Someone reminded me I was in the middle of a Meyers. If you, like me, have forgotten where we were, go here. Stylistic complaints may be referred to the Elmore Leonard “All the information you need can be given in dialogue” Foundation. Because all the people talking my head leave little time for set decoration. If you don’t go for a refresher, Meyers walked from Longwei’s warehouse to an all night gas station and taqueria where he must have called –
“I’m not in the late-night taxi business.” Lieutenant Purcell palmed the four-pack of cheap cigars and stuck his paw in the bag of tacos I offered. “Where’s your child chauffer?”
“He’d better be working.”
“You’d better have somethin’ besides shitty cigars and shittier tacos.”
“According to Peter Wang, the shittier they are, the less you’re supposed to want to smoke them. The tacos will stand up.”
“You an a momma’s boy gangster wears a woman’s bathrobe lookin’ out for my health now?”
“He’s sitting on a girl named Chellaine St. Pierre who’s about to make you a hero with burglary, wealthy citizens, and insurance companies alike.”
“That’s a lotta smoke for one girl. What’s the outlay on the hero medal?”
“Help me with some timing so they don’t all kill each other before we get a few answers.”
“‘They all’?”
“The Dubrevs, a surprisingly adept amateur burglary ring, customs corruption, a porn set up I can’t quite figure. And a Chinaman named Dong Boi that everyone’s afraid of who imports counterfeit logo crap and people. And exports stolen jade under the guise of historical repatriation and pockets the money.”
“I was with you till the Chinaman. Dong Boi’s not my problem.”
“Everybody I talk to says that.”
“I don’t know who you been talkin’ to, but the Fed’s have been after him for years. They call him out, he dials up Diplomatic Immunity an walks. I can’t go there. With you or anybody else.”
“Diplomatic Immunity can be iced.”
“You know this from experience?”
“As a matter of fact…”
“I forgot. Once upon a time you were a spook.”
“Once upon a time I was military and worked for spooks. Dong Boi becomes an embarrassment to his countrymen, he goes down. If the Feds are smart this time they’ll turn him into headlines, load him on a Chinese charter and send him home. He’ll be dead before they hit cruising altitude. Unless—”
“Unless somehow he gets dead with his hand in the embarrassment cookie jar first?”
“So many loose cannons in this mess, that’s a distinct possibility.”
“One of ‘em you?”
“Not if I can help it. But if it is me, it’ll be on video tape.”
“If that was meant to be reassuring it wasn’t. He turns up stiff without the cookie jar it’ll be a fuckin’ ‘international incident’. You know about those?”
“I do.”
“Yeah? Well, don’t give me one. What’s his embarrassment?”
“Human trafficking, reckless endangerment manslaughter, counterfeiting, corruption on both ends, money laundering, international transfer of stolen merchandise, ego—”
“Last I looked ego wasn’t a prosecutable offense.”
“If it involves screwing your countrymen and handlers out of close to a million bucks to make souvenir porn it is.”
“He can’t be that stupid.”
“If the money’s gone and that’s all he has to show for it he is.”
“Christ on a crutch, Meyers…” Purcell unwrapped a soft taco, fought with the salsa packet before abandoning fingers and using his teeth. You know a cop who’s spent a lot of time in a car when he can eat street tacos drenched in hot sauce and not get any on himself or his ride. Sensing its safety from condiment splatter, I set the microcassette recorder on the seat between us, switched on Addie Dubrev’s version of the movie sting and side gig porn. He ate three tacos, slowly, savoring them like a delicacy, sent me back in the store for coffee and listened to the tape twice.
“You believe her innocent as a rainbow-farting unicorn bullshit?”
“About how her wallflower sister turned up dead, yes. The rest of it no more than I believed Wang’s or Longwei’s model citizen routines.”
“Seein’ as how she’s been dead or vapor since Sunday, how’d you get this?”
“I had a run-in with Dong Boi’s gopher, along with Longwei and some more disposable Asians in Ninja costumes this afternoon. I got this after Addie got a dose of how close to dead she’d been, then I stashed her with Toni for a couple of hours.”
