About Changes
Charles Colyott’s novel, CHANGES, is a stunner. A thrill-ride from start to finish that will stay with you long after you’ve finished the last page. The characters are unique in detective lore, the situations are mesmerizing and together they draw the reader into a world quite unlike anything previously encountered. Read this book to learn, laugh, and fall in love with a brilliant young writer’s work.
--Lisa Mannetti, two-time Bram stoker nominee and winner, The Gentling Box.
"With slick action reminiscent of Barry Eisler, and witty dialogue in the league of Jeff Strand, Charles Colyott creates a thriller all his own. The compulsively readable prose of CHANGES will keep you reading long into the night, and when you're through, you'll be hoping for another thriller starring the sometimes troubled acupuncturist/Tai Chi Chuan expert, Randall Lee."
----Glen Krisch, author of Brother's Keeper, Loss, Where Darkness Dwells, and The Nightmare Within
Changes -- A Randall Lee Mystery
by
Charles Colyott
SMASHWORDS EDITION
*****
PUBLISHED BY:
Charles Colyott on Smashwords
Changes -- A Randall Lee Mystery
Copyright © by Charles Colyott
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*****
Dedication
For Ken Colyott (I think he would've liked this one) and for Cara, always.
Special Thanks to:
Sifu, Tom, Alex & Scott and the NOLA crew
Changes -- A Randall Lee Mystery
Table of Contents
Changes - A Randall Lee Mystery
Yu Bei: Preparation.
I fell into the stance effortlessly and stood until my breath came slow, quiet, and easy. I focused on the feel of stale air on my skin, the flash of dust motes gleaming golden in the sunlight, and the stink of rotting fish from the dumpster down in the alley. Cardboard boxes still lined the walls of my apartment, stacked in random, leaning columns; I ignored them. Cobwebs caught the light and shone against the dingy ceiling; a wayward water beetle scrabbled along the floor, looking for a meal or, perhaps, a way back to its home. And through the open windows, guttural shouts in Cantonese, bits of conversation in lilting Mandarin, and heat: oppressive, humid, Midwestern heat. I pushed the distractions from my mind.
Qi Shi: Begin.
I start to move, searching for the stillness in motion, the motion in stillness. The postures shift from one to another without pausing, without breaking. ‘Grasp Sparrow’s Tail’ to ‘Single Whip,’ flowing into ‘Lift hands’. I moved through them, my mind quiet, almost peaceful. It was a refreshing change.
If someone asked me why I still practiced Tai Chi, after everything, I’m not sure I could give them an answer. I would probably say that it was comforting or relaxing, or maybe I would quote some study about the health benefits of the practice, but none of that was it, not really. I just kept on doing it.
The ringer was off on the phone, but I heard the answering machine whir to life in the kitchen. A voice, incoherent and low, muttered something gruff and clicked loudly as the caller hung up. I pushed it out of my head, something to handle later, after. By the time I began the first ‘Cloudy Hands’ set, my arms felt heavy, inflated and numb.Sometime during the third section of the form, the damned machine started muttering again - more incoherent male voice, a bit more urgent and pissy-sounding this time. Whoever it was, they would just have to wait.
After closing the form, I glanced at the clock. Fifty-five minutes from start to finish, and my muscles knew it. My thighs and calves burned and glistened with a layer of sweat. I went to the fridge, grabbed a beer, and took a long pull from the glass bottle, relishing the wave of chills that started in my throat and stomach and spread outward through my body.
I listened to my messages. Both were from some cop, a Detective Knox, and he said he wanted to ask me a few questions. About what, he didn’t say. I called the station, spoke to the detective, and told him he could meet me in twenty minutes.
I showered but didn’t bother to shave. After running a towel through my hair, I bunched it into a ponytail, and got dressed - loose, black drawstring pants and a white tank top. I slipped on my battered black Converse All-Stars, grabbed a cardboard box from the kitchen table, took another beer from the fridge, and left.
A flight of steep, narrow stairs lead down to street level, to my shop. As I emerged from the relatively cool, dim entryway, I shaded my eyes from the sun and once again cursed my particular migratory choice. I couldn't have picked someplace like San Francisco. No, it had to be St. Louis… The city with the shittiest excuse for a Chinatown I've ever seen. I like to call it China-street.
I unlocked the front door of my shop and went in, greeted as ever by the familiar sour stink of herbs and the cloying, medicinal smell of antiseptics. A stack of bills littered the floor by the mail slot. I kicked them into the corner, halfway under a bookshelf, dropped the box on the counter, and went in the back room to start a pot of coffee. I don’t drink the stuff much myself, but I keep it around for clients. I’ve never known a cop to turn down a free cup of coffee.
I was drinking my beer and checking my appointment book when the cop showed up. I knew him immediately from the bad suit; somebody needed to tell this kid Miami Vice was cancelled ages ago. He was a youngish guy, maybe mid-thirties, very yuppie. Very clean-shaven. Either that or his face hadn’t figured out how to grow hair yet. He walked in, looked around as I finished scribbling notes on the calendar, and finally said, "I’m looking for Mr. Lee?"
"That’s me." I said.
"You’re Randall Lee?"
I nodded.
"And this is your place." He said.
It wasn’t really a question, but I answered it anyway.
He frowned, probably thinking that there must’ve been some sort of mistake. I was used to the reaction.
"I guess," he said, rubbing his bare chin, "I just figured you’d be more…"
I raised an eyebrow.
"…Oriental," he finished.
I took the box from the counter, slid my fingers under the thick brown packing tape, and pulled.
"Things are oriental, Detective. People are Asian. As you say, I am neither. just another Gwailo like yourself."
He put his hands on his hips, probably in an attempt to look powerful or intimidating. He just ended up looking pouty.
"How long you been a cop?" I asked.
"Why?"
"Curious, that’s all."
"Almost seven years." he said.
I glanced at his shiny badge, prominently displayed, as it was, on his belt, and said, "And a detective?"
"Two months."
"And you’ve been working this neighborhood for those two months?"
"Mostly, yeah." He said.
