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  “If you’re right, we should search Catt’s apartment,” Kylie said. “We wouldn’t even need a warrant. It’s still sealed. It’s part of the ongoing investigation.”

  “We can get in there easy enough,” I said, “but we won’t find anything. Whatever LaFleur put in there, he disassembled as soon as Catt disappeared. It’s gone, and even if we did find a bug in that apartment, we can’t prove LaFleur installed it, and we certainly can’t get him to talk.”

  “Do you think he knows the guy—or the guys—who killed Catt?” Kylie said.

  “No, but he probably could help us find out who did,” I said.

  “But he won’t,” Kylie said. “As far as he’s concerned, the Hazmat Killer is every bit as heroic as Bernie Goetz.”

  “He’s not alone,” I said. “A lot of people in this city are rooting for Hazmat. He—they—who knows how many there are? All people know is that he’s killing scumbags who got away with murder. Hell…they’ve even given him a fan page on Facebook. They love him.”

  “Then they sure as hell are going to hate us,” Kylie said. “Because we’re the ones who are going to bring him down.”

  That’s the thing about Kylie. Nothing rattles her confidence. Certainly not a crusty old codger like Horton LaFleur.

  Chapter 34

  “Where to next?” I said, getting behind the wheel of the Interceptor.

  “The two choices are at opposite ends of Manhattan,” Kylie said. “Victim number one was Alex Kang—Chinatown. Or number three, Antoine Tinsdale—Harlem. Your call.”

  “Wherever we wind up, we’re going to be closing in on lunch, and as much as I love Marcus Samuelsson’s Red Rooster up in Harlem, I haven’t had good dim sum since the Year of the Monkey.”

  “Done deal,” Kylie said, giving me a thumbs-up.

  “Whoever said police work was difficult?” I said, heading toward the FDR Drive.

  “Speaking of monkeys, Chinatown is Donovan and Boyle’s regular beat,” Kylie said. “They’ve been working out of the Five for years. You would think that as sloppy as their reports were, their file on Kang would be the one they’d get right. But according to their notes, they only talked to one guy.”

  “I saw that. They probably talked to more, but they only named one in their report. Those two coppers are not big on paperwork.”

  “That would just mean they’re lazy,” Kylie said. “But did you see the name of the person they interviewed?”

  I laughed. “Yeah, I did.”

  “It’s not funny, Zach. They obviously didn’t give a shit, and they probably never thought someone else would be taking over the case.”

  “I’ll take the drive down to the Brooklyn Bridge exit,” I said. “Give me the exact address in Chinatown.”

  “I can give you what they wrote in their report,” she said. “Who knows if those numbnuts got it right? All they wrote down was ‘CP Emperors gang HQ—Fifty-Eight Mulberry.’”

  “And remind me again,” I said, busting her chops. “What’s the name of the guy they interviewed?”

  She opened one of the files and pretended to look through it. “Let’s see,” she said, playing along and milking the situation for all it was worth. “Oh, here it is. According to their flawless record keeping, Detectives Donovan and Boyle interviewed a gangbanger named John Doe.”

  Chapter 35

  The CP Emperors headquarters was on the ground floor of a squat redbrick building in the heart of the Chinese community. It looked relatively innocuous, but clearly it was a fortress. The windows were barred, a rolled-up metal security gate spanned the front, and the entry door was solid steel. The only thing missing was a moat.

  Kylie pounded on the front door. “NYPD,” she yelled. Then she turned to me. “I think we should identify ourselves, just in case they can’t figure out who the white couple pulling up to their building in an unmarked cop car is.”

  The door opened, and a sallow-faced Chinese gangbanger blocked our path. He was dressed in black, which is normally a slimming color, but it did nothing to hide his three hundred pounds. He filled the doorway.

  “NYPD,” I repeated. “Who’s in charge?”

  “You got a warrant?”

  “Why would we need a warrant? We’re just here to talk.”

  “We got nothing to talk about. Now get the fuck out of here.”

