Chapter Three
It was his heart.” The pathologist took off her gloves and her mask. I kept my mask on until we walked into the better air of her office and closed the door to the autopsy room. “It was diseased. Could have occurred at any moment. Could have gone when he was crossing the street, when he was making love, when he was sitting in a chair watching TV. He happened to be in a restaurant drinking, that’s all.”
I couldn’t believe that someone sitting next to the character with the red shirt just fell over dead. “You’re sure nothing pushed it over the edge?”
“Like what, Inspector?”
“I don’t know.”
“Neither do I. Don’t speculate, it’s a sign of insecurity. We can wait for the reports on what was in his blood and his stomach, but I don’t think they’ll tell us anything. Anyway, it might be a month before we see them. The testing laboratory is very low on chemicals, and their equipment has been sent out for repair. According to his identification, he was thirty-five. I’d say he lived five years beyond his appointed day, that’s all. Just a matter of time.”
“What about the body that was brought in here the other day, the one hit by the bus, was that also a matter of time?”
“Tell me, Inspector, did you see any other bodies in there? The one you just brought with you is all I have. I’ve got vacancies, if you’re interested.”
“I asked you a question.”
“You got an answer.” The pathologist dropped the gloves on her desk. “I use these a week at a time. They’re only meant to be used once, then thrown away. If I wear them again, they contaminate the evidence. If I throw them away, I won’t have enough to last the month.”
I looked at the mask in my hand. The pathologist laughed. “I opened a new one for you, but the next person here gets a dose of whatever you are carrying around.”
“When you receive the reports on the blood and stomach, even if they’re delayed, let me know. You have my number. Maybe it’s simple, like you said, his heart just gave out, but if there is anything in his system out of the ordinary, call me.”
“I will.”
“Unless you get another set of orders with red numbers.” I looked around the office. “I need to see your file with those orders.”
She stiffened. “I don’t give the orders, Inspector, I follow them. And you don’t have authorization to see that file. You know you don’t, so why did you even ask?”
I smiled. “It never hurts to try.”
She opened the desk drawer and held something out for me. “I can’t give you those orders, but this business card was inside his jacket, in the lining, actually. You can have it. Strange, wouldn’t you say? It’s from somewhere called Club Blue. Mean anything?”
“It might. You always check the lining?” I put the card in my pocket and then stuffed the mask in as well.
“No, but there was a hole in his pocket and it slipped through. There was also a piece of gum.”
“I’ll just keep the mask with me in case I have to come back.”
“Welcome anytime, Inspector, anytime at all.” She sat down at her desk. “You know the way out.”
2
“Where’s that wallet full of money?” Min dropped the normal “where have you been” when I walked in the next morning. I could tell he was angry. There was nothing on his face, and barely anything different in his voice, but he rarely went straight to the point.
“It’s safe and sound, don’t worry.” Trouble this early in the day wasn’t good. We should have gotten rid of the bank robbery case by now, but it was still hanging around my neck.
“I want it on my desk, immediately.”
“Can’t, I don’t have it on me. It’s at home.”
“In your apartment house, the one with no locks on the doors?”
“What’s the problem? No one goes into anyone else’s apartment. We have a code of honor.”
“A code of honor, in an apartment house filled with people who don’t have a pot to pee in? Why do you insist on living in that place? We could get you into somewhere nice, nicer than that, anyway.”
“It’s home, I like it.” Where I lived was my business. Min knew better than to tangle with me on that.
“Fine, that’s your affair, though it keeps triggering questions in the quarterly reviews. Somebody in the Ministry has started voicing suspicions that it isn’t normal for you to refuse multiple offers for a better place with more room. They think it must be a ruse.”
“Pardon me, but bullshit. What am I going to do with more room? Anyway, they’re good people in those apartments, no pretensions.”
“I know you are fond of the idea of the perfectibility of mankind, Inspector, but not at the expense of the Ministry’s procedures, please. How do you even hold on to such a notion? Every day we have examples right in front of our eyes telling us it isn’t true.”
“I don’t believe such a thing. I never said I did.”
“You don’t believe in the perfectibility of man?”
“Careful.”
“We’re not talking about me, Inspector, we’re talking about you. What I believe, I keep to myself.”
“So do I.”
“Ah, how I wish that were so. Do you know how much trouble I have every month, juggling the figures so it doesn’t come out that we are the office with the lowest arrest rate in the city?”
“We happen to work in a refined part of town, is all.”
“So, now you are suggesting that crime has a socioeconomic dimension, and that poorer people are more prone to crime than those who are better off?”
I laughed. “Rich people just commit different sorts of crimes. I see it every day at the markets.”
