The cash register was to the left of the door. It was completely enclosed by a heavy metallic mesh. More stuff hung off the mesh: pretzels, potato chips, barbecued bacon rinds, cinnamon toothpicks, and Slim Jims. Farther along there were sunglasses, condoms, and snuff. Almost invisible in all the hanging clutter was the cashier’s window.
Through the window, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, was a Korean man of about forty-five. Koreans have a reputation for being tough and stubborn. It looked like a lot of that reputation was based on this guy. He was simply watching, with eyes that had seen about everything twice. His face seemed frozen in a permanent frown of watchful disapproval. He looked like it would take heavy earth-moving equipment to budge him.
I stepped to the cashier’s window. His eyes followed me, unblinking and almost unmoving, like the eyes in a good portrait. I leaned slightly in to let him see me better. “Hi,” I said, “Are you Park?”
He just stared. I stared back. “I wonder if you could help me?” I said.
“You no belong here,” he told me.
“That’s right,” I said.
“What you want here?”
“It’s about the boy that was shot out front of your store, back in May. I’d like to talk to anybody who might know something about it.”
He stared at me some more. Something was going on beyond the dark eyes, but it would take a team of researchers ten years to figure out what. “Why?” he finally demanded.
I had a few choices. I could claim to be a cop, but that would matter less to this guy than a mouse fart on a pig farm. I could give him some shiny lie about insurance, but I had a feeling that would matter even less. Taking a deep breath and holding onto my luck with both hands, I went for the more devious approach. I told the truth.
“His father was a friend of mine,” I said. “I promised him I’d find his son’s killer.”
The man moved. He nodded his head almost a full quarter of an inch up and down. “Father dead too,” he said.
“That’s right.”
He nodded again. He was turning into a real whirlwind. He took a step and leaned his head around the protective mesh. He yelled eight or ten syllables. I didn’t understand even one of them. Then he stepped back and leaned in his original position, recrossing his arms. “You wait,” he said. His eyes drifted away, back to the front door.
I waited. I had no idea what I was waiting for. It could be a Libyan hit squad for all I knew. But something told me that I had got to Mr. Chatterbox, and whatever I was waiting for would be helpful.
There was a breath of movement, a faint smell of something clean, and a girl was standing beside me. She said something softly to the man in the cage and stood waiting. She was about seventeen and one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen. She was all the stories about GI’s falling for gorgeous Asian girls, all rolled into one.
The man said something harsh to her. She answered, still softly but with a certain amount of firmness.
He interrupted her and spoke a little longer. She hung her head. When he stopped talking she raised her head again, looked at me, and then gave the man six more syllables. He grunted.
She turned to me. “My father says you want to ask about Hector.”
There was nothing showing on her face, but there was an awful lot going on behind her eyes, too—too much for somebody that young. Maybe it ran in the family. “That’s right,” I said. “Did you know him?” Her mask flickered for just a second, and she gave her head a funny half-turn towards her father.
“Oh, yes,” she said, a little too loud, “I knew Hector quite well. I used to see him all the time.” Her father said nothing, but I could feel the ozone building up. The air between them was as charged as a summer day with a thunderstorm moving in.
I nodded just like everything was normal. “Can you show me where it happened?” I asked, hoping to get her outside before the cage around her father melted.
She turned to me and smiled politely. “Sure,” she said, and slid past me and out the door. The chime sounded again. Her father didn’t look as I walked past, but I thought I could see a vein throbbing on his forehead.
The two comedians were gone from outside the store when I got out on the sidewalk. The girl was standing on the curb, looking into the street at a point about eight feet out into traffic.
“There,” she said, nodding at the spot. “He was standing right there.” I looked. It was just another patch of asphalt. The girl was looking at it like she saw something else.
“What’s your name?” I asked her. Her head jerked around, the first thing I’d seen her do that was not entirely graceful. She looked at me for a long beat before she answered.
“My name is Lin,” she said. “Lin Park.”
I held out a hand. “Billy Knight,” I said. She looked at my hand carefully, then touched it very softly. Her hand felt amazingly soft, warm and alive. She took her hand away.
“Lin, did you see the shooting?”
She bit her lip fractionally. “Yes,” she said.
“What happened, exactly? Do you remember?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, quietly. “I remember.”
“Hector was standing there?” She nodded. “What was he doing?”
She laughed a little. It wasn’t a very funny laugh. “He heard they were going to torch my father’s store and he came to stop them. That’s why my father is so mad—because he owes something to a black boy who is dead. And because—” It was all tumbling out, but she caught herself and stopped talking just before the real revelation, which was no revelation at all at this point. Anybody could have figured out by now that there was something between Lin and Hector.
I pretended I didn’t know. “Who were they?” She looked at me with eyes that were seeing something else, something that wasn’t there anymore. “Who was trying to torch the store?”
She blinked. I had never seen eyelashes like that before, like two great, graceful silk fans waving at me. “Just—you know. A bunch of bangers, I guess.”
“Gang members? How do you know they were?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s just what everybody was saying.”
“Okay. So this bunch of gangbangers comes up to the front of the store?”
