Tyler's worst nightmare. The fear and the anger bubbled up inside his head, and into his throat. He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream. Instead, he hauled back and kicked Chi's shinbone as hard as he could.

Chi let out a yelp of pain, then a bunch of curse words, as he grabbed Tyler by the shoulders, his thick fingers digging in.

Tyler screamed as loudly as he could. "Don't hurt me! Don't beat me!"

The office door flew open and the two cops came out just as Chi started to shake him.

Madame Chen shouted, "Chi! What is the matter with you? Let him go!"

The cops didn't let him have any other option. The big one grabbed hold of Chi and yanked him backward as Kyle grabbed hold of Tyler and pulled him back.

Tyler crumpled into a little ball on the floor, sobbing.

The big cop slammed Chi up against the wall face-first, handcuffed him, and started to pat him down for weapons.

Madame Chen crouched down by Tyler and tried to comfort him in Chinese. Tyler sat up and let her put her arms around him. He pretended to be shaking with fear, hiccupping and trying to stop crying.

Madame Chen asked him if he was hurt. He shook his head no.

The big cop was reading Chi his rights. Madame Chen glared up at her nephew and told him in no uncertain terms he was a disgrace to the family. Tyler looked at Chi, made a face, and stuck out his tongue.

"I didn't do anything to him!" Chi exclaimed. "The little shit kicked me!"

Madame Chen marched over, reached up, grabbed her nephew's ear, and gave it a twist, all the while shouting at him in Chinese. Tyler had never seen her so angry.

"Ma'am," Detective Kyle said, trying to gently draw her away from Chi. "We'll take care of it. We'll take care of him."

"Good!" she said, still glaring at Chi. "Perhaps he will learn something in prison. A trade perhaps, which he can use when he gets out."

"You always favor them over me!" Chi shouted. "I am your family! I am your flesh and blood! I deserve-"

Furious, Madame Chen cut him off, going at him with more rapid-fire Chinese. The detectives looked at each other, frustrated by their inability to understand the words being exchanged. The one named Kyle looked down at Tyler.

"Can you tell us what they're saying? What did he mean when he said, 'You always favor them over me'?"

"Sometimes Chi is paranoid and de-lu-sion-al," Tyler said, rubbing at his sore shoulder. "You can look that up if you don't know what it is. I have a dictionary."

"I know what it is," Kyle said. "Why would you know about those things?"

"Because I'm smart, and I have an in-sa-tia-ble desire to learn new things."

Kyle didn't quite know what to say about that. Instead, he changed subjects. "Are you hurt? Do you need to go to the hospital?"

Tyler shook his head.

"Has this happened before? Has he hurt you before?"

"No. He didn't hurt me now either."

"Because you can tell me," Kyle said in that same condescending tone of voice he had used before. "You won't ever have to worry about him hurting you again."

"Are you going to put him in prison?" Tyler asked bluntly. "I don't think you should. He runs the fish market. He kind of needs to be here."

"We'll see," Kyle said. "He's going to jail right now."

"He's a liar and a troublemaker," Tyler said. "You should know that up front. You can't believe anything anything he says." he says."

It was one thing to get Chi in trouble, sending him to jail was something else. Who knew what he might tell the police?

"He really didn't hurt me," Tyler said. "And I did kick him first."

"Why did you do that, son?" Kyle asked.

Tyler bristled a little at the word son. son. "Because he says mean things just to hurt people's feelings." "Because he says mean things just to hurt people's feelings."

"He hurt your feelings? What did he say?"

"That he has more right to be here than I do because I'm adopted. But I don't think you should put him in jail for that."

"Child abuse is a crime," Kyle lectured, as if Tyler was slow-witted. "We have to take him in. And someone from Children and Family Services will probably come and talk to you."

Tyler looked up at Madame Chen, eyes wide.

"There is no need for any of this," she said to Kyle.

"Ma'am, if a child is in danger in his environment-"

"He is not in danger. Chi manages the fish market, he has little interaction with Tyler. There has been no incident such as this before, nor will it ever happen again. I have no interest in pressing charges."

"You don't have to, ma'am. The county and the state look out for the rights of children."

"I look out for my rights. And for the rights of my family," Madame Chen said firmly. "I neither need nor want help from you. What happened was an aberration. Familial rivalry, if you will. This is a family issue. There is no need to further burden the court system with a family squabble that was finished in five seconds.

"Is this the kind of case with which you fill your calendar, Detective Kyle?" she asked. "I was of the impression you are interested only in the big cases, the murders. Are there no murders for you to see to?"

"Uh, well, yes, ma'am," Kyle stammered.

"I assume you did not come here to arrest my nephew."

"No, ma'am."

"Then enough of this," Madame Chen declared. "You are costing me money and wasting all of our time. If you arrested every person who spoke harshly to a child, the prisons would be overflowing."

Kyle and Roddick looked at each other.

"Time is wasting," Madame Chen said impatiently.

Roddick watched Kyle for a signal. Kyle shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. "Fine, you're right, ma'am. We may have all overreacted."

Dealing with Chi was apparently more bother than it was worth. The big man undid Chi's handcuffs. Chi rubbed at his wrists, sulking. Madame Chen told him to go back to work to earn his way back into her good graces.

"And for what reason did you come here in the first place, Detectives?" she asked.

