A Tale About a Tiger and Other Mysterious Events Read online

  a tale

  about

  a tiger

  AND OTHER MYSTERIOUS EVENTS By S.J. Rozan

  n_

  Crippen & Landru Publishers

  PO Box 532057

  Cincinnati, OH 45253

  Cover by Erin Wells

  Crippen & Landru logo by Eric D. Greene

  ISBN (signed, limited clothbound edition): 978-1-932009-89-7

  ISBN (trade softcover edition): 978-1-932009-90-3

  FIRST EDITION 10987654321

  Printed in the United States of America on recycled acid-free paper

  Crippen & Landru Publishers

  PO Box 532057

  Cincinnati, OH 45253

  www.crippenlandru.com

  [email protected]

  CONTENTS

  Introduction 7

  Film at Eleven 9

  Hoops 42

  Seeing the Moon 75

  Passline 94

  Night Court 109

  Subway 115

  A Tale About a Tiger 144

  Childhood 187

  Double-Crossing Delancey 214

  A Checklist of the Mystery Writings of S. J. Rozan 241

  INTRODUCTION

  I LOVE SHORT STORIES.

  A short story started my career. In the winter of 1989 I began my first novel. It became clear to me fast that I had no idea what I was doing. After seven or eight chapters I wasn't even sure if the thing would ever end; it seemed as likely that it would keep wandering along endless branching paths until it just sat down in the middle of the road and refused to go on. I sometimes still get this feeling about my novels, but I've learned they eventually find their ways out of the forest with a few little pushes from me. Back then, though, I didn't know that. So I decided to write a short story, something with a beginning, a middle, and an end, all of which I could see before I put the first word down. That way I could tell whether I was getting anywhere near where I meant to go. I wrote it, found a market to submit it to, and, mirabile dictu, it got published. They paid me twenty-five smackers. And I started to think it might somehow just barely be possible I could maybe actually DO this.

  I've continued to write short stories my whole career. I've added new reasons in addition to the semi-instant (well, three weeks as opposed to a year) gratification. Now it's sometimes the challenge of coming up with a story to fit a theme. Dogs, for example, I'd never have focused on if I hadn't been asked into a dog story anthology ("Cooking the Hounds"). Las Vegas, either ("Passline"). Other times, the idea's not an editor's, it's mine, one that I think is worth exploring but clearly won't carry a whole novel ("Birds of Paradise"). Then there's the opportunity to work on stylistic chops, isolating and expanding a single element of style (voice, rhythm) to explore its possibilities in a way a novel wouldn't permit ("Going Home").

  This stylistic thing may be the most important, in the end. In a short story, every word counts. No circling a thought, sneaking up on it, describing it from a couple of angles to make sure it's clear (the way I just did). You've got to illuminate it with a lightning strike (like that). Crafting a short story's harder work than making a novel. Not that it should be. Every word in a novel ought to get as much attention, every sentence ought to get as closely cropped. In the year-long project of writing a novel, though, it's easy to slack off sometimes. Not in the three-day to three-week short story. You have to focus harder, pay more attention to end up with fewer words. The exercise of doing that will carry over into novel writing, if you're lucky, in two ways. One: experience counts. The more you do it, the more it becomes part of your natural approach. Two: quality counts. You find yourself writing better sentences than maybe you were used to seeing come out of yourself, better than maybe you thought you could write. Then you want your novels to read like that, too.

  A shortcoming of short stories, of course, is that they're often ephemeral. They appear in magazines or anthologies with limited circulation, limited runs. That's why I'm thrilled Crippen & Landru has taken this project on. I'm happy these stories will have a life beyond their original publication dates, and outside the magazine pages yellowing on my shelf, the files deteriorating on my thumb drive. For all the media surrounding us these days, a book is still the best storage medium for words. I'm delighted these stories have found a home between covers.

