Timothy's Game (44 page)

He eats slowly and methodically because he’s got a lot to brood about. He figures he’s done all he can on Edward’s kidnapping; now it’s up to Johnnie Wong. But that’s not what’s bothering him; it’s the threatening letter Claire Lee received and those phone calls to Edward Lee.

Cone’s first idea had been that the United Bamboo mob was behind both letter and calls. But that no longer makes sense. You don’t act like a blackmailer on the phone and then kidnap your intended victim. And it couldn’t have been the Giant Pandas for the reason he had given Wong: Edward Lee is playing kneesy with that gang.

Which means, if Cone’s reasoning is half-assed correct, there’s a wild card in the deck: some free-lancer out to make a nice score by leaning on Claire and Edward. Timothy can’t totally buy that notion, but it’s the best he can come up with.

He gives the wingtips to Cleo and starts on the second leg, pausing occasionally to gulp potato salad or chomp on a pickle. He’s drinking a beer with his meal and making it last because he only wants a single before getting back to vodka.

Vodka, he sincerely believes, is a great aid to mental labor because it frees the mind of discipline and diminishes linear thinking. You can fly on vodka, and if ever a case demanded an unfettered, soaring brain, the White Lotus caper is it.

He bundles up the de-winged, de-legged, de-tushed carcass of the bird and puts it in the fridge along with the remains of the potato salad and the second pickle. He reckons it’ll make a nice Saturday morning brunch. Cleo can have the neck and back.

Then he goes back to his cigarettes and vodka. He runs out of ice cubes, but that doesn’t annoy him. What nags is a feeling that he’s missing something in this whole cockamamy jumble. He’s missing something or someone is jerking him around. Either way, he doesn’t like it.

Johnnie Wong hasn’t called by 11:00
P.M.,
or midnight, or 1:00
A.M.
Finally Cone gives up and undresses. He checks the door, turns off the lights, rolls onto his mattress. The magnum in its holster is close at hand. Cleo comes padding up to curl into the bend of his knees. The two of them sleep, both snoring gently.

When the phone rings, Cone comes groggily awake. It’s still dark. He stumbles over to the wall phone, cursing when he stubs his toe on the refrigerator.

“Yeah?” he says, his voice thick with sleep.

“Aw,” Johnnie Wong says, “I didn’t wake you up, did I?”

“What time is it?” Cone asks.

“After five. But don’t complain; I’ve been up all night.”

“Any results?”

“Oh, yeah. I think we got a world-class flap on our hands. Listen, can you meet me down on the street in front of your place in about twenty minutes?”

“Sure. What’s going on?”

“I want to drive you somewhere, and I’ll tell you about it on the way.”

Cone dresses quickly, straps on his shin holster, makes sure he’s got cigarettes and matches, waggles his fingers at a drowsing Cleo, relocks the door, and clatters downstairs to an early morning that’s just beginning to break over Brooklyn.

Timothy hasn’t been out at that hour in a long time, and it’s nice. The air is fresh—it hasn’t yet been breathed by a million other people—and the sky is a patchwork of grays and violets. Stars are fading, and an unexpectedly cool August breeze is coming from the northwest. Sprinkler trucks have wet down Broadway; the pavement gleams in the pearly light.

Johnnie Wong is late, but Cone waits patiently, walking up and down slowly, smoking his first Camel of the new day. When the Chrysler arrives, Cone slides into the passenger seat.

“Hey, old buddy!” the FBI man cries, clapping him on the shoulder. “Sorry to interrupt your beauty sleep.”

Cone looks at him closely. “Christ, you’re wired,” he says. “Haven’t been popping bennies, have you?”

“Nah, I’m just hyper. A lot going on, and it could make me a hero or leave me looking like a putz.”

He starts up, turns eastward, accelerates down a deserted street.

“Great morning,” he says. “Best time of the day. No traffic. No pollution. Everything fresh and clean.”

“That’s what you wanted to tell me?” Cone says. “How wonderful the world is at six o’clock in the morning?”

Wong laughs: “Not exactly. Listen, you were right; the United Bamboo pirates are holding Edward Lee. They grabbed him late Thursday afternoon. It took me all night to authenticate that, and I had to call in a lot of chits.”

“Where have they got him?”

“Where we’re heading: Doyers Street in Chinatown. The Yubies’ headquarters. That’s what I call them—the Yubies. From the ‘U’ and ‘B’ in United Bamboo.”

