White Tiger

CHAPTER 11

San Francisco, California

Ryker hadn’t made it to his apartment in the city’s South of Market section until after 4:00am, so getting up for another day on the job was an arduous journey. He showered and shaved, and managed not to slit his own throat even though his eyes couldn’t focus. He examined his face in the mirror, and wondered how someone on the high side of 40 could look closer to 50; he decided the bloodshot eyes didn’t help matters, so he found some Visine in the medicine cabinet over the bathroom sink and popped three drops in each eye. It didn’t help much, but then again, not much did these days.

He found a suit that wasn’t quite as rumpled as the one he’d worn the day before-the others were waiting for him at a local dry cleaner, and he hadn’t had the time to fetch them-so he was left with no choice but to slip it on, even though it was a static gray affair that likely dated back to 1998. He slipped on his pair of Rockports and decided they needed a shine…something he would attend to later. He also selected yesterday’s tie, as it wasn’t in such bad shape.

His apartment was a rather bland affair, reflecting his current station in life. At $1,800 a month, it wasn’t as much a bank-buster as many other places in the city, but he was getting what he paid for: white walls, gray carpets, a bedroom that was only slightly larger than a closet, and a miniature living room that was essentially the Siamese twin of the galley kitchen, sans appliances. There was no balcony, and certainly no view, not that SoMa had any to begin with. A battered cloth sofa and equally battered mahogany coffee table were the only furnishing in the living room, with the former directly oriented upon the forty inch flat screen television. But at least he had the parking space in the garage for free, something the building manager had arranged since he was cop.

Ryker marched down to his car, a white 2003 Chevy Impala, a vehicle he didn’t particularly adore but it was cheap and fit in most the parking spaces he was likely to encounter in the city, not to mention it wasn’t terribly tough on gas. When-if-he made it to Lieutenant, he would get a department ride fulltime, which meant that he wouldn’t have to pay to tank up, he could do that at the station free of charge.

Though that’s not going to happen until I pass the test, he thought, unlocking the car door and sliding inside. Just another thing to add to the list of missed accomplishments.

He made it to Central Station in a little less than twenty minutes, having the misfortune to get caught behind one of the Muni buses as it lumbered through the city, and the stream of traffic was thick enough that he couldn’t get past it for at least five minutes. The constant stop-and-start was aggravating, but at last he made it. He pulled up to the gated parking lot and waved his security card before the reader. The gate opened, and Ryker pulled in and parked.

The detective room was as bland and plain as anyone could have possibly made it, with twenty steel desks arranged in pods of five. At each pod, four detectives sat in two-by-two formations, one pair of detectives facing the other, while the fifth desk at the head of the pod was for the sergeant running the squad. Ryker walked to his own pod, and found only Chee Wei sitting at his desk. Chee Wei’s usual partner, Garofolo, was out on medical leave after falling down a flight of steps while drunk. He had broken a leg, and wouldn’t be back for weeks. Of the other pair of detectives, there was no sign. Nor was the Lieutenant in; his glass-walled office was empty.

“Hey, nice threads,” Chee Wei commented when Ryker approached. “Nice job with the razor, too.”

“Huh?” Ryker stalked toward his desk, situated directly across from Chee Wei’s. Chee Wei touched a spot on his chin as Ryker pulled out his chair and fairly collapsed into it.

“Nice cut right here,” he said.

Ryker ran his hand over his chin, and felt a small scab underneath his chin. It stung lightly when he played with it.

“Fuck,” he said simply. Well, this one’s off to a galloping start.

“Not your day, huh?” Chee Wei said, smiling.

Ryker sighed and removed his pistol from its holster. He dropped the Glock 17 into a desk drawer and locked it with a key on his key ring, then slipped the keys into his pocket.

“Not so far. Where’s Spider?” Ryker nodded toward the vacant lieutenant’s office.

“Dunno, haven’t seen him. You want to get some coffee, though. Your day’s probably not going to get any better.”

Ryker looked over the computer monitor on his desk at the Chinese detective.

“How so?” he asked, suspicious.

Chee Wei waved toward the hallway.

“Grab some coffee. We’ll talk,” he said.

Ryker rubbed his eyes wearily and did what the younger man suggested. He stopped by the men’s room first and washed the blood off his chin, then made his way to the break room. There, he filled a cup with some of the most rancid coffee he’d ever tasted even after he tried to soften it by adding copious amounts of sugar and four Mini-Moos creamers. Mission accomplished and his taste buds almost certainly assassinated, he returned to the homicide office. He slid back into his chair and faced Chee Wei again. He sipped the coffee and grimaced.

