Stealing the Dragon

Chapter Twenty-eight

San Francisco, present day

The problem with finding a dead body in your trunk is deciding where to put it. As Cape drove through the night fog with the top down, he ran through his options.

He briefly considered leaving the corpse at the house of Richard Choffer, his pretentious ex-client. But since Richard was probably going to sue him, Cape figured depositing a dead body on Richard’s lawn was a bad idea-even if the thought did make him smile.

His responsible side told him to drive straight to the nearest police station, calling Beau on his cell phone on the way. Beau might help him cut through the red tape and stay out of jail, but the fact remained that Cape fled the scene of a crime with a body in his car. The interrogation alone would take the rest of the night. When it came right down to it, Cape didn’t believe Beau could help him on this case, so he drove on.

He was frustrated and angry by the time he crossed Broadway and headed into Chinatown. He was groping for leads, working with none of the resources of the feds and no real connections of his own. He felt more like a pawn in someone else’s chess game than a detective, and it pissed him off.

It was well past midnight, and the street was deserted, tourists and tenants alike having gone inside and turned off the lights. Cape slowed the car as he neared Freddie Wang’s restaurant, scanning the second floor for lights or open curtains.

As he pulled up to the curb, Cape checked the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of himself, his hair tangled from the wind, the crow’s feet etched around his blue-gray eyes. Taking another quick glance at the restaurant, he smiled, pulling away from the curb without stopping. He shook his head at his own reflection, realizing he’d crossed a line and didn’t care.

Taking a right and then another, Cape drove slowly down Grant Street with his lights off until he came to the front of the building where he’d first met Harold Yan. The brass plaque for the Chinatown Merchants Benevolent Association glowed dully in the light from the lone streetlamp half a block away. Twisting in his seat to look the length of the street, Cape put the car in park but kept the engine running.

The corpse was heavy, cold, and a little moist. Cape saw that one of the bags had burst open, the half-melted ice scattered across the bottom of his trunk. With a series of muffled grunts and curses, he managed to get the body out of the trunk and onto the curb. Two minutes later, it was propped next to the front door directly under the plaque.

Rigor mortis had started to set in, but the body was still fresh enough for Cape to position the arms and legs. He crossed the legs at the ankle and laid the arms to the sides, the man’s enormous hands jutting out awkwardly. The head was twisted at an odd angle, and Cape knew he was pushing his luck as it was, so he left it sagging to one side. The expression on the dead man’s face hadn’t changed-he looked shocked to be there.

“I don’t blame you,” muttered Cape. “I’m a bit surprised myself.”

Cape turned and reached into his car, popping open the glove compartment and fishing out a digital camera. Glancing down the street and up at the windows one last time, he quickly fired off a shot, the flash throwing everything into stark relief for an interminable moment.

“It’s been fun,” he said to the corpse, tossing the camera onto the passenger seat and putting the car in drive.

Freddie Wang couldn’t-or wouldn’t-help him, whether Freddie knew his bodyguard was dead or not. And neither could the police.

Cape needed someone of influence to help, and that meant he needed to make his problem their problem. Harold Yan got him an interview with Freddie, so he obviously had influence in Chinatown. And Yan had told the press he wanted answers on the smuggling case. That sounded great as a press release, but Cape needed someone with juice like Yan to take an interest.

A personal interest.

Cape didn’t know what would happen, other than Yan calling the cops. But since he was fishing without any bait, he figured he might as well stir up the water and see what surfaced.

And in the meantime, he’d print out a copy of the photo and send it to Beau, just to make things more interesting. As he hit Broadway, he flicked on his lights and gunned the engine, knowing deep down he still had no idea where he was headed.