Dragonfire

Twenty-one

I got back to San Francisco late Thursday afternoon. Tedescu didn’t follow me down. The last I saw of him was in Albion; he trailed me there, after I took him back to Seaview Ranch to pick up his compact, and then pulled off in front of a grocery store. After liquor or beer, probably, something to take the edge off his hangover. He was pretty shaky, subdued; he’d had a bad night. But he’d get through all right, if he didn’t start drinking heavily again and kill himself on the highway. The booze was his crutch — he’d been leaning on it for years and he would not stop leaning on it now. The irony was, Emerson had screwed up Tedescu’s life when he was alive, and even in death he was still screwing it up. Tedescu might never get over what Emerson had done to him, what Emerson had caused him to do. And maybe I would never get over what Emerson had done to me, either.

I’d had a better night than Tedescu, but not by much. Dreams, fever sweats, nagging pain that kept bringing me up to the edge of consciousness. And all the running around in the rain had given me a head cold on top of everything else; it started after I had checked us into the motel — one room, twin beds, so I could keep an eye on Tedescu — and when I woke up I was snuffling and I had a scratchy throat. All of me ached; Doctor Abrams’ warning about pneumonia was in the back of my mind. I managed the long drive all right, but I was exhausted again when I finally got home.

I took some cold capsules and Vitamin C and went straight to bed. And slept sixteen hours, most of them dreamless. When I awoke on Friday morning I was still stiff and sore, and I still had the cold, but I felt somewhat better. I got up long enough to eat, went back to bed, and called Abrams at S.F. General to check on Eberhardt. No change. Then I dialed the Hall of Justice and got through to Ben Klein. I had to know how things stood with the police investigation, what the official position was on the death of Mau Yee.

But I had no worries there. “Still nothing definite to report,” Klein said. “Trying to get answers in Chinatown is like trying to pry open an oyster shell with your fingers. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.”

“No new leads?”

“One possibility, maybe, but I don’t think it’s going to get us anywhere. Chinese thug named Jimmy Quon got himself killed on Wednesday night. One of the body-washers we checked out after the shooting — a real hard case. But he had an alibi we couldn’t shake.”

“You think his death might be connected?”

“If it is, we can’t find the connection. Found in an alley off Waverly Place, skull bashed in. No witnesses, no leads. It could be a gang killing; that kind of shit goes down all the time in Chinatown.”

Found in an alley, I thought. Lee Chuck must have sent some Hui Sip people over to the temple to remove the body, probably because he didn’t want cops, Caucasian cops, doing any more desecrating of a house of worship. How somebody like Chuck could have religious feelings was beyond me. But then, there seemed to be a lot of things that were beyond me these days.

I slept another three hours, doctored myself with more pills, ate again, and then screwed up my courage and called Kerry at the Bates and Carpenter agency. Her secretary took the call, said she’d see if Ms. Wade was still in, and left me hanging for two minutes. Or Kerry did. Then the line clicked and Kerry’s voice said, “Well — so you’re still alive.” She sounded cool and distant, but I thought I could detect relief, too. “I was beginning to think you’d disappeared for good. Or that you’d turn up dead in an alley somewhere.”

“Have you been trying to call me?”

“Twice. Don’t ask me why.”

“I know why. At least, I hope I do.”

No response.

“Listen,” I said, “it’s been a crazy time. I was a little crazy myself for a while. But that’s over now. No more running around, no more guns.”

Pause. “Is that the truth?”

“It’s the truth.”

“What happened? Did you find out who did the shooting? Did you finish your vendetta?”

“I finished it, but it wasn’t a vendetta. I didn’t kill anybody, if that’s what you think. No violence.”

“I suppose you still don’t want to talk about it.”

“Someday, maybe. Not yet.”

Another pause. “So where are you now?”

“Home in bed, taking care of myself. It’s where I’ll be all weekend. Come over tomorrow or Sunday and see for yourself. I’d ask you to come tonight, but I’m still catching up on my sleep.”

“I don’t know if I want to see you.”