“What’ve you got?”

“Zhu lawyered up last night,” Chee Wei said. “I just got a call from the D.A.’s office.”

“So?”

“Her representative is Victor Chin,” Chee Wei said. He leaned back in his chair and clasped his fingers together behind his head.

Ryker sighed again. Victor Chin had started out as a Bay Area ambulance chaser, who now made more money representing specific Asian interests in the city. His current calling was acting as counsel to the “underrepresented” Chinese community whom had been “victimized” by the racist San Francisco Police Department. The S.F.P.D., and more importantly the District Attorney’s office, were already handling several lawsuits initiated by the do-gooder and social crusader with the two thousand dollar sharkskin shoes named Chin.

“This day really is starting to suck.”

Chee Wei shrugged.

“Look, we knew she had money. So of course she’s going to get the best she can get, and Chin’s just going to be the first one. If he doesn’t work out, she’ll just grab someone with more horsepower who won’t make such a scene in public.”

“What’s the D.A. say?”

“They say the normal stuff: we’ll stick by you, but you have to get us a case we can bring to trial. Speaking of which, is Miss Zhu under arrest for murder or just for questioning?”

Ryker rubbed his eyes again. He contemplated the coffee, then went ahead and sipped some more. A mistake.

“We just got her yesterday. She’s not even due for arraignment until this afternoon, right? You can’t tell me that Chin’s got that much name value. The guy’s an ambulance chaser.”

“Who’s suing the department,” Chee Wei countered. “Three suits at the same time.”

“She was properly Mirandized and went through the same procedures as anyone else we pick up. Big deal. This Chin guy can play with himself in Union Park, for all I care.”

“Well, you know-”

Ryker waved Chee Wei to silence.

“Skip it, that’s out of our hands. Let the D.A.’s office handle it. We need to start the murder book. You get the surveillance video from the hotel?”

Chee Wei reached into a desk drawer and pulled out six DVDs. They were in evidence bags.

“Yep. One master disc and one copy of each. Already entered as evidence.”

“Good. Criminologist reports?”

“Not due until this afternoon or tomorrow.”

Ryker grunted. He hadn’t expected anything any sooner. That would have been a genuine miracle, and his morning wasn’t shaping up that way.

“All right,” he said wearily, “let’s get started.”

Ryker spent the next hour working on his initial report, filling out the required departmental forms and annotating all evidence collected. He also added notes from the night’s interrogation of Xiaohui Zhu, currently locked up in the department’s detention cells. Ryker had made sure she was separated from the rest of the detainees in one of the “Hilton suites”, so she wouldn’t run the risk of being injured by one of the other women in lockup.

One of the more interesting aspects of the case was that Xiaohui’s high-end Diamond Heights residence had all the signs of being expertly tossed when the other two detectives on Ryker’s squad, Kowalenko and Morales, had arrived armed with a telephone warrant and keys to search it for themselves. They had recovered the clothes which matched those on the hotel surveillance footage, and had delivered them to the criminologists for inspection. Ryker checked the day planner which served as a blotter on his desk; Kowalenko was scheduled off, and Morales was in court, but was expected back before noontime.

Bit by bit, the murder book began to come together. It was still thin-very thin-but at the very least, the evidentiary process was coming along. Once they had the results from the criminology lab, then they could start tying up the loose ends from a physical evidence perspective. The coroner’s report on the body wouldn’t be seen until the end of the week at the very earliest, as there had been two other homicides earlier in the week. Not that the cause of death was an issue, but Ryker was keenly interested in the DNA evidence the coroner might turn up.

“You ready to watch the video again?” Ryker asked. He checked his watch. It was already ten minutes to eleven in the morning.

“Born ready,” Chee Wei said. “It might even be better than watching HBO.”

“At least this time it’s for free,” Ryker replied. He pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. He took a moment to stretch, and felt his back pop and crack in different places. Getting old certainly could suck.

A monitor with DVD player was on a wheeled rack at the other side of the room. As Ryker and Chee Wei walked toward it, Metro homicide’s commanding officer stepped into the office. He carried a cup of Starbuck’s coffee in one hand.

“Heya Lou,” Ryker said. “Just showing up for work, are we?”

Lieutenant Phil Furino was a tall, thin man with gangly limbs that had earned him the nickname of Spider. He had thick brown hair and dark brown eyes that dwelled deep in his head. His nose was almost as thin as a rifle sight, and he swiveled that targeting apparatus toward Ryker as he continued on to his office, located at the far end of the room.