Min shook his head. “That’s not what we are discussing at the moment. We are dealing with something more philosophical than the price of shoes. We are discussing your view of mankind. Tell me, do you believe that man is already perfect? That there is no need for, shall we say, the gentle guidance of our leaders, who know, shall we say, the truth?”
Min’s mastery of the ironic was suddenly a little thin. “This conversation is going to get one of us in trouble,” I said.
“No, it won’t. I’m certainly not going to remember it five minutes from now. But you have my interest piqued. As long as we are on the subject, why are our arrest figures so low?”
“People make mistakes; they are not always crimes.”
“That isn’t for us to judge.”
“Not in a formal sense, no. But you’ll admit there is a difference.”
“I admit nothing, Inspector. You haven’t answered me. Do you believe man is already perfect?”
“What difference does it make what I think about mankind?”
“You are squirming like a fish on a hook. You have a guilty look in your eye. I’ve caught you, haven’t I? You basically think people are good, that they might commit bad acts, mistakes as you put it, but if we were to tote everything up, take the sum total of their lives, on balance mankind is more good than bad. How could I have landed the only policeman on the continent, maybe even on the planet, who believes such a fantasy?”
Neither of us said anything. I looked out at the gingko trees. Min examined his nails.
Finally, he cleared his throat. “You realize, Inspector, by extension, if you believe humans are perfect, you are saying the same about yourself. That’s what the lady with the grating voice will conclude, before she pronounces sentence on us, and trust me, it will be both of us. I’m your supervisor; if your thoughts have gone astray, they’ll say it was because I didn’t give you proper oversight.”
“I haven’t said anything, Min. You’ve been doing all the talking, and all the inferring, and all the surmising.”
“How did we get into this, anyway?”
“You said I shouldn’t trust the people in my apartment house.”
“For now, for the sake of argument, we’ll grant the perfectibility of the people in your humble dwelling, Inspector. But there are other people, many other people wandering around, from all sorts of places.”
“Chagang.”
“Yes, Chagang.”
“Maybe even worse.”
“Leave the Chinese out of this. My only point is, you don’t know who might be padding down the dark halls of your apartment house at this moment.”
“Well, I think I might. More to the point, I know who isn’t, and anyone who doesn’t belong there isn’t. Maybe the doors of your building are open for one and all. At my building, there is an old woman who guards the entrance. She has nothing better to do than stop people she doesn’t recognize, and if she says they can’t pass, they don’t.”
“What about Yang? Could he get into your building, with a Ministry ID?”
“Well, he did.”
A warning flag hoisted itself up the flagpole. “How do you know?”
“Because he was at your apartment this morning after you left, and he says he couldn’t find the wallet.”
“He went into my apartment? My apartment? Without asking my permission?”
“I told him to.” Min had his head down so he didn’t have to look at me.
“Well, that’s that, then.” I was determined to keep an atom of nonchalance in my voice, and nearly did. “If you don’t need me, I’ll be going.”
When Min picked up his head, he had a doleful look on his face. Having the apartment of one of our own staff searched was wildly beyond anything we’d ever done in our office. No chief inspector could expect to pull something like this and hope to keep his people with him. All I could figure was that Min was under so much pressure on this case it had undermined his judgment.
“Now, Inspector, this minute. I want that wallet, and I want it to be full of nice, crisp euro notes, all in order.” He was trying to sound resolute, but I could tell he felt bad.
“I thought Yang brought it back.”
“I told you, he said he couldn’t find it.” Min thought a moment. “Would you describe Yang as one of your perfect people?”
“Go to hell. You can go straight to hell.” My voice was unnaturally strained, it had taken on the timbre of a fighter plane off in the distance, lining up to strafe a truck convoy at dawn. I shook off the image. My parents had been killed in a strafing attack during the war, a lone jet in a barely light sky. I rarely thought about it, but when I was mad, it bobbed to the surface sometimes.
“Well, is he?” Min caught the ominous rumble and pushed back slightly from his desk.
“Yang is fine. Still a little shaken, but he’s coming out of it, slowly. The man just needs some more time. It was a shock, losing his family like that.” Min had crossed another line, this one worse than the first. It was galling enough that he had ordered a search of my apartment, but I was even angrier at what he was insinuating about Yang. The only thing to do was to change the subject, or walk out. “So, you and Yang discussed the death of that fellow in the noodle shop?”
Min was glad to follow my lead. “Yes, we talked about that. And if it was only that, it would be dandy. But the guy that Little Li dragged over here last night was out again in an hour, and he was spitting mad about how he was treated.”
