“I didn’t know it was Chinese New Year.”
“Huh. But there’s a stove, buckets down there, stuff taped over the windows, and a strong chemical smell.”
“Sounds like another lab.”
“But here’s the good part: you’re looking for the interlocking Cs, right? On the pills? Well, you go down to St. Francis’s Heart and you’re gonna find those Cs all over the place. But mostly on the victims. Someone took looks like a branding iron to them.”
“Ooops.”
“These are guest students down from Canada via Hong Kong, Gordo. Brought in by Willy Wong, a friend of the mayor’s, one of his donors. We can’t be seen fucking around on this.”
“I’m already on it.”
“Well, be on it, but be on it better, okay? Let me tell the Big Chan something.”
“Tell him we already have a task force targeting the double Cs. We’re up and running, my guys are already out there working it.”
“Bullshit. If I’m bullshitting him you can’t be bullshitting me. You have to tell me, Gordo.”
“No, dep. No shit. We’ve got a task force just set-up on the double Cs. The twat and the gunner are out there, riding around like they’re a dozen.”
The skipper hung up and voiced out to Ray Tate and Djuna Brown on the Federal radio. “Where you guys at, Ray?”
Ray Tate came back: “Sitting on a place, might be a lead to the Captain. What’s up, skip?”
“Head down to St. Frankie’s Heart. They got some Chinamen in the Emergency, been branded like fucking cowboys. Double Cs.”
“Ten-four.”
Gloria came into the office and waved at him. The skipper told Ray Tate to stand by.
“The Staties got a truck fire up in the badlands,” she said. “One fatality.”
“So?”
“It was a camper van, dead body inside,” she said. She held her nose. “Strong smell of chems.”
“Let the Staties handle it.”
“Around the truck, when they put it out? Double C tablets all over the ground. They heard we were asking about them.”
The skipper went on the air. “Okay. Ray, you guys do the hospital then get in here. We’re having a task force meeting.”
There was silence. Then Ray Tate said, “What task force?”
The skipper laughed bitterly. “You, you lucky fuck.”
* * *
The Chinese kids weren’t talking. Every time Ray Tate or Djuna Brown asked a question, the older of them, with interlocking Cs burned into his cheeks and forehead, murmured in Mandarin and the others clammed. The older guy spoke robotically to Ray Tate in flat English: “Contact please my uncle Willard Wong.” He sounded like he’d memorized his line.
“We should get ICE down here,” Djuna Brown said, “see what kind of immigration status these guys got.”
“If they’re with Willy Wong, they’re all papered up clean. Willy runs the Chinese Menu for the mayor.”
Djuna Brown wheeled the girl with the casts on her legs down the hall to an empty examination room. The girl’s face had been spared but her breasts and been badly burned. Djuna Brown held the girl’s hand and made sympathetic tsks. “Oh, baby, what they did to you.”
When she stroked the girl’s hair, the girl began talking.
* * *
Ray Tate asked the Chinese mutts a litany of questions. The mutts were sullen and looked at the floor. Only the murmuring guy made any sound. “Contact please my uncle Willard Wong.”
Djuna Brown wheeled the girl back into the room and told Ray Tate she got nothing.
“Fuck ’em,” he said. “Mutts.”
“Mutts be right,” she said. She looked at them. “You fucking goofs.”
They went out to the Intrepid, noted the time in their books, that Ray Tate was driving, and they headed to the satellite.
As she wrote in her book, Djuna Brown said: “Five white guys. They went into the place and just went ape.”
“She talked?”
“Yep. Sisterhood is powerful. Anyway, three guys in leather jackets. They were the wreckers. One other guy had long, black hair and burns all over his face. The last guy, the one with the branding iron, was a big fat fuck in a suit. He was in charge. He had ‘ghosty skin,’ she said. He kept screaming, ‘Tell it to Coco Chanel.’ He laughed a lot, she said. He really liked her tits, gave them a lot of attention.”
“The guy with the scars? That’s probably the guy on the wall, in the Captain Cook chart. Three wreckers? Who knows? The fat guy. The fat guy, he could be our Captain Cook. Sounds like a boss, anyway.”
* * *
They saw the skipper had big eyes. He sat in his office with a Federale detached from the Feds’ Hazardous Unit who wore his jacket like a matador. The Federale was deputized so he got to carry a gun and he didn’t mind shifting it every few minutes as he squirmed about in his chair. A third man wearing a buttoned three-piece suit leaned with his ass on the windowsill, his arms folded. Ray Tate recognized the be-suited man as one of the Big Chan’s new dynasty of cunning deps.
The skipper saw them across the room and held his palm up and out. Ray Tate and Djuna Brown went to their desks and pawed through a stack of photos and reports. When the Federale and the dep left the skipper’s office neither looked at them.
The skipper waved them in. “We’ve got to do everything right, Ray. This is real work and they’re wanting continuation reports daily.” He completely ignored Djuna Brown. “They wanted to take you guys off it, bring in their own tactical crew from Washington, but I stood ’em down. I got us a week, max. Can we do it in a week, Ray?”
Ray Tate put a mug shot and a surveillance photograph of Phil Harvey on the desk. “This is the mutt did the havoc in east Chinatown today. I’m pretty sure.”
“The cowboy branding the herd?”
“Nope. This guy Harvey was just there, leading the charge. The guy with the branding iron is a big fat fuck that laughs a lot.” He hooked his thumb out the door. “Brass and the Feds? For some guys got tuned up in east Chinatown?”
“The Staties had a fatal truck explosion sometime overnight. A lab on wheels went up in the badlands. One dead and a bunch of double Cs scattered around.”
“Strange doings.”
“The deal is: we’re doing the guys that rustled the Chinamen, the Staties’ll work the lab explosion. They figure we’ll meet someplace in the middle. So, bring me up to speed. What were you guys on, when I called?”
“Djuna’s play.” Ray Tate looked at her and waited. This was partner territory and he kept to the rules.
She didn’t look at the skip. Her voice was desultory and resentful, unlike her upbeat lilt in the car. “There’s a girl I’ve been working, guy keeps her in a stash house up in the north end. Mutts that loot pharmacies here and over the state line, bring their swag in, get paid off. The chick copped to two things: one is she works for Captain Cook. Other is that there’s a super lab around. We went up there to her pad and before we could visit you called us down to the hospital, then over here.”
“Super