“We have a meeting at eleven-thirty, you and me,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere I can’t find you.”

Ryker stopped short.

“What meeting?”

Spider continued on, targeting his office with his nose now.

“If I knew, I’d tell, but I don’t. So just stick around.” With that, he disappeared into his glass-paneled office and closed the door. Ryker watched as Spider sidled into his chair and swigged some of his overpriced but doubtless non-lethal coffee and began going through the contents of his inbox.

“Like shit he doesn’t know,” said Detective Sergeant Wallace, a portly man with a thick mustache and bald head. As bad luck would have it, his desk was right beside the A/V cart. “Spider got in at seven-thirty, then got his ass yanked by the High and the Mighty.”

Ryker looked down at Wallace.

“What’s that, Cueball?” he asked, even though he already knew.

“Jericho came stomping in here at about seven-forty-five looking like he was about to piss himself. Went into Spider’s office and asked about you, then he and Spider went off someplace else.” Wallace leaned back in his chair, which creaked beneath his bulk, and interlaced his fingers across his round belly. “You piss someone off again there, Supercop?” he asked, his dark, porcine eyes locking with Ryker’s.

“The day’s too early for that,” Ryker said.

“Never too early to put your ass in a sling,” mused a short, thick black detective named Johnson. He sat at one of the desks in Wallace’s pod.

Ryker shrugged, nonchalant. He then motioned Chee Wei to put the DVD in the player.

“Let’s get the show on the road,” he said.

“Or on the tube, to be more precise,” Chee Wei said, sliding the disc into the unit. As he fiddled with the buttons on the player’s control panel, he asked, “Any idea what’s up?”

“I can only think James Lin,” Ryker responded dryly.

“That chink’s got a hard-on for you, Ryker,” Wallace said. Apparently Chee Wei’s racial status was outside his ability to detect, which made sense: Putting him in the field pretty much guaranteed a case would appear on television’s “Unsolved Mysteries” program.

“You’re a charming man, Cueball,” Ryker said. He noticed the hard set to Chee Wei’s jaw as he switched on the monitor.

“No offense, Fong,” Cueball said belatedly.

“No problem, Wallace. How’s the Weight Watchers coming along?” Chee Wei pressed the DVD unit’s play button, and stood up straight, hands on his hips.

“Hey, what’s this?” Wallace asked, curious.

“Surveillance from the hotel cameras,” Ryker said. “What the hell else would it be?”

“Don’t get testy there, Supercop.” Wallace’s phone rang, and his chair squeaked as he spun around toward his desk. He snatched up the handset.

The surveillance video was of the hallway outside the Taipan Room. It showed the door to the suite, and further down, the elevator bay. Ryker and Chee Wei also had separate footage taken from the elevators themselves, as well as the front desk. They’d already watched the front desk surveillance, which was how they’d established Xiaohui Zhu as being with Lin Dan before he died.

There wasn’t a lot in the video. It wasn’t full-motion action, but a series of stills taken every few seconds. They watched as Lin Dan and his “kept woman” entered the suite, and not much else. There was some of the expected activity, such as guests coming and going from other rooms, but nothing of note until Xiaohui left the suite in a hurry, dressed in the coat she had worn earlier. Her gait was fast and furious, but neither Ryker nor Chee Wei could determine if it was from fear of a sudden, grotesque discovery, or from fear of being caught and branded a murderess. After that, there was no further activity until room service arrived.

“So how did the killer get in the suite if it wasn’t her?” Chee Wei asked after a time.

“Great question,” Ryker said. “No one else approached the room at all, as far as I could see.”

“So it’s her, then,” Chee Wei decided.

Ryker shrugged, but said nothing.

Chee Wei popped the disc out of the player and looked back at him.

“What, you think someone else did it?”

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense, her doing it,” Ryker said. “Lin was her gravy train. He gave her everything she could have wanted, and all she had to do was lie on her back and take it for a few hours at a time. Even if they’d had a rip-roaring argument over something, where she was a couple of nights ago was a hell of a lot better than where she came from.”

“Come on, Ryker, she’s a dame who got pissed because the john wasn’t going to leave his wife for her,” Wallace opined. He’d spun around in his chair and watched the footage after finishing his phone call.

Ryker didn’t even bother looking at him.

“You got a case of your own, right Cueball? Why not solve yours and let the pros take care of this one?”

Wallace’s chair squeaked in protest and he spun back to his desk.

“Fuck you, Ryker,” he said.

