T
he next time I opened my eyes I was alone, filled with pain and confusion. The world seemed dark outside my window, but I could only see a part of the sill and couldn't be sure. Only the light from the corridor spilled onto the tile near the door of my room, all I could see under the curtain that surrounded my bed.
A shadow shifted on the floor, an almost imperceptible motion. Someone occupied a chair outside my door.
I didn't know where I was, but I'd been here before. It wasn't déjà vu. It was mere experience. Another hospital, another injury, another long stretch of recovery and recuperation lay ahead.
But I was still alive, still breathing, still on the right side of the lawn. I wiggled my toes. Yeah, I could do that.
“Hello?” The word came out as a growling whisper. My throat was dry, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, adhered by disuse.
The shadow elongated. A shape appeared, a smudge in the light, visible through the curtain.
“Yes, Mr. Caine?” My keeper was a young Asian male of medium height and muscular build. He seemed agile, a karate-ka, who looked as if he viewed his body as a temple and his abilities as a serious responsibility. He looked solid and dependable. His eyes were alert and intelligent. This was no mere meaty guard, sent to fill a place. His presence was not pro forma. I wondered
from what dojo he had sprung, and why he felt it necessary to hang around outside my hospital room.
“Who're you?”
“Your bodyguard. Chawlie sent me. I am Felix.”
“My bodyguard. Felix.” I had never seen Felix before. “Are you happy, Felix?”
A look of confusion came over his face, replaced by a look of iron determination before he answered. “I'm gay, if that's what you mean.”
“Your name. In Latin it means âhappy.'”
“Yeah,” he said, collecting himself, visibly deciding that he had no reason to be defensive. “I knew that.”
“Are you from San Francisco?”
“Yes.”
“Are you still in San Francisco?”
“Yes. What do you need?”
“Water, please.”
He filled a plastic cup and helped me drink, holding the back of my head. He was gentle, one of those natural caregivers. I wondered how effective he was at bodyguarding. Then I looked at his hands.
“Wing Chun?”
“Yes. And others.”
“Firearms?”
“All kinds.”
“You carrying now?”
“Of course.”
I nodded, instantly regretting it.
“You need more painkillers? I'll ring the nurse. You have your own nurse. Several of them. You are their only patient.”
“Please,” I said, but he had already pushed the button.
“Whatever you need, Felix will provide.”
“That's comforting,” I said, as the nurse came into the room. A tiny Thai woman, she edged past Felix and looked as if she wanted to say something but thought better of it. She wasn't frightened. It was something else. Almost an awe of my companion.
“He is in pain,” said my bodyguard.
She looked at me, as if requesting confirmation.
“I am in pain,” I said, feeling helpless and overwhelmed by the almost total debility, so overwhelmed that I could not even hate the helplessness. Not yet. That, I knew, would come later.
She checked the chart, nodded, and left the room. When she returned she held a syringe filled with clear liquid. She injected the needle into the tube that fed my arm.
Darkness, blessed darkness, came again.
I
spent more than a week in that hospital bed, Felix remaining outside my door like a faithful dog. Unlike a dog, however, I could not get him to remain in the room. He was polite but reserved. It was, I assumed, his way of keeping his distance. “I'll protect you,” he seemed to be saying, “but only so far.” A true professional, he would defend, but not to the death. Overwhelmed, he would cut his losses. I understood. My injuries were nothing if not an object lesson in going too far.
But Chawlie was a friend. So was Daniel. And I hadn't thought about the mortal consequences at the time. My actions had come from somewhere beyond thought, logic, or reason.
The way things worked out, Daniel's wounds were less serious than mine and he recovered before I did. He came to see me before he flew home, shuffling into my room, his neck covered with thick bandages, flanked by three mountainous young men, his human shields.
“I heard what you did. Thank you, Caine. You take care.” His voice rasped. The bullet had damaged his vocal chords. The injury had not muted him, but scar tissue had given him an ominous whisper. He sounded dangerous. Almost as dangerous as he really was.
“You, too,” I said.
“How you like Felix?”
“Not a bad guy.”
“Mahu,” he whispered, or tried to whisper, smiling a tight smile. “He likes boys.”
“Good for him,” I said, wondering why Daniel cared.
“He's the best in San Francisco. Maybe best in California. Little guy like that. Everybody scared of him.”
