CHAPTER 18
Mama Lu occupied the same wingback throne as she had on his first visit. Only the dress had changed: teal with black embroidery. She wore it wrapped around herself like a towel. Her long black braid fell over her shoulder heavy like a horsetail.
LaMoia had asked to come along, but Boldt had refused, not wanting to give the impression of teaming up on her.
He kept his opening comment to the point. ‘‘Your influence both as a businesswoman and great friend to this city stretches far and wide. No, don’t shake your head-we both know this to be true. Let us suppose that someone in this business of importing illegals decided not to risk unloading their cargo on shore but instead decided to make the transfer while still out at sea. To accomplish this effectively this person would need a tugboat, a barge and a crane. We, the police, have identified a company that looks good for this. Our problem is that the individual we believe responsible for renting that crane has failed to show up at work.’’
‘‘I own a few humble groceries, Mr. Both-’’
‘‘And four Laundromats, a movie theater, a limousine company, a hotel-’’
‘‘A few investments is all! Who trusts the banks anymore?’’
‘‘Geribaldi Equipment. The rental company. The manager is named Zulia. If he were encouraged to cooperate with police-’’
‘‘As a good citizen,’’ she said, testing.
‘‘Yes-out of his generosity of spirit-it would certainly save us opening up his or the company’s financial records. Cash flow. Payments.’’
Her brow tightened. She sat forward, however imperceptibly. She took hold of her braid with both pudgy hands as if it were a butler’s pull.
Boldt said, ‘‘There would be no reason for our forensic accountants to examine any of their records.’’
‘‘Only a fool stabs a dragon thinking he will kill it. To kill a dragon one must cut off its head.’’
He paused. ‘‘If forced to. .’’
She grinned, her eyes disappearing behind the folds of flesh. ‘‘How sharp is your sword, Mr. Both?’’
‘‘Zulia drops a name. He goes home.’’ He paused. ‘‘Everybody’s happy.’’
‘‘Not whoever’s name is mentioned.’’
Boldt grinned. The room felt suddenly hot to him. ‘‘The three women who died in that container were sick. They died of malnutrition and dehydration because the captain refused them food and water. Storms slowed down the crossing and the captain just let them die in there.’’
She said, ‘‘You reap what you sow,’’ and Boldt added yet another name to his list of possible murder suspects. The captain of the Visage was not short of enemies.
She said, ‘‘Once on these shores, these girls are good for economy. Maids in hotels, waitress in bars.’’
‘‘Sweatshops, prostitution,’’ he added.
He sought out the person behind those dark eyes, eager to determine her level of involvement, but saw nothing revealed. She sat there as impassive as the best judges.
For a moment he felt convinced this woman had not been involved with the deaths. When she smiled, he lost hold of it, like chasing a wet bar of soap.
‘‘They say ignorance is bliss, Mr. Both. Maybe true.’’
‘‘If he’d given them food and water they would have lived. There was no reason for them to die.’’
‘‘That man no longer with us. We must forgive him his sins.’’
‘‘Him, perhaps. But not the others.’’ He paused, having locked eyes with her. ‘‘Do you condone such treatment of your fellow Chi
nese?’’
‘‘A topic that bears much discussion.’’
He hesitated a moment and told her, ‘‘A Chinese-American has gone missing. A television reporter. She was investigating the container. If they harm her, they are fools. The power of the media is far greater than a single police department, believe me.’’
The woman’s face scrunched up tight. If this wasn’t news to her, she was a good actress. ‘‘You know this as true? Missing woman?’’
He said, ‘‘If a person were to help us locate this missing woman, the city would smile upon her.’’ He added, ‘‘The media, too.’’
She grinned and nodded and returned his determined gaze. ‘‘I understand.’’ A silence fell between them. ‘‘Go carefully, Mr. Both. Accidents happen to the nicest people.’’ She added, ‘‘And trust no one. Not even me.’’ She smiled again, more widely. She had forgotten her teeth. He saw them then in a clear glass to her right, grinning all on their own.
MONDAY, AUGUST 247 DAYS MISSING
CHAPTER 19
On Monday morning-one week to the day since Melissa had last been seen-Ernest Zulia, the manager of Geribaldi’s Equipment, made the morning news by exploding into several thousand pieces. The shock waves were felt at Public Safety.
Boldt met with Captain Sheila Hill in her office. Hill still turned heads at age forty. She understood how to dress for her athletic body and wasn’t above using her legs as a distraction. She came down hard on Boldt over Zulia’s death, but Boldt wouldn’t be drawn into it.
‘‘The Zulia surveillance was pulled, Captain,’’ Boldt complained, reminding her of what he had been told only minutes before by his detective. ‘‘We had a crew watching Geribaldi’s Equipment and they were removed from duty under orders.’’ Hill had given that order. Bobbie Gaynes had been told to cancel the surveillance, pulling an end run on LaMoia and Boldt, neither of whom had been informed of the decision. It wasn’t something for which he could out and out blame her, but they both knew the score. He understood perfectly well that she had called him to her office for damage repair. He also knew that although she could invent any number of excuses for her decision, she had probably canceled the surveillance out of a combination of budget considerations and politics. Knowing Sheila Hill, she resented LaMoia not consulting her on the original surveillance and so had exercised her authority as a means of proving who was in charge. But now she had another dead body on her hands and live newscasts tying this and the ship captain to the container-a political hot potato. Unfortunately, Boldt thought there was more at play than met the eye. LaMoia had bedded down Hill a year earlier in an act of poor judgment and primitive instincts that had left her calling the shots and nearly destroying the man’s career. An odd relationship still existed between the two-LaMoia had suffered the breakup hard; Hill had eventually sought to reconcile. She tended to spoil him; he tended to ignore her, his captain. Only Boldt knew of the affair, though many on the squad suspected. When LaMoia slipped up, Boldt, as the man’s lieutenant, heard about it-but lately Hill seemed to be using him more as a marriage counselor. She wanted LaMoia back. If there was hell to pay for the investigation’s woes, it was for Boldt to sort out.
At the time of the ‘‘accident,’’ Zulia had been in the seat of a propane-powered forklift, as he was every morning, according to his employees. The explosion caused flames to rise three hundred feet in the air, and total destruction to one-third of Geribaldi’s inventory and most of its warehouse. For the first time since a string of arsons several years earlier, there was no physical evidence of the victim found by SID. Along with firemen, they searched the rubble hoping for bone fragments.
‘‘You don’t like John running operations without consulting you,’’ Boldt stated, speaking plainly. ‘‘Point taken.’’
‘‘We have to deal with this,’’ she reminded, glancing at him sternly, but not wanting to invite discussion of the relationship. She left it up to him to offer some kind of way out of the mishap. At last, he saw a compromise position.
He said, ‘‘The missing television news reporter, Melissa Chow, is a far more pressing case than someone like Zulia. Once he returned to work, we could have picked up Zulia anytime.’’
‘‘Go on,’’ she encouraged.