I nodded and said, "How’s that been working out for you?"
He sneered a little. "Y’know what, pal? I don’t really need any shit from you, alright?"
"What exactly do you need from me, Detective?" I said.
His face clouded. I couldn’t tell if it was anger, embarrassment, or, most likely, a little of both. Conflicted as he was, I figured it might take a while for him to spill it. So I carried my box over to the shelves of herbs and began unpacking.
"Look, the department doesn’t typically enlist the help of civilians but we’re a bit short on resources at the moment…"
I brushed Styrofoam peanuts from the packing list and gave it a quick once-over.
"…and we’ve got a situation right now… are you even paying attention?"
I looked up at him, hefting a bag of Siberian Ginseng, and said, "Absolutely, but you’ll excuse me if I work as we talk? I’m a little busy."
"There was a murder last night. A Chinese prostitute." He said the word slowly, with emphasis. Smartass. I was starting to like him a little.
"So?" I said.
"So nobody’s talking to us ‘white devils’, and we got nobody on the force who speaks Chinese."
I looked up. "How is that possible?"
"We only ever had a few to begin with. A couple joined Homeland Security, and Joanie - she was the last one – she’s on maternity leave."
"So… you need a translator." I said.
"Well, yeah, but we were hoping to find somebody they’d talk to. Y’know, one of them."
"I could show them my jade secret decoder ring." I said.
He frowned and said, "You’re kind of an asshole, you know that?"
"I get that a lot, yeah."
He stared at me for a minute.
He turned to leave.
As he reached for the door, I said, "Alright, Detective, my first appointment’s not till two-thirty. That gives us a couple hours."
2
Knox drove a white, unmarked sedan. The big boxy thing may as well have had a giant speaker on the roof blasting the theme to Cops, though; nobody but a cop would be driving that thing around. The interior smelled. It reminded me of a time when I was a kid and somebody puked in the school bus.
"Your car smells like baked-in vomit," I said conversationally.
"Thanks," he replied. "Man, I could really use some coffee. You want some coffee?"
"I made some, actually…forgot to offer you any, though."
"Am I supposed to say that it’s the thought that counts?"
I shrugged and said, "So, what happened to her?"
"Who?"
"The girl we’re asking around about. You got ADHD or something?"
"We’re looking into it."
"The girl or the ADHD?"
"The hooker." he said. He wasn’t as amused as I was, apparently, with my wit. I was pretty used to that.
"I know I’m not a cop," I said, "but isn’t it usually sort of obvious how somebody was killed?"
"Yeah. Usually."
"But not this time?"
"No."
He stared out the window, presumably at a couple of kids playing in the parking lot of an old, boarded up Church’s Fried Chicken.
"Why not?" I said.
He looked at me. "Why you wanna know so much? All you have to do is ask the questions and tell me the answers. Just translation, that’s all."
I shrugged. "Hey, you came to me for help, detective. If I don’t know a bit about what’s going on I might not translate so good…"
He made a snuffly-sighing sound and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. "Alright, but you don’t say shit to anybody about this, got it?" he said.
"Sure."
"…She was blue."
"It’s my understanding that’s a time-honored tradition among corpses."
Knox glared at me and sighed."I’m not talking about regular dead body blue. She was…really fucking blue."
Okie dokie.
"And naked, but no marks on her anywhere. No sign of struggle, no sign of sexual contact. Her hands were balled up real tight, fingers all bunched up like fucking claws."
"O.D.?" I said.
"No sign of a needle or anything else. Preliminaries say her blood was clean. Plus… and you tell this shit to the papers and I’ll kick your fucking ass… Her eyes were filled up with blood…from the inside, y’know? Same with her nose and mouth… it was like something inside her…popped. Coroner said he’d never seen anything like it."
Interesting.
"Still," I said, "you called it murder… if you can’t even tell how she died, how can you be sure?"
"She was laid out."
"What do you mean?"
"You’ll see," he said.
It was the last thing either of us said before we hit the east side. Knox had to swerve to avoid hitting a pair of feral dogs fighting over a scrap of garbage in the street. An eighty pound crack whore shambled along the sidewalk, weaving like a zombie. Paint peeled from an ancient billboard that proclaimed that Jesus was the answer. I felt like I must’ve missed the question.
"You ever see that movie Escape from New York?" Knox said. "Kurt Russell, John Carpenter...y'know that one?"
"I don't really see a lot of movies," I said.
"It's one of those post-apocalyptic deals. New York’s a big prison. Anyway, parts of that movie were filmed right along here."
I can't say I was surprised. Post-apocalyptic was right. We passed a block of abandoned buildings, collapsed structures, and burned wreckage. The ‘Taste of Asia’ spa sat wedged between a strip club and a porn shop. A pervert’s oasis. It was a squat, shoebox-shaped building, decked out with neon and amateurish paintings of half-nude geisha girls on the door. A painted sign on the side of the building proclaimed that, "This establishment is not responsible for damage to your property or person. Enter at own risk."
We decided to risk it. We went inside.
The place smelled like cheap cherry air freshener, but underneath was the stink of sweat, cigarette smoke, mildew and mothballs. I recognized the madam despite her caked-on face paint. She’d been in to see me a few times about her arthritis. She spotted me with Knox, looked at the floor, clasped her hands, and bowed.
In Cantonese, she said, "Doctor Lee? What a surprise… what brings you?"
I told her.
She nodded, wiped an invisible tear from the corner of one pasty eye, and turned to walk away. She gestured for us to follow.
A few cops milled in and out of the various rooms. I caught curious looks from some of them. I felt the irrational urge to smile and wave, but I refrained.
The madam led us to one of the back rooms. The bitter tang of ammonia stung my nostrils. I covered my nose with my hand - for all that helped - and followed Knox inside.
"They took the body early this morning, but we’ve kept the rest of the scene the same." He said.
The massage table, the only furniture in the small room, was covered with white silk. The floor surrounding it was blanketed in single bills of Monopoly money. Yellow scraps of paper painted with red ink hung from the walls. I read the characters on several. They were mostly insults, gross descriptions of bodily functions, that sort of thing.
