White Tiger

CHAPTER 17

Ryker’s head was swimming by the time he arrived at the police station. Most certainly, his life had taken an interesting swing, though in which direction he had no idea. Normally, he’d be ecstatic-it wasn’t every day that a hair shirt like himself found his way into a rich widow’s passionate embrace, especially one as alluring as Valerie Lin. The fact that he pretty much obliterated every departmental rule and regulation regarding officer objectivity was simply icing on the cake.

So what are you going to do about it, you flaming idiot? he raged at himself as he maneuvered his car through the downtown traffic. Refuse to see her ever again? Send Morales or Chee Wei to do any follow-on interviews? If Jericho ever finds out about it-or even Spider-I’m dead fucking meat.

The fact that he had been presented with a goldmine of an opportunity didn’t factor in to it. While there wasn’t a police officer with a beating heart who wouldn’t have given his eye teeth to be in Ryker’s place, most detectives weren’t in the same position. Solving the murder of Lin Dan was going to eventually involve something incendiary, either for the victim, or his family. The press was already on it-Ryker’s cell phone mailbox was full of messages from local beat reporters he knew, all angling for a juicy story that was a newsman’s dream. Of course, he wasn’t allowed to speak to the press directly, unless directed by his superiors, but on occasion, those jackals were sometimes capable of producing a nugget of information that could be worked into something that might fit inside the investigation’s framework. So far, given that James Lin was generally uncooperative beyond producing a different shine on the painfully obvious-Lin Dan was a playboy, and had obviously pissed off someone-the investigation was limping along without much in the way of real breaks.

Ryker pulled his Impala into the station parking lot. He put the vehicle in park but sat behind the wheel for a long moment, his hand paused on the ignition without turning off the engine. Images of Valerie Lin flashed across his mind’s eye: her mouth forming a perfect O was she climaxed beneath him; the sweep of her perfect hip, illuminated in the wan evening light; the almost chaste kiss she gave him as he left the big house in Sea Cliff. The images all conspired to arouse him yet again, and Ryker sighed, willing the ridiculous tumescence away. He couldn’t go strolling into the stationhouse with a full woody, so he had to sit in the car and repeat his social security number over and over in his head. Eventually, his erection subsided to a more manageable level.

“Oh man,” he sighed as he switched off the ignition and unfastened his seat belt. “What the hell am I going to do now?”

He threw open the door and emerged into the overcast day. As he slammed the door shut behind him, he noticed Chee Wei standing nearby, leaning against the rear of his Lexus sports coupe. The slender Chinese man was looking at him with a quizzical expression.

“You all right?” Chee Wei asked.

“Fine,” Ryker said. He returned Chee Wei’s expression with one of his own. “What are you doing here?”

“I still have to report in for start of shift, remember?” Chee Wei answered. “You know, regulations and all that, since I’m still on the clock?”

“Oh. Yeah.” Ryker rubbed his eyes. “Who relieved you last night?”

“Morales. Here’s hoping he can keep his hands to himself-that woman’s a real maneater, and she’ll leave him with only stumps.” Chee Wei straightened and hitched his trousers up on his hips, staring at the building across the street.

Ryker smiled.

“What, you upset that we have a rotation going?” he asked.

Chee Wei looked over at him, frowning.

“Hey, he’s former NYPD. Those guys can be real pigs, you know? All that hard-edged east coast, big city bullshit they push around.”

Ryker snorted and pushed his hands into his pockets.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” he said. “You can’t possibly think you and Zhu are going to be the next item in the society pages? Besides, Nicky’s a good guy-give him a break, huh?”

Chee Wei’s face flushed with embarrassment, and he waved the statement away.

“Hey, don’t take it the wrong way, man. She’s just high-end, you know? A guy like Morales wouldn’t know what to do with something like that, anyway.”

Ryker shrugged and started toward the stationhouse. Other police officers were arriving; to his great displeasure, Ryker saw Cueball hurl himself out of his flashy new Dodge Charger. Their eyes met, and Cueball favored Ryker with a half-sneer, half-snarl. Ryker merely looked away.

“I wouldn’t know about that,” he said to Chee Wei. “By the way, how were the dumplings?”

Chee Wei let out his breath like a deflating tire.

“Man, you know about that?”

“Of course-I am a detective, after all.” Ryker walked up to the glass door leading into the stationhouse and pulled it open, motioning Chee Wei ahead. “Go on, I’ve got the door-you’re obviously having a tough day.”

“Thanks, and blow me,” Chee Wei said, marching through the door.

“Can’t we just cuddle?” Ryker stepped across the threshold and let the door close just as Cueball piloted his bulk toward it. Ryker didn’t wait to check out his expression, just turned his back toward the bigger man and followed Chee Wei.

“Let’s take the stairs,” Ryker said, pulling open the stairwell door. Chee Wei turned back, a questioning look on his face. It faded as soon as he saw Cueball pushing through the door behind Ryker.

“Yeah, let’s.” He followed Ryker into the stairway as the older man began climbing them, taking them two at a time. Chee Wei hurried to keep up.