“He was treated fine. No one roughed him up. Neither Yang nor Li would do that. He had a nasty disposition, that’s all, and he was extra interested in the money. In case anyone has forgotten, he was sitting next to a man who fell off his chair into the great void under suspicious circumstances. We needed him to answer a few questions. Yang would have made a few mournful queries, Li would have taken a couple of hours typing up the report, the guy would have signed it, and he could have walked into the night.”
“Except for one thing. He’s somebody’s son.”
“Oh, excuse me. I’m somebody’s son.” I hesitated. Well, I was, even though I’d barely known my father. “You’re somebody’s son. We’re all somebody’s son, unless we’re somebody’s daughter.”
“Good, thank you, Inspector. Further lessons on lineage will be especially useful when we are on our way to a fucking coal mine in the fucking mountains.”
“It’s that bad?” Pressure apparently didn’t even begin to explain what Min was feeling.
“No, worse, much worse. He is not only someone’s son, he is someone’s husband . . . stop . . . don’t say anything, Inspector.” Min raised his voice and started speaking faster. “I don’t doubt that he is also someone’s cousin, and someone’s nephew, as well. Let me put it in words that will be plain, even to you. He is well connected. He moves in important circles.” He took a deep breath. “And he is now our enemy.”
“Why was he in that little noodle restaurant if he is such a big shot?” It was unsettling to see Min so rattled. We had lots of enemies. One more wouldn’t kill us—unless it was someone close to the center.
“I don’t care. I don’t care at all where he dines. He can come in here and dance on my desk if he wants to.”
“What about his dead friend?”
“Case closed. Episode never happened. Our prime witness is untouchable.”
“No, not yet, there is blood work and—”
“Closed. Locked. Sealed. I don’t care about his dead friend, not for one single, solitary second. Got it? The pathologist called to say the chances of getting anything back from the lab this century are zero; she said she’s sure it was his heart, and if she’s sure, that’s good enough for me. Now, bring me that wallet, and there better not be one bill missing.”
“The dead man, the owner of the wallet, had a business card from Club Blue in his jacket.”
“Anything else?”
“Some gum.”
Min threw up his hands.
“And”—I didn’t think this would weigh very heavily with Min, but I might as well throw it on the scale—“I saw the manager of that same club coming out of the Gold Star Bank last night.”
“So what? He was probably putting his money in the bank. That’s what people do these days, don’t ask me why. I wouldn’t trust a bank with my money. And our dead friend might have liked drinking clubs. It means nothing to me. All I care about at this moment is that wallet, not gum, not business cards—the wallet.”
“It wasn’t his wallet, I told you. We didn’t touch his wallet.”
“He says it is his. He says you stole it.”
“A lie.”
“A well-connected lie, Inspector.” He stopped for a moment and seemed to regain some composure. “Alright, of course I know you didn’t steal the wallet, but how are we going to explain it when we send in a report that claims your apartment now doubles as our evidence custody room?”
“Where do you suppose he got all those big euro bills?”
“Not from the bank robbery.”
“How do you know?” Min was developing a bad habit of telling me things I did not know.
“Listen, the robbers got away with three bags of small bills, nothing bigger than a fifty. From what Yang says, the wallet had mostly one-, two-, and five-hundred-euro bills.”
Fine. Good. You have so many facts, why don’t you take over the investigation? Here.” I pulled the few notes I had on the case out of my pocket. “You can have these. Best of luck.”
“Inspector.” Min’s voice dropped to a soothing register. “It’s your case, you have the lead. Keep your notes. You do as you see fit. I’m just telling you a few tidbits that I happen to know.” He folded his hands on the desk and leaned toward me. “Look, it is painfully obvious every day that I’m not as good a chief inspector as Pak was, but what can I do?”
This came out of nowhere, though I knew it wasn’t nowhere or he never would have said it. It must have been eating at him for a long time. I’d have to do something, suggest we sit and talk to clear the air. It was past time for that, anyway. But not now. Right now we had a big problem—an accusation that we had stolen some money. It had to be fixed in a hurry. “Anything else you happen to know?”
“Not at the moment. If anything pops up, we’ll chat.”
It was irritating, that phrase. “Thank you. I’m interested in things that pop up, always have been. Sometimes I say to myself, ‘O, try to pay more attention to things that pop up, can’t you?’ ”
Min frowned before looking down at his desk. He moved a file folder from right to left, straightened it, then moved it back where it had been. “Don’t let’s be at each other’s throats, Inspector. It won’t do either of us any good.”
“There are some times, Min, I have the feeling there is nothing that will do any good.” That came out harsher than I meant it, but it was out and there wasn’t any way to make it softer. Better just to let things cool off. I left without saying anything else; Min’s sigh was audible all the way down the hall.
