spoke, she said, "You can call me… if you want to. Only if you want to, though."

  I held up the napkin and said, "I will."

  "I didn’t mean to push. The other night, I mean."

  "You didn’t. You deserved to know."

  "Okay." She said. She didn’t look like she believed me. "Take care of yourself, alright?"

  "You too." I said.

  She checked to make sure her boss wasn’t around, and gave me another short kiss goodbye.

  I got to the airport, bought a cheesy-looking kung fu magazine from the gift shop, and picked up my boarding pass. I was reading an article about an obscure Wu Tang sword routine when a voice over the loudspeaker called out, "Flight 2987 – non-stop to San Francisco – is now boarding at gate 8A."

  It was time to go.

  23

  With the time change, I arrived at San Francisco International airport at 12:55 a.m. I picked up my rental car - a Yugo of all things - and set out for the hotel.

  I found myself at the Hilton at 2:30 in the morning.

  I’m not too great with directions.

  I stumbled into my room, admired its elegance for all of ten seconds, and passed out. It was ten when I cracked open one blurry eye to look at the clock. The room was nice. It took me a couple minutes to find the bathroom. I took a long hot shower and began to start to sort of feel human. I wasn’t feeling up to practicing the full form, so I did some Silk Reeling exercises, a set of slow, full-body movements used to develop the sort of spiraling energies used in Tai Chi Chuan. They were enough to loosen up the muscles and get some blood flowing.

  The first bit of detective work on the agenda was finding breakfast, but I wanted to call Tracy. She answered on the third ring with a throaty hello.

  "Hi," I said. "I didn’t mean to wake you…I forgot about the time difference."

  Her voice brightened. "Hey!" she said, "You got in okay?"

  "Yeah."

  "I’m such a ‘tard. I realized after you left that I don’t even know where you are."

  Uh-oh. This had to come up sooner or later.

  "…San Francisco," I said.

  After a moment, she said, "Randall, what are you doing in San Francisco?"

  "Well," I said, "there are some really great herb shops in Chinatown, not to mention the amount of…"

  "You’re still poking around about that dead girl, aren’t you?"

  Busted.

  "…Um…Yeah."

  "Isn’t that something for the police to be doing?"

  "Nobody besides me and Knox gives a shit, Tracy."

  "What if you get in trouble or something?"

  "I’m not going to get in trouble. I’m just going to see what I can find out, nothing crazy. And I really am going to stop off at some of those herb shops…see if I can find some really potent Horny Goat Weed for when I get back to you."

  She giggled. "I’ll stock up on the Gatorade, then."

  "Buy stock."

  "Alright. Keep me posted on whatever you find out, and be careful," she said with a yawn.

  "I will. Get some sleep."

  "’Kay. Bye."

  "Bye."

  I planned to drive around for a bit looking for some decent local food, but the traffic and my lack of direction-sense got on my nerves, and I ended up giving in to my raw hunger.

  Denny’s.

  One bad case of heartburn later, I checked my arm - just below the faded notes I’d written outside of Tracy’s club, I’d copied Mei Ling’s address from her license - and decided to just walk to her apartment. She'd lived a couple miles away in the midst of Ashbury Heights. I found the place and walked up to the front door. She'd lived on the ground floor of a building that was once a large house, but had been cut into three moderate sized apartments.

  I knocked on the door, just in case. No one answered.

  I checked the mailbox. Massive stacks of junk mail.

  I walked around the building.

  Bingo.

  Mei Ling had a back porch.

  And a back door.

  It didn’t look like anyone was around, so I took a credit card from my wallet and jimmied the door in under a minute.

  I went inside and closed the door quickly. The place looked like any other young woman’s apartment. Fruit (now rotting) and diet soda in the fridge. About a hundred pairs of shoes in the closet. Surprisingly upscale wardrobe.

  Family photos in frames throughout the place. Frowny-faced mother and a strict-looking father. Mei Ling, standing in front of them, smiling demurely.