“Hey, where’s the fire?” Chee Wei asked. “This your new exercise routine or something? Trying to get yourself in shape for Valerie Lin?”

Ryker turned on the landing and shot Chee Wei a sharp glance without meaning to. Chee Wei caught it and smiled, happy that he had stroked an apparent nerve.

“Yeah, that’s it, a couple of days running up and down the stairs’ll make you into a lean, mean fighting machine,” the younger detective continued. “Pretty soon, you’ll be in as fine of shape as, say, me.”

“And I really look back on those days when I was a skinny twelve-year-old kid with acne,” Ryker shot back, resuming his climb up the stairs. “Did Zhu cop to anything yesterday? Anything that might be relevant to the case, that is. I’m sure she told you all about the lady Rolex watch she wants for Christmas.”

“Uh-huh, the one that’s diamond-encrusted. I told her I’d go knock over the Federal Reserve and see what I can do. No, she didn’t come up with anything we didn’t already know. Once the lab results came in, I thought we were writing her off?”

“I’m not writing off anything. Lab reports can be wrong, and they’re not infallible. You start believing in everything some crime scene tech brings to you, and you’re either fat and lazy-”

“Hey, I ain’t Cueball!”

“-or you’re just plain retarded,” Ryker continued. He started trudging up the last set of stairs, mounting the flight with substantially less than vigor than when he had started. His chest already felt tight, and his breath was beginning to sharpen.

Christ. Washed up at thirty-eight. Good thing I never wasted any money on a gym membership I’d never use.

Ryker pushed open the door to the fourth floor and stepped out, Chee Wei right behind and absolutely no worse for wear; the climb probably hadn’t even elevated his heart rate. Ryker straightened his red and blue striped tie and strolled toward the squad room. Cueball had beaten them, but only just; as Ryker and Chee Wei entered the room, the fat detective was just pulling out his chair. A bag of doughnuts from Winchell’s sat on the desk before him.

“Hey Cueball, those double-long cinnamon twists have about four times the amount of fat and cholesterol required to choke a whale,” Chee Wei commented as they breezed past his desk.

Cueball patted his crotch.

“The only thing that’s double-long and fat is what’s right here, and I have the testimonials to prove it,” the rotund detective claimed loudly.

“Yeah right, like I care what they say about you when you’re singing karaoke for the twinks over at the Midnight Sun,” Chee Wei shot back, referencing one of the Castro’s better-known gay night clubs.

Cueball grunted, and his small eyes locked onto Ryker.

“Hey, Ryker! Looks like your little pet here needs to go back and complete his sensitivity training-some of the gay guys here might get offended by his act. Either that, or he’s trying to compensate for some latent sexuality he’s been repressin’ for too long.”

Chee Wei turned, his face turning red.

“Hey Wallace? Fuck you,” he said, voice even despite his obvious anger at the jibe.

Cueball laughed and pulled lowered his big ass into his chair. It creaked beneath his weight.

“Punk,” he said, opening the bag before him and pulling out a sticky glazed doughnut. “You know what you remind me of? A little Chihuahua on a leash, barkin’ up a storm but not able to do shit.”

“You-” Chee Wei started, but Ryker put a hand on his arm, interrupting.

“Enough,” Ryker told the younger detective, pulling him away. “We’ve got work to do.”

Chee Wei allowed himself to be pulled off, but not before giving Cueball an award-winning case of Evil Eye. Cueball laughed and licked his fingers.

“Like I said, a little Chihuahua…and now, you’re bein’ led away on your leash.” The fat cop bit into his doughnut. Chee Wei tensed, but Ryker continued to pull him away toward their pod.

“Don’t worry about that piece of shit,” Ryker said. “He’s not worth getting all riled up over. Let him choke on his doughnuts.”

Once Chee Wei was settled down, Ryker had him go over the murder book. There was nothing to add, other than a few isolated tidbits that had very little bearing on the case, namely the latest lab results. More would find their way to Ryker’s desk over the coming weeks, each hopefully more detailed than the last. Nevertheless, Ryker wasn’t holding out hope for a bonanza of physical evidence that would identify the killer. But anything that might help would be certainly welcome, even though the chain of command wouldn’t be content to wait for all the results to come in. If ever there was a case that required the slam-dunk, this was it.

Ryker made some inquiries into the health of Raymond-she was at home, resting comfortably, and taking her meds. He called Morales on his cell phone to see how he was holding out, and found that all was well at the Zhu woman’s residence; there hadn’t been any indication the house was being watched, which didn’t surprise Ryker at all. If James Lin wanted Zhu Xiaohui, he wouldn’t need to resort to strong-arm tactics when one telephone call to the assistant chief could likely result in what he wanted being hand-carried to his office. Ryker promised Morales that Chee Wei would be over to relieve him within an hour or so.