She shook back her hair. I held my breath. “No,” she said.
“No? Who did show up?”
“Hector. With his posse,” she said proudly. “He had this group of kids like him, they were trying to like stop the violence and stuff. And they found out these bangers were going to like torch my father’s store. And they showed up to stop them.”
Something was slightly off and at first I couldn’t figure out what, but it bothered me. I chewed my lip for a minute. Then I got it. “You said he found out the bangers were coming here?”
“Yeah, uh-huh.”
“How did he find out?”
She shrugged. She made it look like an elegant gesture. “I don’t know. Somebody told him, or one of his posse or something, I guess.” She shrugged again.
“Lin, I wasn’t here for this thing. But was the looting and burning and all that, was that usually planned ahead of time?”
She frowned, gave her head a half-shake. Her hair rippled. “What do you mean?”
“Didn’t people just sort of get mad and then burn and loot whatever was handy?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “Well, sure, I mean they weren’t like planning crimes or anything. They just did it, you know.”
“But somebody told Hector this was going to happen, and when. And then nobody showed up.” She didn’t say anything. I let it sink in for a moment. “How did it happen?”
She looked at me again. There was a new look in her eyes now, almost like she was seeing me for the first time, as she chewed on what I’d just helped her figure out. “How did it happen?” I repeated.
She was a little more careful with her answer this time. “Hector was standing there with his posse. He was like, waiting for the ban
gers. There’s one shot, bam, and Hector goes down.” There was a small catch in her voice as she said it.
“Did you see where the shot came from?”
She shook her head. “I was inside the store with my father. I couldn’t even hear what they were saying. But I could hear the shot.”
“Okay, you couldn’t see the shot. But you saw Hector. How did he fall?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, when the shot hit him, how did he fall? Did he go straight back? Did he twist left or fall forward? What? How did he fall?”
She nodded. “I get it. He like twisted down. Sort of—” She showed me there on the sidewalk, in slow motion, a strange watusi of a fall. It was like she was screwing herself into the pavement. I nodded at her.
“Okay. So the shot came from above.”
“Hey,” she said, and looked very thoughtful. I looked up at the building, and then at the bank next door.
“Can I see the roof?”
She nodded again, suddenly very brisk. “Sure. This way.”
Lin led me around to the back of the building, where a fire escape climbed up the side to the roof. She pulled on a rope tied to a length of rusty chain and the lower stair slid down. I held it for her and then followed her up.
Halfway up a woman’s voice yelled something and Lin yelled back. She turned and gave me a small grimace of a smile. “My mother,” she said apologetically.
She led me up to where the steps turned into one last iron ladder bolted to the wall of the building, and climbed it to the roof. I followed, being very conscious that to look upward at the legs of a seventeen-year-old girl, no matter how gorgeous, was indecent beyond measure. Keeping that thought firmly in mind, I climbed out onto the roof a moment later, and I only looked once.
As I climbed onto the gravel roof I could see Lin ahead, about thirty feet away. There was a desperately ratty lawn chair and a few milk crates sitting in a clump. I came up behind Lin and she spoke without looking at me. “We used to come up here all the time. Just—you know, to talk.” She flashed me a furiously embarrassed look. “Not what you think. Just talking. It was like our hangout, the whole posse and everybody.”
I nodded and looked at the chair.
“Hector was an amazing guy,” she said. “But my father—all he could see was this black boy, and it freaked him out. Told me I couldn’t see Hector at all. So I had to like sneak away to talk to him. And Hector wasn’t just—he wanted—”
She stopped altogether for a moment. She frowned and stepped to the chair. A worn Dodgers baseball cap was underneath. She picked it up, brushed it off with the back of her hand, and set it on the seat of the chair. “Anyway, I guess he had something he wanted to prove to my father, which is like maybe why he did some of that, you know. Nonviolent confrontation. So my father would see, here’s a man. Who was tough and stubborn, just like my father. I don’t know,” she said, and sat on the milk crate.
So she was feeling guilty about Hector’s death, too. It wasn’t enough that she had to feel his loss and her father’s disapproval. Poor lovely child, carrying a weight so much heavier than herself. Carrying it quite well, too. Tough and stubborn—a chip off the old block. If he could only understand his daughter he would be quite proud of her.
I felt that I should say something, but I couldn’t think what. So I watched her for a minute. She just sat, looking down at the roof between her feet.
I turned away to give her some privacy. At the western edge of the building the bank loomed up. It was some twenty feet higher than the roof I stood on, and there was a gap of about twenty-five feet between the two buildings. I walked over to the edge and stood looking at the bank building. There wasn’t much to see, but I saw it anyway.
Screwed into the side of the building was a large and healthy-looking stainless steel eyebolt. I pulled at it. It seemed very solid, strong enough to hold my weight and a lot more. I tried to think what might go there that would need a bolt that big. Window-washing equipment? Not on a building like this. Bungee cord?
I gradually became aware of a strong smell of cheap cologne. I stood up and turned back towards Lin.
