Chapter Twenty
“What?” Mike asked. “The kid has a long white beard?”
“No. Paix is a very nice-looking young man.” I took Mike’s arm. “He is also very Asian.”
“So? This tells you something?”
“Yes. It means Marc was not Paix’s father.”
Mike drew away to give me a narrow-eyed glare. “I’m lost. Could you back it up a little?”
“Celeste inferred that Marc fathered her son.”
“And you believed her?”
“Never. I remember what Marc used to say about Celeste. He had no interest in her. Marc could be a wild man, but he was cast in a Beau Geste mold. He believed in true love.”
“But you believed her enough to worry about it.”
“To think about the implications, anyway.” I sat on the base of Sun Yat-sen’s statue. “What Garth said about Celeste was true: she’s full of shit.”
“The things that come out of your mouth,” he tsk’ed. He quickly grew serious again. “Just watch your backside. She’s a powerful woman in this town, and she has a bad reputation for the means she uses to get her own way.”
I looked up at him. “For example?”
“I’ve heard stories.” He shrugged. “Why do you say she’s full of it?”
“She told me this sad tale about how she enrolled Paix in an exclusive preschool, but when he showed up, the place was suddenly full. The little guy, she said, had been a victim of conspiracy-someone had gotten to the school.”
“You don’t buy it?”
I started to shake my head, but it was throbbing, so I thought better of it. “Maybe Paix didn’t get into the school. I can think of more ordinary reasons why that might have happened. We’re talking twenty years ago. Here’s the equation: single mother with a bad rep, fatherless Asian child, high-dollar baby school. Can you make succotash out of that?”
“Maybe not.”
I looked up at Mike. “Where was Celeste when Emily was shot?”
“All over town, getting ready for her party. We can’t pin her down very well. No one close to her will give us a goddamn thing.”
“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
“A lot of things make me wonder.” He stood up and offered his hand. “Let’s go get you an ice pack.”
“I thought we were going to skulk around the wishing well and Hop Louie’s for a while.”
He shrugged. “No need. The area has been staked out since the shooting.”
“Then why did you say you would meet me here?”
He grinned. “Because it’s where you said you would be.” I stood up too fast and made myself woozy.
“You okay?” Mike asked.
“Yes.” I took a deep breath and walked beside him, trying not to jar my head. “I like your new tie. The hula dancer is just true art.”
“Thanks. I like it, too. Made me think all day about where my other tie was.”
We were just passing Hop Louie’s on our way over to Hill Street. I turned to look over my shoulder toward the mouth of the alley where Emily had been shot. I had walked past the same spot maybe half a dozen times in the last couple of days. Though I had given it considerable thought, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to go into the alley and see for myself where it had happened. In my mind’s eye, I saw Emily lying there among the crates of trash, alone, in the rain. It may sound spooky and superstitious, but I believe I felt she was still in there.
Mike had my hand. He, also, was looking down the alley. “I’ll show you, if you want.”
“Not yet,” I said. “It’s pretty dark in there.”
“No it isn’t.” He tugged a little. “You’ll feel better if you look, Maggie. Let’s get it over with.”
He was already walking. I could have kept going right on toward Hill Street, but I followed him as far as the mouth of the alley. I stopped to tuck in my shirt. I looked up at the sky to make sure it wasn’t going to start raining anytime soon. I remembered three or four phone calls I had to make that really could not wait a few more minutes.
Mike stopped opposite Hop Louie’s back door and waited. “Don’t be afraid. There’s really nothing to see.”
“For crying out loud,” I said. “I am not afraid.”
“Then get to steppin’.”
I ventured in. The alley was just like any alley behind a restaurant. There wasn’t room for a dumpster. Instead, there were lots of full trash cans, a stack of wood-slat lettuce crates, a couple of up-ended milk crates surrounded by cigarette butts, some broken Naugahyde chairs. Pots clattering inside the kitchen covered most of the street noise.
“Where did it happen?” I asked.
“Down here.” Mike walked on past the door to a small nook where the alley made a dogleg. He moved a couple of boxes and stood in the angle. “This is where she was found. A couple of busboys came out for a smoke and found her in a heap. The boss tells them all the time to keep bums from sleeping back here because they make a mess that gets him in trouble with the health department. So they came over to get her to move along.”
“Did they know her?” I asked.
“She was the doc,” he said matter-of-factly. “They took good care of her until the paramedics came, put a cover over her to keep the rain off.”
He crossed the narrow alley and ran his hand along the back wall of the opposite building, a china shop. He laid his finger next to a spot where a chip had been gouged out of the stucco.
“See this?” he asked. “It looks like a bullet impact. Emily was shot at fairly close range; we saw significant gunpowder tattooing on the skin, scorching of the hair around the wound. The bullet made a through and through wound to the head, and still had enough juice left to ding the wall here. A slug, looked like a.38, was recovered from the pavement. There was very little bleeding, virtually no other physical evidence.”
I went back and sat down on one of the up-ended milk crates. I did some more deep breathing, but I was okay. It was just another alley after all, and I felt terribly let down. There was no stain on the pavement where Emily had been found. The bullet impact on the wall was nothing. For all the damage that had been done, all the pain, there wasn’t enough to show for it. I thought there should be a wreath, at least.
“Thanks, Mike,” I said.
“Anything else I can do?” he asked.
“Tell me what you see here with your trained eye.”
“It’s what I can’t see. Come here.” He gestured me over to the angle in the wall. “Take a look. From here, you can’t see either end of the alley, right? And unless someone comes out the kitchen door, no one can see you, either. The shooter did his homework, picked a good spot.”
“You think it was a local?”
He shrugged. “It’s easy homework. The trick is getting Emily in here.”
“Not much of a trick for a friend to pull off, is it?”
“You’re right.” He took my hand again. “Seen enough? Or would you like to sit here for a while longer?”
I took a last careful look around. Mike had been right to get me into the alley. Emily was not there. A kitchen worker came out and dumped a pot of cabbage ends into a can. He glanced up at us as he tried to force the lid back down.
“Think he speaks English?” I asked Mike. “Maybe he saw something.”
“Maggie, he’s been questioned. Everyone has been questioned.”
“May I see their statements?”
“No need.” He put an arm around my shoulders and impelled me back out toward Gin Ling Way. “Maggie, the answer will not be found in fingerprints, or eyewitnesses, or sock fibers left at the scene. We won’t need any of that until we get to court. If we get this to court.”
“What are you saying? You aren’t investigating?”
“Of course we are,” he said, with some heat. “I’ve been doing this work for a lot of years. I’ve learned a thing or two. I know that the vast, vast majority of murder victims know their killers. Emily knew her killer. Right now, in the county morgue, a forensic pathologist is trying to identify the burned corpse of the person who took a shot at you this afternoon. When he makes that ID, it will be someone you know. And when we figure out who, why will follow right along.”