“You don’t have to draw me a diagram,” Cone says.

“God, you’re grouchy early in the morning.”

“I’m always grouchy.”

“Well, the Yubies have three or four hangouts that we know about. Mostly in Manhattan, but one in Queens. Anyway, their headquarters is on Doyers Street in a five-story tenement. They’ve got the whole building except for a ground-floor restaurant, which happens to be the best dim sum joint in Chinatown. Edward Lee is being held in a third-floor office. He’s been roughed up a little, but he’s alive and okay. At least he was a couple of hours ago.”

“You guys going in for him?”

“Ah, there’s the rub. That’s why I’m taking you to see the place. It’s a fucking fortress.”

Even at that early hour Chinatown is bustling. Merchants are taking down their shutters, street vendors are setting up their stalls, the narrow streets are crowded with men and women carrying live ducks, dead mackerel, and net bags filled with fruits and vegetables. Tea houses are already open for business, and the whole area has a raucous vitality.

Wong finds a parking space on Chatham Square. As they walk back to Doyers, he describes the setup.

“The entrance to the Yubies’ headquarters is alongside the dim sum restaurant. There’s an iron grille door on the street, kept locked, a small vestibule, and then a steel door painted to look like wood. Also kept locked. And if that wasn’t enough, there are always two United Bamboo soldiers on the sidewalk outside the entrance. Twenty-four hours a day. I figure they’re carrying. They don’t let anyone inside the iron grille or the steel door unless they’re recognized or expected. There’s an intercom to the upper floors and also an alarm bell the guards can sound in case they get jumped.”

“Beautiful,” Cone says. “Back entrance?”

“Nope. Just a small blind courtyard. Fenced and topped with razor wire. There it is; take a look.”

They saunter along on the other side of Doyers Street, pausing while Cone lights a cigarette, giving him a chance to eyeball the place. Three red-brick tenements in a row. The center building has the ground-floor restaurant. He spots the guards lounging near an iron gate. They look like kids to him: short and wiry.

Cone and Wong continue their slow stroll, turn onto Pell and then Mott Street.

“There’s a place up near Canal where we can get coffee and a nosh,” Johnnie says. “It’s probably open by now.”

“Yeah,” Cone says, “that sounds good. My treat.”

They sit at a table against a white-tiled wall. Wong tucks into a down-home breakfast of buttermilk pancakes and pork sausages with a side order of hush puppies. Cone has a bagel with cream cheese, lox, and a slice of onion. Both swill black coffee.

“You were right,” Timothy says. “A fucking fortress. You guys thinking of hitting it?”

“Our legal eagles say we don’t need a warrant; we’ve got probable cause: a kidnap victim being held against his will on the third floor. But how do we do it? We rush the place like gangbusters and already we’re in deep trouble. Those two jerko guards will probably draw and start blasting away; you know that. And if they don’t, they’ll push the alarm button. That’s what scares me most, because if the alarm goes off before we get upstairs, the guys in the third-floor office are liable to pop Edward Tung Lee just so he can’t testify against them. I told you they were savages, didn’t I? Real primitive types.”

Cone continues munching his bagel sandwich and gulping black coffee. “So what do you want from my young life?”

“We can’t let Edward Lee rot in there, can we? We’ve got to make a try at getting him out as long as it doesn’t endanger his life.”

“You could surround the front of the building and make a big show of force. Then bring in your hostage negotiation team.”

“You think that would work?” Wong says, pouring more syrup on his pancakes.

“No,” Cone says. “Because if they cave and hand you Lee, they’ll know you’ve got them on a kidnap rap.”

“Right. Well, you were an infantryman. Vietnam and your medals and all that shit. So what do you suggest?”

Cone pushes back from the table, lights another cigarette. He finishes his coffee and signals for a refill.

“You got some cowboys in your office?” he asks.

“You mean like a SWAT team? Sure, we got guys like that. An assault squad. Specially trained. Real hotshots. They just don’t give a damn.”

“Uh-huh,” Cone says. “Listen, you know anything about the tong wars back in the twenties and thirties?”

“A little. I know the area bounded by Mott, Pell, and Doyer streets was called the Bloody Triangle.”

“That’s right. Well, during one of those wars the boss of a tong was threatened by an opposing gang. They swore they were going to top him. So he surrounded himself with bodyguards. On the street outside his headquarters. In the room where he worked. Even in his bedroom. But he got slammed just the same. You know how?”