Several small jars lay around the room. I knelt by one and realized that the smell came from them: they were filled with piss.
Lovely.
I wondered whose piss it was and whether there was a way to fingerprint waste products. Then I realized that I was wasting time. Sometimes I annoy even myself.
I called to the madam and asked what she knew about the scene. Her observations weren’t much different from my own. Her theory on the girl’s death, however, tripped me up momentarily. I disagreed with her, but she kept on repeating herself. I turned to Knox.
"Could I see the body?" I asked.
"No. Why?"
I stared at him and blinked.
He shrugged uneasily and said, "Is it important?"
I kept on staring.
"You can stare at me all day, but that’s not going to get you in to see the body."
"What if I told you that I might be able to give you the cause of death?"
He shrugged again and said, "Alright, alright…Why the fuck not? It’s all a clusterfuck anyway. I’ll call ahead, make sure they know I’m bringing you."
We went outside. I took a deep breath of the (relatively) fresh air. We got in the car and headed for the morgue.
Knox said, "What’d the madam say? The point of you being here, y’know, is to translate. So fucking translate."
I took a deep breath and said, "She didn’t have much to say. Superstitious nonsense, mostly. But listen, detective, whoever killed this girl set everything up like a mock funeral. They did it as an insult. Taoists believe that if a person isn’t properly buried then their soul cannot rest. Whoever did this… they didn’t just want her dead. They wanted her damned."
3
Knox stopped me before we went inside. I figured I was in for a lecture on police procedures, but that wasn’t it at all. "Listen," he said. "The thing you need to know is that this isn’t a real great area."
I looked across the street, to where somebody’d nailed a dead raccoon to a tree, and said, "Really?"
"My point is that this isn’t exactly a high-profile investigation. And Childerson, well, he’s…" he searched for the right words for a minute, but ultimately decided to let me find out for myself.
I’d only been to one other morgue, but apparently they’re all more or less the same. Sterile, yet somehow dingy. Always that one fluorescent light that flickers away, threatening to go out. The smell - not just the formaldehyde that gets in your skin and hair and clothes, but that other smell. The one reminiscent of meat.
And the cold.You never forget that cold. It gets in your bones, and you can’t shake it.
The M.E. was fat, jovial, yet a little sickly. A little too cheerful, too smiley. Yellowish teeth. This was the infamous Childerson. He clapped Knox and I on the shoulders and led us to a steel table in the center of the room. Lights perched overhead like metallic buzzards; trays surrounding the table held numerous, wicked-looking instruments which shone dully in the cold, artificial light.
Then there was the body. Knox hadn’t been kidding. The girl was really fucking blue. Not the typical pale bluish cast that most corpses had. She looked like a smurf.
"Most dramatic case of cyanosis I’ve ever seen." Childerson said, seeming to read my thoughts, "Comes from a lack of oxygen in the blood."
I leaned in for a closer look.
The girl was young… maybe twenty. She was fine-boned, with big eyes and full lips. Delicate hands, long fingers. She must’ve been quite beautiful in life. I felt guilty looking at her.
"What’s her name?" I asked.
Childerson looked at me like I’d just asked him if I could have sex with her corpse. He glanced over at Knox, who shrugged and waved a hand impatiently.
"All we managed to get from Madame Chong was that she called herself ‘Mei Ling’. I kinda don’t think that’s her real name, though."
Knox asked about the cause of death. Childerson turned his considerable bulk toward the detective. I took the liberty of grabbing a pair of rubber gloves from a box on one of the steel trays, and I slipped them on.
"Early evidence would suggest asphyxiation." Childerson said. "From her skin tone and the state of her eyes, I’d say it’s looking like it’s probably from a crushed larynx. Probably her pimp that did it. Same old bullshit."
I put a thumb lightly on her closed eyelid and slid it upward, exposing her eye. The pale green iris swam in a sea of red - every blood vessel had burst.
"I’d place the time of death at sometime early yesterday morning." Childerson continued. I had just opened her mouth to examine her tongue when he turned and screamed, "What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Don’t fucking touch her - you’re fucking up the evidence, you asshole!"
I ignored him for the moment. Mei Ling’s tongue was a bloated black slug that barely fit inside her mouth. I pulled up her upper lip; her gums were the same – blackish, swollen almost to the point of bursting.
I stood and faced Childerson. "Your evidence? The astounding amount of evidence to suggest that she suffocated from a crushed throat? That evidence?"
Childerson puffed up like an obese blowfish and got up in my face. "That’s right."
I looked at Knox. He watched us with a sort of detached interest.
"You asked for my help. Do you care about how the girl really died, or are you content with this asshead’s throat crusher theory?"
Asshead protested.
"You got something he hasn’t got?" Knox said skeptically.
"Yeah. I’ve seen something like this before."
Childerson said, "Oh, bullshit."
I turned to him and said, "Did you actually examine her? She’s been here since early this morning, and you don’t know anything about her, do you?"
"She's
a fucking dead whore. Case closed."
"She's somebody's
daughter," I said.
He tried to stare me down, but a drop of sweat rolled into his eyes. He blinked the sweat away and sighed loudly. "Alright then, let’s hear your theory, fucko."
"Tell you what: I’ll lay it all out for you. You do your tests. Fifty bucks says I’m right and you’re an idiot."
Childerson crossed his huge arms and said, "You’re on, asshole."
I stepped to the other side of the table, allowing them access to the body as well.
"Knox, you said there were no marks on the body. That’s not true. And this is not cyanosis."
Childerson laughed. "She’s fucking blue… what else could it be? Too much time at Willy Wonka’s?"
"No. She’s bruised. From head to toe."
They looked at each other and Childerson laughed again. I held up a latex-clad finger and said, "Let me explain."
Childerson sneered at me; Knox frowned but waved me on.
"I want you to press lightly inward," I said, "here and here." I pointed to the ribs directly beneath Mei Ling’s breasts. Childerson reached out a hand, rolled his eyes at me, and pushed on the girl’s chest. The color immediately drained from his face and his eyes widened. Knox looked from the M.E. to me and back, and then felt her ribs for himself.
