It was a blues club with a house band. The sign on the door said it stayed open until two in the morning. He found a table in the darkest corner and ordered a drink from the waitress.
A Chinese tiger drinking whisky and listening to someone sing the blues. He drank it fast, hoping it would settle his nerves, and ordered another. He would have to slow down with this one or he would be drunk, and they would ask him to leave.
The last time he’d drunk alcohol had been at the end of a case that had ended as badly as one of his cases could end. With a dead child. After he’d broken the news to the parents, and watched their entire life implode, he’d bought a bottle of Scotch, drunk half of it on a park bench, gone home, taken a cold shower, and set out to find the men responsible.
That had been a case that started well. It was a hot trail, only a few days old. The kind of case he rarely got. His specialty was cold cases, in some cases so cold that he had to chip away ice to get to the evidence.
Families rarely thought to involve him when a child was taken. They went to the police. More often than not it was a terrible mistake.
So this case had been exciting. He’d gotten straight down to business: interviewing witnesses; speaking with the family; talking to his many contacts and informants.
In less than twenty-four hours, he had a good idea who had done it. Unfortunately, they’d heard he was after them. They panicked, killed the child and dumped her in the river.
It was the closest he had come to walking away from all of this. The gang had killed her because of their fear of the Red Tiger.
He had caught up with them, but too late. He had blamed himself and resolved to stick to the cold cases from now on. To work cases where the crime had been committed, passions had subsided, and he could go quietly about his business.
Now he was drinking again as, a few feet away, a white man tried to sound like a black man as he sang about his baby leaving him. The Red Tiger sipped his second drink, pushed it to the side of the table and reached for a cigarette, then remembered he would have to go outside to smoke it. He tapped the cigarette back into the pack.
On stage, the band finished their last song and people around him applauded. He joined in.
He needed a plan. But first he had to make sense of all of this. Why had the police not arrested him? Why had they been outside like that? If he’d been them he would have hidden, then pounced.
Earlier he had thought that perhaps he had the wrong address. He had checked it. He had even run a fresh search. No, it was correct.
Maybe they had only wanted to scare him off. To let him know that what he was doing was futile.
He took another sip of whisky. Yes, that could be it, he told himself. If they arrested him, and he went to court, all their secrets would slip out. Wasn’t it better just to scare him off?
If that was what they wanted they had made a fatal error. They must have known that he wouldn’t give up so easily.
He would have to be careful. If he didn’t leave, they would have to try something else, something more permanent.
Drinking was a bad idea. He needed to be sober. He pushed the glass away from him.
He would find a motel outside town. He would rest up. Get some sleep. Eat. Exercise. Clear his mind. Plan his next move.
At the bar, he waited to settle his tab, the dollar bills ready in his hand. The bartender was busy, speaking to an older couple. He happened to look up at the television above the bar.
He glanced at it, then away. Then back.
No, it couldn’t be.
For a moment he thought it must be some kind of elaborate practical joke, staged just for him.
On screen was the house with the patrol cars outside. Just as it had looked when he had driven past. The only difference was the television reporter standing outside. The dollar bills he had been holding slipped from his fingers onto the bar top.
A hand scooped them up. “Thanks, buddy,” said the bartender, seemingly appearing from nowhere. “Crazy, huh?” he added, with a nod towards the screen.
“Could you . . .?”
The Red Tiger mimed someone hitting the button on a remote control.
“Sure thing.”
The bartender walked down the bar, grabbed the remote for the television, and increased the volume, then came back with change. The Red Tiger waved it off.
“Thanks, buddy, that’s very generous of you.”
He had handed the bartender a twenty and a fifty. Not that he cared.
The bartender slid the remote toward him. “Here you go. Knock yourself out. But I gotta close up in a few.”
He increased the volume a few more notches and hopped onto a bar stool. It must have looked suspicious, a lone man staring at the television with such intense focus, but he didn’t care.
The reporter was mid-way through her presentation.
“So far, local law enforcement are staying tight-lipped about the motive behind this apparent abduction. But they have confirmed that vehicles belonging to the two victims were taken, they believe at the same time as the two young people were taken at gunpoint.”
The bartender came back. “You know, you can rewind that,” he said, pointing at some buttons on the back of the remote. “Crazy what they can do now, huh?”
The Red Tiger hit the rewind button until he reached the start of the report.
“Tonight, news of a shocking robbery and double abduction in Arcadia’s upscale Upper Rancho neighborhood. Two young Chinese nationals taken from their multimillion-dollar home at gunpoint.”
By the time he had watched it twice through, only the bartender was left. “Buddy, I really have to close up.”
The Red Tiger slid off the stool onto uncertain legs. His mind hovered between disbelief and paranoia. He thought he had anticipated every possible outcome. But nothing had prepared him for something like this.
The bartender was staring at him. “You know those people or something?”
“Me?” he answered, a finger pointed to his chest. “No, I don’t know them.”
He drove, on auto-pilot, back to the house. He thought about what he had said to the bartender before he left. It was truth and it was a lie, all at the same time. He didn’t know them. Not really. That, after all, was why he had come all this way.
As he made the final turn, he had a moment of hesitation. What was he doing here? Especially so late at night. In his work, he was bold, but never reckless. This was way beyond reckless. Cruising past a crime scene. In a car. After drinking whisky. With an unlicensed firearm.
Still, he kept going, driven forward by the gnawing need he had hoped would ebb away, but it had only grown.
A sharp sigh of relief as he slowed down. The patrol cars were gone. The gates were closed, the street silent.
He parked on the opposite side of the road and walked over to the gates. His chest felt tight. At any moment he expected to be surrounded and placed in shackles. He stepped back and looked at the wall surrounding the property.
No wonder the house had been a target.