I CAME DOWN THE HOSPITAL CORRIDOR AND SAW THAT PEEPSHOW was on guard outside the gangster kid’s room.
“Hey, Chow,” said Peepshow. He had a copy of Cracked Mazagine opened on his lap. A brown paper bag was at his feet and the air smelled like orange peels.
“Geller,” I said to Peepshow. I made the mistake of clasping his hand, which was sticky. “Quiet?”
“It’s like I’m guarding nobody,” he said. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Well, I . . .” I paused, distracted by seeing Peepshow licking his sticky palm. “I think the kid might have some information relevant to this case I’m working on.”
“He’s not supposed to have any visitors. I mean, none except for his lawyer.”
“I have to see him, though. I’m sure it’s okay. Chinese people have to look after each other.”
“I guess there’s no harm. You’re not going in to kill him or anything, right?”
“That is the farthest thing in the universe from my mind!” I said, smiling.
I went in and kicked down the doorstop to give Peepshow a false sense that he was still protecting the kid, who was propped up in his bed, reading a book with one hand. It was a little dim in there. The only light was from his nightstand lamp. The ceiling fluorescent lights were off.
Eric watched me come in. He picked up his bed remote and lowered the head end until he was fully reclining. Then he snapped off his light and tossed the book aside.
“I’m sleeping,” he said. “Besides, I got nothing to say to you.”
I flipped a few switches and all the lights came on. Eric groaned and I pulled up a chair next to his bed.
“What are you reading here?” I asked. I picked up his book. It was a MAD magazine book of stupid cartoons. “Hey, you and Geller ought to get together,” I said, pointing back at Peepshow. “You’re at the same reading level—zero.”
“Look!” Eric said. “I told the black cop everything that happened. I don’t know who shot at me, but I can take care of it myself.”
“I know what you said so far—pretty much nothing. But I know your name is Eric. My name is Robert.”
“I knew that!” he spat.
I looked into his face. Eric was about eighteen years old or so, a pivotal age for gangster kids. Pretty soon he’d be killed, go to jail for a long time on an adult-sized sentence, or get serious about a girl and move far, far away.
“What are you looking at?” he demanded to know. His nose had been broken at some point and seemed to be growing a knuckle. He had scars on his forehead and his skin was oily and blotchy like a slice of pizza when the cheese and sauce slipped off. Eric’s eyes were scared and childlike. I felt a little bad that this kid probably would be laid out on a slab in the next year.
“What do you want!” he yelled. It sounds meaner in Cantonese and it shocked me into dropping any sympathy for him.
“I am so sorry to bother you, but I was just wondering if there was any chance you know someone named ‘Brother Five.’”
“A snakehead, right?”
“Yeah!”
“I did some freelance work for him.”
“Your friends, too?”
“Maybe they did. I’m not sure.”
“Can you remember for me, Eric?”
He rolled his eyes and turned his head away. “Hey, dumbfuck,” he said. “I was shot. You shouldn’t even be here, now.”
“I know you were shot. I’m here because I was worried about you. As I am worried about all the Chinese youth.”
“Well, I heard you live with a little boy. Do you fuck him up the ass?”
I scratched my right ear and stood up. I went to the door.
“Nighty night, child molester,” Eric called after me.
I kicked up the doorstop and started to close the door.
“Geller,” I said to Peepshow.
“Yeah?”
“I’m closing this door because there’s a bad breeze coming through.”
“Sure.”
“Now might be a good time for you to go over to the vending machines. Why not have a coffee break?”
“Aw, I get it,” he said, smiling. “You’re trying to get me to go down and get you a cup of coffee, huh?”
“Guilty as charged,” I said, laughing. “But hey, let me cover you, too.” I gave him three dollar bills. “If you feel like it, have a cigarette down there in the lounge, as well. I’m not really in a rush.”
“Sure, I’ll take a break. Why not, I’m going to be here all friggin’ night.” Peepshow stood up. I moved to shut the door. “Hey, wait!” he said, pushing it open.
“What?”
“How do you want your coffee?”
“Let’s keep it simple. I’ll take it the same way you take it.”
“That’s a good idea. Who could screw that up?” I could only smile and laugh a little.
I got the door closed. I locked it and turned down the blinds covering the windowpane.
“Hey!” said Eric. “What are you doing?”