  A note: when Crippen and Landru proposed this anthology, and I re-read my earlier stories, my first thought was to edit them. The earliest, especially, I see as weak in a number of ways. They could be improved, matured, re-styled! But that, as R. Crumb used to say, would be the phonus balonus. I and my chops were new at this when I wrote them. They reflect that. They're of their times, as they should be. Some succeed better than others. So here they are: challenges, ideas, and experiments, for your perusal. I hope you like them.

  S. J. Rozan

  NYC

  July 2009

  FILM AT ELEVEN

  I HAD FOLLOWED the case long before I became a part of it because the dead woman was Chinese. Not Chinatown Chinese, like me: Patricia Lin had been uptown Chinese, a doctor's daughter raised on ballet lessons and music classes, summer camps and private schools. When she'd enrolled at The College of Communication Arts, where she'd met the man alleged to have murdered her, Patricia Lin had been slumming.

  I hadn't known Patricia Lin. I wasn't tied to her by blood or marriage, home province or village, but she was Chinese, so I followed the case.

  It seemed over, of course, before I ever got involved. There was the finding of the body, the arrest, the trial. There was Mitch Ellman, with his gloating, victorious grin, his short blond hair lifting in the wind outside the courthouse as reporters crowded near him. When we'd seen his arrest on the eleven o'clock news his hair had been shoulder-length, tied in a ponytail. I wondered if he would grow it again, now that he'd been found not guilty of murder.

  There was the jury forewoman, short-tempered, correcting a reporter: the jury's task had not been to find on the defendant's guilt, but on the question of whether the prosecutor had proved the defendant's guilt, which he had not done. She sped away in a taxi as the camera returned to Mitch Ellman being hugged and pounded on the back by his family and friends. His lawyer, Jay Beriow, known to those of us in the crime-related occupations as a high-priced oil slick, beamed beneficently in the background.

  I was disgusted that night when I turned off the news, and my mother had to listen to me spout for a while. She sat silently hemming a pair of my pants until I stopped for breath. Then she said, “How do you know he's guilty? Maybe he's innocent. This is America."

  My mother says 'This is America' the way I imagine Dorothy explaining the Technicolor miracles whirling around her by saying 'This is Oz.'

  "He's guilty, Ma," I said. "Did you see his face? Hear his voice? His body language?"

  "Body language?" She looked at me blankly. There really is no Chinese word for it, and the phrase I had dredged up to use has a more formal, ritual meaning.

  "Never mind," I said.

  'Never mind' always annoys her.

  "Arrogant girl." She pursed her lips. "You think because you waste your time with criminals and policemen you know everything. Always so sure. One day you'll be surprised—"

  "Not by you, Ma. Everything that happens you turn into a complaint about my profession. The only surprise is how you'll do it."

  "Oh, smart mouth," she said. "But wait. One day—whoosh! The world will show you where you belong." She nodded sagely to herself.

  I went to bed.

  The case didn't become mine until three months later. It was April by then, a time of soft nights and warm, breezy days. A
phone call came from John Kimball, a lawyer I didn't know, but that wasn't unusual: a lot of my work is for lawyers, and lawyers talk to each other. Kimball said he'd gotten my name from a colleague, and would tell me about the case when we met at his office.

  So we met at his office. It was on the forty-fourth floor of a blue glass building on Park Avenue just north of Grand Central. The lobby was polished green stone and the directory was one of those computer touch-screens. I was early so I stood and played with it, moving the little orange person down the blue hallway. It told me where to find John Kimball, with a map and everything, and it told me where the ladies' room closest to his office was, just in case.

  When it was time, I went up. The firm's name, O'Herlihy Davis Kimball, was spelled out in big stainless-steel letters on the taupe wall opposite the elevators. I wondered if lawyers didn't use commas or ands because they didn't want to pay for the extra stainless steel.

  To the right was a glass wall with glass doors where a woman with big glasses sat behind a taupe counter. To the left was taupe door with a tiny sign: "ODK Deliveries." I suppressed the urge to go that way, strolled briskly to and through the glass doors.

  By the time I was seated in John Kimball's office I had seen more shades of taupe than I'd ever thought possible. I was glad I'd dressed conservatively, brown suit and white cashmere sweater, low brown heels and briefcase; it would be very easy to stick out like a sore thumb around here, and as a small, young Asian woman I usually stick out like a whole sore hand anyway. Especially in the kinds of places I sometimes go.

