Kylie pounded on the front door. “NYPD,” she yelled. Then she turned to me. “I think we should identify ourselves, just in case they can’t figure out who the white couple pulling up to their building in an unmarked cop car is.”
The door opened, and a sallow-faced Chinese gangbanger blocked our path. He was dressed in black, which is normally a slimming color, but it did nothing to hide his three hundred pounds. He filled the doorway.
“NYPD,” I repeated. “Who’s in charge?”
“You got a warrant?”
“Why would we need a warrant? We’re just here to talk.”
“We got nothing to talk about. Now get the fuck out of here.”
And then we heard it coming from the other side of the door. Loud, clear, and unmistakable. Click. Clack. The distinct sound of someone racking the slide of a gun, most likely a semiautomatic.
Kylie didn’t hesitate. She reached behind her right hip and drew her Glock. “Down on the floor!” she yelled. She didn’t wait for a response.
She jerked her right foot straight between Fat Boy’s legs and hit paydirt. He grabbed his balls, doubled over, and dropped like a canary in a coal mine.
I had no idea how many CP Emperors were in there, and I had no interest in finding out. I drew my gun and yelled from behind the door, “NYPD! Weapons down. Weapons down—now!”
I braced for the first shot to be fired and hoped the door was thick enough.
“Bullshit,” said a voice from the other side. “You got no right to pull guns on us.”
“Don’t tell us what we can’t do,” Kylie yelled back. “As soon as that asshole racked the slide on that semi, we stopped needing a warrant. Exigent circumstances. Toss them. Now.”
“All right, all right.” I heard the gun slide across the floor. Then another. “I’m coming to the door. Move your fat ass, Rupert.”
Still holding his crotch, the big guy slid out of the way, and a tall, long-haired Asian kid opened the door wide. He was about twenty-two, with a wispy mustache and a permanent scowl on his face.
“You in charge?” I asked.
“Most of the time,” he said. “Except right now it looks like you’re in charge.”
“What’s your name?” I said.
“John Doe,” he said without disturbing the scowl.
“We already have plenty of guys named John Doe in the morgue waiting to be identified,” I said. “How about your real name.”
“John Dho,” he repeated. “D-h-o. You’re in Chinatown, dude.”
So it turned out that Donovan and Boyle actually did know who they talked to. They just couldn’t spell.
“This is a house of mourning. What do you want?”
“We understand, and we’re sorry for your loss, but we still need to talk. Here or at the precinct?” I said.
“You can come in,” Dho said. “The bitch stays outside.”
“The bitch either comes in,” Kylie said, “or she marches you out the door and parades you down Mulberry, screaming at you the whole way until we get to our car, which we parked two blocks from here.”
“Bullshit. You’re parked across the street.”
“Then I’d have to march you back. I don’t give a shit about your ‘No girls allowed in the clubhouse’ rules. I yelled ‘NYPD,’ and somebody in here locked and loaded a semi—which I’m sure you have a license for.”
He stepped aside and let us in. “What do you want here?”
“We’re looking for the person who killed Alex Kang,” I said.
Dho was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette that smelled like the inside of a stable. He blew a lungful of smoke our way. “So are we,” he said, “but we can do it without your help.”
“Let’s talk about it,” I said.
The room was dimly lit and sparsely furnished. Two tumbledown sofas, a smattering of Formica-topped tables, and a mismatched assortment of folding chairs. One corner at the far end was a makeshift kitchen.
“Nice digs,” Kylie said. “Clearly fit for an emperor.”
“Tell us about the day Alex went missing,” I said.
“He was hanging here till about eleven in the morning. He left to go visit his grandmother—she was in Beekman Downtown Hospital. When he didn’t come back by two, we started calling him. No answer. I went to the hospital. His mother was there. She said he never came. We checked his apartment, all his usual hangouts—nothing. Six days later, he shows up in a Hazmat suit on a bench in the Canal Street subway station. I already told all this to those two doughnut commandos.”
“Who are we talking about?” I said.