“I’m not a stranger anymore, Kerry. Maybe not the person I used to be, but not a stranger. Come on over tomorrow and we’ll talk; you’ll see.”

“I might be busy,” she said. “I just don’t know yet.”

She came at one o’clock on Saturday afternoon. I thought she would, but I was relieved when the doorbell rang and I heard her voice over the intercom from downstairs. More sleep and the antibiotics had got rid of my cold; my shoulder was better too. Only the stiffness in my arm seemed as bad as it had been before.

There was still some distance between us, but it was tolerable. We talked, and she fixed me some lunch and changed the sheets on the bed, and when she left at four she kissed me. I said, “I’ll call you pretty soon,” and she said, “Or I’ll call you.” All in all, it was a promising time.

She had brought me the morning paper, and after she was gone I took it back to bed and read through it. On an inside page there was a short article that said Carl Emerson, a prominent local businessman, had been found dead at his Mendocino ranch by sheriff’s deputies investigating a call from business associates who had been unable to reach him. The cause of death, according to the Mendocino County coroner, was an accidental fall.

On Sunday, Jeanne Emerson called. She’d also seen the article in the paper, and the first thing she said to me was, “Did Carl really die in an accident?”

“As far as I know, yes.”

“It wouldn’t matter if it was something else. I was just wondering. Was he involved in the shooting, as you thought?”

“I guess he was. But it’s finished now, as far as I’m concerned; how about if we just leave it that way?”

“Whatever you say,” she said. “I’m not sorry he’s dead, though.”

“Neither am I.”

“About that photojournalism piece on you I suggested — I’d still like to do it, if you’re willing.”

“One of these days, maybe. Not right now.”

“I’ll call you in a few weeks, then. All right?”

“All right,” I said.

On Monday, I went in to see Doctor Abrams. The wound in my shoulder was healing satisfactorily now, he said, and I seemed to be in reasonably good health. The continuing stiffness in my arm and hand was another matter. He said that therapy might correct the problem and that I ought to consult a specialist. If therapy didn’t do it, I might have to have an operation.

I did not have to ask him what would happen if an operation didn’t do it either.

And on Wednesday, after seventeen days in a coma, Eberhardt finally regained consciousness.

I knew he would sooner or later — there had never been any question in my mind — but it was a relief when Ben Klein called late that afternoon to tell me the news. I said, “How is he? Coherent?”

“Yeah, thank God.”

“No memory damage?”

“None. He remembers everything that happened.”

“Then you’ve talked to him?”

“Just for a couple of minutes, about an hour ago.”

“What did he say?”

“Not much. Asked if we found who did the shooting, if we had any idea why. I hated to have to tell him no.”

“Is that all he said?”

“Well, he asked about you. Wants to see you whenever the doctors’ll allow it. Tomorrow sometime, probably.”

I rang up S.F. General early Thursday morning and got through to Abrams. He said I could come in at eleven. I was there at ten-thirty, pacing up and down in the visitor’s waiting area, trying not to think about what was coming. I just wanted to get it over with.

They let me go in right at eleven. It was a private room, and Eberhardt was lying cranked up in the bed with his head swathed in bandages. A tube led down out of a suspended bottle into another bandage on his arm; they were still feeding him intravenously. He looked shrunken and gray and old... old.

I pulled one of the metal chairs over next to the bed and sat down. He said in somebody else’s voice, wan and thin, “Don’t ask me how I feel. I feel lousy.”

“You’ll get better.”

“Yeah. So they tell me. How’s your arm?”

“Not too bad. Still need the sling, though.”

“You going to have full use of it?”

“Sure. Never mind about my arm. You just came out of two and a half weeks in a coma.”

“Been better if I’d never come out of it at all,” he said. “If it wasn’t for me, you’d never have got shot.”

“I know,” I said.

“You know? What do you know?”

“All of it, Eb. Who shot us, who hired it done. And why.”

The room seemed to get very still. Pain flickered across his face, and guilt, and remorse. He could not look at me anymore; he averted his eyes. It was several seconds before he spoke again.

“How did you find out?”

