15th Affair (Women's Murder Club 15)

But I swear, the way his lips were set in death, he was still smirking.

I released his shoulder and he toppled, dead weight falling sideways onto the floor.

I was still staring at his body when Conklin called my name. He was on the phone. He said to me, “Wang’s on the line. They’ve got that waiter guy, Henry Yee. He’s in custody.”

CHAPTER 69

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS after the takedown on Stockton Street, we were still cleaning up the mess and trying to get answers.

Chi was recovering from surgery and in stable condition. Two pedestrians had been hurt, a woman and her young daughter who had been hit by the spray of gunfire when the men in the apartment opened up on the street.

The press was all over us. It didn’t matter that the shots that had injured the passersby had been fired by criminals. The fallout was all on the SFPD.

Under pressure, Jacobi gave a press conference, saying that military-grade automatic weapons had been seized from apartment 3F at 1035 Stockton, but he didn’t mention the missile launcher and he didn’t take questions, saying only, “I can’t discuss an ongoing investigation.”

No documents or identification had been found on the dead men in 3F. There were also no fingerprint matches, and no one had come forward to claim the bodies. We had too many questions without answers, but we did have the sorry patsy, young Henry Yee.

Conklin and I were with Yee and his lawyer in our small, gray interview room. A camera rolled tape from a corner of the ceiling, and the observation room behind the glass was packed with high-level cops, including Brady, Jacobi, and our DA, Leonard Parisi.

Henry Yee was five feet tall, nearsighted, and pretty much lost. His lawyer, Ernest Ling, was a mild-mannered man who went by the street name of Daddy. Mr. Ling negotiated for Yee, and given Yee’s importance as a material witness, Parisi himself had agreed to drop the gun charge as long as we were satisfied with what Yee told us.

So far, we had established that Yee was twenty years old with two years of high school. He had two small-time drug arrests and no parents.

The lease for apartment 3F had passed to Yee when his mother died. And then, about a month ago, Yee had sublet the apartment to four men from China who paid him eight hundred dollars over the rent for him to sleep elsewhere. Yee worked as a waiter and dishwasher for Mei Ling Happy Noodles and had been sleeping in the storeroom. His subtenants hired him to bring them take-out and do occasional odd jobs. He also stopped by the apartment to change clothes.

Sometimes the four men joked around with him, and he also overheard some of their conversations. So he said.

Yee had been carrying a gun under his apron when Wang and Michaels snatched him up. He had no license to carry, and certainly no need for a gun in his job. The Colt .45 was a gift from his subtenants, and apparently, to Yee, it was a prize.

That gun had been lucky for us, too.

Yee was an adult with a sheet. He was looking at prison time for the illegal possession, and if he could be implicated in the crash of WW 888, he would be eligible for the death penalty.

Daddy Ling had made the best and only deal for his client. Now we needed Henry Yee to tell us everything he knew.

CHAPTER 70

HENRY YEE WAS sipping from a can of Coke, looking at morgue photos of the deceased.

Said Yee, “This one. He’s called Dog Head or Dog. I don’t know his real name. This one is called Jake. This one speaks no English. He’s called Weisei. But this one,” he said, pointing to the picture of the man with the scar, “he goes by Mr. Soo. He is not a gangster. He says he works for the government.”

Conklin asked, “What were the weapons for, Henry?”

“I don’t know,” said Yee. “Mr. Jake told me it was private business.”

I said, “Did these men ever discuss the airplane that went down at SFO?”

“That airplane from Beijing? No, I didn’t hear that.”

I said, “We think they did have something to do with that airplane, Henry. Think hard. Did you hear anything at all?”

Ling said to his client, “Henry. You don’t have to worry. None of those men can hurt you.”

“They didn’t tell me anything,” said Henry Yee.

I said to the lawyer, “Mr. Ling, this isn’t working. Your client has given us his name, rank, and serial number. That’s not the deal we made.”

Daddy Ling said, “He’s afraid it’s going to come back on him. That’s not crazy, Sergeant.”