“Now that would be your lucky day.” Ryker walked back to his desk with Chee Wei in tow.

“So if not her, then who?” Chee Wei asked.

“What am I, a psychic?”

Chee Wei pulled out his chair and sat down.

“You know, sometimes things are exactly what they seem,” he said. “I agree we don’t have much in the way of motive, but who else could it have been?”

Ryker sat in his own chair.

“I don’t have a clue,” he said. “But this girl’s in it for the reward, nothing else. Certainly not love, other than the love of money.”

“That much is pretty obvious. So what do you plan on doing? Her DNA’s going to be all over the place.”

Before Ryker could do more than just shrug, Spider stepped out of his office. He pulled on his jacket.

“Ryker, let’s go,” he said simply.

Ryker nodded. He sighed heavily and pushed himself to his feet.

“Call the D.A.,” he told Chee Wei. “Tell him we need to hold onto Zhu as a material witness. And mention that may be revised once the lab work gets done. If we get something good, she could go from material witness to murder suspect.”

Chee Wei cocked his head to one side.

“Why not just go there now, and tell the D.A. she is the murder suspect?”

“Because for some reason, I don’t think she is,” Ryker told him. “I can’t put my finger around it, but she’s not the killing kind of animal-even if she did think Lin was dirt.”

“Ryker,” Spider called again, impatiently. “We’ve got to get downstairs.”

“Coming, Lou.” Ryker looked down at Chee Wei. “Make the call,” he urged.

“She’ll just make bail,” Chee Wei said, “but all right, I’ll do that.”

Ryker shot him a thumbs-up and headed after Furino.

Furino wasn’t the most gregarious of sorts, but his silence during the time it took them to ride the elevator down to the second floor convinced Ryker he knew more than what he was letting on. But Spider was a stand-up kind of guy, the type of leader a cop could follow without too much trouble. In Ryker’s mind, if he wasn’t even going to give him a heads-up on what to expect, then whatever was coming was a done deal. No changes would be made, and if Spider had his orders, he had his orders.

There was quite a reception waiting for them in the conference room. Spider opened the door and stood aside, allowing Ryker to enter ahead of him. The first person he saw was Captain Jericho, of course. Almost four inches over six feet in height with dark hair that was going gray at the temples in the most distinguished of ways, he cut an impressive figure in his uniform. Ryker figured there was a lot more gray in Jericho’s hair than just at the temples; it had been that way for years, and the gray was as perfectly delineated as the day Ryker had first laid eyes on him. As he watched, Jericho squared his broad shoulders and smiled, revealing perfectly capped teeth. Obviously, he subscribed to the premium dental plan.

“Detective Sergeant Ryker, thanks for coming,” he said, his voice booming a bit in the functional conference room. “You of course know Chief Hallis?”

There were other people in the room, but all of them faded into the shadows when Ryker looked to his left and saw the Chief of Police rising from his chair. Chief Hallis had been a cop once, and a good one, rising from the ranks as a patrolman in the early 1970s all the way to San Francisco’s top cop. But that had been a while ago; now, Ted Hallis was just another politician, and it showed when he halfheartedly returned Ryker’s salute.

“Detective Sergeant,” the Chief said.

“Sir,” Ryker responded automatically.

The chief immediately lost interest in him. Ryker looked around the room. Sitting at the end of the long conference table like an emperor was James Lin, dressed in an expensive suit. Next to him was the broad white man Ryker had seen the day before outside of Xiaohui’s sister’s house. Ryker’s chest tightened. This wasn’t exactly a good sign.

He turned to Jericho just as the tall captain was beginning to make introductions.

“Captain, what’s Mr. Lin doing here?” he asked, cutting to the chase.

Jericho paused, and from his expression Ryker could tell he was taken aback that Ryker would even dare to speak before such an august assemblage. He recovered a moment later, and his voice was hard-edged.

“I was going to get to that, detective sergeant. Maybe you’d like to have a seat?” Jericho indicated a nearby chair.

Ryker sighed and pulled out the chair. He settled into it with all the aplomb of a truculent adolescent showing up for after-hours study.

“Thank you, Hal. I’ll make some introductions, and then we’ll get this show on the road.”

Ryker nodded absently. He noticed that Jericho wasn’t exactly up to snuff, performance-wise. As far as he could remember, Jericho never met an audience he didn’t like, and being the star performer was one of his more natural traits. This time, his manner was halting and perhaps even a bit obsequious. Ryker wondered if it was because of the chief, but a small part of him was convinced it was because of Lin and all the money he had behind him.

