I was most curious about the empty apartment. I hadn’t thought to ask. And, too, my most ready access to information would come from Ray, ever eager to exchange gossip.
Ray found his way to me before I found my way to him.
“You find what you are looking for?” he asked. His face looked like those drawings of a happy sun.
“Bits and pieces,” I said. “What about 3B? Who lived there?”
“Old Chinese woman.”
“She moved?”
“She die.”
“Here?”
He grinned again. “Accident. Fall down elevator shaft.”
“And everyone believes it was an accident?” I wondered why Mr. Lehr hadn’t told me about this. A death preceding a death, no matter how unrelated it might seem, ought to have been on his mind. Perhaps it was.
“Oh, Mr. Detective, honorable Mr. Chan, this is an old building. Elevator door work, elevator do not. Boom!” Ray clapped his hands together once.
“I think splat was the word you were searching for,” I said, impatient with and unappreciative of Ray’s gallows humor.
“That is why there is a sign on the elevator,” he said, suggesting I had been more than remiss not to have figured it all out earlier.
“Thanks. When did she die?”
“About a month or so ago?”
“Ted Zheng was still alive then?”
“Yes. You think he did it?”
“That’s not why I was asking. Did he know her?”
“Sure, he ran errands for her.”
That evening I set out my clothes for the next day, realizing that it might be better if I fit into the neighborhood. My standard dress was not casual. But there were few western-style suits on streets dominated by working-class Chinese and tourists.
I also called my client, Mr. Lehr, and asked him why he hadn’t bothered to tell me about the woman who fell down the elevator shaft.
“Not related,” he said.
I didn’t tell him that maybe that was why his tenants—actually, only Mr. Emmerich, as far as I could tell—were so upset. An elderly tenant lands at the bottom of an elevator shaft, and another is bludgeoned to death.
I wanted to know more about the so-called accidental death. And I was pretty sure I could find out.
When I pressed, Mr. Lehr told me more. The dead woman was Mrs. Ho. She’d been seventy-two and was becoming increasingly senile.
“She acted crazy,” Mr. Lehr said. “I got calls from everybody about her. She was a problem.”
“The problem was solved when she fell.” Perhaps I was becoming too invested in this case. After all, I wasn’t expected to solve crimes.
“There was a barricade in front of the door,” Mr. Lehr fired back. “Not a big one, but big enough that no one but an idiot—”
“Or someone suffering from severe mental illness.”
“—could miss it. Listen, safety inspectors and the police investigated. The elevator car was on four. The elevator technicians were working underneath and using the third-floor doors to move in and out. They took a break or something. She was just crazy. She belonged in a home.”
“Wasn’t anyone watching after her?”
“Toward the end, one of the Siu sisters helped her—helped with the groceries, paying the bills, that sort of thing. That kid, the dead kid, helped her.”
That evening I kept a vigil outside the Blue Dragon. At ten thirty Norman Chinn came out. He was dressed casually. He walked down to California Street and hailed a taxi. Fortunately, it wasn’t raining, and there were other cabs hanging around the gates to Chinatown. I calmly asked the driver to follow the other cab. I expected some kind of comment but got only silence until we arrived at a bar on Polk Street. Norman went inside. I counted to ten slowly before going in.
Not a woman in sight. On the dance floor was a mix of Asian and Caucasian men. Norman Chinn got a drink and went to the back of the bar, where a scantily clad young Asian boy danced for tips. I’d lived long enough in San Francisco to know there wasn’t anything shocking about all this—but it was telling.