White Tiger

“Enough,” Ryker told the younger detective, pulling him away. “We’ve got work to do.”

Chee Wei allowed himself to be pulled off, but not before giving Cueball an award-winning case of Evil Eye. Cueball laughed and licked his fingers.

“Like I said, a little Chihuahua…and now, you’re bein’ led away on your leash.” The fat cop bit into his doughnut. Chee Wei tensed, but Ryker continued to pull him away toward their pod.

“Don’t worry about that piece of shit,” Ryker said. “He’s not worth getting all riled up over. Let him choke on his doughnuts.”

Once Chee Wei was settled down, Ryker had him go over the murder book. There was nothing to add, other than a few isolated tidbits that had very little bearing on the case, namely the latest lab results. More would find their way to Ryker’s desk over the coming weeks, each hopefully more detailed than the last. Nevertheless, Ryker wasn’t holding out hope for a bonanza of physical evidence that would identify the killer. But anything that might help would be certainly welcome, even though the chain of command wouldn’t be content to wait for all the results to come in. If ever there was a case that required the slam-dunk, this was it.

Ryker made some inquiries into the health of Raymond-she was at home, resting comfortably, and taking her meds. He called Morales on his cell phone to see how he was holding out, and found that all was well at the Zhu woman’s residence; there hadn’t been any indication the house was being watched, which didn’t surprise Ryker at all. If James Lin wanted Zhu Xiaohui, he wouldn’t need to resort to strong-arm tactics when one telephone call to the assistant chief could likely result in what he wanted being hand-carried to his office. Ryker promised Morales that Chee Wei would be over to relieve him within an hour or so.

After that, Ryker paid a visit to the coffee machine and grabbed himself a tall cup of the extra-potent battery acid that the department called coffee, and lamented not stopping by a real coffee house on the way in. He dumped in a handful of Mini-Moo creamers to avoid suffering from a seared esophagus for the rest of his life, and plodded back toward his desk. He noticed a newspaper sticking out of his previously-empty mailbox as he walked past, and he altered course to grab it. Setting his coffee on the countertop, he pulled the publication from the narrow box and opened it up. He scanned the headline and groaned loudly.

“Ah, shit!”

Wealthy Chinese Industrialist’s Son

Slain in Hotel

By Emerson Loo

special to the San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco — The son of wealthy Bay Area industrial magnate James Lin was found dead in a suite at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel at 222 Sansome Street. Cause of death was classified as a homicide.

Authorities are still trying to identify Mr. Lin’s assailant, but have not yet made an official statement regarding the cause of death. An undisclosed source within the San Francisco Police Department has confirmed on the condition of anonymity that Mr. Lin’s death was in part caused by ritual mutilation of his sexual organs…

“A real bummer, huh?”

Ryker looked up from the paper and slowly turned around. Cueball looked back at him from his desk, leaning back in his chair, fingers clasped across his protruding belly. Specks of glazed frosting dotted his lower lip, a few of which fell to his brown tie as he grinned widely.

“Yeah, that’s gotta be a real bummer for you and your team there, Supercop,” Cueball said. “I mean, here you are, your investigation depending on secrecy and all that, and then there’s a whole writeup on it in the Chronicle. Not that there was any way of keeping it quiet for long, but hey, another couple of days wouldn’t have hurt, right?”

Ryker felt his pulse rate increase. He rolled the paper up in one hand and lowered it to his side. His eyes bore into Wallace like laser beams. For his part, Wallace merely chuckled.

“Yeah, it’s got to suck to be you,” the fat detective chortled. He reached into the bag for another doughnut.

Ryker crossed the gap between them in three strides. One of the detectives in Wallace’s pod looked up at him in some surprise; at least one person in the room could understand body language. The detective rolled his chair back from his desk, either to put some distance between him and the brewing shitstorm, or to more easily jump in.

“You’re chickenshit, Wallace,” Ryker growled, towering over the fat cop. “You’ve always been chickenshit. Remember what happened to you yesterday when you thought you’d grown a pair?”

Wallace’s jocularity faded like a cold glass of water on a hot Arizona day.

“Yeah? So what’re you gonna do now, Supercop? You want to make this physical?” Wallace rose from his chair in a display of sudden agility that surprised everyone. All faces were turned their way, Ryker knew. There was no way this episode wouldn’t get some airtime inside the department.

Better dial it back a bit, a small voice inside him reasoned. You’re already persona non grata. You let this go much further, and it’s a suspension pending charges.

Ryker’s jaw clenched so tightly from the frustration that it made his muscles ache. He took a deep breath, and forced the tensed muscles in his shoulders and arms and hands to relax. It was a near-Herculean effort. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that Wallace had been the “undisclosed source” cited in the article, and every part of Ryker wanted to extract vengeance. But vengeance would likely mean his badge.

Wallace apparently read it that way himself. He snorted, sneering.

“Yeah, not so tough after all, are you Ryker?” he pushed, trying to make it look like something it wasn’t. “Poor baby’s got his diaper in a bundle because some newspaper boy caught onto his case and blew it up in public. Boo-fucking-hoo, Ryker. Come back to me when your balls drop, and we’ll have ourselves a little talk, man to boy.”

Ryker took a sudden step toward Wallace and wound up for just an instant, with their faces only millimeters apart. That instant evaporated when Wallace reacted, almost stumbling backward over his chair. A quick titter of laughter went through the squad room.

“I don’t have anything to say to you except there’s a two-for-one special at Allstar Donuts,” he hissed. “Just think about it-for the price of twelve, you could get twenty-four of those heart plugs, and you might do us all a favor if you ate them all at once and vapor-locked right here at your desk. Of course, no one would notice, since you almost never haul your ass out of your chair except to get something to eat, take a dump, or go to lunch. I mean, what the hell, all of your clients are already dead, so why bother breaking a sweat trying to figure out the whodunit part, right? At the end of the day, they’re still dead, and you have some food to find.”

“Hey, fuck you, Ryker! I clear my cases-”

“Yeah, only after one or two generations of next of kin have either died or gone to a home for managed care,” Ryker interjected. “You make me sick, Wallace. Die, already. Please.”

“Am I interrupting something?”

Ryker glanced over his shoulder for a moment. Spider was standing behind him, a cup of Starbucks in one hand, a newspaper in the other. Furino’s narrow nose tracked from Ryker to Wallace and back again, like a weapon system trying to evaluate which target to engage first.

“I was just giving Cueball a tip on Allstar’s new two-for-one promotion,” Ryker said, before spinning on his heel and stalking toward his pod. Chee Wei was on his feet, face expressionless, but he’d been watching the whole thing.

“Next time, send him an email,” Spider said, walking along behind Ryker. “When you get a second, come in and talk with me.”

Oh, outstanding.

“You got it, lou.”