3
I was ready to waste a few hours at the Traffic Bureau trying to locate the file on the accident. The accusation about the wallet and the search of my apartment told me that the pressure on Min was at a danger point; the case had sharp edges, and anyone handling it was going to get sliced. The sooner we dropped it, the better. But I had to admit, there was something odd about it, something that made me want to hold it up to the light one more time before dumping it in the trash. For one thing, it wasn’t usual for a bus to hit a man wearing a silk stocking over his face. It would be interesting to see what the Traffic Bureau file said, and I figured the case would have been discussed enough in the halls that it would be easy to find what I needed. I just had to make sure I didn’t find out too much.
When I got to the Traffic Bureau, a sign on the front window said they were all in a political meeting and wouldn’t be open for business until after lunch. I walked in anyway. Sure enough, the front desk was deserted, but there was more laughter from a room in back than I normally associate with political meetings. Finally, the door opened, and a line of traffic officers in white uniforms came out. Most of them had deeply tanned faces, from being outside in the weather all the time. I recognized a couple of them. They nodded as they walked past but didn’t say anything.
I went up to the front desk as the officer on duty sat down and told him what I wanted. “Who needs to know?” He stared at my identification card. He was a little man, very fine bone structure. He moved like a bird.
“I do.”
“What do you mean, who are you? It says so right here, on this card. Got my picture, my name, the signature of the Minister of People’s Security. That is usually enough. You have special requirements around here these days?”
“What’s your problem? I asked a simple question, who needs to know. It has to go on the release form.”
“I told you—I need to know. And I told you who I am. That’s who goes on the release form. Me. We finished with the formalities?”
He took my ID, looked at it for a long time. “Sorry. No such incident.”
“What do you mean, no such incident? There’s a body in the morgue that says there was.”
“Really? You talked to him, did you, the body?”
“No, but I talked to the person who did the autopsy.”
“Really? Someone told you they did an autopsy?”
“Not exactly.”
“No, not exactly. Not at all, from what I hear. If there is nothing else, Inspector, we’re busy.” He picked up the phone. I put my hand on his little wrist, gently. Even so, it wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done.
He put the phone down, stared at my hand for a moment, then looked up at me. He was trembling with rage. “Never do that, Inspector. Never, ever do that.”
I patted his wrist. “That didn’t hurt, did it? But we weren’t done with our conversation. I showed you a valid identification card. You are blocking my investigation. That is against regulations.”
He stopped trembling long enough to sneer. “There is nothing to block, Inspector. That’s what I told you. We have no file; there was never any accident like you described. Go away. And I mean now.” The sneer was replaced by a grin. “I hear SSD is moving into the case. That’s bad news for you inspector-boys, makes you look like a bunch of ducks.”
This was sometimes called “healthy tension” between different parts of the Ministry. Actually, the Traffic Bureau hated us, the construction troops despised the traffic cops, and nobody could stand the guards at the camps. I could stay and make a nuisance of myself, but it would tie me up for an hour, and even then I knew I wouldn’t see the whole file—which, if I stopped to think about it, I had to admit I didn’t want to see. But I also didn’t want some runt of a Traffic Bureau clerk telling me what I could see and what I couldn’t. His superior would be more amenable, even offer me tea, but claim to have no information. He would make phone calls, he would tell me: You can rest assured, Inspector, I’ll call all the way up the line if that is what it takes. He would promise to make inquiries: Most certainly, Inspector, we will continue to search the records. He would get back to me: As soon as I hear anything, absolutely as soon as I hear, I’ll call you. None of it remotely true. Better to leave now and cut my losses.
On the walk back to the office, I decided enough was enough. I’d put the case file in the bottom drawer and forget about it. Min wouldn’t like it if SSD took over, but that was the least of my concerns. If he had to deal with it in the Saturday meeting, that was his problem.
When I got back to my office, I heard voices coming from Min’s room. A minute later, my phone rang.
“O here.”
“Inspector, come into my office, please.”
“I need to write up one of those daily reports for yesterday.”
“No, you don’t, and you didn’t get anything done at the Traffic Bureau, just like at the bank and that bar. We need to talk.”
Min was behind his desk, and in a chair against the wall was a lanky man, probably in his late thirties, wearing an open white shirt with cuffs that could knock your eyes out, a blue blazer, and tan slacks. His hair was short and neat. He had a dark complexion, made darker by the large, square sunglasses that hid his eyes and a good deal of territory around them.
Min stood up as I walked in, which put me on my guard. “Inspector, I want you to meet someone.” The other man nodded but didn’t get out of his chair. “This is Lieutenant Han, from SSD. He’ll be working with you on the bank robbery.”
