THE TWO CHINATOWNS
Chapter 5
At just after one A.M. Brunette got the call from Van Etten informing him that there was "quite the situation shaping up in Chinatown." It seemed that there had been some carnage in a restaurant there, Cisco had been the cause of a good part of it, and he was "basically uncooperative." His girlfriend had been murdered and a dishwasher had been killed, as well as two Chinese thugs. Cisco refused to provide the lawful authorities an explanation on what had occurred, and he quite forcefully refused to permit his girlfriend's body to be examined until Brunette arrived.
"Confounding situation, and quite unusual conduct on your man's part, eh?" Van Etten commented.
"Unusual? I never know what's unusual when it comes to Cisco," Brunette admitted. "Is he hurt?"
"Apparently not physically, but the captain on the scene thinks he's suffering some kind of controlled nervous breakdown that's spreading fast."
"Spreading?"
"For some reason your man has our Chinese community solidly behind him. I'm told that they're there in force, and prepared to behave just as irrationally as he is."
"Any arrests so far?"
"Not yet, and hopefully there won't be. I've already heard from two of our very influential Chinese civic leaders. They strongly urged that we use restraint tonight."
Without completely understanding the situation, Brunette sympathized with Van Etten's plight. "I'll get right over there," he promised. "If you don't mind, I'm going to bring Detective McKenna with me. He's Cisco's partner, and he'll be a big help calming him down."
"Don't mind at all. Bring him."
"Thanks. Give me the address."
"No need. There'll be a patrol car waiting for you in front of your hotel. I'm getting underway now, and I'll meet you at the restaurant."
* * *
The Chinatown street was so crowded with people and vehicles that the cop driving Brunette and McKenna had to park one block from the restaurant, behind a long line of other police vehicles, ambulances, and news vans. He told them that Van Etten was waiting for them in the mobile headquarters truck parked near the front of the restaurant.
Brunette and McKenna were big-city people accustomed to bizarre street scenes late at night, but the scene outside the Goo Pan restaurant was one that even they considered unusual. It was a street of restaurants. All of them should have been closed at that hour, but many weren't. Instead, they were serving as meeting areas for groups of well-dressed Chinese businessmen engaged in animated discussion inside. Outside the restaurants were Chinese waiters dressed in black pants and white shirts, as well as kitchen workers dressed in white.
The area in front of Goo Pan had been cordoned off by wooden barriers, with a dozen uniformed cops on the inside and hundreds of Chinese civilians on the outside. It was an orderly, quiet crowd consisting of men and women of all ages. Those closest to the barriers were content to lean against them and peer into the restaurant, but those on the outside seemed to be there without purpose.
Brunette and McKenna passed the restaurant and stood in front of the headquarters truck, taking in the scene for a few minutes. "What do you make of it?" Brunette asked.
"It's an organized demonstration that hasn't happened yet," McKenna replied. "All these people are just waiting for a purpose, leaders, and a plan."
"Who are the leaders? The suits in the restaurants?"
"I'd say so. Restaurant owners. They've got all their employees gathered outside, ready to join in while the cameras roll. For some reason, whatever happened in Goo Pan tonight has got them all worried."
McKenna knocked on the door of the headquarters truck. They were recognized by the uniformed cop who opened it, and he let them in.
The interior of the truck was laid out in the same fashion as the NYPD headquarters trucks utilized at the scenes of riots, major crimes, demonstrations, and natural disasters. Neighborhood maps, rows of portable radios in chargers, and personnel assignment sheets on clipboards covered one wall. The other wall was lined with the desks used by the administrative personnel monitoring the event. In the rear was the inner sanctum, the mobile office used by the chief in charge of the situation.
There was only one other person in the outer office, a middle-aged Asian man wearing a suit with a lieutenant's shield on a chain around his neck. He had a friendly smile so broad that McKenna and Brunette figured it was permanently affixed to his face. "Glad you're here, Commissioner. The chief's waiting for you in the back," he said in a Southern drawl that surprised them both.
Brunette had to ask. "Where you from, Lieutenant?"
"Alabama, suh, and proud of it. What the hell am I doing on the Toronto PD? is the next question. Right?"
"Absolutely right."
"Was in the U.S. Air Force in the seventies, stationed at a DEWEY radar site on the Arctic Circle. Happens that my CO was a lovely Canadian Air Force captain who just loved my Southern charm, but she wouldn't consider moving to Alabama just to have me around. So here I am, five kids later, a Canadian citizen and a Toronto cop."
"You like it up here?"
"Tough question that would take a lot of discussing. But like I said, suh, the chief's waiting." The lieutenant knocked on a door at the rear of truck, then opened it.
Van Etten was inside, standing at a window and peering through the blinds at the scene in front of Goo Pan. "Good evening, Roy," Brunette said. "Hiding from the press?"
"Yeah. How'd you know?"