So Chawlie had found the best bodyguard in the state to sit outside my door. Not only a bodyguard, but a fearsome warrior. And gay, as well. And Daniel had been uncomfortable to the point where he felt he had to explain it to me.
“So was Alexander the Great. Mahu,” I said. “And he conquered the world.”
“What?”
“Makes no difference.”
Daniel shrugged. “It don't seem right,” he said, offering his hand.
I took it.
“See you at home.”
“Rest your voice.”
“Rest yourself. Chawlie said he'd fly you home when you're ready.”
“I'm ready.”
“When they say you're ready. See you around, Caine.”
I lay back and stared at the ceiling after he left, exhausted by the conversation. I craved agility. There was nothing I wanted more than the ability to leap from this bed and run out that door. But that wasn't possible. I barely had the energy to count the pinholes in the ceiling tile. It would be some weeks before I could do much more than totter around like an ancient on his last legs. I had no idea what they had done to me here, what permanent destruction the bullet's path had accomplished. I only knew that my lower body felt as if it had been plowed and planted with pain, and that they were having a bumper crop this year.
“Excuse me.” Felix stuck his head in my room.
“Hi.”
“Do you feel like speaking with a police officer?”
“Do I have a choice?”
He shook his head. “The time and the place may be changed, but the inevitable will happen.”
“Sounds like a fortune cookie.”
“Not so profound,” he said. “You feel all right?”
“I feel like crap. Send him in. I've been expecting him.”
Felix smiled. “Or not,” he said, opening the door wide to admit a handsome, brisk woman in her thirties. She wore a charcoal gray business suit and a severe expression.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Caine,” she said.
“Have a seat. And you may call me John. Pardon me for not getting up.”
She didn't smile as she took a chair near the bed and unfolded a notebook. I started to speak, but she shushed me and showed me a star and identification with her photograph and handed me a business card imprinted with the Great Seal of the City of San Francisco. Her title was detective inspector, and her name was Shirley Henderson.
“What can I do for the City and County of San Francisco?”
“You were shot a week ago on Green Street. You and several other people. I am one of the investigators on the case.”
“I don't know what to tell you.”
“Just answer a few questions. Why were you at the scene?”
“Just visiting.”
She looked at me, condescension written large across her features. “Oh, come on, Mr. Caine. You can do better than that. How did you get here? You are a resident of Hawaii.”
“I flew in.”
“We can't find you on any passenger manifest. How did you get here? Which airline did you fly?”
“Private jet.”
“Are you here on business?”
“Just to visit old friends.”
She bristled, unhappy with my answers. I wasn't sure where this was leading. I decided to be careful with this woman. I wouldn't lie, but I wouldn't babble everything I knew, mindful of
my responsibilities and duties to Chawlie. “And you just happened to be standing at the corner of Green and Columbus when the shooting started.”
“Yes.”
“The fellow who just left, Daniel Choy. Do you know him?”
“Yes.”
She nodded.
“Did you get a look at the person who shot you?”
“I was too busy ducking for cover.”
She looked at me, her eyes telling me she believed nothing. “That isn't what I heard,” she said.
I shrugged, and made a mental note not to do that again. Shrugging hurt as much as nodding. Maybe a little more.
“I spoke with the paramedics and some of the people in the ER. They said you kept Mr. Choy from bleeding to death. That you remained with him until he had medical attention, that you did not complain of your own injuries until you knew he was safe. He is just an acquaintance?”
When I said nothing she continued. “I spoke with people at Honolulu PD. There are all kinds of stories about you, Mr. Caine. I frankly don't know what's true.”
“Reputations are difficult to build,” I said, “easy to tear down.”
“Do you own a .45 automatic?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Uh-huh.”
“May I examine it?”
“I don't know where it is.”
“I could get a court order.”
“I'll tell you the same thing under those circumstances.”
“What happened in Kauai last year?”
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
“Why did eight people die over there? Or was it nine? All foreign nationals. There is the strong suspicion that you killed them.”
“You'd have to talk to whoever has those suspicions.”
“I did. The legal consensus was self-defense. That's apparently why you weren't prosecuted. But all of them?”
She waited for an answer and I waited for her to stop waiting. This would be part of her pattern, a technique, something to distract me before she got to her main point. If I waited, she would eventually get around to it.