"Jesus Christ…what the hell happened to her?" he said, pulling his hand back quickly. Human chests shouldn’t be squishy.
"Certain martial arts have very specialized, almost legendary, strikes. As Mei Ling here realized what her client really wanted, she would have inhaled to scream for help. The killer then struck," I extended both of my palms slowly outward in a pushing gesture, "both sides of the ribs, simultaneously. With sufficient internal energy and body coordination, this compresses and shatters the ribs. The lungs pop like balloons and crush the heart. The blood - with no place else to go - shoots outward, and temporarily soaks into the muscles and tissues. This girl died within an hour of being discovered; by tomorrow morning the blood will already start pooling on the underside of her body."
I slid the gloves from my hands and tossed them in the trash. Reaching in my pocket, I took out my wallet, slid a business card out of it, and handed it to Childerson.
"Business hours are on there. Feel free to drop off my fifty bucks any time."
I headed for the door.
When I realized Knox wasn’t following, I checked my watch and said, "My first appointment’s in twenty minutes. I gotta go."
Knox nodded absentmindedly.
"I rode with you, man." I said, hoping to jog his memory.
He looked up at me as if he’d just woken up.
"Let’s. Go. Please." I said.
As we headed out, I looked over my shoulder at Childerson. He was still staring at my card.
‘Fucko,’ indeed.
4
Once we were in the car, Knox said, "How the hell did you do that?"
"What?" I said. Coy as a schoolgirl, that’s me.
"How did you know all that?"
"It’s part of my job. Knowing things. It’s what separates me from somebody like Childerson. There are other things I think I know, but I wasn’t positive…and I wanted my fifty bucks…" I was mostly guessing about all of it, but there was no way I was admitting that to Knox, and certainly not to Childerson.
"What other things?" he asked.
I slipped a plastic bag from my pocket, drew a decent-sized slice of ginseng from it, and popped it in my mouth. The root tasted earthy, slightly bitter, and a little sweet.
"Well," I said, "I’m pretty sure Mei Ling was pregnant, for one thing."
"No shit?"
"If Childerson would get on with the exam, we’d know soon enough. Also, I think it’s pretty clear this wasn’t a random thing…"
"Right. This was planned… an assassination?"
"Seems
so. Which would suggest certain things." I said, "Bad, bad
things."
He was silent for a minute. I kept on chewing.
"Okay, I give up." he said.
"What?"
"What things? What did you mean?"
"You’ve got a dead Chinese girl, a hooker. Probably a contract killing. The killer is proficient in martial arts, specifically, a Chinese martial art. Are you seeing a pattern?"
Knox slipped a cigarette in his mouth and muttered, "It’s all way fucking Chinese…"
"True. So you’ve got prostitution and murder for hire. Who’s likely to be involved?"
Knox’s face lit up. I half expected him to raise his hand and say, "Oh! Oh! Me! Pick me!"
"Triads," is what he did say. Give the man a cookie.
"But look," he said, "this is St. Louis...there’s very little Triad activity around, and they’ve always kept things quiet, always handled things themselves. So why attract all the unwanted attention over some hooker?"
He parked in front of my shop and turned to look at me.
I chewed the ginseng some more and said, "That's an excellent question. I'll leave that to you to figure out. I get paid to poke people with needles, so this is all way above my pay grade. But this was all very interesting, and I’m glad I could help out. See you around, Detective."
I got out of the car and fished my keys out of my pocket.
Knox rolled down his window and said, "Hey, Lee… you busy tomorrow?"
"Why?"
"Might need some more translating." He said.
"I’ll be around." I said.
5
The girl sucked air through her teeth and hissed, "Ow!"
"Tender?" I said.
She squirmed on the table and said, "Uh, yeah."
"What happened?"
She lifted her head to look at me and said, "Let’s just say that platform boots and cobblestone streets don’t mix."
My hands slid from her swollen knee down her smooth, shapely calf to her ankle. I moved her foot gently.
"Sore?" I asked.
"Yeah, but nothing like the knee… I landed right on it when I fell."
"The good news is that it’s not that bad. The bad news is--"
She winced and said, "You’re gonna turn me into a pincushion?"
I nodded and went to the cabinet for my supplies.
This was Tracy’s first visit. Well, as a patient, anyway. I’d seen her once before, when she came through the neighborhood with a friend. There are a few semi-touristy locations down the block from me: a rundown chop suey shack, a video rental store trying to cash in on the success of Jackie Chan and Jet Li, and HK Trading, a small grocery that carried incense, hell banknotes, and the sort of silly, mass-produced crap that westerners think of when they think of "the Orientals" - soapstone Buddhas, tiny gongs, that sort of thing.
Tracy and her friend had been amazed to find that I wasn’t selling any lucky bamboo kits, but they were more amazed to see that I was not Asian. I remembered her smile, her funky hair and clothes, and the way she snatched one of my business cards with her black nail-polished fingertips. I couldn’t tell you a single thing about her friend.
When Tracy called to make an appointment, she made it very clear that she hated doctors, and that she really wasn’t too keen on needles either, but I was used to that. Needles, I’ve heard, lie somewhere just below public speaking and death on the list of most feared things.
When I returned to her side, I said, "I promise you this won’t be nearly as bad as you think it’ll be… nothing ever is."
She bit her lower lip and nodded. I tried not to notice the lip-biting, because Tracy was a very attractive girl… outstanding facial structure, big, dark eyes, full lips, a figure that a pinup model would kill for, long, long legs. Really cute feet. And I’m not into feet at all. In fact, I haven’t paid any attention whatsoever to any part of a woman in a long time.
I haven’t wanted to.
A lot of that is because of Miranda, I know, but the rest of it is that I’m mostly used to dealing with elderly people. They love to inform me of their bowel issues. That is no fun. But being paid to attend to this young lady’s legs? Hell, I would do that for free.
I opened an amber jar, poured its smelly contents into a basin, and soaked some thin gauze strips in the liquid.
"What’s that stuff?" she said, wrinkling her nose.