  Right now, though, I wasn't the only small young Asian woman in the place.

  "Miss Chin, this is Janet Woo," John Kimball said, reseating himself behind his broad, glass-topped desk, his back to a window I could see Chinatown from. "Janet, this is Lydia Chin, the private investigator I was telling you about." Janet Woo half-rose from her chair, smiled shyly. We shook hands, Janet Woo and I, while John Kimball went on explaining to me why I was here. Janet Woo's hand was soft, dry and limp. Kimball's had been fleshy and firm.

  "Janet has a story I want you to hear, Miss Chin," he said. "I'm hoping you'll be able to help us."

  "I hope so too," I said politely, and I did hope so, because O'Herlihy Davis Kimball did not seem like a client who would need to pay my bill in barter instead of cash.

  Janet Woo gave me a serious look, her head held low; she gave John Kimball the same look, and it seemed to me she held her head even lower.

  "Go on, Janet," Kimball ordered, leaning back in his chair. He was a big man in a pale blue shirt, navy suit, blue striped tie. His hair was beginning to thin and his chin was pointy. He wore a gold wedding band on his left hand.

  Janet Woo wore no jewelry at all, and her only makeup was lipstick of the shade you wear less to attract than to keep people from noticing you because you don't wear makeup. Her blouse was high-necked, her skirt a noncommittal, below-the-knee length, and her long, straight black hair was pulled back from her face with two silvery clips. I had time to catalog all this because she sat staring at her hands, saying nothing.

  After a full minutes' silence, Kimball asked, a little coldly, I thought, "Do you want me to start?"

  Janet Woo nodded.

  "Miss Chin," he turned his intense blue eyes to me, "do you remember the Patricia Lin case?"

  "Yes, of course," I said, surprised.

  "Can you summarize it?"

  I could and did, although it felt a little like a high school pop quiz. "Patricia Lin's body was found in Central Park. She had been strangled somewhere else and dumped there. She had died during or soon after having sex. The man she'd been dating, Mitch Ellman, was arrested, tried, and acquitted."

  Janet Woo did not look at me while I spoke, and she blushed faintly. John Kimball's eyes, on the other hand, never left me.

  "How do you characterize the verdict?" he asked.

  I thought. "I don't have access to all the facts."

  "Nevertheless."

  I looked at Janet Woo, and then back into Kimball's eyes. They matched his shirt perfectly, I noticed.

  "I thought the verdict was wrong."

  Kimball nodded, and Janet Woo seemed to soften a little.

  "Why," Kimball asked, "do you think he was acquitted?"

  "Because the evidence was all circumstantial. And because he had a very expensive, very slimy attorney." In a lawyer's office, I'd learned, you don't say 'lawyer'.

  "Janet…" Kimball said; when she didn't respond he went on, "Janet has some evidence pertinent to that case."

  Janet Woo looked up hurriedly. "I don't know if it's evidence," she said. "I only think so." Her voice was high and hushed, breathy. Oh, well, I thought, at least it's a voice.

  "I don't understand," I said. "Mitch Ellman's been acquitted. What good is evidence now? They couldn't try him again even if he confessed."

  "Not for murder," Kimball said. "But if it were solid evidence the Department of Justice might be willing to undertake a civil rights prosecution."

  "Civil rights?"

  "It's a violation of someone's civil rights to kill them."

  I almost laughed. I controlled myself and said, "I'm glad to hear that."

  "Yes." Kimball frowned. Nothing funny about the law. "Well. I'm a friend of Janet's family, and recently Janet came to me. She didn't know where else to go. She feels she cannot tell her family what she has told me. In fact it would be a disaster if her parents found out. Isn't that right, Janet?"

  She nodded. John Kimball waited a few moments, then said, "Janet knew Mitch Ellman too. Didn't you, Janet?"

  I wondered if the whole rest of our meeting was going to be a silent-response Q & A, but suddenly Janet Woo spoke up.