"Do it myself from time to time when I don't have answers to give them. Sometimes do it in a truck just like this one."
"Comes in handy, doesn't it?" Van Etten asked. "They don't even know I'm here, and they won't find out unless we can get some answers from your man and make some sense out of whatever happened in that restaurant tonight."
"Then you'll be talking to them," Brunette promised. "Has your situation improved since you called me?"
"Somewhat. My people have finally been able to talk to three witnesses, so now we've got a better handle on what's going on here."
"Finally? What was the problem?" Brunette asked.
"Unusual. As I told you, it seems that your Detective Sanchez has the Chinese community solidly behind him. At first, not one witness would tell my investigators what had happened until Detective Sanchez made a statement."
"So why did they finally talk?"
"A half hour ago it was pretty tense out there, so Sanchez told the three to talk to my investigators."
"And that defused the situation?"
"To what it is now. One of the three witnesses is very influential in Chinatown. Sammy Ong, the vice-president of our Hip Sing branch. He helped calm things down."
Brunette was familiar with Hip Sing. It was one of the powerful international Chinese organizations that used to be called tongs in the U.S., but in recent times the tongs had attempted to assume a mantle of respectability as ordinary Chinese benevolent and business associations. In New York, Hip Sing had managed to project that image quite well, and had become a political force to be reckoned with since it numbered among its members many of the wealthiest and most successful businessmen in Chinatown. However, Brunette had intelligence information on Hip Sing that was not available to the general public, so he still regarded it as a fringe criminal organization involved in the operation of the many gambling clubs in New York's Chinatown, among other things.
In New York, operating the gambling clubs sometimes became quite messy since the tongs employed Chinese street gangs to protect their establishments. Most of the gangs owed their allegiance to one tong or another, and the young gang members were the foot soldiers in the occasional territorial disputes between the tongs. These disputes sometimes turned quite violent, and when they did, casualties among the gang members were often high. Often, innocent civilians were caught in the crossfire as well.
After New York, Toronto had the largest Chinatown in North America. Brunette recognized that Cisco's having the vice-president of the local Hip Sing as a friendly witness went a long way toward explaining the crowd on the street ready to support him. The call went out from Hip Sing, and the crowd appeared outside the restaurant shortly after.
"How many witnesses are there all together?" McKenna asked Van Etten.
"A total of thirteen. Eleven adults and two children, but not one of them saw everything that happened in the restaurant tonight. Bit of a problem, but by piecing together the accounts of the three who've talked, we're able to get a somewhat cloudy view of the total picture."
"How does Cisco look in this `cloudy view?' Is he going to come out of this all right?" Brunette asked.
"I'd say so, but ultimately that will be up to the coroner's jury to decide after the inquests."
"But your department isn't charging him with anything at the moment?"
"He's killed two people tonight under unusual circumstances, probably Chinese street gang members, but at the moment we're considering them justifiable homicides."
"Could you give me the story, as you know it now?"
Van Etten explained to Brunette and McKenna what had happened that night. The two NYPD cops weren't surprised about the Frisbee throw of the plate that killed one gangster. It was the kind of thing that only Cisco could try and get away with doing. But Brunette had a funny feeling about the death of Johnny Chow. "What happened with the knife?" he asked Van Etten.
"Linda told Sanchez what they had done to Sue, and he seemed to take it pretty calm. Took the guy from under the chair and dragged him to the bathroom to look at the body. When Sanchez saw her, he went to pieces and the gangster saw his chance. Grabbed his gun from Sanchez's belt, tried to shoot him, and Sanchez stabbed him with the serving knife he had in his sleeve."
"Dead?"
"Very. Stabbed in the heart with a dull serving knife," Van Etten said, shaking his head. "My men were outside by that time. Saw the whole thing through the window. Justifiable self-defense."
Neither McKenna nor Brunette could imagine any one man taking a gun from Cisco's belt, but any questions they might have had they kept to themselves. "Who called the police?" Brunette asked.
"Sammy Ong. Used his cell phone while he was under the table. We had a pretty good response time, under four minutes."
"How did your people treat Cisco when they got here?" McKenna asked.
"With professional courtesy, once they found out who he was. I'm sorry to say that our courtesy wasn't exactly returned, though. Sanchez was very shaken up, just about irrational for a while. He wouldn't make a statement and threatened to knock our coroner out when he tried to examine Sue's body. Said nobody was to touch her or even look at her until you came. Closed the bathroom door and stood in front of it with quite an attitude. As you can imagine, the mood in there was quite tense for a while."
"Is it more relaxed now?"
"Somewhat. My captain's a good man and he was at the fight tonight. He knew that Sanchez could cause some damage, and he didn't want to provoke an international police incident without calling me first. I told him to let Sanchez have his way, and then I called you."
"Thank you," Brunette said. "That was very kind of you, and I owe you a big favor."
"I'll consider the debt paid if you can help us straighten out this mess. I think you could also do yourself a favor by getting some psychological help for Sanchez. He must've been crazy about that girl, and he's hurting."