"It’s an herbal mixture that’s good for joint pains. I’m going to send some home with you and I want you to use it, even if it does smell like cat pee, alright?"
She laughed and nodded.
"On the bright side," I said, "unlike some of the prescription stuff you could get, this stuff will not cause weight gain, projectile vomiting, or persistent rectal seepage."
She giggled again. I felt this absurd swelling in my chest, this ridiculous, almost overwhelming giddiness because I made her laugh.
It was probably heatstroke.
I took a strip of gauze, shook out the excess fluid, and laid it on her injured knee. I crisscrossed several more wet strips around the joint before wrapping her leg in a fresh, dry bandage.
"How’s that?" I asked. "Not too tight?"
She shook her head and said, "It feels neat… and all cold inside."
I nodded and took a packet of needles from the glass jar at my side.
"Shit," she said with a frown, "I was hoping you’d forgotten that part."
I unwrapped the packet and tossed the paper in the trash. With my left hand, I measured out the cun distance, from her kneecap, toward the outside of her leg. I held the needle lightly in my right hand and looked up at Tracy; her eyes were squeezed tightly shut and she was biting her damned lip again.
I situated the tip of the needle directly over the spot, and held my left hand up a few inches from her face. Simultaneously, I snapped the fingers of my left hand as a diversion and lightly tapped the needle home.
"You okay?" I asked.
Without opening her eyes, Tracy said, "Yeah. Just tell me before you do it okay, because…"
"First one’s in, kiddo."
She opened her eyes and looked. "Oh… Oh, wow."
"Cool, huh?" I said.
She watched as I inserted the other needles. Once she’d convinced herself that it really didn’t hurt, she allowed herself to relax. As I worked, she said, "So… do I call you doctor, or mister, or, like, master, or what?"
"You can call me Randall." I said, twirling the first needle a little.
"Okay, but what’s your title?" she said.
"Well, I'm a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, but that doesn’t mean much here in the good ole U.S."
She cocked her head sympathetically and said, "I guess the powers that be want that whole medical school thing… seven years of schooling or whatever it is."
"Maybe," I said, "but, I spent ten years with my teacher before I was ever allowed to even sit in with a patient."
"Jeez," she said, "did you start when you were a little kid?"
I grinned and said, "I’m older than I look."
She flashed a quizzical look and grinned back.
When we’d finished up, there was a part of me - the bad part - that was thinking about telling her that part of her treatment involved taking her out to dinner, but luckily I was spared that moment of impropriety by the arrival of my next client.
Mrs. Lhung.
A sixty-eight year old Cambodian woman.
With bowel issues.
Christ.
6
That evening, after the rest of my appointments, I settled in to dinner. My dining room consisted of a folding card table and chair, but I made the most of the evening – microwaveable Ramen noodles and Miller Genuine Draft.
I like to keep it classy.
As I ate, I thought about Mei Ling. I wondered why anyone would’ve wanted to kill her. I wondered how a girl like that got into the life to begin with. How had life failed her? No answers sprang to mind, so I thought about Tracy, and her exquisite legs, instead. That carried me through the rest of dinner. I finished my beer, rushed through a little Tai Chi, and went to bed.
I only woke up a few times during the night.
Only twice did I scream.
Thank heaven for small favors.
In the morning, I got up, threw some cold water on my face, and did some stretching. Once I was loose, I practiced the form - slow to make up for the hurried practice from the previous evening. I focused on releasing the tension from all of my muscles. It was a struggle not to fight against gravity, to let go and allow the movements to happen. I don’t know if it worked, but it kept my head quiet, and sometimes that was good enough. I finished up, showered, and was getting ready to go downstairs to the shop when the phone rang.
It was Knox. He asked if we could meet in the park across the street. I said sure. I didn’t have much else to do - only two appointments, later in the day, and neither of them were with attractive young women, so I could do with a little diversion.
I walked down to HK Trading, picked up breakfast, and strolled over to the park. Knox was messing up his nice suit sitting on a park bench. As I approached, he said, "Didn’t know what you’d want, but I brought you some Dim Sum or whatever, just in case."
"Yeah? I brought some of your native cuisine, too," I said, tossing him the box of donuts I’d bought.
"Nice." he said. "Did you think about bringing coffee?"
I opened the paper sack I was carrying, took out a Styrofoam cup, and handed it to him.
"Well, damn. I feel special."
"You should," I said.
He opened the box and took a glazed donut as I sat down.
"So what’s up?" I said. I popped a ground pork dumpling into my mouth. It was chewy, undercooked, and packed with enough MSG to make my brain bleed. He must’ve picked them up from the chop suey shack.
Knox took a bite of his doughnut, dabbed at the corner of his mouth daintily with a napkin, and said, "Childerson checked out the girl…"
He took a fifty-dollar bill from his inside coat pocket and handed it to me.
"He also said the girl was pregnant. Oh, and a special message just for you… he said, ‘Go fuck yourself.’"
I pocketed the money, blew on my coffee to cool it, and said, "Classy."
Knox nodded and said, "So, you want to tell me what that shit was that you and the madam were arguing about yesterday?"
"What? Oh, right. It was nothing."
"Bullshit. She kept repeating that shit to our boys all night… ‘Deem mock, Deem mock.’"
I took a jelly donut from the box and said, "Dim Mak."
"Whatever. What’s it mean?"
I shrugged and said, "It’s hocus pocus, nothing but an old Chinese superstition. ‘The Death Touch’… supposed to be some secret deadly art. Y’know, where you touch certain energy points and cause a person to die hours later… they say that’s what got Bruce Lee… Madame Chong said that’s what killed Mei Ling. I already showed you how she died, though. So it’s crap."
Knox seemed to think about that as he popped the rest of his donut in his mouth. He dabbed his mouth again, tore open the plastic lid of his coffee, and took a sip.
"Why?" I asked.
"Got the call this morning. Chong’s dead. Heart attack, we think."
"…Shit."
"Yeah. And it looks like the case dies with her."
"What? Why?"