  And then we heard it coming from the other side of the door. Loud, clear, and unmistakable. Click. Clack. The distinct sound of someone racking the slide of a gun, most likely a semiautomatic.

  Kylie didn’t hesitate. She reached behind her right hip and drew her Glock. “Down on the floor!” she yelled. She didn’t wait for a response.

  She jerked her right foot straight between Fat Boy’s legs and hit paydirt. He grabbed his balls, doubled over, and dropped like a canary in a coal mine.

  I had no idea how many CP Emperors were in there, and I had no interest in finding out. I drew my gun and yelled from behind the door, “NYPD! Weapons down. Weapons down—now!”

  I braced for the first shot to be fired and hoped the door was thick enough.

  “Bullshit,” said a voice from the other side. “You got no right to pull guns on us.”

  “Don’t tell us what we can’t do,” Kylie yelled back. “As soon as that asshole racked the slide on that semi, we stopped needing a warrant. Exigent circumstances. Toss them. Now.”

  “All right, all right.” I heard the gun slide across the floor. Then another. “I’m coming to the door. Move your fat ass, Rupert.”

  Still holding his crotch, the big guy slid out of the way, and a tall, long-haired Asian kid opened the door wide. He was about twenty-two, with a wispy mustache and a permanent scowl on his face.

  “You in charge?” I asked.

  “Most of the time,” he said. “Except right now it looks like you’re in charge.”

  “What’s your name?” I said.

  “John Doe,” he said without disturbing the scowl.

  “We already have plenty of guys named John Doe in the morgue waiting to be identified,” I said. “How about your real name.”

  “John Dho,” he repeated. “D-h-o. You’re in Chinatown, dude.”

  So it turned out that Donovan and Boyle actually did know who they talked to. They just couldn’t spell.

  “This is a house of mourning. What do you want?”

  “We understand, and we’re sorry for your loss, but we still need to talk. Here or at the precinct?” I said.

  “You can come in,” Dho said. “The bitch stays outside.”

  “The bitch either comes in,” Kylie said, “or she marches you out the door and parades you down Mulberry, screaming at you the whole way until we get to our car, which we parked two blocks from here.”

  “Bullshit. You’re parked across the street.”

  “Then I’d have to march you back. I don’t give a shit about your ‘No girls allowed in the clubhouse’ rules. I yelled ‘NYPD,’ and somebody in here locked and loaded a semi—which I’m sure you have a license for.”

  He stepped aside and let us in. “What do you want here?”

  “We’re looking for the person who killed Alex Kang,” I said.

  Dho was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette that smelled like the inside of a stable. He blew a lungful of smoke our way. “So are we,” he said, “but we can do it without your help.”

  “Let’s talk about it,” I said.

  The room was dimly lit and sparsely furnished. Two tumbledown sofas, a smattering of Formica-topped tables, and a mismatched assortment of folding chairs. One corner at the far end was a makeshift kitchen.

  “Nice digs,” Kylie said. “Clearly fit for an emperor.”

  “Tell us about the day Alex went missing,” I said.

  “He was hanging here till about eleven in the morning. He left to go visit his grandmother—she was in Beekman Downtown Hospital. When he didn’t come back by two, we started calling him. No answer. I went to the hospital. His mother was there. She
said he never came. We checked his apartment, all his usual hangouts—nothing. Six days later, he shows up in a Hazmat suit on a bench in the Canal Street subway station. I already told all this to those two doughnut commandos.”

  “Who are we talking about?” I said.

  “Defective Donovan and Defective Boyle. They hassle the shit out of us all the time. Even when we’re the victims.”

  “So you knew Donovan and Boyle before Alex was killed.”

  “Yeah, we all know them. They work this area. ‘Youth Patrol.’”

  “Did they have a beef with Alex?” Kylie asked.

  Dho looked at her as though she were clueless. “They’re racists. They hate all the CPEs—only they shit on Alex even more because he was in charge. Do you really think those two cops are looking for the person who killed Alex?”

