Authors: Rhys Bowen
“Really?” He was looking at me with interest tinged with amusement now. “A female dick. That’s a novel one.”
He glanced down at my letter he was still holding. “Murphy, is that the name? Molly Murphy? I’ve heard of you before somewhere.”
I wasn’t going to say that my name had probably been mentioned as Daniel’s future wife. “I have worked on cases in this part of the city,” I said.
“Have you, by george? What kind of cases?”
I tried to think of harmless things I might have done in the Lower East Side—certainly not dealing with Monk Eastman and his gang. “Another missing person case once. A girl who had come over from Ireland. Her family wanted to trace her.”
I hoped he’d be satisfied with that, but he was still frowning. “And why exactly did old Lee hire you particularly to find this bride?”
“I suppose he thought that a young woman like myself could move among other young women in the world outside of Chinatown, without arousing suspicion.”
“I see.” He paused. “And what made him think that his bride had run away and not been kidnapped by Hip Sing, for example?”
“I asked him the same question,” I said. “He indicated that his spies had looked into that aspect thoroughly before he thought of hiring me.” I hesitated, then went on. “From what I understand of the Chinese, I don’t think Mr. Lee would have resorted to hiring an outsider and a female unless he’d done everything he could himself to recover the young woman.”
“That’s true enough,” he agreed, then he stood looking at me, head cocked to one side, like a bird’s. “You know what I find interesting? That Mr. Lee smuggles in a new bride from China—which I might point out to you is breaking the law to start with, Chinese women not being allowed to enter the United States. Then this bride does a flit, he hires you to find her, and immediately afterward he plunges to his death. Odd chain of events, don’t you think? And in my twenty years of experience in the New York Police Department, I’ve always found that when strange things happen, one after the other, there’s always a connection.”
He was staring at me, long and hard, as if he expected me to crack and confess all. “Now look here,” I said, my hackles rising. “I don’t know if you’re hinting that I might have had anything to do with his death. If so, I’ve no idea why you’d think that. For one thing, he hasn’t yet paid me my fee—and now he’s not going to, so I’m left out of pocket. Besides, I’d never met the man before and I have no interest in Chinatown or its inhabitants.”
As I said this, unwanted thoughts were racing through my brain. I could think of several people who might want Lee Sing Tai dead, and first on the list was his runaway bride. The officer’s mind must have been working along the same lines because he said, “So you haven’t located this runaway bride yet?”
Now what do I say? Lying to the police was a serious matter, but I also realized that she’d make a perfect scapegoat for them, so that the case could be solved neatly and a new tong war would not erupt. “I did start to look for her. I went around the local missions. But as you can see from the letter, I decided to withdraw from the case,” I said. “I realized that I didn’t wish to be any part of this sordid business. I don’t approve.”
Suddenly his expression changed. He was no longer looking at me as if I was his prime suspect. I could see an idea had just come to him. “Look, Miss Murphy, I’m Captain Kear of the Sixth Precinct,” he said. “Can I ask you to do something for me? Nobody has officially verified the identification of the body for us yet. The old woman in there couldn’t make it down the stairs on those feet, even if we could get her to shut up.”
“What about the servants?” I asked.
“They must have run off when they heard the police were on their way,” he said. “There was nobody in the house when we got here and the door was wide open. Probably thought we were going to blame them. And the Chinamen in the crowd suddenly can’t understand any English or claim to be complete strangers.”
“Is Mr. Lee’s son nowhere around?” I asked.
“He has a son?”
“Bobby Lee,” I said.
“Oh, Bobby Lee, that’s right. Old Lee’s paper son, isn’t he? I haven’t seen him for a while. I heard old Lee shipped him out to the cigar factory in Brooklyn after the last dustup with Hip Sing.”
“He was around here yesterday,” I said.
“Was he? I’ll send someone to look for him. But in the meantime I wondered if you’d take a look at the body yourself. If you’re not too squeamish, that is? I need him officially identified before we move him. These Chinese would lie to their grandmother if it suited them. They all claim they’ve never seen him before.”