“Kam Fong called me after I got home from the hospital,” I said. “He gave me a name — Mau Yee, a Chinese body-washer — and said the shooting had to do with some kind of bribe. I went to your place and opened your safe and found the stock-transfer form. The rest of it was detective work.”

“You always were a hell of a detective,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell the Department?”

“Because I didn’t believe it at first. Because I’d been shot too and I was angry and I wanted to know the truth.”

“And now you do.”

“Now I do.”

“This Mau Yee... is he still on the loose?”

“No. He’s dead. Carl Emerson killed him.”

A tic started up on the left side of his face; it took him a few seconds to get it under control. “Why did Emerson kill him?”

I told him why. I told him all of it, straight through to my abduction of Lee Chuck from his gambling parlor; how I’d found out about Emerson, how I’d pieced the whole thing together.

He said, “You crazy bastard. You could have got yourself killed, messing with a Chinatown tong.”

“But that didn’t happen. I’m still here.”

“And Emerson? What did you do about him?”

“I didn’t do anything about him. He’s dead, too.”

“Christ. How?”

I explained that, omitting Tedescu’s name; I just said it was somebody who knew Emerson who’d been the catalyst in his accidental death.

“So nobody’s left,” Eberhardt said, “nobody knows the full story except you and me. And you still didn’t go to the Department.”

“I was waiting to talk to you,” I said.

“Suppose I hadn’t come out of it. Then what?”

“I never doubted that you’d come out of it.”

“But if I hadn’t?”

“I don’t know. I guess I wouldn’t have done anything.”

“Why not? Why shield a cop you figure’s gone dirty?”

“Did you go dirty, Eb?”

Silence for a time. Then he said, “You think I been taking all along? One of the graft boys?”

“No,” I said.

“Well, you’re right. I never took anything in thirty years — not a nickel, not even a cup of coffee. Tempted a couple of times; who doesn’t get tempted? But I never gave in. I didn’t think it was in me to give in...”

He fell silent again. I waited. He was getting around to it; it was something he had to tell in his own way, maybe the hardest thing he’d ever had to tell anybody.

“But things happen,” he said. “Some things you prepare for, like you get old and you get tired. Some things you don’t prepare for, because you never figure they can happen. Like your wife walking out on you, taking up with some other guy. Taking the guts right out of your life. You understand what that can do to a man?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I understand.”

“Maybe you do. You wake up one morning, you’re fifty-three years old, you’re all alone, you got bills up the ass and half the money you thought you had in the bank is gone because the bitch grabbed off her share when she walked out. You say to yourself: I got to hang on, it’ll all work out. So you hang on. What the hell else can you do?”

He might have been talking about me, too. Substitute losing your profession for losing your wife, and there wasn’t much difference between us. Or there hadn’t been up until three weeks ago. The difference now was that I was still hanging on and he’d already let go.

“But then maybe you get tempted again,” he said, “one day right out of the blue. Not small potatoes this time, a whole goddamn feast. And all you got to do is look the other way on something nobody gives a damn about anyway. You get mad, you say no at first — but maybe you keep on listening. And maybe you break open inside and for a little while you stop caring. And maybe the no turns into a yes.”

“I guess I can understand that, too,” I said. “But it was a homicide case, Eb. I don’t understand how you could look the other way on a homicide.”

His cheek began to tick again. “It wasn’t murder,” he said. “Emerson swore up and down Polly Soon’s death was an accident. The witness, Ming Toy, corroborated it; she saw the two of them scuffling, the Soon woman tripped and went off the walkway, that was all there was to it.”

“Why were they scuffling?”

“Argument over how much she was charging him. He lost his temper and smacked her; she tried to claw him. Manslaughter, that was all I had on him. A smart lawyer could have got him off with a suspended sentence.”

“Did you tell Emerson that?”

“I told him. But he said the publicity would ruin him. His company was about to go public; he stood to lose millions.”

“And that was when he made his pitch.”

“Yeah. One thousand shares of Mid-Pacific stock, transferred over to me. Worth six figures in a few years, he said. Better than cash — security for the future. Pay taxes on the income, everything on the up and up; no way for either of us to get caught.”

