“Stay down!” he orders the other man. “Don’t even raise your head.”
He looks cautiously to the rear of the restaurant. Tables and booths are empty; the patrons are flat on the floor.
“Keep down,” he cautions Lee again.
He rises slowly to a crouch. No more explosions, the shrieking has finally ended. Now there are shouts, and someone is blowing a whistle: short, loud, repeated blasts.
Cone slips the.357 into his jacket pocket. Gripping it, he goes out the front door onto Pell Street. People are coming from doorways, from behind parked cars and pushcarts. A uniformed cop is already there, and another comes pounding up. A circle of gawkers forms.
And in the center, spread-eagled on the sidewalk and leaking blood, lies the body of Mr. Chen Chang Wang, looking like a beached and punctured whale.
Cone goes back inside. Edward Lee is standing, brushing off his black silk suit. Henry rises slowly from behind the bar.
“Sorry I knocked you over,” Cone says.
“Glad you did. What the hell happened?”
“I’m afraid,” says Timothy, “you just lost a good customer.”
Lee stares at him, face twisted. “Chen?”
Cone nods.
“Dead?”
“Very.”
Lee’s face scrunches up even more. He begins pounding on the bar with a clenched fist. “Bastards!” he spits out. “Oh, the rotten bastards!” Then, calming: “Henry, pour me a brandy, and one for Mr. Cone, and you better have one yourself.”
No tricks this time, no wizardry; the bartender fills three snifters with a trembling hand. He drains his glass in one gulp. Cone and Lee right the toppled barstools, sit down, turn to watch the confusion on Pell Street. A squad car, siren growling, has nosed through the mob and parked. They hear more sirens coming closer.
“Ah, Jesus,” Lee says, taking a swallow of his brandy, “he was a sweet man.”
“Someone didn’t think so,” Cone says. “Who are the bastards?”
“What?”
“When I told you he was dead, you said, ‘The bastards, the rotten bastards.’ Who did you have in mind?”
“Oh,” Lee says, “that. I meant the man who shot him.”
“Uh-huh,” Cone says. “Probably more than one. Wang is pretty well perforated. Sounded like forty-fives to me.”
Two uniformed officers come into Ah Sing’s Bar amp; Grill. One is Chinese, the other black. They have notebooks and pens ready. The Chinese goes to the back of the restaurant where the patrons, now seated at tables and booths, are again digging into their rice bowls. The black officer stops at the bar.
“Were you gentlemen seated here when the incident occurred?” he asks them.
“Yeah,” Cone says. “Having a drink. Then all hell broke loose. We heard shots, and the plate glass window came down.”
“Did you see anything that happened outside?”
“Not me,” Cone says.
“You?” he asks Edward.
“I saw nothing,” Lee says. “We were talking together, facing each other.”
“Okay,” the cop says. “This is just preliminary. Could I have your names, addresses, and phone numbers, please. And I’d like to see any identification you have.”
He copies everything down in his notebook.
“Thank you for your cooperation,” he says politely. “Anything else you can tell me?”
“Yeah,” Cone says, pointing at the holed and starred mirror. “A wild slug went in there. You’ll be able to dig it out if you need it.”
The officer looks. “Thanks again,” he says gratefully. “I might have missed that.”
“Can we leave now?” Lee asks him.
“Sure,” the cop says. “Everything’s under control.” He moves down the bar to question Henry.
“He didn’t even search us,” Lee says.
“Why should he? They’ve probably got witnesses who saw the shooters make their getaway. I doubt if killers would pop Mr. Wang and then come into his bar and order drinks.”
“If he had searched us,” Lee persists, “he’d have found your gun. I saw you take it from a holster on your leg.”
“So?”
“You always carry it?”
“Yep. My security blanket. I’ve got a permit for it.”
“You’re a valuable man to know,” Edward Tung Lee says in a low voice.
What he means by that, Cone has no idea.
Two
He wakes in a grumpy mood, hauls himself off the mattress, lights his first cigarette of the new day. He goes growling around the loft, washing and shaving, drinking black coffee and then adding a smidgen of brandy just to get his eyelids up.
“So I tell him a good customer has been scragged,” he says to Cleo, who is working on a breakfast of leftover chicken chow mein. “And he says, “The bastards, the rotten bastards.’ So I ask him who the bastards are, and he says he meant the guy who popped Chen Chang Wang. Now I ask you, does that make sense? Of course it doesn’t. So he was lying. But why? No skin off my ass. I couldn’t care less who ventilated Mr. Wang. Cleo, you dirty rat, are you listening?”
It’s a peppy August day, which does nothing for his crusty mood. So the sun is shining. Big deal. That’s what it’s getting paid for, isn’t it? And that mild azure sky with fat little puffs of clouds-it all looks like a sappy postcard. “Having fine time, wish you were here.” And when the hell was Samantha coming home?
There’s a guy waiting for him in the Haldering reception room. He looks short and squat sitting down, but when he stands up, he’s lean and mean, only an inch or two shorter than Cone. He’s Chinese, with black hair cut
“Mr. Timothy Cone?”
“That’s right. Who you?”
The gink hands him a business card, and the Wall Street dick reads it aloud: “Johnnie Wong. Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Cone inspects the card, feeling it between thumb and forefinger. “Very nice. Good engraving. You mind showing me your potsy?”
“Not at all.” Wong whips out his ID wallet and displays it.
“Uh-huh,” Cone says. “Looks legit. What’s with the Johnnie? Why not just plain John?”
“Take it up with my mom and pop,” the FBI man says. “I’ve been suffering from that all my life. The Wong I can live with, but please don’t tell me ‘Fifty million Chinese can’t be Wong.’”
“I wasn’t going to,” Timothy says-but he was. “You want to palaver, I suppose. This way.”
Johnnie Wong follows Cone back to his weeny office and looks around. “I like it,” he says. “It’s got that certain nothing.”
“Yeah,” Cone says, and holds up the brown paper bag he’s carrying. “My breakfast: coffee and bagel. You want something? I’ll call down for you.”
“No, thanks,” Wong says, “I’ve had mine. You go ahead.”
Cone lights a Camel, starts on the container of black coffee, the bagel with a schmear. “So?” he says to the other man. “How come the FBI is parked on my doorstep?”