Two of the men in the room were city supervisors, one representing district one, while the other represented district eleven. At first, Ryker couldn’t determine why they were present, then it came to him that Danny Lin lived in Sea Cliff, which was part of district one, and had died in the Mandarin Oriental, which was in district eleven. Both men appeared to be a bit on the nervous side, and Ryker figured that the supervisor from district one-a man named Harrison Newsom, who still looked every bit the hippy even though he must have been in his sixties-wasn’t at all that comfortable with police stations in general and police officers in particular after spending the latter half of the 1960s as something of a counter-culture magnet. Ryker found his presence to be not only incongruous, given his blue jeans, denim jacket over a tie-dyed shirt, and long gray hair tied in a ponytail, but almost laughable as well.

The only woman in the room was well-known to Ryker as she was one of the primary assistant district attorneys he dealt with on occasion. Selma Kaplan was as much a thoroughbred as they came, with her no-nonsense business suits and perfectly-coiffed blonde hair that likely had so much hairspray in it that even a typhoon couldn’t ruffle a single hair on her head out of place. She was also something of a heartbreaker, with those perfect good looks that only California seemed to be able to generate. She was also rumored to be so frigid that she couldn’t even get an Eskimo to date her. All Ryker cared about was that she was a hell of a prosecutor, tough, shrewd, and dedicated.

That left James Lin and what Ryker could only surmise to be his bodyguard. The hulking man was introduced as Lin’s corporate chief of security, Alexsey Baluyevsky. Ryker met the man’s eyes, and the big man nodded toward him curtly, his blue eyes as cold as the Arctic Circle. His mammoth hands were clasped before him on the table. Ryker looked at them. They were broad and hard, just like the rest of him, and Ryker had no doubt that he had no trouble using them in the most lethal of ways when the situation required it.

“And you of course know Mister James Lin,” Jericho finished.

“Indeed I do. Good morning, sir.” Ryker nodded to Lin, and felt that wasn’t enough by means of acknowledgement. He lamely added, “Good to see you again.” It sounded false even to him.

“Detective Ryker,” Lin responded simply.

Ryker looked at Spider, but the Lieutenant only continued to stare at the tabletop before him. Ryker cleared his throat and leaned back in his chair.

“So what can I do for you folks?” he asked, turning his gaze toward Jericho.

It was Hallis who spoke instead.

“Detective sergeant, how are things coming with the Lin investigation?” he asked.

The chief was seated almost directly across from him, so Ryker had no problem meeting his gaze. Hallis kept his demeanor pleasant and non-assuming…well, as much as the chief of police of a major metropolitan city could when dealing with a minion.

“It’s just started, chief. We’ve only made one pass at the mur-ah, at the book, and we’re still going through the inventory of physical evidence. We’re also waiting for both the crime lab and the medical examiner to finish up, and as you might suspect, there could be a lot of potential leads in those areas.”

“I’ve asked both departments to expedite their procedures,” Jericho added, which made Ryker smile slightly. A captain didn’t have the horsepower to change jack-diddly when it came to either department.

“I’ve already had a heart-to-heart with Morry,” Hallis said, and Ryker knew that Morry could only be Deputy Chief Maurice Trabak, currently the head of the S.F.P.D. Investigations Bureau. As a matter of fact, he was also Ryker’s top boss, but the two men had had little contact over the years.

“I expect things will start moving along much more quickly,” Hallis continued. He looked at the far end of the table. “Mr. Lin, we’ll have your son returned to you by tomorrow afternoon at the very latest. The medical examiner will conduct the autopsy today.”

Lin nodded his head and tried to look gracious. It only looked fake.

“Thank you, Chief Hallis.”

“You’re very welcome.”

The mutual admiration society thing was beginning to get a little thick, so Ryker cut to the chase. After all, it looked like they were about to kick him off the case, so he had nothing to lose.

“Excuse me, please. I don’t mean any degree of disrespect, but I have a murder investigation to get back to.” Ryker looked at Jericho. “Unless this meeting has been called to bigfoot me, that is.”

“Not at all,” Hallis said immediately. “As a matter of fact, Mr. Lin has requested that you be kept on it full time.”

Ryker looked down the table at Lin. The Chinese man was as expressive as a department store mannequin. He met Ryker’s gaze evenly.

“This is true, detective sergeant,” Lin said. “I can see you are a dedicated man, and I would like to express my hopes that you can dedicate all your skills toward finding the person who killed my son.”

“I see,” Ryker said. He shifted in his chair and glanced over at Spider. Spider fidgeted a bit himself, then spoke for the first time since entering the room.