After that, Ryker paid a visit to the coffee machine and grabbed himself a tall cup of the extra-potent battery acid that the department called coffee, and lamented not stopping by a real coffee house on the way in. He dumped in a handful of Mini-Moo creamers to avoid suffering from a seared esophagus for the rest of his life, and plodded back toward his desk. He noticed a newspaper sticking out of his previously-empty mailbox as he walked past, and he altered course to grab it. Setting his coffee on the countertop, he pulled the publication from the narrow box and opened it up. He scanned the headline and groaned loudly.

“Ah, shit!”

Wealthy Chinese Industrialist’s Son

Slain in Hotel

By Emerson Loo

special to the San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco — The son of wealthy Bay Area industrial magnate James Lin was found dead in a suite at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel at 222 Sansome Street. Cause of death was classified as a homicide.

Authorities are still trying to identify Mr. Lin’s assailant, but have not yet made an official statement regarding the cause of death. An undisclosed source within the San Francisco Police Department has confirmed on the condition of anonymity that Mr. Lin’s death was in part caused by ritual mutilation of his sexual organs…

“A real bummer, huh?”

Ryker looked up from the paper and slowly turned around. Cueball looked back at him from his desk, leaning back in his chair, fingers clasped across his protruding belly. Specks of glazed frosting dotted his lower lip, a few of which fell to his brown tie as he grinned widely.

“Yeah, that’s gotta be a real bummer for you and your team there, Supercop,” Cueball said. “I mean, here you are, your investigation depending on secrecy and all that, and then there’s a whole writeup on it in the Chronicle. Not that there was any way of keeping it quiet for long, but hey, another couple of days wouldn’t have hurt, right?”

Ryker felt his pulse rate increase. He rolled the paper up in one hand and lowered it to his side. His eyes bore into Wallace like laser beams. For his part, Wallace merely chuckled.

“Yeah, it’s got to suck to be you,” the fat detective chortled. He reached into the bag for another doughnut.

Ryker crossed the gap between them in three strides. One of the detectives in Wallace’s pod looked up at him in some surprise; at least one person in the room could understand body language. The detective rolled his chair back from his desk, either to put some distance between him and the brewing shitstorm, or to more easily jump in.

“You’re chickenshit, Wallace,” Ryker growled, towering over the fat cop. “You’ve always been chickenshit. Remember what happened to you yesterday when you thought you’d grown a pair?”

Wallace’s jocularity faded like a cold glass of water on a hot Arizona day.

“Yeah? So what’re you gonna do now, Supercop? You want to make this physical?” Wallace rose from his chair in a display of sudden agility that surprised everyone. All faces were turned their way, Ryker knew. There was no way this episode wouldn’t get some airtime inside the department.

Better dial it back a bit, a small voice inside him reasoned. You’re already persona non grata. You let this go much further, and it’s a suspension pending charges.

Ryker’s jaw clenched so tightly from the frustration that it made his muscles ache. He took a deep breath, and forced the tensed muscles in his shoulders and arms and hands to relax. It was a near-Herculean effort. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that Wallace had been the “undisclosed source” cited in the article, and every part of Ryker wanted to extract vengeance. But vengeance would likely mean his badge.

Wallace apparently read it that way himself. He snorted, sneering.

“Yeah, not so tough after all, are you Ryker?” he pushed, trying to make it look like something it wasn’t. “Poor baby’s got his diaper in a bundle because some newspaper boy caught onto his case and blew it up in public. Boo-fucking-hoo, Ryker. Come back to me when your balls drop, and we’ll have ourselves a little talk, man to boy.”

Ryker took a sudden step toward Wallace and wound up for just an instant, with their faces only millimeters apart. That instant evaporated when Wallace reacted, almost stumbling backward over his chair. A quick titter of laughter went through the squad room.

“I don’t have anything to say to you except there’s a two-for-one special at Allstar Donuts,” he hissed. “Just think about it-for the price of twelve, you could get twenty-four of those heart plugs, and you might do us all a favor if you ate them all at once and vapor-locked right here at your desk. Of course, no one would notice, since you almost never haul your ass out of your chair except to get something to eat, take a dump, or go to lunch. I mean, what the hell, all of your clients are already dead, so why bother breaking a sweat trying to figure out the whodunit part, right? At the end of the day, they’re still dead, and you have some food to find.”

“Hey, fuck you, Ryker! I clear my cases-”

“Yeah, only after one or two generations of next of kin have either died or gone to a home for managed care,” Ryker interjected. “You make me sick, Wallace. Die, already. Please.”

“Am I interrupting something?”

Ryker glanced over his shoulder for a moment. Spider was standing behind him, a cup of Starbucks in one hand, a newspaper in the other. Furino’s narrow nose tracked from Ryker to Wallace and back again, like a weapon system trying to evaluate which target to engage first.

“I was just giving Cueball a tip on Allstar’s new two-for-one promotion,” Ryker said, before spinning on his heel and stalking toward his pod. Chee Wei was on his feet, face expressionless, but he’d been watching the whole thing.

“Next time, send him an email,” Spider said, walking along behind Ryker. “When you get a second, come in and talk with me.”

Oh, outstanding.

“You got it, lou.”