“Toni being the exotic pet boarding house to the stars woman who was a spook same time as you?”
“Military. I thought Toni giving Mrs. Dubrev a taste of uncomfortable confinement might shine some light on her predicament while I got straight on Dong Boi’s shipping connection. I had Toni cut her loose a couple of hours ago.”
“That where your chauffer is, luggin’ Mrs. Dubrev around?”
“Everybody but old man Dubrev and a couple of stoners think she’s dead. Her husband set her up and got her sister instead. I doubt she’d blow her cover when she’s down to nobody to trust.”
“Nobody to trust in this cluster fuck sounds a lot like you an me. If she finally seen the light about bein’ disposable why’s she hangin’ around?”
“The money. Everybody on that side of the deal wants the cash old man Dubrev didn’t spend.”
“Who’s to say he hasn’t already stuffed it in a bag and waltzed into the sunset?”
“He’s stuck. Like his wife, Dong Boi, Denaldo and everybody else in the direct or indirect gravitational pull of that million and a half.”
“The center of their universe is?”
“The Dubrev estate.”
“I’m starting to see some light on that angle. Since I figure you for a clever whack job, how does that tie into my hero medal?”
“The girl Wang’s protecting is the only one who knows where the burglary ring’s high-end merchandise is stashed.”
“What’s that worth and why should I care?”
“Roughly nine million, legitimately, and only from what’s reported stolen. Half that on a black-market fire sale. You care because aside from clearing a shit load of burglaries it’s the bait that’ll expose Dong Boi.”
“Sheezus. Nine million? An Dong Boi’s on both sides of this scam?”
“He and a woman named Bren. She’s the bridge.”
“I need a goddam program to keep up with the players. How’d this Bren woman pull the Dong Boi crossover?”
“Someone involved in her burglary business tipped Bren to the Dubrev movie scam, but at the time I don’t think anyone but old man Dubrev knew it was a scam. She took it to Dong Boi knowing he wanted in the movie business.”
“So this Bren woman needs to make up some points and possibly lost cash with the hot jade you been askin’ about and a boat load of other shit or she’s out on a limb with you an me.” He wadded a fistful of napkins around the spent hot sauce and taco wrappers, dropped the ball in the original bag. “From where I’m sittin’ it sounds like the girl who knows where the goods are needs to be found by friendlies first and brought up to speed on whatever plan you have that’ll save her ass and yours and make me a hero. What’re we waitin’ for?”
“I don’t know where she is besides a safe house of Wang’s. Wang is supposed to send me flowers with a coded message.”
“How sweet. And you trust him?”
“I don’t have any alternatives.”
“If all you need are addresses for Wang’s stash houses, I can get those.” Purcell picked up a radio no bigger than a cordless phone, identified himself, told whoever on the other end to find someone named Papeete in the gang unit and do it quick. He handed me a pocket notepad and a pencil. In under five minutes I’d copied four addresses. I ripped the sheet from his notepad, folded it, moved it toward my pocket, got a “Whoa, Meyers. What the fuck you think you’re doin’?”
“I need this if I’m—”
“Hell with ‘I’m’, Meyers. This is a ‘we’.”
“Now?”
“You can’t trust nobody. Neither can I. But like you, I got no alternatives but to trust you on this kaleidoscope of who’s screwin’ who.” He dropped the didn’t-look-like-a-cop’s-car maroon Trans Am into gear, foot on the brake. “Unless you got somethin’ better to do…”
“Going now puts me six, seven hours ahead of going in the morning.”
“An possibly ahead of havin’ to shoot your way into a Chinese gang house. Alone.” He popped the microcassette out of my recorder, put it in his sport coat pocket along with the stubby cigars. “You have no idea how glad I am you didn’t get me out at damn near midnight for nothin’ but shitty cigars and tolerable tacos.” He took his foot off the brake and eased us out of the parking lot. “Shotgun’s under the seat on your side.”