So, the boom had been lowered, even faster than I’d expected. Maybe too fast. I eyed the man from SSD, a long, thoughtful look, nothing to suggest I was surprised, or concerned, or already felt quicksand up to my waist. The man from SSD returned my gaze, or maybe he didn’t. He might have been sleeping, for all I knew; you couldn’t be sure what was going on behind those big dark glasses. I turned back to Min. “Good of SSD to make the offer to work with us, but unnecessary. This is an important case.” I paused to make sure I had the next sentence phrased just right, with the sarcasm decently buried. “They should handle it, and we wouldn’t want to weigh them down.” Lieutenant Han didn’t respond, but Min did, before anything like an awkward silence had a chance to establish itself.
“The State Security Department has been assigned to this case, Inspector, in conjunction with us.” Min was talking fast, clipping words like hedges; that usually happened when he was nervous or in the presence of people who clearly were—or might conceivably be—a threat. “You can imagine how the Center wants all resources working together. The Minister has personally approved.” This I doubted, unless the word “approved” was taken in the strictly literal sense of signing one’s name to a piece of paper. Min must have read my mind. “The signed order is coming down later today. You and Han here can start before it arrives. Take some time to get acquainted, get used to each other’s mode of operations, that sort of thing. You’ll need to give him a full briefing on where things stand. Teamwork, Inspector.” Min’s voice was looking for a false bravado it couldn’t find. “That’s the new way. No more lone-wolf policing. Teamwork.” The word seemed to give him a certain ballast. I was afraid he might repeat it again, but he only looked at us in turn and fiddled with a pencil.
Now there was an awkward silence. Han finally stood up. I thought maybe the reference to wolves had stirred him. “All we have to do is solve this, Inspector. After that, we can go back to normal.” He spoke with his mouth mostly closed, in a voice that sounded like he was borrowing it from someone else. This kid was not going to be much help, already I knew that. I’d trailed along with SSD many times before, and it was never pleasant. At our level, they were a threat, alright, but not the usual type. When they weren’t lazy, they were stupid. The combination was inevitably lethal for someone; I always tried to make sure it wasn’t me. The only time it was really serious was when SSD headquarters became personally involved. Those people had heft, that we knew, and you didn’t want to get in their way.
“Fine, good to have you with us, Lieutenant.” I took the silk stocking out of my back pocket. “You wouldn’t have the match to this, would you?”
Min sat down. The chair creaked, but he said nothing as he covered his eyes.
Han followed me back to my office. He looked around the room. “Where’s your computer?”
“We don’t have computers.” This was the first sign of trouble. SSD had a bigger budget and was better equipped. Even more galling, it liked to rub our noses in the fact that it was operating from a higher plane than the rest of us. What SSD wanted, SSD got. “We don’t need them, actually.” I gestured around the room to suggest the office was more than sufficiently equipped.
“Is that so?” Han went over to my file cabinet. “You have everything in here?” He opened the top drawer, where I keep my wood scraps and my sandpaper. “What’s this?”
“I keep that mostly empty for evidence.” He didn’t say anything. I pushed the drawer shut. “You like wood?”
“I use it to pick my teeth. Where’s the paper on this case?”
“Wasn’t it in your computer?”
Han slowly took off his glasses and put them in his shirt pocket before he fixed me with a cold look. He did have eyes, after all. They were way too gentle for SSD, almost a girl’s eyes, but he had perfected the cold look pretty well. “It doesn’t matter to me how we get this done this, Inspector. Because when everything is over, I have someplace useful to go back to. You, on the other hand, will still be here.” He dusted off the chair with a handkerchief before he sat down. “You see what I mean?”
“Tell me, Han, harassed anyone interesting lately?”
“What?”
“That’s SSD’s main job, isn’t it? I mean, harassing people.”
“You want to be real careful, Inspector, from here on out. Real careful in what you say.”
“No, seriously, I’m interested, Lieutenant. You must have techniques, am I right? A phone call comes in; it’s anonymous and for some reason untraceable; someone tells you that someone else just said something questionable about—”
“Like I said, Inspector, be real careful.”
“Well, you know what I mean. So you start up a file or something. It must be hard to keep track of all those phone calls, all those people who say things in such soft voices. Hard to hear people talking that soft, sometimes. You never said ‘something’ yourself? I mean, you can tell me, Lieutenant, just the two of us here.”
“Inspector, I’m going to do you a favor and pretend my hearing has gone bad. We have a lot of work to do, let’s do it.”
“Good, let’s go harass someone, Lieutenant. You can show me how it’s done.”
Min stopped me on the way out. “Inspector, could I see you a moment?” He shut the door when I stepped into his office. “Lay off the kid, would you? He’s smart, he has a good reputation. Maybe if we stay on his good side, he’ll go away happy.”
