Slice

BUCKHEAD SPRINGS

Eichord was out under the big red maple thinking about the birthday Donna had given him. The treasured Disney comic book and the tapes of rare hero chapters were safe inside. He loved the idea of what she'd tried to do for him. He could no longer lose himself in nostalgia the way he had once been able to do. Either cop burn out ... too much shit ... or this thing with Chink. God, it bugged him. It bugged him that Jimmie would TAKE, number one. Number two, he wished he'd never been told about it. What would he do when IAD pulled him in and said, “Did you know?” Fuck it.

What it boiled down to is he would lie. No question. To protect a real friend like Lee. Who's kidding who? He'd stonewall it just the way all the other assholes did these days. He'd smile and cross his legs and protect his balls to the walls. What more could you do? Or what LESS could you do, in his case? He owed the kid that one.

Jack remembered their trip together. Years and years before, back at the beginning of the whole thing. Before McTuff had ever heard of a cat named Eichord. He'd been sitting there, a fish out of water, partnerless, no track record, a strong candidate for the drunk tank, and listening to fat Dana, not so fat back then, and Lee talking nostalgia.

“...those fuckin’ Buicks with the outrageous portholes on the side. God they were sharp. Every time I drew a picture of a big ole limo in school I'd draw three or four portholes onnit."

“That was the damn Chrome Decade: 1949 to 1959. Began with the Riviera and ended with the Seville. Remember the ‘59 El Dee? Oh, my, mercy sakes. Big ole righteous fins on that sucker. God! Wouldn't ya like to have been rich enough you coulda got a ‘53 El Dee when you were born or somethin'—you know, like your first words to mommy when you're three: ‘Get me a ‘53 hog!’”

“Put it in a garage somewhere and pay the rent."

“Yeah, keep it cherry. Pay rent on a garage from 1953 to now—shit! If you'd put that in gold you'd be Nelson fellering Rockefucker by now."

“I'll tell ya a classic vehicle. Wanna hear a classic?"

“Yeah."

“Here ya’ go: the 1948 Chevy Fleetmaster station wagon."

“Oh, fuck. Wait a minute. You want a classic—get serious. Here's a classic. Ya ready?"

“Unnn."

“The ‘56 ‘Vette."

“Wait—the ultimate. The ‘51 Buick LeSabre rag top."

“Here ya go. The 1957 Ford Fairlane.” There was a long pause. “THE ‘57 FORD FAIRLANE? You're crazy!” And on and on. Little Deuce Coupes and ‘51 Starlites (what the hell was a Starlite?) And being smuggled into the drive-in in a ‘37 Chevy coo-pay. That whole mythology of chrome and full mills and speed-shifting and dual H-wood glasspaks, and how the shift levers impeded the flow of romance way back then, and before long Eichord couldn't stand it. He had to go to the files and look through the old crime reports where the pictures of the cars were.

So in a way Lee had given him his career. It was there on the page with the grainy Kodak shot of the old car. It was a story about a homicide.

The picture of the car hadn't turned him on much but the homicide report caught his eye, and he took it over to the desk and sat there immersing himself in the old crime reports the way a curious detective will.

It was a homicide of “ancient history” even back then. Today it would be over thirty years old. It was 1957 and the main witness looked awfully shaky. The more Eichord read, the deeper he got into it and pretty soon he was on the phone and getting records pulled out of dusty boxes. He started talking to people, dredging up ancient facts and suspicions, and—he thought he had something.

It began with the suspicious crib death of an infant and ended with the death of a husband. But as Jack examined the reports more than a few contradictions loomed. The more he checked, the more the facts began to tear at the old contexture of interwoven lies. Then he found the woman's first marriage, which she'd been so careful to hide from the prying eyes of history and police, and he found the other mysterious infant crib death. The same MO. Suffocation. He saw a portrait of a killer emerge. It was a Buckhead homicide that would take him to the Orient.

He devoted weeks to it. Backtracking. Hiking over long-gone trails. Stirring the dirt where the forgotten ashes had long since been blown away. He found opportunity, and then motive, and then ... the key. One of the accomplices had spent too freely. He saw what it had been all along. A careful, smartly planned insurance fraud.

She was sixty and living in Hong Kong, the last anyone could determine. He took it by the numbers. The reports. The requests. The channels. The warrants. The long series of confabulations with the Hong Kong cop shop. Extradition conferencing. The considerations of the circuit attorney and the assholes in the State Department. But Eichord wanted her badly, so he hung in there and persevered and pissed and moaned and caused a stink and generally irritated everybody to the point where they'd give him his way just to shut him up. He was going after her.

He would have to take along an interpreter, and a Chinese-American detective by the name of James Lee was right there in-house, and why the hell not? So off they went. In the end he'd solved a case that had been on the books “forever,” and the positive ink it pulled for the department had changed his way of life completely, catapulting him into the hot seat when the Dr. Demented shit hit the headlines. All because of Lee. He'd probably never have nailed her had it not been for Lee and the man from Kowloon. The incredibly fierce warrior who allowed them to penetrate the bamboo veil of one of the ultra-secret societies called triads—the ninja who would slice off his tongue to prove a point—the fearless, frightening, awesome, and awful man who Eichord always thought of as “the man from Kowloon,” but who was Jimmie Lee's older brother.