  “I don’t know about them, but I can promise you that these two cops really are looking for the killer. So as long as we’re all on the same side, how’s your investigation going?”

  “It’s none of the other gangs,” Dho said.

  “Are you sure?” Kylie said, asking the same question that got her in trouble with LaFleur.

  Dho put his palms together and bowed his head. “Most sure, Honorable Detective. Our investigation very thorough,” he said, purposely omitting the verb—a dead-on imitation of Charlie Chan, the classic Asian stereotype churned out by the Hollywood studios in the thirties and forties.

  He stood up and dropped the act. “You cops are all full of shit,” he said, the scowl firmly back in place. “When this Hazmat asshole killed Alex, you send in Detectives Dumb and Dumber. But now that he whacked some rich white lady, you’re all over it like—how you round eyes say?—‘white on rice.’ You want to know who killed my best friend, Alex Kang? There’s some freaky guy out there who thinks he’s some kind of fucking savior, and he’s doing his part to make this city a safer place to live. Here, you can read all about it in today’s paper.”

  There was a newspaper on the table. He picked it up and shoved it toward me.

  It was all in Chinese. The only thing I could understand was the picture of Evelyn Parker-Steele on the front page.

  Chapter 36

  “I had cause to draw my weapon,” Kylie said as soon as we were back outside. “As soon as I heard that semi—”

  “Hey, no arguments from me,” I said. “I was right behind you. I didn’t agree with the way you handled Damon Parker this morning, but kicking Odd Job in the balls was spot-on. Nice work, partner.”

  She looked surprised. “Thanks.”

  “You really are a bitch,” I said. “And I mean that in the nicest possible way.”

  We stood outside the building, absorbing the unique sights, smells, and sounds of Chinatown—this little enclave that is home to some and a tourist destination for many.

  “I don’t get it,” Kylie said. “Alex Kang walks out of here at eleven o’clock in the morning. How does he just disappear? It’s a little after eleven now, and look—there are people all over the street, cars are going in and out of the garage next door, somebody had to see something.”

  She looked right to left, slowly panning Mulberry Street.

  “Don’t strain yourself trying to pick out the surveillance cameras,” I said. “This is gang territory. Whatever may have been here was probably vandalized long ago.”

  “Then maybe we’ll have to rely on human surveillance,” she said, pointing to the other side of the street.

  Directly across from the gang’s headquarters was Columbus Park. It’s the only park in Chinatown, so of course the city named it after an Italian explorer. Even so, it’s the CP in CP Emperors.

  “The park is jumping,” Kylie said. “The same people probably come here every day to read the paper, walk the dog, roller-skate. At the risk of repeating myself—somebody had to see something.”

  “Somebody did,” I said. “The problem is going to be getting them to talk about it.”

  We crossed the street to the park entrance, where a dozen Chinese men from twenty-something to eighty-something were grouped in a semicircle, chain-smoking and watching two men hunched over a makeshift table. They were playing Go, the two-thousand-year-old Chinese board game.

  I’m a gamer. My father got me started on backgammon when I was six. Then chess, and along the way, I got hooked on Go. The rules are so simple that anyone can learn the game in ten minutes, but the strategies are so infinitely complex that few can master it in a lifetime. And it’s totally addictive, not only to play, but to watch.

  I studied the two players—one in his sixties, the other a decade or more older than that. These were not men who could afford the traditional board made of seasoned wood cut from the kaya tree. They were playing on a piece of rough-cut plywood with hand-drawn squares. And instead of using the classic stones made of highly polished Japanese slate and clamshell, their black and white game pieces were a few bucks’ worth of genuine Chinese plastic.

  But the passion, the concentration, and, of course, the competitive spirit were genuine and authentic. One of the things that makes Go such a fascinating spectator sport is the wagering, and there were two ten-dollar bills on the table. I looked over the board, and clearly the older man had the edge. Within five minutes, he won the game and scooped up the money.

  “You’re good,” I called out to the old man.

  He bowed his head.

  “I’m better,” I said.