“You forgot one thing. He works for SSD. The last thing in the world he wants to do is help the Ministry.”
Min went over to his desk and sat down. If his chief inspector bottom was on the chair, it meant he was going to say something important. “I’m going to tell you this once, Inspector. One time, a single, solitary time. Listen carefully, please. We cooperate with SSD on this, or they eat us alive.” He closed his eyes. “Don’t argue, just do it and let’s get back to normal, like the man said.”
4
The two of us were in Han’s car, heading toward the Gold Star Bank. Han was driving with one hand, holding a cigarette in the other. It didn’t take much to convince him that his car was better than mine, and that if we were taking his car, he should drive. The driver always thinks he is in control, exactly what I wanted. Things would go smoother if Han thought that he had the lead and that I recognized his position. I looked out the window and wondered why no one from SSD ever knew anything about investigations. Or why they wouldn’t listen to anyone who did. Maybe it was the gene pool they pulled from. Han was driving too fast. That was another SSD trait.
“We in a big hurry?” I put my hand on the dashboard to brace myself as we pulled around a truck.
“I’m driving, Inspector. When you drive, you pick the speed. Let’s agree on that, shall we?” In that borrowed voice again.
I took a piece of poplar wood out of my pocket and began sanding it with an old scrap of sandpaper. There wasn’t much left of the sandpaper, and poplar isn’t all that interesting. I was just going through the motions. The car swerved as Han reached for my hand and yelled, “Hey! You’re messing up my upholstery.”
“You’re driving,” I said. “I’m sanding. Let’s agree on that.” I brushed the front of my shirt. It always amazed me how much sawdust came out of a little piece of poplar; sawdust and matchsticks. Trash wood, my grandfather would say.
Han pulled over and braked sharply in front of the train station. “Put it away, Inspector. I heard about you and wood. You can mess up that dump you call an office with sawdust if you want, but not here. In fact, don’t do it in my presence, not on this case.” When he was angry, I noticed, he fell into using his real voice. It was younger, not so tough.
I blew some sawdust against the front windshield and watched it settle on the dashboard. “I’m not here because I volunteered, Han. As I recall, the sequence was this: You showed up in my chief inspector’s office, and he told me to cooperate with you. It was a Ministry order. We were to work as a team. I’m doing my part; I’m doing what I do. If you want to make changes to that, be my guest. Get your headquarters to call you back home. Otherwise, we have work to do. Sawdust bothers you? File a complaint. Trust me, it’s a lot easier to clean up sawdust than it is to repair cigarette burns in upholstery.” I waited, but he didn’t have a smart answer ready, so I continued. “Tell me something, if you don’t mind.”
“What?” Kind of sullen but also, I thought, preoccupied.
“You wear those sunglasses when you sleep?”
Han threw his cigarette out the window and stepped on the gas. A traffic policeman was crossing the street to see why we were stopped. Han sped past him. “Okay,” he said. “Good. We’re beyond the getting-to-know-you stage. The textbooks refer to it as ‘initial posturing.’ It has been established beyond a reasonable doubt that you don’t like SSD. That’s your problem. Can we move on to something else?” This was still his regular voice, but I could tell he didn’t have a chance to use it much, except maybe when he was talking to himself.
“Move on to something else,” I said, “such as?”
“Such as the bank robbery we’re supposed to be investigating.”
“Is that the next stage in the textbook?”
“Inspector”—Han turned into a side street that took us two short blocks from the bank—“I’m not interested in our becoming fast friends. All I want is to see this case file in the out-basket.” He switched off the engine, took off his sunglasses, and pulled a notebook from a side pocket on his door. “Your out-basket had a piece of wood in it, oak I think it was.”
“What sort of oak?” I wasn’t going to give in that easily. Maybe oak was the only tree he knew.
Han leaned back and smiled. “Oak, that’s enough.”
“Fine, we’re back to stage one, getting acquainted.” Han didn’t fit with the normal SSD character. I’d never heard one of them refer to a textbook, or to any book, actually. “If I had to guess”—I stared out the windshield—“I’d guess you aren’t from SSD. The blazer had me fooled, but no one from SSD is so smooth, and none of them know oak from abalone. Who are you really?”
Han didn’t break stride. “Just who your boss said I was. We have been put together to focus resources on a crime the Center wants solved. You have a reputation as a competent investigator.” Curiously, it sounded like a compliment. “I have access to files and equipment you lack. I’ve worked in SSD for almost eight years. Satisfied?”
“No. It’s a sad day, when one ox can’t pull the cart.”
“Let’s leave farm implements out of it for now.” He started thumbing through the notebook. “This woman, Chon, at the bank. Have you seen her file?”