"Really crazy," McKenna said. "She changed his life and he was determined to marry her."
"Real tragedy. How long they been going together?"
McKenna didn't want to answer, so he looked to Brunette. It was obvious to him that Brunette didn't want to either, but he did. "Two days, I believe."
"Two days? How long has he known her?"
"Two days."
"She changed his life and he was determined to marry her after just two days?" Van Etten said, not understanding at all. "Seems to me that man should've been in treatment a long time ago."
"Not so," McKenna said. "I'm his partner, and I know him as well as anyone. I can tell you he's totally sane, usually rational, and he always stands by his decisions. Two days or ten years, makes no difference. If this hadn't happened tonight, Cisco and Sue would've grown old together."
Van Etten appeared unimpressed with McKenna's analysis of Cisco. "Unusual man, but I'll be glad when he's out of my hair."
"We'll get his story and get him out of there," Brunette promised. "Anything else you want us to do?"
"I need more than just his story. Homicides are rare here and I've got four people dead, so I'm going to be under a lot of pressure for answers in a hurry. I need the whole story, including the reason those gangsters came in there tonight to beat and kidnap a dishwasher."
"What makes you think Cisco knows the reason?" Brunette asked.
"He knows. After he calmed down, he had a long, animated conference in front of the men's room with Benny Po and Sammy Ong. My captain thinks they were coming up with a cover story, because it was after that talk that our three witnesses finally decided to talk."
"Didn't your captain listen in?"
"Tried to, but they were speaking in Chinese."
"Cisco speaks Chinese?" Brunette and McKenna asked at the same time. Both instantly regretted the question.
"Of course he does," Van Etten said, looking from one to the other, and then focusing on McKenna. "Didn't you just tell me that you know him as well as anybody does?"
"Yes, that was me who said it," McKenna admitted.
"But you didn't know he speaks Chinese?"
"No, but Cisco likes surprises. I'll admit I'm surprised, but not shocked."
"Learn Chinese and not tell his partner while he's doing it? That doesn't shock you?"
"No, that's just routine, everyday Cisco. Hard guy to understand, but the language thing should give you some idea of his determination once he makes a decision. He wanted Sue, he thought learning Chinese would help him get her, and then he did it."
"Let's get over that for now," Brunette said. "We'll talk to Cisco and do what we can to help you, but I need to know a few things first. Do you have a big problem with Chinese gangs here?"
"Sure do, mostly gangs from your town setting up extortion rackets here," Van Etten said. "Had a small reign of terror for a while until my predecessor got together with the RCMP and the provincial police to set up our Combined Forces Asian Investigative Unit."
"Who runs it?"
"We do, the Toronto PD, but everybody's got a voice."
"They make many cases?"
"Yes, and quite a few arrests. I'd thought we've been doing a good job bringing the problem under control, but tonight's events might prove me wrong."
"It's a very tough problem to control. We've been trying for years without much success," Brunette offered. "You have any ID on the dead gangsters?"
"None. If they had wallets, they must have left them in the car. The bodies have been fingerprinted, though, and we're waiting to see if they have a record in Canada."
"Anybody here from this Asian Investigative Unit?"
"The lieutenant got here about ten minutes ago. Chinese, very competent man, but a bit of a character. You should have met him outside, Lieutenant Robert E. Lee."
"A Chinese Robert E. Lee?"
"And he's particularly proud of it. Call him just Lieutenant Lee, and he always says `It's Lieutenant Robert E. Lee, suh.'"
"I'll keep that in mind," Brunette said. "Is he going to be involved in the homicide investigation?"
"Technically, it should go to our Homicide Squad, but not this time. Before he took over the Asian Investigative Unit, Robert E. Lee had worked in homicide for years. Since he knows most of the players in Chinatown, I put him in charge of this one."
"Did he see the gangsters' bodies yet?"
"Yeah. Them he doesn't know."
"Does he have any idea what was behind the Yuan Chan business tonight?"
"Says he's got one, but that he's not ready to commit until he talks to the other kitchen workers."
"Cautious, but wise," Brunette commented. "We'll go talk to Cisco now. Shouldn't be long before we're back in here to give you the scoop."
Lee was lounging in a chair outside when McKenna and Brunette left Van Etten's office. "Lieutenant Robert E. Lee," Brunette said.
Lee stood up. "Suh?"
"Are you thinking snakeheads?" Brunette asked.
"Yes, I am, suh. Vicious, murdering snakeheads is what I'm thinking."
"So am I. Ever had any dealings with them before?"
"No, suh. I'm sure we've got them, but we've never had any cases with them before tonight—if this one is snakeheads."
"Let's go in and see how smart we are. We'd like to talk to Detective Sanchez alone in there for a few minutes, and then you can have a go with the kitchen workers."
"Understood. Lead on, Commissioner."
