“Almost there,” I said.

“Change of plans.”

He laid them out. I got on the freeway, sped downtown.

CHAPTER
44

The chief had opted to hide in plain sight, designating the meet at Number One Fortune Dim Sum Palace, one of those arena-sized places in Chinatown that still feature gluey chop suey, oil-drenched moo goo gai pan, and seafood of mysterious origin.

The air was humid with steam, sweat, and MSG. Linoleum floors had been pounded dull by decades of feet. The walls were red, green, more red, raised panels embossed with gold dragon medallions and outsized renderings of birds, fish, and bats. Chinese lettering might have meant something. Hundreds of lunchers were crammed into vault-like dining rooms, tended by ancient waiters in black poly Mao suits and tasseled gold beanies who moved as if running for their lives.

Enough clatter and din to make the Grill seem like a monastery. If there was a caste system behind this seating scheme, I couldn’t decipher it, and when Milo asked to be directed to the chief’s table, the stunning hostess looked at him as if he was stupid.

“We don’t take reservations and we have eight rooms.”

We set out on the hunt, finally spotted him at a smallish table near the center of the sixth room surrounded by hordes engrossed in their food. No one paying attention to the white-haired, mustachioed man in the black shadow-stripe suit, white silk tab-collar shirt, gray-yellow-scarlet Leonard tie that screamed more is more.

He saw us when we were thirty feet away, looked up from chop-sticking noodles into his mouth, wiped his mouth and drank from a glass of dark beer.

I looked around for his bodyguards, spotted a pair of cold-eyed burlies four tables over, pretending to concentrate on a platter of something brown.

“Sit down. I ordered spareribs, pepper steak, shrimp-fried rice, and some sort of deep-fried chicken thing, hopefully they won’t include the damn feet.” Glancing at Milo. “You I know will eat anything.” To me: “That sound suitable for your constitution?”

“Sure.”

“Easy to please today, Doc? Strange phase of the moon?”

He’d been trying to hire me full-time for years, had never accepted failure with anything approaching good nature.

He returned to eating, chopsticks whirling like darning needles. Excellent fine-motor coordination motivated a huge load of noodles under the mustache. He chewed, had more beer, looked around. “Damn barn.”

One of the old waiters brought tea and beer and sped away.

The chief said, “You stirred up a hornets’ nest, Doctor.”

“Keeps life interesting.”

“Maybe yours. Okay, give me a brief summary. And I mean brief. You, not Sturgis. He already went over the basics when he called and made my life complicated.”

I said, “At least three people who lived at Premadonny’s compound have been murdered.”

“Three?” he said. “I’ve got the nanny and the guy—Wedd.”

“The baby found in the park.”