“Detective Sergeant Ryker is a supervisor, Mr. Lin. He runs four other detectives, who have two other murders assigned to them.”

Well, at least Spider still has a pair. Ryker’s respect for the lieutenant increased a bit.

Chief Hallis cleared his throat and stirred in his seat. He glanced down the table at Jericho.

“Ah, Lieutenant Furino, we were hoping maybe you could make some additional assignments. Offload the cases Ryker’s team is handling to the rest of the homicide squad at Metro.” As he spoke, Jericho rubbed his hands together, almost wringing them, in fact. It was a fitting gesture from Ryker’s perspective.

“I see.” Spider kept his voice steady and neutral as he spoke. “So you’re asking me to put two other deaths on the company back-burner, so to speak. Excuse me sirs, but isn’t that proscribed by at least one or two departmental policies? I really can’t imagine that there’s any regulation that would allow for that.”

Whoa, Spider’s kicking ass and taking names. Ryker glanced down the table at Lin. He was surprised to find the elderly Chinese man wasn’t looking at Furino at all. His gaze was fixed directly onto Ryker. Ryker stared back for a moment. If there was something in his eyes, some indication of what was going through his mind, Ryker couldn’t see it. Ryker shrugged to himself mentally and refocused his attention on Jericho.

“As I said. We were hoping you could find a way to make the reassignments.” It was obvious that Jericho didn’t intend to follow Spider’s line of reasoning.

“We can backfill with detectives from one of the other districts, if you think that’s necessary.” Hallis Said. Apparently, the chief wasn’t buying into Spider’s nearly-voiced argument, either. Ryker looked across the desk at Selma Kaplan. She met his eyes for an instant, then shook her head minutely.

This is way out of my league, pal, she seemed to say.

“So you want me to work on the Lin case full time,” Ryker mused aloud. “Shuffle the other cases my team is handling off onto the rest of the squad. Tell me, captain, do you think the Hermanos family would feel good and secure knowing that their son’s death is now being handled by, say, Cueball?”

“Detective sergeant, I don’t think you’ve discovered the proper tone to take with me. Try again,” Jericho said.

“Take it easy, Hal,” Spider cautioned, glancing over at the chief. “Let’s listen to what the captain has to say.”

“The Hermanos case is a drug-related homicide, is it not?” Jericho asked. “He was shot dead in a transaction involving ice at a gay dance club, was he not?”

Ryker nodded slowly. Wow. I never knew Jericho cared.

“Those are some of the facts, yes,” he answered. “But-”

“So answer me honestly, detective sergeant,” Jericho pressed on, overriding him, “would you really feel that badly if the case was taken off your team’s hands?”

“That’s Morales’s case, sir. He’s close to closing it out, and we expect an arrest to be made very, very soon. Snatching it away from him and Kowalenko will bust the momentum. And the Dyer case-”

“Another drug-related murder most probably,” Jericho said. “Dyer was indigent and clearly not in the best of health, and the medical examiner found substantial amounts of heroin in his system. Hardly a model citizen,” Jericho finished, looking down the table at Lin.

Ryker looked down at the Chinese man as well. Yeah pal, a lot like your little Danny-boy.

If Lin saw anything mirroring the thought in Ryker’s face, it did not move him. Ryker sighed slightly and turned back to Jericho.

“We don’t judge them for how they lived, captain. We only figure out who killed them and bring the guilty parties in for justice.”

“And the other detectives will see to that. But we need you prosecuting the Lin murder with everything you’ve got.

“I have to ask-why?” Ryker blurted before he could stop himself. The question resulted in a long and uncomfortable silence; even Spider seemed to shrink in his chair. Jericho put his elbows on the table and looked at Ryker directly. There was no mistaking the hostility in his voice and body language.

“You don’t need to know why, Ryker. You just need to know this is how it is, and you’re going to give a hundred and fifty percent. Do you have any further questions?”

Ryker saw the lay of the land very clearly. He took one sidelong glance at Spider, and when his lieutenant didn’t meet his eye, he had his answer.

“I got you, sir.”

“Glad to hear it,” Jericho nodded toward Lin. “Mr. Lin, you had some special requests to make?”

Oddly enough, it was the big Russian who spoke.

“Mr. Lin insists on full access to your investigations into the murder of his son, Lin Dan,” he announced. His English was accented but perfectly understandable. “In this matter, a third party has been retained to act as Mr. Lin’s second. Mr. Lin has many important business affairs to attend to, and in the end, this third party would perhaps be more objective in this matter than he.”