“And then I spoke with a detective in San Diego,” she said after a while. “There was an incident on the Mexican border a few years ago. A shooting. Several shootings. You apparently have a tendency to get into these situations, don't you?”
I tried to shrug without moving my shoulders. I wasn't sure she noticed.
“I'm sure that was self-defense, too.”
“It would always be self-defense.”
“Self-defense?” she went on. “Is that what you were doing here? Defending yourself?”
“Some lunatic was shooting people in the street from a rooftop. I was looking for cover.”
“Just minding your own business?”
“Yes.”
“You have some interesting friends.”
I looked her in the eye.
“I do know that you were in the company of the head of the most powerful Triad in the Pacific. HPD says that you're friends with him. Longtime friends. Old friends in the Asian sense. I know that the shooting took place at the funeral of a San Francisco Triad leader. I think you were here because of that funeral, although I don't know why.”
“Is it important?”
“I don't know.” She regarded me. “On the other hand, I heard stories about you that made me wonder. You have defenders, too.”
“That's nice. I wonder who?”
“You had an empty holster on your belt when you came into the ER. It was custom made for a large automatic. A Colt 1911A
.45 automatic, to be exact. Expended .45 shells were found at the scene. No gun was found. Can you clarify that for me?”
“No.”
“You know, a funny thing happened when the lab examined the shells. They found no fingerprints. Nothing. Not even a smudge. Now that's interesting. Normally we would expect to find a thumbprint where you would have pushed the cartridge into the magazine, but on these, nothing. As if you'd wiped them clean and wore gloves when you loaded the magazine. Did you plan to do some shooting that day?”
“I think the only one who planned to do any shooting was the man on the roof. He seemed to have a plan.”
“I can't get over polishing the cartridges before you loaded the pistol. That's the mark of a professional. San Francisco has enough of its own problems without importing professional gunfighters.”
I didn't like the way this was going. “Are you going to charge me with a crime? I don't believe you can prove that I did anything wrong. Or is getting shot against the law in California? I haven't read the codes lately.”
“You're right. I can't prove anything. But I have doubts about you.”
I just looked at her. She was not the only one here with doubts.
“Your friend. Chawlie Choy. He left town that night. Went back to Honolulu in his private jet. The uniforms who first arrived at the scene didn't know who he was, but they were Mandarin speakers. They spoke to him, but he complained in an obscure Chinese dialect that he was just passing by and saw nothing and knew nothing and they let him go. Unfortunate, but understandable. Apparently he complained like an old pensioner. By the time anybody discovered who he really was, he was gone.”
“He apparently felt the weather here was bad for his health.”
“By the way, Mr. Choy is paying your hospital bills.”
“Nice of him.”
She sighed. “The body of a young Asian male turned up several days after the shootings. Bad scene. Someone hung his naked
body from the side of a building in Chinatown when they were done with him. Have you ever heard of âDeath by a Thousand Cuts?'”
“Chinese method of execution. They save it for special cases. Combines torture, mutilation and execution. I saw it once in Vietnam. They can make it drag out for days. Very nasty.”
She regarded me for a moment. “You
saw
it once,” she said slowly, as if that alone should convict me.
“I was just passing through. It wasn't my business.”
“How could you stand by and let something like that happen?”
“There was one of me and five hundred of them. Nothing I could do but hele on. Had I interfered I'd likely have ended up there with the poor bastard getting my extremities sliced off one at a time.”
“So you didn't get involved.”
“It was that kind of a war.”
She sighed. “My father said the same thing,” she said softly, as if to herself. Then she returned, her eyes focusing, seeing me, but seeing someone else at the same time, someone she hated.
“So you know about âDeath by a Thousand Cuts.' This was horrible. What a way to die.”
“Those things are always horrible.”
“There was a gun. A 9mm. Hanging around his neck on a string. Ballistics matched it to the slug they pulled out of your kidney.”
That she knew about my injury told me that she'd spoken with my doctor, and that she had gone to the trouble of getting a court order. Or maybe doctor-patient relationships were no longer protected in California. I didn't like the fact that she was spending so much energy investigating my actions. I had done nothing except try to survive. Now she tried to link me with the dead man, the one who presumably had shot me.
“He the shooter?” I asked.
“His fingerprints were the only ones found on the gun. They left one of his fingers so we'd know for sure. Left it in a bag.”