  Another one showed her arm in arm with a guy. They were on a beach. They looked happy. I took it and a few others and stuck them in my pocket.

  I looked around some more, but the only thing that jumped out at me was that the place looked as if she could come home at any moment. Her closet was full. She'd never put a stop on her mail. My chest ached a little. It might have been breakfast, but I didn’t think so.

  I was pondering the situation when I went to the back door and found it blocked by a very large, very muscular Chinese man in an expensive suit.

  Well, poop.

  24

  He wasn’t a cop; I knew that much for certain. This was a good thing. It meant that I could hurt him if necessary.

  "Can I help you?" I said, summoning as much righteous indignation as I could manage, considering I was clearly breaking and entering.

  The voice that came out of the giant, muscled human wall did not fit his appearance – polite, refined, with a strong British accent. "You are trespassing on Miss Zhao’s property."

  "I’m a friend of Mei Ling’s." I said.

  He shook his head. "I’m afraid not, sir. Please come with me."

  "Where to?" I asked.

  He stepped aside slightly and gestured to a black Jaguar parked in the rear alley. A big part of my brain was arguing over whether to fight or flee, but a calm little voice in my head suggested just going with him. After all, it’s not like I’d learned much of anything useful so far.

  On the other hand, Oddjob here could just be taking me out to a landfill to whack me.

  Ah well, what the hell.

  I let him escort me to the car. He gently helped me into the back seat and slid in beside me. The man in the driver’s seat, the only other occupant in the car, was dark-skinned and dressed in an immaculate, dark violet silk suit. His braided hair hung loose around his shoulders. He wore black sunglasses that obscured his eyes.

  "He come peacefully, then?" the driver said. His accent sounded almost Spanish.

  "Yes." Oddjob said.

  The driver smiled, showing brilliant canines, and said, "Drat."

  25

  We drove.

  My hosts were not very talkative. Any question I asked was ignored, so I decided to save my breath. I was starting to wonder how long it was going to take the authorities to find my corpse when we pulled into an underground parking garage.

  I didn’t know where in the city we were, but the area, above ground at least, was very upscale. Before we got out of the car, the driver turned to me and said, "You going to behave?"

  I nodded.

  He nodded.

  We understood each other.

  We took an elevator up, and they escorted me discreetly through the opulent lobby to another private elevator in a back hallway. The driver pulled a key card from his pocket and slid it into a slot in the elevator’s console. We rode this elevator all the way to the top - the thirty-first floor, the penthouse.

  It was beyond belief. Greenish-black marble floors, polished teak walls, hidden, ambient lighting, and a waterfall. A freaking waterfall.

  And that was just the entryway.

  They led me to a large, high-ceilinged studio. The first thing I noticed was the couch.

  To be honest, the very fir
st thing I noticed was the nude redhead on the couch.

  A young Chinese man stood at an easel, painting her.

  I didn’t care much for his color choices.

  When we entered the room, neither the artist nor the subject appeared to notice.

  We waited.

  Finally, the artist laid down his brush and gestured to the model. The woman stood and walked from the room with such grace and poise one could almost forget that she was bare-ass naked in front of a bunch of strangers.

  "What is your name?" he said, turning to face me. I recognized him as the guy on the beach from Mei Ling’s photo.

  "Randall Lee." I said. At this point, I didn’t see much point in lying.

  "Why did you break into Mei Ling’s apartment?"

  "I just wanted to find out what happened to her," I said.

  The man blinked. When he spoke, he said, "Mr. Lee, I am typically a patient man but as of late my patience is wearing thin. I will ask you this one time – do you know where she is?"

  Uh-oh. I really felt like squirming under the pressure, but I kept cool.

  "Yes," I said.

  It stunned him.

  I said, "You’re her boyfriend?"

  The driver grabbed my elbow and said, "You don’t ask questions, he ask questions."