You gotta be kidding me, Ryker thought.

The Russian went on.

“We would like full access to the woman you are holding, Zhu Xiaohui. We would also like to review all evidence collected in relation to this case. We would also need to read all reports made, and be briefed on the facts as they now stand.”

“That’s quite a list,” Ryker said. “Getting your Christmas shopping out of the way early?” He turned to Jericho. “Are you planning on deputizing this ‘third party’, sir? I mean, if he gets all this access, the least we can do is give him a detective shield. He probably already has his own gun, but we can square him away with a badge, right?”

“Ryker,” Jericho warned.

Ryker ignored him. He turned to Lin and faced him directly.

“You want to see Xiaohui Zhu? No. You want full access to the investigation I’m conducting? No. You want to review all the evidence we collected? No. Neither you nor your bodyguard are police officers, Mr. Lin. I’m sorry you’ve lost your son, but the task of finding his killer is mine.”

“Ryker!” Jericho snapped. “Enough!”

The chief stirred after a moment. He and Selma Kaplan exchanged glances.

“I have to take Detective Sergeant Ryker’s side on this,” Hallis said unexpectedly, and Ryker did a double-take to make sure it was actually the chief talking. “These requests are-extreme, at the least. The San Francisco Police Department does not usually allow for outside interference when it’s conducting an investigation into any matter.”

Alexsey looked at the two city supervisors sitting next to him.

“Mr. Lin remembers those who show him kindness and respect,” he said. “He is willing to donate substantial monies to a number of charities, including the police athletic league…and certain political parties.”

Both Newsom and the other supervisor-Ryker couldn’t remember his name-exchanged glances among themselves and with Chief Hallis, then Jericho. They didn’t bother paying attention to Ryker or Spider, or even Kaplan. They were only tools of the city, no one important.

“He also has the ability to remove some of the S.F.P.D.’s current troubles,” the Russian finished.

“Current troubles?” Hallis asked.

“Victor Chin,” Alexsey said.

“What’re you going to do, plug him?” Ryker asked.

Alexsey looked at Ryker with eyes that were as flat as the landing deck of an aircraft carrier. “Mr. Lin has the ability to appeal to Mr. Chin’s better nature.”

“How’s that? You’re going to give him a choice of which kneecap gets busted first?”

“Please, let’s not let this get completely unpleasant,” said the hippy supervisor Newsom. “I think you’re being needlessly antagonistic, detective.”

“Fashion tip: bell-bottomed jeans went out of style in 1974,” Ryker said.

Newsom’s eyes bugged out of his head, but he said nothing further.

Spider pushed back in his chair. He slapped Ryker on the shoulder once, hard.

“Get out of here,” he said. “I’ll handle this.”

“The hell you will,” Ryker snarled.

“The hell I won’t,” Spider hissed. “Get out. Now. Go wait in the hall.”

“That sounds like some excellent career advice,” Jericho seconded. “We’ll handle this from here on out, detective sergeant. Thank you for coming.”

Ryker snorted and shook his head. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It was insane. The entire situation was completely outside of anything he’d had to deal with as an officer of the law, and it was totally beyond him how both Jericho and Hallis could roll over for Lin in front of him and Spider. It made him sick, and just witnessing it made him feel dirty. He knew Lin would get what he wanted.

Disgusted, he left the conference room.

The meeting lasted for another ten minutes. Ryker cooled his heels in the hallway as Spider had instructed. He wanted a cigarette, but he had quit years before and San Francisco was the kind of town where a smoker could be drawn and quartered. Men could tongue-kiss other men in public on the street in front of kids from the Midwest on a walking tour, but he couldn’t smoke a Marlboro in back of the station.

When the meeting broke, Ryker watched as Lin and his Russian sidekick headed down the hall, escorted by Chief Hallis and the two city supervisors. None of them looked in his direction. Then he found himself face to face with Jericho.

“You’re some piece of work, Ryker,” Jericho said. “Do you really want me to pull you off the case? With that little outburst you just made, I should have your ass shipped out to the Traffic Company. You can get your jollies handing out parking tickets and directing traffic.”

Ryker reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his plastic container of Tic-Tacs. He held them out to Jericho.

“You need some of these, captain. Really.” Because I think I smell dick on your breath, he wanted to add, but couldn’t bring himself to completely commit professional suicide. Not just yet.

Jericho stepped closer, towering over Ryker, his face flushed.

“You’re not as useful around here as you seem to think you are, son,” he rumbled. “You want to fuck with me? You think you have what it takes to bring me down?”

