Authors: Michael J. McCann
“
Why have you been seen with Tommy Leung?” Peter asked. “Is your gang doing some kind of business with him?”
“
Doan’ know what you be talking about, man.”
Peter made a quick gesture and Foo struck ShonDale across the back of the neck. ShonDale hit the ground hard, rolling into a fetal position, grinding his cheek into the dirt that covered the hard paved surface, lips scooping particles into his gasping mouth.
“
Tommy Leung,” Peter said, leaning down.
“
Yeah, yeah, man, all right. Tommy and me used to be like homies, man. Like bros. We chilled together now and then, back in the day.”
“
I’m tired of the ghetto talk,” Peter said, gesturing once again to Foo.
Foo proceeded to give ShonDale a beating that was quick and efficient but required them to wait a while afterwards for ShonDale to recover sufficiently to speak again. Foo took a little walk toward the river, shaking his hand as though he’d hurt it. When ShonDale’s eyes finally opened and focused, Peter leaned down until they were almost nose to nose.
“
Speak properly or he’ll beat you again.”
“
All right,” ShonDale mumbled.
“
What are you doing with Tommy Leung?”
“
Went to … school together, man. State U. Friends.”
“
You went to State University with Tommy Leung, that’s what you’re saying? You were friends?”
ShonDale nodded, coughing.
“
I find it hard to believe he’d be friends with someone like you.”
“
You mean a nigrah like me. Well, it’s so. Go way back, Tommy an’ me.”
“
What about now? Are you and Tommy in business together or something?”
“
Fuck, man,” ShonDale croaked, “don’t mean nothing. Just a little action. Don’t mean no harm.”
“
What kind of action?”
“
Just a little skimming, man. That’s all.”
“
Credit card skimming?”
“
Yeah, man.”
Credit card skimming involved the use of a small device, often hidden under the counter at a convenience store or gas bar. The cashier would swipe an unsuspecting person’s card twice, once in the business’s device and a second time in the skimmer, thereby capturing data that could be used to make counterfeit cards. The data was stored in a laptop hidden nearby. The laptops were routinely collected and the data downloaded to be used in the making of counterfeit credit cards. Peter knew that Eddie Leung was supposed to be in charge of skimming in addition to his counterfeiting businesses. Eddie had apparently entrusted it to his son, who was also a sworn member of the brotherhood, but Tommy had diverted the operation to include his outsider friends and was likely withholding revenue from his father and by extension his community.
“
Who else is involved with this? Is your gang in this, or just you?”
“
Gang?” ShonDale sounded a little confused.
“
The R Boyz, you idiot. Is the R Boyz gang connected to this, or are you on your own?”
ShonDale shook his head. “Just me, man. RaVonn would hand me my ass in a plastic bag if he knew about it.”
“
Who else, then, beside yourself?”
“
Just me and Tommy, Gary, and Tommy’s partner. That’s all, man.”
“
No one else?”
“
No, man. Gary and me, we drop off the laptops and pick them up, and we pay the drones along the string who do the skimming. Tommy takes the laptops and does his thing.”
Peter’s focus had shifted as ShonDale talked. He stared at the ground for a moment, thinking hard. Gary. ShonDale. Shawn and Gary.
“
How long?” he asked. “How long have you been doing this with Tommy Leung?”
“
Few years now, man.”
“
How many years?” Peter demanded sharply.
“
I don’t know, man. Three, four. Something like that.”
“
Four years?”
“
Yeah, I guess.”
“
Four years ago you and this Gary killed a young Chinese named Martin Liu, isn’t that right?”
“
Liu?” ShonDale rocked back and forth. “Name don’t mean anything to me, man.”
Peter stood up and moved back, signaling once more to Foo, who proceeded to give ShonDale another brutal beating. Peter walked aimlessly beneath the overpass, looking at the lights reflecting on the black river. Could it be that the two things were actually connected?
When Foo was finished Peter stood over ShonDale, who lay on his side gasping for air. “Who shot Martin? You? Gary? Tommy Leung?”
ShonDale began to struggle, trying to get up. Suddenly he vomited. Peter moved out of the way and turned his back. He heard Sheng and Foo drag ShonDale aside and haul him up on his knees. They waited patiently and then asked ShonDale if he was done. There was silence, and they asked again. Finally ShonDale answered that he was all right. Peter turned back.
“
Who’s this Gary?”
“
Thatcher,” ShonDale managed.
“
Tell me about him.”
“
Prick,” ShonDale mumbled. “Knew him at State. Tommy liked him. Brought him into our thing. Got a place downtown. Thatcher Enterprises, some fuckin’ thing. Stuff with the city.”
“
The city?”
“
Yeah, man. Fixing contracts for big bucks, like that.”
“
Did Tommy Leung shoot Martin Liu?”
ShonDale shook his head.
“
Gary Thatcher?”
ShonDale shook his head again.
“
You shot him, didn’t you?” Peter felt the adrenaline surge through him.
ShonDale began to cry.
“
Why did you shoot Martin? Because he found out about the skimming?”
“
An accident, man. Wasn’t supposed to go off. Just pistol-whippin’.”
“
An accident,” Peter repeated.
ShonDale cried raggedly.
“
Stop that,” Peter commanded. “Act like a man.”
ShonDale sobbed, looking up at Peter. “I didn’t mean … for it to happen, didn’t mean it. I hit him a few times with the gun, trying to get him to talk, to answer the fucking
questions
, man. It went off by accident. Didn’t mean to shoot him.”
“
So you took him to 121
st
Street and dumped him in an alley to die.”
ShonDale sobbed. “Sorry, man, so fucking sorry, so sorry, so sorry.”
“
Where’s Tommy Leung now?”
“
I don’t know, haven’t seen him for a while.”