  But the artist ignored him. He stepped closer to me and said, "She’s my fiancée. Where is she?"

  I felt bad for the guy, but I wasn’t sure yet if he was the kill-the-messenger type.

  "St. Louis," I said.

  He was still thinking about that when the driver said, "If you know she in St. Louis, why you say you want to know what happen to her?"

  Shit.

  Well, they say the truth will set you free, so I decided to give it a try. If it didn’t work, I always had explosive, desperate violence as a back up plan.

  "She was murdered," I said. "I came here to find out why."

  The room became very still. Mei Ling’s fiancée went to the couch and sat. He slumped slowly and laid his head in his hands.

  The driver said, "You are not a cop."

  "No."

  "Then why do you do this thing?"

  I wasn’t sure how to answer, so I said, "Because nobody else will."

  26

  The artist was Tony Lau. He was the only son of Jimmy Yi Lau, boss of the Eight Tigers Society. The Eight Tigers ran most of the rackets throughout San Francisco – heroin, money laundering, pornography, prostitution, extortion, even pirated movies.

  The ‘Taste of Asia’ parlors belonged to Jimmy Yi Lau.

  Over an exquisite lunch in the apartment, I found out that Tony was actually getting some attention for his art.

  Ah, what the hell do I know?

  I learned that Oddjob’s actual name was Lawrence, and that the driver was called Daniel.

  That was about it.

  Tony Lau claimed that Mei Ling spent the night at his apartment a little over two weeks ago. He said Daniel had driven her home. It was the last he’d seen or heard of her. I remembered what Tracy told me and thought it unlikely that Mei Ling had been abducted. Still, one does not go from the top of the food chain to the bottom in two weeks. In any case, I believed Tony’s story. He’d managed a stoic front since hearing the news, but it was obvious he was upset.

  He must’ve believed me too. I remained breathing, and he gave me his business card and told me to contact him if I found out anything. I stood to leave. Daniel offered to drive me back to my hotel. I decided to take him up on the offer, since I didn’t know where in the hell I was.

  Before I left, I had to ask one question. "Did you know that she was pregnant?"

  Nothing in the man’s face changed. Without a word, he stood and left the table. Daniel took me by the elbow, a little roughly, and guided me from the apartment. During the drive back to the hotel, neither Daniel nor I spoke. When he parked at the curb, he said, "It’s a hell of a thing, you know. She was… a good girl."

  I hadn’t gotten into the details with them about how and where her body had been found. I figured Tony Lau had enough to deal with.

  I left the car, got up to my room, and sat down for a good long think about everything.

  And promptly fell asleep.

  I got up around seven in the evening and practiced for awhile. When I was finished, I took a shower and looked at the room service menu.

  I checked the minibar. Six bucks for a domestic beer (not counting the ten dollar "restocking fee.")

  Damn.

  All of this activity covered up nicely for the fact that I didn’t know what the hell else to do here. I thought about calling Knox and asking for some helpful detecting tips, but I didn’t think he’d be amused. I wanted to call Tracy, to hear her voice, but I didn’t. I am a male, and we are such stupid creatures sometimes.

  I took out the pictures I’d snagged from Mei Ling’s apartment and looked at them. My mind kept seeing the image of her on the slab in the morgue.

  Several things occurred to me:

  One – any leads I wanted to follow out here were likely to get me into trouble. Big trouble. I’d gained some small amount of trust from Tony Lau; it wouldn’t be a great idea to go poking around at his dad and his business.

  Two – Maybe Mei Ling’s murder was some kind of revenge hit from another Triad. If so, then what? Triads, as a rule, handle Triad business.

  Three - the recurring thought that I was totally inept at this, as I was with most things in life, and that I should just order that roast beef sandwich I’d been eyeballing on the room service menu, buy a sixteen dollar beer, and hop the first available flight home.

  Three was sounding better and better.

