Walking Shadow

CHAPTER 47

It was the gang kids that found Lonnie Wu. In the bird-watching pavilion out across the causeway on Brant Island Road, where I had stood in the darkness watching the ghostly Asians immigrating.

When Rikki and I got there, only two of them were around, leaning against a black Firebird with chrome pipes and silver wings painted on the hood. Neither one looked old enough to drive.

They spoke to Rikki in Chinese and nodded toward the pavilion.

She took my arm as we walked toward it.

Lonnie was there. Crumpled in the corner, his back propped against the low railing, his feet stuck straight out in front of him, his argyle socks looking forlorn. You don't have to have seen many corpses to know one when you see one. I heard Rikki's breath go in sharply and felt her hand tighten on my arm.

"No need to look," I said.

She didn't answer, but we kept going until we were standing right above him, looking down. He was facing west, his back to the ocean, and the early afternoon sun hit him full in the face. Before Lonnie died, someone had beaten hell out of him. His nose was broken, one eye was closed. His lip was so swollen it had turned inside out, and several of his teeth were missing. There was dark blood soaked into the front of his shirt. Rikki stared down at him for a moment, then turned away and pressed her face against my chest. I put my arm around her. Several herring gulls swept in on the wind and settled on the pilings of the causeway, reorganizing their feathers as they landed. Road kill was road kill to them. They didn't make fine distinctions.

"Do you have a friend that you could stay with?" I said to Rikki Wu.

With her face still pressed against my chest, she shook her head no.

"Family?"

"My brother will come."

"Okay," I said.

"I'll ask you to sit in the car for a minute or two and then we'll go back together."

She made no reply, but she didn't resist when I turned her and walked back to the Mustang. The two kids looked at me blankly.

They made no finer distinctions than the gulls.

"Either one of you speak English?" I said.

The smaller of the two wore an oversized Chicago Bulls jacket.

He smiled widely. The other one, taller but just as frail, with his long hair blown forward by the wind, showed no expression at all.

"Dandy," I said and went back up the causeway. I heard the doors open and close on the Firebird and then it started up and roared away. Who could blame them. No reason to hang around.

They didn't work for Lonnie Wu anymore.

I squatted on my heels beside Lonnie's body. I didn't like it, but there was no one else to do it. I felt inside his coat and found his holster on his belt near his right hip. The holster was empty. I looked for bullet holes or stab wounds. I saw none. I felt along his rib cage, I could feel some broken ribs. In one instance the fracture was compound. I felt myself grimace. Some of his fingers appeared broken. His flesh was cold, and he was stiff. His hair was tangled, and strands of it, stiffened by hair spray, stuck straight out at odd angles. He was so messed up it was hard to tell for sure, but probably the gulls had already been at him.

I stood and looked down at Lonnie's body. He was as far from China as he could get, on the eastern edge of the wrong continent, on the western edge of the wrong ocean. I looked out at the waves rolling uneventfully in from the horizon. They came a long way to this shore, but not as far as Lonnie had come, and nowhere near as far as he had gone.

I turned away and walked back down to my car and got in beside Rikki. She wasn't crying. She simply sat staring at nothing, her face composed, her hands folded in her lap. I started the car and let it idle.

"We should call the cops," I said.

"No," Rikki said.

"I will call my brother."

"Eddie Lee?"

"Yes. He will take care of everything."

"The body?"

"Everything."

"So why didn't you call him in the first place?" I said.

"Why did you come to me?"

"I didn't want him to know," she said.

"I didn't want him to know that my husband was gone. I didn't know what we'd find out. My brother doesn't, didn't, admire my husband. He thought he was shallow and vain. I didn't want to shame myself."

"Your husband got to be the dai low here because he married you," I said.

"Yes."

"Might the tong have killed him?" I said.

"No. My brother is my brother. He would not allow anyone to kill my husband."

"Even if he were disloyal to Kwan Chang?"

"My brother would not allow someone to kill my husband."

"Someone killed him," I said.

"It was not a Chinese person," she said firmly.

I nodded and handed her the car phone. She dialed and spoke in Chinese while I turned the car and headed back toward town.

When Rikki got through I called Mei Ling.