The two comedians and four of their friends stood facing me in a half-circle, about eight feet away. The friends were stamped from the same mold; young, baggy clothes, Raiders paraphernalia. One of them was Chicano, one of them Korean. The others were black. They didn’t look very friendly.
“What’s happening, ghost?” said Porkpie Hat.
I nodded. “Something on your mind?”
He took a step forward. “No, man, something on my roof.” The others laughed and inched forward. They smelled blood and they liked it. I smelled it, too, mixed with the cheap cologne, but I wasn’t happy about it.
“Did you know Hector McAuley?” I asked them.
They got very serious very fast. “What’s it to you, ghost?”
“His father was a friend of mine. He asked me to look into Hector’s murder.”
The kid with the backwards Raiders cap thought this was hilarious. He did a very loose-limbed comedy strut forward to Porkpie Hat. “Yo, check it out, dude thinks he’s Magnum P-fucking-I.” They cracked up again. And then Porkpie Hat took another step forward. “Look into this, motherfucker,” he said, and threw a spinning kick at my head.
Off behind my new friends I heard Lin call out, “Spider, no!” and then two of them stepped over to hold her arms. She was saying something more, but I didn’t listen. I concentrated hard on Porkpie Hat as he spun, stepped, and flung a foot at me.
I let the kick come very close to my head, stepping back a little at the last minute and trying to look clumsy about it. I wanted him to feel confident and try another one. High kicks can be very effective and painful—if the person you’re kicking is either intimidated or playing by the rules.
I was neither. And I knew a very good trick for stopping high kicks. You have to be very fast and a little lucky, but I’d done it in the dojo. I hoped it worked in real life, or I was going to have a very lopsided smile.
When the second kick came with all the quick tight moves leading up to it, I was ready. As Porkpie Hat went into his spin, I stepped forward, inside the arc of his kick. As he spun around to kick my face off, I was already too close for his foot to hit me. I let his calf smack into my open hands and then grabbed his ankle with both hands. I pulled hard, letting the force of his kick push him around and off his drag foot. Then I lifted.
Porkpie Hat’s hat fell on the roof. Maybe I’d have to call him something else now. He was dangling off the ground upside down, and all of a sudden all the cockiness was gone. “Put me down, motherfucker!” He almost squealed it, sounding his age for the first time.
“Why? So you can try to break my face again?”
“Damn right I will! You on my roof! Let the fuck go of me!”
I pulled higher, lifting my arms straight over my head so his face came higher. I wanted him to see my face, but I wanted to impress him with my strength, too. He was still young enough that the adult-child relationship might kick in if I held him up in the air like a bad uncle scaring his nephew.
“Listen, kid,” I told him. “Hector McAuley was murdered. I want to find out who did it. If you were his friend, help me. If not—” I paused here for effect. I was going to say something very tough but not too corny—just enough to make him a little wary of trying to kick me again.
It was a good plan. It probably would have worked. Probably—if I hadn’t been so busy thinking what to say I forgot about the other kids. I remembered a little too late. I heard a light whirring rattle and half-turned just in time to see the guy with the backwards Raiders hat. He had circled around behind me. He had some nunchuk sticks spinning, and as I registered what they were, he bounced them off my forehead.
From a long way off I heard an epic boom! sound, kind of slow and majestic like some great Cambodian temple gong. I thought I heard Porkpie Hat yelling something, too, but it was hard to be sure because the gong ran
g again.
It got dark very early today, I thought, and then I didn’t think anything.
Chapter Twelve
There were a couple of vague voices coming from far down a dark hall. I couldn’t make out what they were saying at first, and I didn’t want to. I started to think maybe my head hurt, except it was hard to say if what I was feeling was really pain and anyway I wasn’t sure it was in my head.
One of the voices was really getting on my nerves; it kept saying, “Gee, that hurts. Ow. Gee, that hurts. Ow,” over and over again in a kind of weak, pathetic moan until I’d finally had enough and said, “Cut it out, you fucking wimp.” My voice sounded exactly like the annoying voice.
At that point I started to feel pretty sure it really was my head. And it was definitely hurting.
I tried to open my eyes, but that made the pain come roaring down at me, so I closed them again quickly.
I smelled rubbing alcohol and felt a gentle swab of cool across my forehead, where the thundering pain was blooming out into something sharper. It stung for a moment, and I heard one of the other voices say, very softly, “There.” I opened my eyes.
Nancy Hoffman stood over me. She looked so good to me that I forgot to hurt for a second. In her gleaming white nurse’s outfit she looked like an angel, except for one small detail: she was smiling at me like she thought it was all pretty funny.
“Hey, there you are,” she said as she saw me open my eyes.
“Pretty much,” I said. I made the mistake of trying to sit up. It brought the headache into very clear focus, very quickly. I wanted to throw up, except I knew that would hurt too much, too.
So I sat there for a moment with my eyes watering, my stomach clenching rhythmically, and my head hammering. I could feel my skin go cold and green as the thundering agony in my head went on and on until finally, after several weeks of torment, it slowed to a nearly tolerable level.
I opened my eyes again. Nancy was still smiling.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Is this funny?”
“Yes,” she said. “Very funny.”