"These massage joints… they get girls fresh off the friggin’ boat in California. Ninety percent of ‘em are illegals. They stick ‘em in a parlor and rotate ‘em out to another place whenever a new group arrives. Keeps things moving, keeps the girls from getting any kind of criminal record in any one spot, and keeps things more or less anonymous."
"A kind of slavery, then."
"Basically."
"And with Chong dead, there’s no way to find out who Mei Ling was."
"Pretty much. The girl’s a ghost. No records of her anywhere. Frankly, no one in the department is going to lose a minute‘s sleep over a couple of dead Chinese hookers."
After our cheery breakfast, Knox went his way and I went mine. Before he left, he slipped me a copy of Mei Ling’s file, in case I could come up with anything else, and made certain I knew just how much trouble I’d be in if I was caught with confidential evidence files.
Touched by this show of camaraderie, I went home, tossed the file on my desk, and got ready for work.
Mrs. Lim had pain from an inflamed gallbladder, and Mr. Yeung was quitting smoking. All told, it was about two hours out of my day. The rest of the time I spent thinking about Mei Ling. Something about all of this stunk like the back alley behind HK Trading, and that was pretty goddamned stinky.
That girl was too pretty, too damned clean, to be giving twenty dollar hand jobs out of some chop-socky shit-hole on the east side. Besides, she would’ve started showing before long and that would’ve been the end of her brilliant career.
The whole ceremonial aspect of the scene bothered me too. Did it mean that Mei Ling was a Taoist, or was the killer? Or both? I’d known a lot of Taoists, back in Hong Kong, and they were the most peaceful people I’ve ever known. Did this guy really hate her that much, or was the room made up that way for someone else’s benefit. Was she made into some sort of an example?
Then there was Chong.
I checked my files. Turns out, she’d been in to see me a total of eight times in six months. The last time was three weeks ago. Minor arthritic pain in the hands, hips, and feet. In Chinese medicine, we take a pulse diagnosis to gauge the strength of each organ. I’d noted the pulse diagnosis for each visit, and there was no mention of any weakness or imbalance in the heart. In fact, there didn’t seem to be much of anything wrong with her besides the arthritis. Must’ve been all that clean living.
I called the station and managed to catch Knox. I asked him for a double or nothing shot with Childerson. He told me to meet him in twenty minutes.
The morgue was as upbeat and cheerful as it was the last time I’d visited. Childerson was just as fat. Madame Chong’s body occupied the steel table this time around. She’d seen better days. Knox distracted Childerson with sports talk while I gave the body a quick once-over. I noticed a dullness to some of the skin on her face. I touched her lips briefly and rolled my fingertips together.
"Any preliminary findings?" I asked.
Childerson was rambling about the size of some cheerleader’s tits.
I repeated myself.
"Wha…?" he said. "Nah. Nothing, yet."
"There’s that sterling work ethic I know and love." I said.
The man adjusted his straining belt against a tidal bulk of gut flesh and crossed his arms. Brownish pit stains peeked out from underneath his arm fat.
"I suppose you’re going to throw out some bullshit theory about ninjas and chi and shit like that, right?"
"Ninja are Japanese." I said.
"Whatever. You gonna show me which aura points the killer whacked to magically cause an elderly woman to have a massive coronary?"
"Sure." I said. "And it’s really comes down to just one point."
"Oh, really."
"Yep, this one." I said, raising the woman’s arm and pointing to the puckered hole situated neatly between folds of skin in the crook of her elbow.
The M.E.’s face fell. He immediately started sweating. It wasn’t pretty.
"Maybe it’s my mystical new age bullshit talking," I said, "but that looks an awful lot like an injection site to me. What do you think?"
He nodded. Droplets of sweat hit the floor with loud little splats.
Even his sweat was fat. Whoa.
"Now, I’ll leave the details to you and your medical expertise," I said, "but you and I both know that just about anything could have been shot into this woman’s veins, right?"
He nodded again. The tile floor received another flash flood.
"Awesome. You might want to try X-raying her before you slice her open, alright? And if you don’t have the cash on you right now, I understand. You can always have Knox drop it off later."
Childerson gathered his senses; it only took him a second, which was a surprise. With an arrogant certainty he said, "You still don’t know she was murdered… an injection site by itself means nothing."
"You’re right," I said, "but the adhesive residue on her mouth is an interesting coincidence."
I touched Madame Chong’s wrists and felt the same stickiness.
"Maybe she just likes self-bondage." I shrugged and grinned. "You never know with these kinky old broads and their weird hobbies."
"And what, exactly, do you expect we’ll find through x-raying a corpse?" Childerson said.
"Honestly? I think our boy here got a little sloppy with the duct tape. I think he moronically picked the most obvious injection site on the body. But I’d be willing to bet that he wasn’t stupid enough to pump an old woman full of crank or Drano or arsenic or something that would show up right away and stand out. It looks like he wanted it to look like a heart attack, and he almost fooled you already, so keep an eye out for things that don’t belong."
"Like what?" Knox said. Mostly, he’d just let me and Childerson bark at each other, but now he was interested.
I shrugged. "Something natural. Potassium, maybe. Or even air. That would be the easiest way. Hard to catch too, I‘d imagine."
"Shit." Knox said.
"Actually," I said, "Shit was a favored poison of the aforementioned ninja, way back in the day. Antibiotics pretty much put a stop to that, though."
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Childerson said.
"Never mind me. Get to work on that x-ray." I said.
Knox and I left him to simmer in his own considerable juices. We went outside.
The detective lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, and blew out a lung full of carcinogens. He picked at his thumbnail for a moment and said, "So there are two killings. One flashy, one not-so-flashy. Mei Ling was planned out. An organized, ritualistic assassination… Chong was a relatively sloppy rush job. Why?"
I thought about it for a minute. I knew he was talking to himself, but I shrugged, and said, "Different killers?"
"Yeah. The first guy was pretty slick. In and out without drawing attention to himself. Unless he did draw attention but the girls are too scared to talk… and the other…" he stopped and turned to me.
"How the hell do you know all this shit?" Knox said.