“All right.” I swallowed hard. Frankly I was not at all keen to view a body described as flatter than a pancake, but I had my image as a cool-headed detective to uphold, and I was rather flattered that Captain Kear was treating me as an equal and not as a helpless woman who might swoon at any second.
He ushered me down the stairs ahead of him. The street was still deserted and the church was now silent. I thought that probably any sensible Chinese had shut himself in his rooms, just in case he found himself grabbed as a suspect or new tong violence erupted. There was still a crowd around the body. Hardly any of them were Chinese, but there were curious Italians, Jews, and Irish, being held back by constables. I heard one of them saying, “Here’s the captain now,” as Captain Kear elbowed his way ungraciously through the crowd.
“Is the morgue wagon on its way?” he asked one of the constables holding back the crowd.
“Yes, sir. Should be here any moment.”
“And the doctor?”
“Been summoned, sir,” the same constable replied. “Might have a problem locating him. It’s a holiday.” His tone implied that it should have been a holiday for him too, if he hadn’t been summoned to this scene.
“And has somebody been to HQ on Mulberry to request a photographer? I want a photograph of him before he’s moved.”
“I’d say he’s not looking at his best for a photograph,” one of the constables quipped and got a general laugh.
“Get going then, Mafini.” The captain barked the order.
One of the constables forced his way through the crowd and took off, running.
“I’ve brought this young lady to identify him,” Captain Kear said. “If you don’t mind taking a look, Miss Murphy.”
I sensed the curious stares of the crowd as they parted for me to step closer. I took a deep breath, then looked. He was lying on his back, spread-eagled like a starfish, limbs sticking out at unnatural angles like a broken rag doll. His mouth was open in surprise, his eyes staring up at the sky. He was wearing a nightshirt that made him somehow look even more pathetic, like Scrooge in
A Christmas Carol
. The white nightshirt was now spattered with blood. There was a great pool of blood around his head, now black with a carpet of flies. I shut my eyes and looked away.
“Yes,” I said, turning back to Captain Kear when I had composed myself. “That is definitely Lee Sing Tai.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Come away now. I’ll just need a few particulars and then you can go.”
I looked back at the corpse. “There is no way he’d have landed like this if he’d tripped and fallen,” I said, as the thought came to me. “He’d have fallen forward and landed on his face. He had to have been pushed.”
As I said the words I heard a murmur go through the crowd and a couple of Chinese at the back took off running. Captain Kear looked up and frowned. “It wasn’t the smartest thing to say that out loud,” he said. “They’ll be reporting back to On Leong in seconds.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t think. Besides, you said they didn’t understand English.”
“Only when it suits them. Most of them understand pretty well.” He took my arm and dragged me away from the crowd. “If what you say is true, then we’d better make it quite clear that we don’t see this as a tong murder. For starters, I’d like to question your runaway bride. Why don’t you come back with me and you can give me her particulars and tell us how far you’ve got on the search.”
He’d phrased it as an invitation, but it really was a command.
“You’d better come along to take notes, O’Byrne,” the captain added. “And I want the missing servants found. Houseboy and cook, wasn’t it? And I gather there are usually bodyguards outside his place. Where the hell were they? They’ve run off too. Get to it, Hanratty, and spread the word that these men are our main suspects if they don’t show up immediately. The rest of you keep the crowd away. Ask if anyone saw him fall, or saw anything at all. Not that I’m hopeful that anyone will come forward, but we can try. Oh, and make sure someone comes to get me the moment the doctor and photographer arrive.”
He shoved his way back through the crowd, clearing a path for me. While he had been giving his orders, I had been taking a long look at the corpse and I’d noticed something else. I moved closer to Captain Kear. “He’s got a wound on one side of his head,” I said, this time in a low voice so that nobody else could overhear. “He couldn’t have received that during the fall.”
“He could have hit something on the way down,” Kear said.
I looked up at the building. There was a succession of balconies, but they didn’t project in any way; in fact his descent would have been smooth and swift.