  27

  I woke up in the morning, after a depressing night of staring at shitty infomercials, and felt awful. I was wasting my time here. Time and a lot of money. And to think, I had clients back home, possibly in pain, because I was off playing Sam-freaking-Spade.

  On top of the feelings of failure, woe, and disappointment, I felt lonelier than I ever had in my life.

  Specifically, I missed Tracy. And I don’t mean that in the way people usually do. This wasn’t a fleeting feeling or a casual twinge. It wasn’t a John Hughes marathon type of emotion.

  This was pain.

  This was a drowning man’s longing for oxygen.

  I needed to hear that I wasn’t a failure. That I was important, even in some small way, to somebody other than a dead Chinese girl I’d never met.

  I knew I could just pick up the phone and call Tracy, and I knew that I probably would, but it would only make things infinitely worse because it just drove the point home that I was here and she was there. I couldn’t smell her hair or kiss her neck. I could hear her laugh, but I wouldn’t see the way her eyes gleamed.

  In short, my sappy ass had it bad.

  I pulled the phone book out of the drawer and looked up a few numbers. I wanted to call to check on a few flimsy leads but my heart just wasn’t in it. I set the phone back in its cradle and had another sixteen dollar beer.

  When I picked up the phone again, it was to arrange for my flight home.

  I would be back in St. Louis at 8:35 p.m. that night. Unable to resist the opportunity for masochism, I immediately called and got Tracy’s machine. I left her the time when I’d be in, and said that I’d try back later.

  After showering and packing, I went down to the lobby and checked out. I had the bellboy hold onto my luggage in the check room, though. I figured I could screw around sightseeing for a bit until I had to get to the airport.

  I spent a good part of the day just wandering around, lost. I went to Chinatown and glared at each person as if I knew exactly what they were hiding; sadly no one threw themselves at my feet to confess.

  Some of the sights and sounds and smells reminded me of the festivals when I was growing up. It would be easy to pretend that I was back in Hong Kong. Everything stood out more, seemed more real than real. I wanted to go around touching everything. I di
dn’t, though. That would’ve been weird and creepy.

  It’s a strange sensation, to be homesick for two places at once.

  I learned one valuable lesson, though. One of the best ways to cure any feelings of depression or inadequacy is to somehow trigger the survival response: Adrenaline- nature’s first anti-mope drug.

  In my case, the ‘trigger’ was a group of well-dressed thug types I caught following me through Portsmouth Square. Considering my mental state, they might’ve been tracking me for awhile. Of course, there was always the possibility that I was being paranoid…

  So I strolled along, looking at shops, and turned down the first alleyway I saw. They followed. Five guys: three Chinese and two American, wearing Armani suits. The alley was a dead end, thanks to a parked produce truck at the other end. Chickens in crates squawked at us and each other. I turned from the chickens and met my shadows.

  "Eight Tigers, I presume?" I said.

  A few of the guys exchanged surprised looks. A big American kid stepped forward; his nose was crooked from numerous unset breaks. He stabbed his index finger at my sternum and said, "You been pokin’ your nose where it don’t belong, man."

  I laughed and said, "Oh, come on. That’s a bad guy 101 line… surely you can do better than that?"

  He ground his jaws together and stabbed harder with his finger. "Fuck you!"

  More originality.

  I took the offending finger and bent it backward with a crunch until it touched his wrist. He screamed.

  One of the Chinese guys started reaching in his jacket. I kept hold of the American’s broken finger and rammed him in the chest with my shoulder. It accomplished two things: for one, it deflated his lungs and shut him up. It also sent him flying into the Chinese guy, knocking him on his ass.

  A kid to my left lunged in with a knife. I yanked the American back by his now very broken finger and threw him into the two other guys. My own little Three Stooges routine.

  I leaned back in time to avoid the incoming knife and slapped the kid’s elbow with my left hand, and his forearm with my right. It felt effortless, but with my full weight behind the strikes, his arm bones shattered like carnival glass.