"I’m observant, I pay attention, and I used to watch Quincy reruns all the time."
We stopped near our cars. Knox took a toothpick from a plastic box and began gnawing on it. This guy seemed to have a serious oral fixation.
"Y’know what I don’t get?" he said, "Why are you doing this? I mean, you didn’t give a shit about any of this when I came in your store…now, suddenly, you’re all gung ho. What’s that about?"
"I don’t like bullies." I said.
He leaned against his car and said, "Oh, so you’re just a Good Samaritan?"
"No, but if I can do my part without inconveniencing myself…why not?"
The expression on his face was hard to read. He wasn’t exactly happy, I knew that much, though I didn‘t know why.
I wished him luck on his search, got into my car and went home.
7
I checked the cupboards and the fridge - sad. Really sad.
So, at nine thirty at night, with a couple beers in me, I decided to hit the market, assuming it was still open. I walked. It was a nice night, and all the beer on my empty stomach made everything pleasantly ridiculous.
They say that St. Louis used to have a Chinatown, until the city demolished it to make room for a new baseball stadium. So my sad little China-street was made, and it never blossomed into anything bigger. When I came to the city, I picked the location because it felt a little like home and I thought the locals might appreciate my skills. Truth was, I could’ve moved into one of the ritzy white business districts and raked in the cash, but I’m not the new age healer those types want. I hate that whole racket. So this modest, hell, rundown little neighborhood was my home now, and I figured I’d get out and see it a bit more. Since alcohol makes everything better.
H.K. Trading closed at ten.
I checked my watch: ten till. I was in luck.
I went in, inhaled the smells of fresh fish, dried herbs, and incense, and nodded to the elderly man behind the counter. We didn’t know each other really, but I‘d shopped there enough that we did that weird stoic male nod thing. A wall-mounted television in the corner played a grainy kung fu film. From the music - a Chinese folk song called ‘On the General’s Orders’ - I knew it to be a Wong Fei Hung movie, but it didn’t look like one I’d seen.
I grabbed a bowl of ready-made soup and a few packages of noodles. I saw a bin filled with durian melons and, on a (very) drunken whim, grabbed one.
For those not in the know, the durian is a sort of Hong Kong delicacy. It is a hard, spiky, football-shaped fruit with a sweet, almost buttery taste. It’s very, very healthy. On the downside, it smells like rotting garbage threw up in a honeydew melon, and that honeydew melon then took a shit. Really.
I grabbed a six pack of Tsing-Tao, because I was going to need it if I honestly thought I was going to eat that durian, and took my stuff to the counter. The old man was ringing everything up when I heard the doorbell chime.
A group of wannabe thugs came in, giving me and the old man a heavy case of the stink-eye. The shopkeeper grumbled and began bagging my groceries; he put the spiky durian in its own plastic shopping bag so that it wouldn’t crush the noodles. I appreciate that kind of good customer service.
The kid in the front of the group, I assumed he was supposed to be the leader, looked like he’d just fallen off the boat from Hong Kong… Circa 1985. Greasy golden skin, bad teeth, really shitty mullet. He wore a white t-shirt with a bad iron-on Scarface transfer (a picture of Al Pacino and his "little friend"), an honest-to-god pair of parachute pants, and high-top kangaroo sneakers.
His crew wasn’t dressed much better. A couple of them even sported headbands.
I nodded to them. It didn’t hurt to try to be friendly.
He sneered at me and pushed past; as he did, he muttered something to his friends about "the stupid American Gwailo bastard." That, I thought, wasn’t fair. I mean, I’d had to go through the whole immigration process myself. I don’t doubt I had it a little easier; being Caucasian, male and speaking English gets you pretty damn far in this world, but still.
I should’ve let it lie, but there was that whole matter of being drunk enough to eat fruit that smelled like poop, and, well, I am not always as mature as my years would suggest. In fact, drinking – especially alone – usually brings out the worst in me.
I called out to them. As they turned, I gave them my most charming smile and - in Cantonese - suggested that they might enjoy having sex with each other’s mothers. The leader turned a bright shade of red and got in my face.
Kind of… He was about a foot shorter than me.
I glanced at the shopkeeper. He raised his hands and backed away; he didn’t want any trouble, and I didn’t blame him. He’d probably dumped everything he had into this place; I’d have to try to keep the damage to a minimum.
The kid sprayed a number of Cantonese curses, and a good deal of spittle, in my face. He smelled like curry and garlic mixed with a wicked case of body odor. He probably still smelled better than my desert. That thought made me giggle.
Just say no to alcohol, kids.
I cut him off mid-spittle stream and said, "What’s your name?"
He spat, "Scarface!"
I looked at the picture on his shirt. "Ah."
The kid turned a different shade of red and - in broken English - said, "Fuck you, motherfuck. You want ass-kick, you come right to place!"
In Cantonese, I said, "I believe the word you were looking for is ‘motherfucker.’ And the rest of that was just a train wreck. Insults and threats are tough if you don’t have a good grasp of the language. Like this:"
Then I told him that his mother contracts turtles.
I know it doesn’t make any sense, but apparently, that’s a really big deal. I read it somewhere on the internet.
He spouted out something unintelligible and shoved me as hard as he could. I didn’t move. He succeeded in sliding himself back several feet, though. By the look on his face, you’d think I attacked him. His hand flew to his waistband and came up with a balisong – those flippy little blades that Americans incorrectly call ‘butterfly knives.’
Grinning a crooked, yellow-toothed grin, he began flipping the mobile handles of the knife. His dexterity and speed was impressive.
I leaned on the counter and admired the display for a minute before wrapping my fingers around the handles of my plastic grocery bag. I turned and swung the bag like a mace. The spiky football-sized durian fruit splintered the bones in Scarface’s hand and sent the balisong spinning across the floor. He yowled in pain for a second before I twisted, rocketing the makeshift weapon into his teeth. They looked like they needed to come out anyway.
He fell on his back, groaning, and bled for awhile.
Scarface’s friends kept looking from him to me and back again. They didn’t want to abandon their fearless leader, but I could tell that they weren’t overly anxious to take an ass-kick either.