“I think somebody killed him first,” I said, “or at least knocked him out.” Even as I said it I could hear a voice in my head yelling at me to shut up. If he was lying where he landed on the street, then there was the possibility that he tripped and fell, however strangely he had landed. If, on the other hand, he had a large dent in one side of his head, then it was obvious that somebody knocked him out before throwing him over the edge.
“I’d keep that to yourself if I were you,” Captain Kear muttered. “For the moment the official line on this is going to be accidental death. If I get word that On Leong is going to blame it on Hip Sing and we’re about to be back in a full-flown tong war, then I’ll have to come up with a suspect pretty damn quick.”
I had observed that he was not toning down his language in the presence of a lady. This surprised me until I realized that he was not treating me like a lady. I was a detective, a professional. That made me feel a certain sense of satisfaction.
We turned the corner back into Mott Street with Constable O’Byrne leading the way.
“Is it possible that it was committed by Hip Sing?” I asked. “I understand that Mr. Lee was very thick with On Leong.”
Captain Kear shook his head. “It doesn’t seem like their method of operation at all. Gunning down someone in the street, a quick stab in the back—that would be normal tong tactics, not a death made to look like an accident. They actually want the other side to know when they are killing someone. Besides, it’s in Hip Sing’s interest to keep the peace right now. They suffered far worse in the last round of violence than On Leong did. They need to build up to full strength again before the next round begins.”
“You think it will break out again?”
“Bound to. While you’ve got struggles for control of the Chinese community they’ll keep on at it until one side wins.”
“I understand that On Leong pays you to turn a blind eye to their activities,” I said. “What about Hip Sing?”
“You mentioned that before,” he said sharply. “Are you talking about bribes? Bribes are not allowed in the police department. Who told you that?”
“It was old Mr. Lee himself,” I said, realizing that once again I’d let my mouth run away with me and this wasn’t the wisest thing to say. “He said he had the police in his pocket.”
Captain Kear’s face was flushed. “Well, he might have made a donation to our benefit fund, in return for which we kept an eye on his businesses and saw that nobody robbed them or firebombed them, but that’s another thing entirely.”
So he’d just confirmed by his guilty bluster that Lee Sing Tai had been bribing the police—which might have given someone else a motive for killing him. What if Mr. Lee had threatened to spill the beans at police headquarters? It seemed to me that given the diverse nature of Lee Sing Tai’s business ventures, any number of people might have wanted him dead.
“And another thing,” Captain Kear said. “How the hell could Hip Sing gain entry to Lee Sing Tai’s home? He always had bodyguards lurking on the street nearby. He kept servants around him. They’d never have admitted a Hip Singer. The tongs always meet on neutral turf at the Port Arthur restaurant.”
I gave myself a facetious reminder never to go and eat there in case a gun battle broke out around me and I grinned. I suppose one has to make light in the middle of tension. But then I considered what he had just said.
“If Mr. Lee was sleeping on the roof, might it not have been possible to gain access from the roof of a nearby building?” As soon as I said the words I realized that once again I should probably have kept quiet. Now I was actually putting into his head a way to pin the crime on Bo Kei. And if he did, I couldn’t save her without admitting that I knew that she was safely in the settlement house. I’ve always liked to appear clever, I suppose, or at least to prove I’m equal to any man. It’s one of my failings.
He looked surprised. “You think that’s possible? That never occurred to me. You might be right. You hear that, O’Byrne. The young lady suggests it might have been possible to access the roof from another building.”
“Have to have been a darned good jumper,” O’Byrne said.
I knew it could be done, but this time I said nothing.
“Let’s take a look, anyway,” the captain said. He paused outside the Golden Dragon Emporium and looked up and down the street, which still remained unnaturally empty. “Where is everybody, for God’s sake?” he demanded. “O’Byrne, go and round up someone who can interpret for me. I want to question the old woman and also the servants when Hanratty brings them in. They’ll sure as hell all claim that they can’t speak English.”
“I’ll do my best, sir,” the constable said, looking dubiously at all those closed and shuttered doors.
“Start with On Leong headquarters,” the captain said. “There has to be someone inside and they’d lose face if they didn’t come to the aid of a top man like Lee Sing Tai. Remind them of that.”