When Al finished telling Jake his plan, one thing was clear. They were going to need help. Jake’s first thought was his friends. Friends who were currently in Europe, bouncing around Prague, Budapest, and Rome. Jake needed help, and for the love of God, only one thing came to mind.
“Try to get some sleep, Jake,” Al said, interrupting his visitor’s introspection. “You’re going to need it.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, if you manage to save this girl, things are likely to get hot around here.”
“You mean if
“Jake, I would love to go with you, but I don’t fly. Not yet. I’m crossing one bridge at a time, and that one is a little longer than I am ready for.”
“Al, you can’t leave this all to me.”
“I’ll do everything I can, but getting on an airplane isn’t on the list.”
“If we do this thing, how long will it take you to organize it?”
“Couple of days.”
Jake felt like hiding, but he already was. He was under a bridge, sleeping with the homeless. He had one idea and admitted to himself that it wasn’t a good one. “Maybe I’ll bring some people with me. Some muscle,” Jake said, trying to convince himself he wasn’t crazy.
“You have muscle, Jake? You didn’t tell me that you have muscle,” Al said, ribbing his friend.
“You know how you said fear is a good emotion?”
“Yes.”
“Well I am tingling with it.”
“Just remember, Jake. If you want to take on a senator, don’t whisper it. Yell it from the tree tops.”
With that thought, Jake got up from his uncomfortable sleeping nest and walked out from under the bridge. He waited for his cell phone to connect and when three bars indicated ample signal strength, he made the call.
Mr. Sorrentino was in bed with his wife. After apologizing profusely for the late call, Jake spoke nervously. “Mr. Sorrentino, I will agree to stop seeing Kate…”
“I knew you would come to your senses and see it my way,” Mr. Sorrentino said before Jake finished.
Jake started over. “I will agree to stop seeing Kate on one condition…”
Chapter 34
Nguyen rode shotgun as Wallace drove the car through Chinatown. A picture of Chow Ying rested on Detective Nguyen’s lap. He took intermittent glances at the photo on his thighs and looked at the faces on the street. Beyond the stereotypes, there was truth to the fact that Nguyen could look at another Asian and tell where they were from. As an Asian, he simply had an advantage in identifying and recognizing other Asians. Slight differences in the shape of the face distinguished the features of Northern Asians from their distant evolutionary kin in the south. The shape of the eyes was a second indicator of origin. And if facial features weren’t a dead giveaway, clothes and hairstyles were.
“I don’t like Chinatown,” Detective Wallace said, behind the wheel for the first time since unofficially partnering with Nguyen. “It smells.”
“What do you mean it smells? Just what smell is that, Sergeant?”
“It smells like Chinese food. Fish. Whatever. It just stinks.”
“Be thankful it’s not ‘Koreatown.’ Talk about a smell that will knock your socks off.”
“My wife would warn against knocking my socks off, but that’s a different kind of stench altogether.”
“Could have gone all year without knowing that.”
Wallace turned the cruiser north, crawling past a new restaurant on the corner called Wok n’ Roll. The line snaked out the door, past a Beijing-style basement bodega. Two floors above, a sign for the now-defunct D.C. Police Asian Liaison Unit hung on the wall, the lettering faded by the sun. Wallace nodded toward the building and Nguyen grunted an acknowledgement as he continued checking the faces of a group of Asians strolling in the crosswalk.
Wallace began giving Nguyen an unsolicited lesson in local law enforcement history. “You know, Chinatown used to be a lot wilder. When I first started, the police came down here for the occasional late night raid. They had mini-casinos on the tops of some of these restaurants. Four or five dozen Chinese guys would be in there—betting, throwing money on the table, screaming. It was like a Kung Fu movie from Hong Kong, without Bruce Lee. No one spoke English. Most were illegal. There was always a pile of drugs in the room. Heroin being smoked in some back corner. Yeah, Chinatown was definitely not a place to park your car in the evening ten, fifteen years ago. Now look at it—it’s becoming yuppie-central faster than you can order a bowl of egg drop soup.”
“And you still think it stinks?”
Detective Wallace rolled down the window and took a left by the markets and restaurants on H Street. He inhaled through his nose and stuck the spear of agitation just a little deeper into Nguyen’s side. “You don’t smell that?”
Nguyen took a deep breath. “Smells just like my apartment.”
“Then it looks like I’ll be the one inviting you over for dinner. My wife can cook. Ribs and okra. The scent of the South.”
The good-natured banter ended as Wallace stepped on the parking brake and the two detectives got out of the car. They walked past the Capital City Brewery and turned right on Sixth Street.
Wallace crossed between two double-parked delivery trucks as Nguyen began working the crowd on his side of the pavement. The market was alive with activity. The summer sun melted the ice bins, slowing bringing fish, clams, and squid to the surface. Wallace spoke with the vendors, smiled, and showed contrived interest in the funkiness-from-the-sea his Asian neighbors considered food. He stopped at a tray of sea cucumbers and gagged, forcing his breakfast back down. He dry-heaved a second time as the moving squid shot black ink on its Styrofoam container. Throwing small talk aside, Wallace pulled the picture of Chow Ying and started drilling passers-by on the person in the photo. He got a dozen negatives responses and twice as many blank stares.
At the end of the small string of temporary fish stalls, Wallace stopped and looked back at the street market scene. He would never understand how the local supermarket wasn’t good enough. He turned into the open door of a small boutique and announced his presence. An elderly Chinese woman answered from the back of the store, a clothier no bigger than a late-seventies station wagon. Wallace flashed his identification, and then the picture of Chow Ying at the sub-five-foot octogenarian. A younger woman popped her head between two hanging pieces of cloth in the doorway in the rear of the store, a sleeping baby strapped to her back. The elderly woman waved her hand at her granddaughter and looked at the picture.
“Have you seen this man?” Wallace asked, looking around.
The old woman didn’t bat an eye. “Yes, I have seen him.”
Wallace snapped to attention, surprised by the answer and its immediate delivery in near-perfect English. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. My hearing is not so good, but there is nothing wrong with my eyes,” the old woman said spryly.
Detective Wallace stepped to the door, rolled his tongue in his mouth, and blasted a whistle across the street to Nguyen.
“I saw him in the window,” the old woman continued. “About a week ago. It was early in the morning, before we were open. He looked at something in the display window and walked off. I only saw his face, and I only saw him once. Right there, next to the mannequin.”
Both detectives looked toward the window and the mannequin. A bright red dress rode up the mannequin’s legs, her face painted with a thick layer of poorly applied cosmetics in ghastly colors. “Looks like a hooker,” Nguyen said under his breath. Wallace suppressed his normal belly-shaking laugh.
Detective Wallace eyed the display window and noted the position of the mannequin and its pose on the raised floor near the window. “Where in the window did you see his face?” Wallace asked. The old woman stood at the small counter, the picture of Chow Ying resting on the wood surface next to the calculator that served as her register.
“I was standing here, changing the roll of paper on the calculator, getting ready to open. His face was right