“She doesn’t have a file.”
“Inspector, everyone has a file. I have a file. You have a file.” A faraway look came over his face. “And it’s some file.” He closed his eyes briefly, in a kind of ecstasy I didn’t like. “Anyway, I can have her searched in our records.” He checked his cuffs. “At least we can see if she exists on the computer. She works with foreign currency; most of those people have to fill out special paperwork.”
“Only one problem, we don’t have her full name yet. She hasn’t been formally interviewed.”
“What does that matter? Her name should be cross-filed under the bank’s employees.”
“So, why are we sitting here? Drop me off, and you can go back to your office to check.”
“Go back? I’m going to call in her name from here. It will only take a couple of minutes for the computer run. That way, when we go in, we’ll have something to talk about.” Han took a cell phone from his coat pocket, dialed a number, said a few words, then put the phone on the dashboard and slumped down in his seat. “Now we wait.”
A few minutes later, the phone buzzed like a bee. Han pulled it to his ear, nodded his head, then turned it off.
“Impressive,” I said.
“Yes, they move fast.”
“No, I mean that buzzing. How do you get it to do that, instead of playing music?”
Han snorted. “Give me your cell number. I’ll call you so we can see what you have.”
“Not a chance.” I climbed out of the car. Whatever tune was programmed on my phone, Han didn’t need to hear it. “It’s time to go to work.”
“Don’t you want to know what they have on her in the files?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“Because they don’t have anything. I already told you, she doesn’t have a file.”
“How did you know that?” Han looked in the rearview mirror, frowned, and smoothed his hair.
“I checked. Women like her don’t have files. Women like her know a certain level of people, and people at that level don’t want to be in the files of women like her. It’s too hard to do, staying out of her file. The easier route is just to get rid of it, pay someone to lose it. Maybe we can go through the foreign visitors’ roster that the immigration people have, but I don’t think she’ll be there, either.”
Han shook his head. “Don’t worry; someone has a file on her, someplace. Let’s find out who she knows.” He smiled at the mirror, ran his finger over his teeth, and then frowned again. “I hate dealing with people who don’t have files. There is something abnormal about it.”
Just as we reached the bank’s front door, Han took a pair of latex gloves from his pocket. “You have a pair of these, Inspector?”
“No, but I have this.” I put on the mask from the morgue. “Do I really need it? We’re not going to do an autopsy, Han, we’re just going to ask the lady some questions.”
“This is a crime scene, Inspector, and there may be evidence. Without these gloves, you’ll contaminate the place, leave fingerprints. Take off the mask. They’ll think it’s another robbery.”
“The crime took place days ago. By now hundreds of fingers have visited. There’s no physical evidence left. But who knows, you can always get the flu.”
“Are you really going to leave that mask on?” He was sounding nettled.
I opened the door and walked in. “Don’t worry, it’s just us.” One of the desks was missing, and no one was sitting at the other two. The three teller windows along the rear wall were open; the broken one had been fixed. “Good security practice.” I turned back to Han. “Front door open, and the place is empty. No wonder they got robbed. If you need some cash, Han, it’s there in the back. Help yourself.”
Han pulled off his gloves and stuffed them in his back pocket. “Something isn’t right here, Inspector.”
“You’re telling me. Overnight, they’ve cleaned the place up, rearranged the furniture, and left for Switzerland. A good piece of plywood has disappeared, as well. It was exterior plywood, but they were using it inside, which wasn’t very smart. You could get splinters.”
“No one’s gone to Switzerland, trust me on that. Keep your eyes open while I go to check the back. Whistle if you see anyone coming.”
“Don’t bother. They’re in the back waiting, watching us on the security camera right now.” I pointed at the small camera bolted on the wall close to the ceiling in a back corner, over one of the desks. “I wonder if it taped the robbery. Wouldn’t that be a lucky break?”
“You’re out of luck, Inspector.” Miss Chon came in behind us through the front door. “We don’t tape. We just monitor from the back, mostly to make sure the clerks stay honest.” She frowned as I turned around. “I don’t have any communicable diseases, nothing that is airborne, anyway. You can take off your mask.” She looked at Han, then back to me. “I see you felt the need for reinforcements. I already told you, we don’t require an investigation.”
“And I told you, I am polite but persistent. This young fellow is not from my ministry, but he is more persistent than I am, and probably not as agreeable.”
Miss Chon didn’t bother to look at Han again. “I don’t care who he is. You’ll both have to leave, unless you have financial business to transact with the bank. Since the robbery, we aren’t letting people loiter. No one even comes in if we don’t recognize them as a customer.” She walked over to her desk and sat down. “I don’t recognize either of you.”