  The crowd, who had not spoken a word of English, obviously understood enough of it to laugh out loud.

  “You have money?” the old man asked. “Or you just have mouth?”

  He put a ten-dollar bill on the table.

  I opened up my wallet, pulled out a hundred-dollar bill, and laid it next to his ten. The crowd let out a collective guttural sound—the male Chinese version of oooh.

  “You have money?” I said. “Or you just have mouth?”

  The old man reflected for a few seconds, then dug into his pants pocket and came up with a bunch of tens, fives, and ones. Not enough. He stuffed it back in his pocket and opened an ancient wallet with an equally ancient hundred-dollar bill inside. He unfolded the bill and placed it next to mine.

  I sat down.

  I was black and went first. There’s an ancient Go proverb: Play fast, lose fast. And to his credit, the old man treated me with respect from the start. He played thoughtfully—not as if I were some loudmouthed white guy ready to be relieved of a hundred bucks, but as if I were truly a worthy opponent. After five minutes, he realized that I was.

  The game lasted almost an hour. Neither of us dominated, and the highly partisan crowd went silent as we approached the endgame.

  And then I made one bad move. Not just bad. Dumb. Really dumb. I knew it, the old man knew it, and he knew I knew it. His fingertips tugged at a few wispy gray hairs on his chin, and he stared at me, puzzled at first, and then it came to him.

  I was throwing the game.

  He snapped a white stone down on the board, and the crowd erupted with laughter, applause, and home team pride.

  He won.

  I stood up and turned to the platoon of smokers that had tripled in size since I’d set down the first stone.

  “I am good,” I told them. “He is better.”

  They clapped and hooted, and once again I bowed to the victor. “This game has left me very hungry,” I said. “Where would I go to get the best dim sum?”

  The old man smiled. “Best dim sum? My mother’s house. Guangdong Province. But I think I take all your carfare.”

  The group yucked it up again at my expense.

  The old man reveled in it. “But if you willing to settle for not-so-bad dim sum, go to New Wonton Garden across street.”

  I bowed again, nodded to Kylie, and we headed toward the restaurant.

  Like I said, I’m a gamer, and I had just invested a hundred bucks and an hour of Kylie’s time and mine playing a mind game with an old man I’d never seen before.

 
Now I had to sit patiently in the New Wonton Garden, sipping tea, eating not-so-bad dim sum, and waiting to find out which one of us had won the game.

  Chapter 37

  Teresa Salvi took off her robe and looked at herself in the full-length mirror. “Sixty-three years old and still a size four,” she said. “Not bad.”

  Her closet was as big as a master bedroom, and there was a second one just like it. This closet was for daytime wear. She walked through the racks of dresses and pulled out a Dolce & Gabbana midi—charcoal gray. She had stopped wearing black years ago, but she was going to see Father Spinelli, and the dark gray would make the right statement—still in mourning, but moving on with her life.

  The shoes and the bag were Prada, and when she finished dressing, she took another look in the mirror. Joe would approve. He wanted her to dress classy—not like those rich bimbo housewives on the reality shows.

  She made sure her checkbook was in her purse. Father Spinelli had asked her to join him for tea in his study, and that could mean only one thing. The church needed money.

  “No more than ten grand,” Joe told her as she was leaving the house. “It’s October, and you know he’s going to hit us up again at Christmas.”

  Teresa already had a higher number in her mind, so she just kissed her husband and said, “Don’t worry. Whatever I give will be for a good cause.”

  Two good causes, she thought as she drove her beige Buick Regal the mile and a half to St. Agnes. Joe sometimes forgot the respectability factor. The newspapers always painted her husband like some kind of monster. But every time he donated to the church, Father Spinelli was out there spreading the word to the congregation about how generous the Salvi family was. It helped balance things out.

  She parked in one of the visitor spaces, turned off the engine, and took the black rosary beads from her purse.

  She loved this church, but sometimes she couldn’t face going back. This was where Enzo was christened. And eighteen years later, this was where she’d last set eyes on his sweet face before returning him home to Jesus.