“So you took it.”

“I took it.” He lifted a hand and rubbed the knuckles across his mouth. “You think I’m a real shit, don’t you?”

“I’m not here to pass judgment on you, Eb.”

“You don’t have to; I’ve already done that. But it’s not as cut and dried as it seems. I took the stock-transfer and went home and put it in my safe. But I didn’t sleep that night and I didn’t go to the Hall the next day. I kept thinking about it, all the clean years thrown away. And it got to me. I couldn’t go through with it. You can believe that or not, but it’s the truth.”

“I believe you,” I said.

“I called Emerson that Friday and told him I’d changed my mind. I told him I’d give him until Monday noon to turn himself in; otherwise I’d have to go after him. I told him if he said anything about the bribe offer, I’d deny it and it would go twice as bad for him.”

“What did he say?”

“I didn’t give him time to say much of anything. I thought I had him buffaloed.” He made a sound that might have been a bitter laugh. “Some cop I am, huh? I underestimated that son of a bitch by a mile.”

I said, “What about the stock-transfer form? What did you say you’d done with that?”

“Destroyed it. I guess he believed me; if he’d thought I still had it, he probably wouldn’t have tried to have me blown away.”

“Why didn’t you destroy it?”

“I was going to.” He paused. “I think I was going to.”

“But you’re not sure.”

“No,” he said, “I’m not sure. I took it out of the safe half a dozen times on Saturday and Sunday, to get rid of it, but I always put it back. I guess I was giving myself until Monday morning to make a decision.”

“What would you have done on Monday?”

“I don’t know. Either destroyed the form or called Emerson back and told him I was going through with it after all.” He closed his eyes; the pain, the uncertainty, lay over his features like a mask. “I don’t know,” he said.

Both of us were quiet for maybe a minute. I finally got up and went to the one window and stood there looking out. Without turning, I said, “What happens now, Eb?”

“That’s up to you, isn’t it? You got the form.”

“It’s not up to me, it’s up to you. Your decision.”

“Suppose I decide to just sweep it under the rug, go on as if nothing happened? Promise you I’d never do anything like this again? Would you go along with it?”

“Probably. We’ve been friends a long time.”

“But we wouldn’t be friends anymore.”

“No,” I said. “Not anymore.”

Silence again. At length he said, “If I make a clean breast of it, they’ll put me up on charges and take away my pension.”

“Maybe not. Your record’s too clean.”

“That doesn’t count for much these days. Everything’s public relations, the squeaky clean image; you ought to know that if anybody does.”

I didn’t say anything.

“The least they’d do is suspend me without pay,” he said. “How the hell would I live?”

“You’d find a way. Just like I’m going to do.”

“There’d be an investigation and they’d find out about you; there wouldn’t be any way to keep you clear. Practicing without a license, withholding evidence, breaking and entering, failure to report a homicide... you could go to jail.”

“I don’t care about that.”

“No? Well I do.”

I turned and looked at him again. He was staring up at the ceiling; his eyes had a haunted look.

“The other thing I could do,” he said, “I could take an early retirement. Voluntary. Claim mental disability. That way, I’d get my pension.” He ran his tongue over dry lips. “I earned my pension, goddamn it. I was a good cop for a lot of years.”

“One of the best.”

“Okay. Give me a little time to think it through, will you? Twenty-four hours?”

“Sure,” I said. “Take all the time you want.”

“You better get out of here now. I don’t feel like talking anymore.”

“All right. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

“I’ll be here,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

When I got home I took the stock-transfer thing out of the nightstand drawer where I’d put it, carried it into the bathroom, tore it into pieces and flushed the pieces down the toilet. No matter what Eberhardt decided, that paper was a symbol of ugliness — the last tie to Carl Emerson, the last tie to corruption and murder and all the craziness of the past three weeks. Getting rid of it was like purging myself of the last vestiges of a disease.

Then I called Kerry and invited her to come over and have dinner with me.

Then I got on with the business of living my life.