“
What about the skimming? Surely you saw him to pick up your latest cut.”
ShonDale shook his head. “Tommy and his partner shut it down. Said somebody was sniffing around. Might get caught.”
Peter frowned. “Who was sniffing around?”
“
He was scared it was Triad, man. Rolled everything right up.”
“
Who’s his partner?”
“
Don’t know. Only saw him once, when we, when the Liu guy, when….”
“
Describe him.”
“
Dunno, man. White dude. Older guy. Going bald.”
“
What else?”
“
That’s all I remember, man. I’d tell you more if I could.”
Peter held out his hand and Foo produced a pair of latex gloves. Peter noticed a small cut on the middle knuckle of Foo’s right hand. As he took the gloves and put them on, he frowned at Foo.
“
You’re cut,” he said in Cantonese. “Put on fresh gloves.”
Foo obediently took Sheng’s spare pair and put them on, balling up the damaged pair and shoving them into his pocket.
When Peter had put on his gloves, Sheng took out a handgun that was inside a plastic zip-lock bag. It was ShonDale’s own gun, a Beretta M92 nine millimeter, taken from him when they picked him up. Peter removed the gun and gave the bag back to Sheng.
Sheng and Foo bent down and held ShonDale in place on the ground. Peter stooped and touched the muzzle of the gun to ShonDale’s left thigh.
“
This was where you shot Martin.”
“
Fuck, I’m so sorry, man.”
Sheng grabbed him by the throat and squeezed. “Shut up.”
Peter fired the gun, sending a bullet through ShonDale’s leg in almost the same spot that Martin had been shot four years ago. ShonDale twisted and howled in agony through Sheng’s grip on his throat.
Peter straightened and motioned with the gun for Sheng to move aside.
“
Blood for blood,” he said, and fired twice more.
Hank was sitting in a lounge having a drink. Across the table from him was a woman with fair hair who smiled and told him about flowers she grew on the roof of the apartment building where she lived. He was very fond of this woman. She leaned forward as she told him about the flowers because she wanted to be near him. A timer began to ring at a table just behind Hank and the woman excused herself to see to it. The ringing continued until Hank woke up and grabbed the portable telephone beside his bed.
“
Donaghue.”
“
Woke you up, did I?” Karen asked.
“
No,” Hank mumbled, “I was reading a book.”
“
Right. We got a call. I’ll be there in fifteen.”
“
All right.” He disconnected and dropped the phone back into its base, looking at the red numerals on the face of the clock next to the phone. It was 3:24 a.m. Wednesday night. Or Thursday morning, depending on your perspective.
He showered quickly, then looked in the mirror and decided not to shave. He got dressed, grabbing a black suit from the back of his closet that he didn’t particularly like and tended to save for working a crime scene. The memory of the woman in the dream lingered as he moved around his bedroom, getting ready. He was out the door, into the elevator and down to the lobby in time to see headlights pulling up in front of his building. He went outside and got into the car.
Karen had turned in the Crown Vic for servicing and was driving her personally-owned vehicle, a 1979 Pontiac Firebird Esprit, the Redbird edition. An older brother, Delbert, was an auto mechanic in Houston and had bought the car in 1999 for three thousand dollars from a regular customer who found himself short of cash. Delbert put a thousand dollars’ worth of work into it and sold it to Karen for four thousand dollars. She drove it back from Texas and drove it every summer since, putting it in storage each winter and switching to a beat-up pick-up truck.
She had clipped a dual strobe light to the passenger sun visor and plugged it into the cigarette lighter, and Hank watched the blue and red lights flicker across the big red hood with the yellow pinstripe down the middle as they raced insanely through the quiet streets. He listened to the throaty roar of the four-barrel V 8, 301 cubic inch engine and wished, not for the first time, that the damned car had cup holders because he was desperate for a cup of coffee.
As Karen gunned through a red light Hank ran his hands through his frizzy hair and tried to shake a nagging headache that had started in the shower. “We gotta stop for coffee.”
“
No problem, Lou, we’ll hit a drive-through on the way to the expressway. So what happened, lose your razor?”
Hank fingered his cheeks self-consciously. “Just trying something different.”
“
Looks hot. The Widow Liu’s gonna flip when she sees it.”
Hank shook his head. “So what’s the call?”
“
You’re not gonna like it.”
“
It’s four o’clock in the fucking morning,” he complained. “I already don’t like it.”
“
It’s ShonDale Gregg.”
“
Damn.”
They stopped at a 24-hour fast food restaurant and bought two jumbo coffees. Hank held Karen’s for her, burning his mouth with hasty gulps of his own as she accelerated up the empty ramp and hit the expressway as though trying to blast out of the earth’s atmosphere. Traffic was light and she settled into the inside lane, reaching for the cup of coffee.
“
Byrne has the scene right now,” she said, steering with her left hand as she raised the cup of coffee to her lips. Senior CSI Tim Byrne was a crime scene investigation team leader who worked the night shift. Formerly a detective in the Arson Unit, he’d successfully competed for an investigative position in the Criminalistics Section when the CSI Unit’s budget had expanded and technology had begun to make crime scene investigation much more intensive and rewarding. He was a short, stocky man in his mid-forties, with neat red hair, small pig-eyes, a florid complexion and a square, jutting jaw. Intelligent and well-read, he had the personality of a porcupine and Hank didn’t particularly like him, but he appreciated working a case in which Byrne had the crime scene, for he knew that every scrap of evidence available would be gleaned from the scene, literally down to the molecular level where necessary.
“
Found him in an alley off 121
st
in South Shore East,” Karen said. “Multiple gunshot wounds. That’s all I got from Jarvis. He’s gonna be there.”
Bill Jarvis was the supervisory lieutenant for the Homicide Unit. He went out to homicide crime scenes when Ann Martinez was not available.