Ryker stared up at Jericho but said nothing.

“Are you boys going to have a gun fight?” Selma Kaplan asked. She was standing in the doorway to the conference room with Spider right behind her.

Jericho glanced over his shoulder. He then turned back to Ryker. After a moment, he stepped back.

“Lieutenant Furino. Give your detective his instructions,” he said, then stomped off after the Chief and James Lin, like a good lackey.

Ryker leaned back against the wall. Down the hallway, a couple of cops on the bow and arrow squad-desk duty-had gathered to watch the fireworks. Now that the show was over, they went back to their respective offices.

Spider stepped around Kaplan and approached Ryker.

“That could’ve gone better,” he said.

“How’d it end up? Hallis, Jericho, and our duly-elected officials line up to give Lin a collective blowjob?”

Kaplan laughed. She walked up to Ryker and punched him in the arm, her blue eyes bright and luminous.

“You’re my hero. You’re as dumb as a brick, but you’ve got cojones, I’ll give you that.”

“Thanks. Was it just my imagination, or did Lin just successfully bribe the chief and a district commander?” Ryker asked.

“Serious accusations,” Kaplan said, “but since no money changed hands in my presence, I couldn’t confirm that.”

“Internal Affairs might see things differently.”

Spider laughed. “You want to try and uncage IAD on Hallis and Jericho? Kaplan’s right, Ryker. You are dumb as a brick.”

Ryker looked at Spider directly, his eyes narrowed.

“So what’s the upshot? What went down after I left?”

“They don’t get access to Zhu or any other witnesses or suspects we nab,” Spider told him. “Everything else, they get. We do keep identities private, however. Even the supervisors agreed to that one, because if it ever got out that S.F.P.D. let some names out and those folks got either whacked or mysteriously disappeared, it could put us all over the barrel.” He paused for a moment. “And Lin’s man said that Victor Chin and his lawsuits would go away.”

“Generous,” Ryker commented.

Spider shrugged.

“So how about it, Hal? You going to play ball, or what?”

“Like I get a choice?” Ryker asked.

“Sure, you get a choice. You have a choice between working homicide or Company K,” Spider told him, using the alias for Metro’s Traffic Company.

Ryker shook his head. “Lovely.”

“It does suck,” Spider acknowledged, watching a group of cops walk toward them down the hall. He nodded to them but kept silent until they had moved out of earshot, then continued. “It sucks big time, but San Francisco’s just like any other city-politics make the prime time, the rest of the action, like real police work, gets tossed into the backseat. Both Hallis and Jerko”-Ryker smiled when he heard Spider use Jericho’s nickname, something he’d never known the lieutenant use before-“want a long and storied life after they leave the department, and Lin’s obviously offering it to them. Same for the supervisors, too.”

Ryker nodded and looked at Kaplan.

“And what’s the district attorney’s interest in all of this?” he asked.

Kaplan reached up with both hands and threw her blonde hair back over her shoulders.

“Ostensibly, to make sure that things don’t get too far out of hand. If you guys agree to something that’s going to break the rules, we’re here to walk you back to sanity.” She paused. “But at the same time, I wouldn’t be too surprised if Sheffield wasn’t looking for some handouts either. He’s an elected official too, you know.” Sheffield was San Francisco’s district attorney, and Kaplan’s boss. He’d been known as a handout king for years.

“Well, looks like we’re getting it all around,” Ryker said.

“And it’s not likely to get any better,” Spider agreed. “Your guys have to work double-time on this one, Hal. Seriously.” He looked at Kaplan. “You’re attached to this one now, I take it?”

Kaplan nodded. “I’ll be representing the D.A.’s interests in this, from this point forward.”

“What do you make of the girl? Xiaohui Zhu?” Spider asked, mangling the name.

Kaplan shrugged and looked at Ryker. “If she did it, I’ll prosecute. Did she?”

“I doubt it,” Ryker admitted. “Danny Lin was a first-rate asshole, but this girl has her eye on her bank accounts, and killing Lin was no way to keep ‘em full. Speaking of which, I’d like to run a financial on her, if you don’t mind, Lou.”

Spider nodded. “Get me the form, and I’ll authorize it.”

“Will do.”

Spider checked his watch. “All right, let’s get to it. Keep Miss Kaplan in the loop as far as persons of interest go, and give the rest of your troops their details.”

“You got it,” Ryker agreed, not liking it one bit. But it was better than being sent down to the Traffic Company, he had to give it that.

But only just.