Dim Sum Asylum(29)

“Fine. Get Medical to give you the okay and go home. Don’t give me any shit on this, Roku,” Gaines cut me off before I could protest. “Get checked out, and chase down your leads tomorrow. Follow up on the missing woman yourself and find out where that statue came from. After that—”

“Captain?” Yamada opened the office door without a knock, and the strain on his round face bled him nearly white. “We’ve got a problem. UCSF Medical just called. They’ve got a couple of DOAs—”

“And?” Gaines swiveled around, and Yamada gulped. “Spit it out, son.”

“They both choked to death,” the inspector stammered out, quivering in the Captain’s doorway. “The medics found netsuke in their throats. They died choking on a carved tanuki, and one of the stones was still moving when they cut the guy open.”





Eight


AFTER GAINES cut us loose, I’d gone home to feed Bob the Cat and get a few hours in, tossing about in my bed before I finally drifted off to sleep. When I finally pulled myself out of my nightmares, I slapped more wet food into my ungrateful pet’s dish and met Trent at Medical’s Emergency Room.

It was about three in the afternoon—nearly five minutes after I’d walked through the front door—when one of the techs on duty gave me a bottle of painkillers and clearance to work. Most of the conversation between me and the tech involved a twenty dollar bill and a promise to get a seat at Goma’s counter at 1:00 a.m. I dropped a call to the ramen shop and found out Goma’d taken the night off, but the chair was secured after a short chat with the line cook. Trent listened to the exchanges with a disapproving sneer, but I didn’t have time to educate him on the ways of lubricating a process to make life go smoother. Either he learned how to do business in Chinatown or he’d wash out before his badge got dirt on it.

Most cops hated hospitals. They equated them with death, sorrow, and pain. I didn’t have that hang-up. All of my losses were out in the open. Violence gave mine from me. Death hunted them down and sucked their lives out of their bones, cracked open and scraped dry. So hospitals? Nothing more than a place with walls, tired people fighting to keep the living alive and death from taking what it came to reap.

Still, painkillers.

I stashed those in the unmarked’s glove compartment and went back to sipping the horrific healing concoction Mrs. Sun-Ye, my favorite apothecary and hedge witch, whipped up for me before Trent dragged me through Medical’s doors.

“That smells like you scraped the hair off a gorilla, burnt it, then made tea out of the ashes,” Trent grumbled.

“Just be glad I took a shower.” I took another sip of the hot liquid I’d poured into a thermos before heading out to face the day. It was rank. I couldn’t argue that point, especially after Bob sniffed the pungent steam coming out of the pot I’d used to steep the packet of leaves and fungi, and peed on my shoe in retaliation. Fun cat, that Bob. “And we’ve got to get those jeans of yours broken in. They look like you just stopped in at Woolworths and pulled on the first pair you saw.”

His jaw went granite, and a tic formed along his temple, telling me either that was exactly what he’d done or he didn’t appreciate my commentary on the cotton button-up plaid shirt and stiff dark blue jeans he wore with a pair of much too white sneakers.

“Find a spot and pull over. We’re going to need to walk in.” I tapped the central console to tell Dispatch we were leaving the car. The crackle I got from the woman sitting in a tiny room back at the Asylum pretty much confirmed she not only didn’t care but that she’d appreciate it if we didn’t get ourselves killed because she didn’t want to have to fill out any more paperwork where I was concerned. Thanking her for her distress over my well-being, I ended the call and caught Trent giving me a strange look. “What? That’s Marcy. I’ve known her for years.”

“Your relationships with people are very complicated,” he said softly. “I’m never sure if people like you or hate your guts.”

“Always assume the latter. That way you’re surprised when it’s the former,” I counseled. “Now find us someplace to park. Yellow or white zone if you’ve got to. We’ve got a do-not-tow placard on us.”

The shift from dark to light was never going to happen today. Storm clouds shoved themselves between the sun and the city, drenching us in water and black. Lightning played grab-ass above the Bay, splashing the deserted prison and the bridge in flowing white streams. Thunder boomed hot on the light’s fade, rattling windows and setting off alarms. Parts of the city flickered, transformers cringing beneath the electrical storm, and then the skies cracked open, pounding the streets in sheets of icy, sharp rain.

Trent did as I asked, pulling into a loading zone on Jackson, turning the car’s wheels to the curb to prevent it from rolling. We were facing downhill, and the river coursing the street was going to make getting out difficult, but there was no helping it. Nothing we did was going to help us stay dry, not today. Maybe not even this whole week. I flipped up the hoodie I’d put on under my black leather jacket and prepared myself for the cold.

The cold laughed its ass off at me and then began to peel the skin from my face with gusty kisses of wind.

“Go!” I shouted at Trent while I splashed my way through the downpour. “Get under the awning.”