I went and stood over him. “Eric, I need to know what you know about Brother Five.”
“I don’t have to talk to you. My lawyer already said I was done.”
He looked scared when I grabbed the nurse call controller and dropped it on the other side of the nightstand, out of his reach.
“If you don’t start talking,” I said, “I’m going to find some way to hurt you and then I’ll tell everyone that you tried to go for my gun and I had to subdue you somehow.”
“You’re a rotten cop.”
“You’re a rotten kid. Let’s not dwell on the personal, though. I got no beef with you, but I’m trying to catch Brother Five.”
“Okay. I helped keep an eye on some human snakes that he thought needed watching. They might have been trying to plan an escape or go to the authorities.”
“You basically just shadow them from the safe house to their jobs?”
“Yeah, like a cop.”
“No, not like a cop! Like a two-bit Nazi in fake leather!”
He squirmed a little bit in bed. “He said that they agreed to the terms of being smuggled over. We watched them to keep them honest and make sure they didn’t try to cheat him.”
“Brother Five told you that?”
“Yes,” he said. Suddenly he winced in regret. “I didn’t mean to say that.”
“That’s all right because I already knew. I wanted to hear it from you. So what would you do if you saw someone trying to get away?”
“I saw two people talk to a lawyer.”
“How do you know they were talking to a lawyer?”
“There’s a lawyer who sits in the back of the shoe store. Like how you used to sit in the back of the toy store. Oh, we all knew about you!”
“It was never a secret and it’s not like I was creeping around, doing something illegal. So what did you do when you saw the guys talking to a lawyer?”
“I told Brother Five.”
“Let me guess—those two guys are the ones who got killed, right?”
He gave me a defiant look. “Yeah, they were. But I didn’t do it! I wasn’t involved.”
“Who killed them?”
“It was three kids, all under sixteen, so they couldn’t get put away if they were caught.”
“Where are these three kids now?”
“They’re gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Boston? Philadelphia? Taiwan? I swear I don’t know.”
“You told Brother Five and he had these three kids kill those two guys.”
“Yeah.”
“What does Brother Five look like? Old? Young? Tall or short?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” I had a quick image in my head of pushing a pillow in his face.
“I just talked to his assistant. I only ever met his assistant.”
“You have no idea what Brother Five looks like?”
“No!”
“What’s Brother Five’s real name?”
“I don’t know!”
“What does the ‘Five’ stand for?” I was going to run through my guesses with him but decided to hold back.
“Who knows!” He crossed his arms.
“The assistant was the guy who paid your salaries, right?”
“Duh!”
“What does the assistant look like?”
“He’s a guy in a suit. Shaggy hair and sunglasses.”
“Where can I find him?”
“You don’t find him. He finds you. You feel a tap on your shoulder and then he’s right there. It’s always a different place. He walks with a limp.”
That shaggy hair and sunglasses sounded like a pretty obvious disguise. The limp could be faked. It was probably Brother Five himself.
“Why were you shot?”
He kept his mouth shut.
“Was it because you knew about the two murders?” I asked.
“I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry.”
That was as far as Vandyne had gotten with the Pagoda incident and it was as far as Eric was going to let me get. I took a step to the door.
“When you’re well enough to walk out of here, you should do yourself a favor and leave New York. Start your life over in the country somewhere.”
He looked up at the ceiling. “My life is here,” he said. “Besides, what kind of a man would I be if I left? I would look like a coward if I didn’t stay and get my revenge.”
I looked at Eric. He reminded me of another wayward Chinaboy running full tilt at a brick wall. But he wasn’t as smart as Paul. How was he going to make it?
“Eric, you have a lot of chances in this life, a lot more than your parents. Now you want to throw it all away so a bunch of jerks in the pool hall respect you. Let me tell you something. These people who you think are your friends aren’t going to stand by you when it counts. Plenty of guys like you have very lonely funerals, if they even get one.”
He still wouldn’t look at me, his eyes defiantly fixed on the fire sprinkler. Maybe I had gotten through to him. Maybe he’d see the light, eventually. At least he wasn’t dumb enough to threaten me.
He ruined my hope for him by opening his mouth.
“If I hadn’t taken a bullet, Robert, I could put you in the high dive for the East River Olympics.”
I smiled. “Shows how much you know. Both China and Taiwan are boycotting the Olympics, dumbass!”