  "I dated him."

  I waited, motionless, afraid any movement or sound would stop her again.

  "I studied acting at CCA two years ago," her soft voice went on. "I dated Mitch Ellman. Not for long."

  "Why not for long?" I finally asked, when it was clear she was stalled.

  "He was… exciting." She started slowly, then warmed to it. "Wild and… powerful. He attracted me." She gave me an earnest look, as though trying to make sure I believed such an odd thing could happen, a shy woman attracted to a powerful man. "For a while we dated," she said, "without… physical intimacy." She blushed furiously; even the part in her hair grew crimson. "But he became more insistent. And I also…" She swallowed. "We began to have sex."

  This last line was delivered in a whisper so low I had to lean forward to hear it.

  "Go on, Janet," Kimball said.

  Janet Woo jumped in her chair. Maybe she'd forgotten he was there. She looked at him, then at me. I tried to smile encouragingly.

  "But…" She straightened her skirt and continued. "At first it was exciting. Then it got frightening. I stopped seeing him."

  "What about it," I kept my voice soft, "was frightening?"

  "He likes to," she looked at Kimball's desktop, but not at him, then down at the taupe carpet, "to tie you up. If a man likes to do that, that can be exciting…" she brought her eyes to mine again, "… but only if you trust him. I found I couldn't trust Mitch. Sometimes he hurt me. He always scared me. He… I didn't know what he would do. I was afraid. So I stopped seeing him."

  Janet Woo was staring into her lap now, twisting her hands. I looked at John Kimball, raised my eyebrows inquiringly. As hard as this might be for Janet Woo, I didn't see that it added significantly to any case against Mitch Ellman.

  John Kimball seemed to sense what I was thinking. "Tell Miss Chin," he said to Janet, in a voice with an edge of demand in it, "what you told me about Patricia Lin."

  She raised her head and blinked. She said softly, "I think there is a tape."

  "A tape?" I repeated, not sure what she meant.

  "A video," she nodded.

  I didn't know what expression was on my face, but she looked down again, spoke to her hands. "He liked to tape us. Not every time, just some. The camera was hidden; at fir
st I didn't know. Then he told me. I even saw one. The important thing," she said with a rush, "the important thing is, the times he taped were the times he scared me most. He changed then. Well, not changed: he got more like himself, got… wilder. Those were the times he hurt me. If he…" she swallowed again, preparing for the words she was about to say. "If Mitch killed Patricia Lin while he was having sex with her, it must have been one of those times. It must have been while he was taping it."

  "Oh," I said. I let my eyes wander to the window, where pretty, innocent clouds floated across Manhattan. "Oh."

  "Do you see, Miss Chin, why I called you?" John Kimball's edgy voice almost made me jump, the way Janet Woo had done.

  "I think so," I said.

  "If we had that tape," Kimball said, "we could take it to the FBI."

  "But we don't know if there really is one."

  "No."

  "And if there is, why on earth would Mitch Ellman give it up?"

  "Mitch Ellman," John Kimball said carefully, "obviously finds Asian women… attractive."

  I looked at him coldly. "I suppose," I said, "that I might get him to go to bed with me. I don't think that necessarily means he'd give me a videotape that could send him to jail for the rest of his life." And I'm a private eye, not a concubine, you stuffed shirt lawyer, I thought.

  "He wouldn't have to give it to you." John Kimball ignored my attitude, which gave me time to get myself back under control. "If you could swear you'd seen it, the FBI could get a search warrant. Once they found the tape, they could use it."

  "If it exists," I said.

  "If it exists."

  I looked at him steadily for a few moments, then looked at Janet Woo. She instantly dropped her gaze to the floor.

  "What do you want me to do?" I asked.

  "Get the tape," Kimball said. "Or at least see it."

  "Do you care how?"

  Kimball frowned again. "Yes. Nothing that will discredit this office, or expose Janet to any publicity." Janet's eyes widened. "I think I should be informed of what you're planning, and how each step is progressing," Kimball said.