I told them to take ‘Scarface’ – now a little more aptly named - and get the hell out.
Wonder of wonders: They did.
As the last of the gang left the store, I turned to the old shopkeeper and asked if he was alright. He called me a stupid American Gwailo motherfuck, and told me to never come back to his store again.
I took my remaining groceries - the durian split when it hit Scarface’s teeth, and the market was flooded with the scent of hot, shitty melon stink - and left.
So much for my understanding of the culture.
8
The next morning, I got up, had some green tea, and checked my appointments for the day - I was pleasantly surprised to see that I had a follow-up with Tracy at six fifteen.
Something to look forward to, anyway.
Since coming to St. Louis, I’d more or less neglected my daily practices. I decided that I’d been lazy for long enough. I went to my practice space – my empty living room - sighed at the boxes, as if they would unpack themselves, and assumed the basic preparation stance. Feet shoulder width apart, spine straight but relaxed, arms loose at the sides, head held as if suspended from above. I inhaled, pulling my stomach inward, and exhaled, relaxing it outward. My eyes drifted closed, and I let the room disappear.
In its place, I imagined a field of wildflowers. The sun warmed my face; a light breeze blew past, ruffling my hair. As I breathed in, my wrists floated up while my elbows sank down. My arms formed a circle, a posture called ‘Embracing the tree.’ I released the tension throughout my body and simply allowed myself to stand – the simple art of Zhan Zhuang, ‘Standing Stake’ chi gong.
After awhile, my body felt heavy. My legs seemed to push down into the earth. The real activity, though, happened inside - Surges of fire and ice intertwined and danced along the nerves of my spine. They echoed outward, down my arms and legs, sparking at the tips of my fingers and toes. Streams of force flowed down the surface of my skin, into my pores, to collect in my lower abdomen.
The whole thing sounds like the kind of new age crap that I hate, but the practice is actually very beneficial, it’s results very tangible.
When my eyes fluttered open, an hour had passed. My arms and chest felt like I just bench-pressed a Buick. My legs shook.
I did some light stretching and went straight into the 103 posture Yang style long form. As I went through the movements, my mind wandered again to the girl, Mei Ling.
I wondered if Knox was having any luck.
I wondered why I cared.
I wondered if I’d ever get around to unpacking.
It was nearly noon when I finished practicing.
On a whim, I went to my computer, got online and looked up ‘Taste of Asia’.
After sifting through a handful of restaurants and porn sites, I found it. Turns out, they were a chain. San Francisco, Vegas, Houston, St. Louis, Miami, New Jersey, New York. I clicked the buttons for each location and skimmed through the photos of young women dressed in silk robes, their postures alluring, their eyes dead, looking for any pictures of Mei Ling.
No such luck.
I sighed and closed the window.
9
Tracy arrived just before six, wearing a sleek little black dress that could cause a twenty car pileup, thigh high fishnets, and stiletto heels.
When I regained the power of speech, I said, "…so, your knee is doing better?"
She smiled a little and said that, yes, it was feeling fine.
"Um… It’s going to be hard to do much work on your leg," I said, "with you in those stockings."
"Oh, should I take them off?" she said.
I felt my face heat up and it pissed me off. I’m an adult for god’s sake, not some horny teenager. I opened my mouth to speak, but incoherent gibberish fell out of it. She giggled and went into the treatment room. I thought of what she was doing, of the lucky stockings that got to slide down those thighs, and felt the need to sit down. Perhaps, I thought, if I were really good in this life, I could be reincarnated as Tracy Sandoval’s stockings.
When she called out that she was decent, I went back too.
Her legs were crossed at the ankle, her dress slid up to mid-thigh. The vast expanse of skin made the edges of my mind crackle and buzz with a kind of pleasant static. They were very high quality thighs. And I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable.
I sat near the foot of the exam table and put one hand just above her knee. I pressed my fingers gently into the soft tissue, feeling for any swelling. Most of what I felt was a ridiculously strong case of butterflies in my stomach.
"Can you move it?" I asked.
She nodded and bent her knee. I pretended not to notice the momentary flash of black lace accentuating the perfect, pale crescent of her ass.
Instead, I worked at two very difficult tasks – swallowing and breathing.
"Is there any pain?" I croaked. "Any stiffness or soreness?"
Yes.
"No." she said. "It feels great."
Yes, yes it does.
I cleared my throat, fumbled her file from the desk, and made some notes in the margin. I thought of Mrs. Lhung’s thighs, riddled as they were with varicose veins, and attempted to regain my composure and professionalism. I kept looking at the box in Tracy’s file marked Date of Birth. Twenty-six was hardly a child, but still…
I stopped that line of thought right away. The room felt very hot.
Tracy sat up, slid those long legs over the side of the table and said, "Everything okay?"
"Um?" I said. Smooth. Real smooth.
"I said, is everything alright?"
"Yes." I said. "Sorry, I’m just a little out of it today. My chi must be on vacation."
She laughed and said something but my heart thrumming in my ears blocked most of it out.
I finished the notes in her file and walked out to the front room while she put her stockings back on. I thought of herbs to occupy my mind in some kind of positive way. She came into the front room, paid for her visit, and was almost to the door when she turned and said, "Mr. Lee?"
"Yes?"
"This is probably, like, against the rules and stuff… but… would you ever maybe want to… have dinner with me?"
Gulp.
"Uh," I said, being a terrific conversationalist, "dinner?"
Yes, Randall. That meal that happens in the nighttime.
Jesus.
Tracy winced. I saw her teeth closing in on her bottom lip and looked away before I had an aneurysm or something.
"Yeah. I’m being inappropriate aren’t I?" She said. "I’m really sorry. It’s just…"
She continued on with apologies she didn’t need to make, but I didn’t hear them. There was too much of a roaring thrum in my head. I knew I had to be the adult here. To take the moral high ground. I couldn’t start dating patients… if I did, Mrs. Lhung would want a shot, and I prefer not to know my date’s gastrointestinal history.
But before I could muster the maturity to say no, my mouth opened and said yes.
10