Lucky added, “He’s the reason she lost her last job, after all.”
“That’s right,” I said with an emphatic nod, though I recognized that Detective Quinn had a point; I’d lost my job because I was working in a mob joint that got busted. Even Thack had said it was bound to happen eventually.
“Besides,” Lucky added, “it’s no secret that Detective Lopez has got a thing for Esther. Anyone can see it. So he probably feels bad about what he did to her. Maybe he even wishes he could go back and change what happened.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” said Max, oblivious to the subtext that I suspected I was hearing. “Helping her now was obviously the honorable thing to do.”
“Hmph,” I said, recalling that Quinn seemed to think Lopez was helping me in hopes of getting laid again.
“Yep. If he’s bein’ a stand-up guy now,” said Lucky, “well, it’s no more than he should do for a lady he’s wronged that way he wronged our Esther.”
Our eyes met for a moment, and I saw that he did indeed know. But he was, in his way, a gentleman of the old school, so he would never mention it. Not directly, anyhow—and probably not ever again, either.
So I smiled at him and said, “Being saddled with the job of liaising between Ted Yee and city bureaucracy might even be sufficient punishment. I sure wouldn’t want to be in Lopez’s shoes now.”
“And speaking of Detective Lopez,” Lucky said, though his tone suggested he was changing the subject, “it’s kinda funny that he’s poking around Chinatown because of the Ning family.”
“Funny ha-ha or funny strange?” I asked.
“From where I’m sittin’, funny coincidental.” He added with a philosophical shrug, “Or maybe not. Uncle Six has got his fingers in so many pies, maybe it ain’t that strange that Young Blue Eyes and I both wound up with our hooks stuck in him at the same time.”
“Ah!” said Max, who had obviously followed Lucky’s mixed metaphors better than I had. “While Detective Lopez is revisiting his former investigation of the younger Ning whom the elder Ning is now trying to get exonerated, you have uncovered relevant information about the Nings in the course of your inquiries into Benny Yee’s affairs.”
“Yep.”
“Oh.” I said in surprise to Lucky, “Do you mean you think Uncle Six wanted Benny dead?”
“Sure looks like it,” he confirmed.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “They were both in the Five Brothers tong. Wouldn’t that make them allies rather than enemies?”
“Well, I don’t know about the Chinese, kid—John’s an educated boy, so he could tell us—but Sicilians must have a hundred proverbs that warn you how dangerous your friends can be,” said Lucky. “Sometimes they rat on you . . .”
Which was presumably what Victor Gambello was worried about these days, with so many of his “family” members being arrested.
“. . . and sometimes they stab you in the back—which they’re in a position to do because you trusted them. After all, giving someone an opportunity like that is a mistake a man doesn’t make with his enemies.”
Max asked with interest, “Are you saying you’ve learned that Benny Yee coveted Uncle Six’s leadership position in the Five Brothers?”
“Bingo, Doc.”
I said, “And I suppose a man like Uncle Six holds onto his position by being ruthless to challengers?”
“It’s pretty much a requirement of the job,” said Lucky.
“Then I would say he seems a viable candidate for our unknown adversary,” said Max.
“But Uncle Six was so courteous at the wake,” I argued. “Bowed before the coffin, spent a lot of time paying his respects to the relatives, stayed to mingle with visitors. John said his behavior is what restored the family’s face after that scandalous scene between Benny’s mistress and his wife.”
“Hearing about that is what put him on my radar,” said Lucky. “The Chens told me they were surprised by it, since everyone knew he didn’t like Benny. So that got me to thinking that maybe he was the one who whacked the guy.”
“Because he showed such respect for the departed?” I asked. “Don’t you think he might have done that just because exercising benevolence toward a dead rival was good for his face?”
“Esther’s point is well taken,” said Max. “No doubt Uncle Six’s behavior that evening enhanced his own social credit, not just the Yee family’s. It was a shrewd choice, a way of confirming his unshakeable stature.”
“Maybe,” Lucky conceded. “But another possibility is that Six is one of those guys who get a kick out showing up at a funeral and acting like the dead guy was their favorite person, when they’re really the one who sent him down for the dirt nap.”
“Well, that’s creepy,” I said disapprovingly.
“No argument there,” said Lucky. “I mean, sure, sometimes you can’t get out of attending the send-off of a guy you whacked. But that ain’t no reason to be oily about it.”
I couldn’t think of a reply to that, so I stuffed my shredded duck dumpling into my mouth.
“A person who could murder Benny Yee and then show such solicitude to his widow at the wake . . .” Max nodded. “That would certainly be in keeping with the cruelly ironic methodology of the murder—sending a death curse to a notoriously superstitious man.”
I asked, “Do you think Uncle Six could be some sort of sorcerer?”
“Possibly,” said Max. “Lucky, do you know if he has any previous connection with mystical events?”
Lucky shook his head. “As far as I can tell, he don’t. I’ve talked with reliable sources about this. And Six is a high-profile guy, after all, meaning there’s always a lotta chatter about him. So I think I’d have found something by now—at least a question mark—if he had a habit of conjuring mysterious mojo.”
“In that case,” said Max, “I am inclined to think that rather than possessing the sort of power used in this murder, he instead is a man with the resources to secure the assistance of a discreet person with the necessary skills.”
“Definitely,” said Lucky. “I know something about this guy’s reputation. If he wants a thing to be done, it gets done. Maybe he saw someone with dark power and thought of a way to use it to get rid of an inconvenient upstart who was getting on his nerves.” He added, “Or maybe he wanted to whack Benny in a way that would never point to him—or even be recognized as murder—and so he looked around for someone who could help him pull that off.”
“Either way,” I said, “it sounds like Uncle Six is someone who could have arranged the weird way Benny was killed.”
“And he had motive,” said Lucky. “In fact, he might’ve felt pushed to it. I hear that Benny was getting pretty aggressive with Ning by the time he died.”
“That sounds reckless,” I said, remembering the ruthlessness I had sensed in Uncle Six at Benny’s wake.
“Or desperate,” said Lucky. “Benny was having a run of bad luck lately, just like his widow told your movie director. One of his perfectly legitimate business interests went bust last month, and then the cops shut down a less-than-strictly-legal operation that was a good earner for him. Maybe if things had been going well, he’d have been more patient and bided his time. But with his luck turning sour and his business concerns bleeding money, he started getting pushy, demanding a bigger cut of things and trying to grab more power. And that didn’t go over well with Joe Ning.”
“No, I wouldn’t think so,” I said, finishing the food on my plate and resisting the urge to reach for seconds. I had a feeling that every extra bite would show up in whatever costumes Ted wanted to me to try on at his mother’s store tonight. “Well, at least we have a viable suspect now. That’s progress. Uncle Six is not a person I look forward to investigating, though.”