"We have reason to believe your car might have been used in the commission of a crime. We'd like to take a look."

Madame Chen gave them a perturbed look. "Now I see how my tax dollars are wasted. The detective here before you already looked at the car. I told him it had been damaged in a parking lot. He insisted on taking it anyway. Then more police officers came, and they towed it away. And now I am an aging woman with no mode of transportation."

"What other detective came here first?" Kyle asked.

"Detective Parker," she said. "The car is gone. Perhaps you should talk to him as to its whereabouts."

Kyle went down the narrow hall and out the side door. There was no sign of a Mini Cooper.

"Detective Parker seems like a very nice man," Madame Chen commented. "Courteous, thorough, very well-dressed. I was angry with him for taking my car, but he was only doing his job. I have nothing to hide," she said, pulling Tyler closer to her side, an arm around his shoulders.

Kyle ignored her. The muscles in his face flexed and tightened. He wasn't a happy man.

"Do you happen to know a young man named J. C. Damon?"

Madame Chen didn't blink. "Why would I know this person?"

"Maybe you've seen him in the vicinity. Early twenties, blond hair, blue eyes. He works as a bike messenger."

"I am a busy woman, in my office most of the time."

None of what she was saying was exactly a lie, nor was it exactly the truth. Tyler stood by her side looking as innocent as a lamb.

"How about you, son?" Kyle asked.

"You really shouldn't talk down to me, sir," Tyler said politely. "You might be embarrassed to find out I have an IQ of one sixty-eight."

The cops looked at each other again.

"Thank you for your time, ma'am," Kyle said. "We may call on you again once your car has been processed for evidence."

He took one long look at Tyler, at the blue eyes and the blond hair. Tyler held his breath. The detectives started toward the door.

Boo Zhu hurried from inside the warehouse to the edge of the loading dock. He looked like Humpty Dumpty, Tyler had always thought. The bright sun made him squint like a mole. He turned one way and then the other.

"I know! I know!" he said excitedly, his thick tongue sticking out of his mouth. "I know JayCee!"

35.

Parker left the Sebring in a red zone in front of the restaurant and went inside. The place was so dimly lit, for an instant he thought he'd gone blind. Then his eyes adjusted and he saw Diane, looking at her watch as she sat in a corner booth. The restaurant was at the front end of a nightclub that had been a swinging place in the days of the Rat Pack. It had never been redecorated. Most of the clientele in the main room had blue hair.

Once a month or so Diane met him there for lunch. The food was decent, it was quiet, and no one from either of their professions ever came there. They both preferred to keep their private lives private. Their monthly lunches were like little oases amid the chaos of their daily lives. Nice respites.

Parker kissed her cheek and apologized for keeping her waiting.

"I went ahead and ordered," she said, gesturing to the chopped salad on his side of the table. "Your usual."

"Perfect. Thanks." He slid into the booth, heaved a big sigh, and tried to idle the motor down. He was revving into high gear now. Things were happening. Time was short.

"It's been a hell of a day so far," he said, and proceeded to fill her in on the latest troop movements of the Evil Empire: Robbery-Homicide.

"They'll never give you a break, Kev," she said, picking at her salad.

"No, they never will. And you know what? Fuck 'em. I'll make my own breaks. If I can just stay ahead of them for a day or so . . ."

"You think you're that close to solving it?" she asked. Her elbows rested on the tabletop. She propped her head in one hand, looking drained.

Parker leaned across the table. "Are you all right?"

She rallied and brightened as if she'd just increased the volume on her energy level. Her mouth curved up at one corner. "I'm tired. All that social carousing and skulduggery I did for you last night. And I didn't even get a thank-you orgasm for my trouble."

"I'll make it up to you."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah . . . That's what you all say," she said with a wry smile.

"Yeah, but I've got the goods to back it up, baby," Parker said in his sexiest voice. One of the blue-haired ladies in the booth behind Diane leaned over to get a better angle for her eavesdropping. Parker caught her eye and winked at her.

Diane shook her head. "You're shameless."

Parker grinned. "Yes, I am. Aren't you glad?"

"I am." She poked the tines of her fork at a piece of shredded chicken. "So have you figured out who a guy like Lenny Lowell could possibly know who would be worth blackmailing?"

"Not yet, but I'm this close," he said, pinching a thumb and forefinger together. "And I ran off with the murder book, so it'll take Kyle and Roddick a while to catch up."

"This really must tie in to something big, for them to go to all this trouble with you."

"Their captain told my captain it relates to something they have ongoing. I can't connect the dots yet, but there's only one name that keeps coming to mind. Tricia Crowne-Cole."

Diane straightened in her seat. "What? Rob Cole killed his wife," she said firmly. "How could this possibly have anything to do with that? Are you delusional?"

"Somebody has been paying somebody else a lot of money to keep a secret."

"You don't even know that for certain."

"Actually, I do know that for certain."

"Rob Cole killed his wife," she said again. "You weren't there, Kevin. You didn't see what he did to her. It was personal, vicious-"

"She had other people in her life. The daughter, who might have been fucking her husband. The brother, who had to live in the shadow of perfect sister Tricia-"

Diane ticked her points off on her fingers. "Rob Cole is the one who's been indicted, the one going on trial, the one with no alibi and plenty of motive-"