“How?”

“The enemy went up on the roof of the building next to the tong headquarters. Same height. They crossed over and let a shooter down in a bosun’s chair. He popped the bossman through a front window.”

Johnnie Wong stares at him. “Son of a bitch,” he says softly.

“Probably the world’s first demonstration of vertical envelopment,” Cone goes on. “When you’re in a firefight, or going into one, you tend to think horizontally. You figure the enemy will be on the same level. You never expect to get a load of crap dumped on your head. In World War Two it took a while for our guys in the South Pacific to learn the Nip snipers were up in the trees.”

Wong leans forward, interested. “You think it would work here?”

“You’ve got buildings on both sides of the United Bamboo headquarters. All the buildings are tight together and the same height. Crossing to the middle roof should be a cinch. You couldn’t lower just one guy; you need more firepower than that. The Yubies’ headquarters are three windows wide. You make sure your lines are secure, and then three guys rappel down the face of the building, one guy to each stack of windows. They’re armed with Uzis or maybe Ingrams or whatever lightweight choppers you guys are using these days. They rappel down to the third floor and start blasting the bejesus out of everything in sight, keeping their shots high because you don’t want Edward Lee cut in two. If you think all that shooting is too risky, then have your hotshots kick the windows out with their boots and toss in stun grenades.”

“Or tear gas,” Wong says. He’s getting excited now.

Cone shakes his head. “Gas would take too long to knock out Lee’s guards. And besides, while this is going on, you’re going to have a squad charging up the stairs to the third floor. And unless they’re wearing masks, the gas will take them out, too.”

“And how does this squad get past the guards, inside the two locked doors, and go galloping up to the rescue?”

“When the guys come down from the roof and the party begins, those two guards are going to run out into the middle of the street and look up, to see what’s going on. That’ll be your chance to grab them—while they’re still peeing their pants. As for those locked doors, they shouldn’t take more than a minute or two to pry open if you’ve got the right tools. My advice would be to blow them. Look, I haven’t been in the war business for years, so I don’t know what new goodies you guys have in your armory. But I’ll bet you’ve got gizmos to get you through locked doors in seconds. Then you go hotfooting up to the third floor where the bad guys are still spooked.”

“You really think that meshugass would work?”

Cone shrugs. “Fifty-fifty,” he says.

“Come on,” Johnnie Wong says angrily, “give it to me straight. If you had to make the top decision, would you say go or no-go?”

“Go,” Cone says.

Wong sighs. “All right,” he says. “I’ll give it the old college try. We’ll have to buck this one all the way up the line, probably to D.C. It’s the time factor that worries me. I want to get Edward Lee out of there before the media gets wind of it or we’ll have a three-ring circus on our hands. By rights, we should have conferences on this, liaise with the NYPD, and maybe even run a rehearsal down at Quantico. But we just don’t have the time. Listen, are you going to be home this weekend?”

“I’ll be in and out.”

“I’ll try to keep you up to speed on what’s going on. I owe you that; it’s your idea.”

“Look,” Cone says, “if you can’t get enough guys to jump off the roof, I could do that. I know how to rappel.”

Wong looks at him with amusement. “Smell action?” he asks. “Can’t get it out of your system, can you? Thanks for the offer, but we’ve got weapons you haven’t even heard about.”

“Guns are guns,” Cone says. “You point and pull the trigger.”

“Forget it,” the FBI man advises. “My God, you’re just a lousy civilian.”

Johnnie says he wants to get back to his office as soon as possible, so Timothy decides to walk home—a nice hike that’ll get his juices flowing. The sun has popped up, but the air is still cool enough. It promises to be a hot, beamy day, not a rain cloud in sight. There’s a skywriting plane at work over Manhattan, and Cone wonders what would happen if a berserk pilot spelled out
FUCK YOU
for all the city to see and ponder.

He buys a morning
Times
and a
Barron’s
from a sidewalk kiosk. Then, nearing home, he begins stocking up on groceries and potables, figuring he’ll spend the weekend in the loft; he doesn’t want to be out if Johnnie Wong calls.

The elevator works until noon on Saturdays so Cone doesn’t have to lug all his bundles up six flights of steep stairs. He gets everything stowed away, gives Cleo fresh water, fresh litter, and a Twinkie. Then he undresses and sacks out on the floor mattress to complete his night’s sleep.