“Do you have any idea who you’re talking to?” Han was back to his tough voice, though the overall effect wasn’t helped by the buzzing coming from his coat pocket. “This is an SSD investigation, and the inspector and I will stand here until the mountains fall into the sea if we feel like it.”
Miss Chon was wearing a red dress with a white belt that made her waist look even smaller. It was a wonder she could breathe. “You’d better answer your phone before then. It might be your mother.” She smiled at me, I smiled back.
Han swore under his breath. “Get your manager out here. And where are the records?” He fumbled in his pocket for the phone; the buzzing stopped.
“Before we see the manager, we need to ask you a few questions.” I smiled again at Miss Chon. “Nothing too probing. Were you sitting out here when the robbery occurred?”
“This is my desk, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know whose it is. You weren’t sitting here yesterday. You were sitting at the desk that isn’t around anymore. You got tired of it? Needed a newer model?” I looked at the indentations in the rug where the other desk had been. It must have been heavy; the marks it left went deep into the carpet.
“It isn’t a crime to move furniture, Inspector, unless your ministry has discovered regulations from the old days, when things were tidy and dull. We needed a new interior scheme, that’s all, something that would attract more foreign customers. We hired a decorator, an Italian man who favors silk shirts that open to here.” Wherever “to here” was would look good on her, but I pretended not to notice. “He told us the colors were too plain and the furniture was too heavy. So, we’re lightening things up. Yesterday seemed like a good day to start.”
“This may come as a surprise, Miss Chon, but a bank robbery is considered a serious crime, and altering a crime scene is a bad thing to do. It’s actually hampering an investigation. That’s not from the old days; in the old days there weren’t investigations.” The look on her face told me she wasn’t going to chew her nails over the news that she had altered a crime scene. I moved along to something else. “What about that teller window? How did you get it repaired so quickly?”
Miss Chon crossed her legs and began to dangle one shoe off her foot. She looked very comfortable. “Quickly? What do you mean, Inspector? We’ve been waiting to get that fixed since February. The glass only came in this morning. The janitor put it in himself. He said we’re not to touch it for a couple of days, something about letting the glue dry.” Miss Chon reached over and massaged her ankle. I could hear Han’s labored breathing behind me.
“Maybe we should see the manager now,” I said.
“You already have, Inspector. Who did you think I am, a clerk, a pretty face to greet the men with bags of money? I’m the manager. And if you have no more questions, I’m very busy.” She looked up at the security camera for an instant, then turned back to me. “We’re closed today to customers. Tomorrow, to mark a fresh start, to help clear away the memory of the robbery and the unpleasantness outside, we’re holding a small party in the afternoon, at five o’clock. I know it’s a Sunday, but perhaps if you’re not busy you’d like to come, you and the bumblebee from SSD.”
As we walked back to the car, Han was silent. Just before he got in, he gave a little skip. “I knew it.” He opened the door and then slammed it shut. “I knew it.”
“Something I missed?”
“She’s in on it, Inspector. Did you see the way she was sitting?”
“I did. But you seemed to be paying more attention than I was.”
“What did it tell you—I mean, her posture, her demeanor?”
I opened the door and slid into the passenger seat. “She sits like a lady who knows how to cross her legs.”
Han climbed in on his side. “No, she doesn’t. She doesn’t sit like a lady at all. Her bearing was all wrong. She’s nervous, shifty. She didn’t make eye contact with me once.”
“I think she doesn’t like you.”
“Of course she doesn’t, I’m from SSD, and I’m a threat. She has a guilty conscience.”
“So why did she make eye contact with me?”
“Because she knows you’re not a threat, Inspector. She thinks you’re a clown.”
“Really, is that so?” I took some paper from my pocket and jotted a few notes. “Who do you think was in the back room?”
“No one.”
“I’d say you’re wrong, I’d say there was someone. She was nervous, I’ll grant you that, and she needed to get us out of there before we went into the back to take a look. She glanced at the security camera, not very long, but long enough to tell whoever was back there to leave. What did you think of the glass?”
“What glass?”
“The new glass in the teller window. She said the janitor did it himself and then told her not to touch it for a few days until it dried.”
“So?”
“It wasn’t glued. You don’t glue glass into place. You use putty. But this was just sitting in a slot in the frame. It could fall out if someone slammed the front door.”
“Who cares?”
“Why would she make up a story about something like that? More to the point, why would anyone who knows about being a janitor talk about gluing in the window?”
Han rubbed his nose. “You said there was a desk missing.”
“A heavy desk.”
“What was in it?”
“At last, a good question, Lieutenant Han. Now I have one for you. Shall we get something to eat?”