“Well,” said Captain Kauhane, “now that we know this is a local gang, we need to look into the members and their friends.”
“Right,” said Chan, “we’re on it. I want to go talk to Jason Yu and his father.”
“I can understand,” said Kauhane, “and I sympathize with you, David. If we could’ve done it, you know we would have hung Yu out to dry for your dad’s disappearance by now.”
Chan shook his head. “I need for this to not be called a disappearance anymore. It’s a murder. Byung Yu killed my father. No need to sugarcoat it. And now that damn kid of his is growing up to be a murdering bastard, just like dear old dad.”
“Right, David, right,” said Yamamoto. “But you know what he means. Just because Dennis Anderson knew Jason Yu, doesn’t mean we can storm Yu’s castle and drag his ass out and hang him.”
“No,” said Chan. “We can’t drag him out and hang him anymore, can we. He’s found ways to get away with it long enough that we can only drag him out. After that, there’s no hanging.”
“Look,” said Kauhane, “you’re one of the ones who led the charge against the death penalty, David.”
“So what? So I’m to blame for Yu dancing around long enough not to hang?”
“No, no, of course not. That’s not what I mean,” said Kauhane. “But you know how you felt about the death penalty, and I know on balance, you approve of it ending.”
“Yeah, right, I know,” said Chan. “But would it really be so bad an idea not to just go over there and question the son?”
Kauhane shook his head. “I tell you, David, if it were anyone else, I’d say heading over to talk to him might be productive. But Byung Yu is the kind of person who would take anything he could to try to call us out for harassment.”
“Look, Captain. I don’t want to harass him, okay. All we need to do is get a look at Jason’s forearm. If he’s got that tattoo, we know he’s part of it. And he’s alive, which means he’s somehow alive while all his little buddies are dead. Doesn’t that tell us something right there?”
Kauhane sipped his coffee.
“David,” said Yamamoto, “how do you know he’s alive?”
“What?” said Chan.
“I said how do you know Jason Yu is alive? He could be one of the bodies. We can’t recognize them, can we? The faces are fucked up. I don’t know Jason Yu well enough to say whether he’s not one of the guys we got in the morgue. Do you know what he looks like that well?”
“Huh,” said Chan, “that’s interesting. I never thought of it that way. Now is that maybe an angle we can look at? Is there some way we can approach Byung Yu, some way that seems non-adversarial? Some way, huh, that we can ask him if he knows the whereabouts of his son? That, let’s say, we’ll tell him we’re very concerned that Jason may be dead. Hmmm, I wonder.”
“I don’t know,” said Yamamoto. “I’m just worried that if we push too hard, we’ll end up giving Yu a way to twist his and his son’s asses out of this in court. David, we all want him. But we need to think this through carefully.”
David Chan was steaming. It was as if the Yus were immune. They stood on some pedestal, kings of the mountain, and no one could rush them and get near enough to throw them off. It seemed as if there would never be justice for people like them. They lived the proverbially charmed life. Money really did talk, and law enforcement, well, they walked.
“So what,” said Chan, “even if every blessed one of those bodies is ID’d, and every single one of them knew Jason Yu, there’s not a damn thing we can do other than wait for him to slip on a bar of soap and accidentally fall into our arms?”
“I tell you what, David,” said Kauhane. “If every one of them turns out to be associated with Jason Yu, then we’ll definitely talk to the D.A., see what advice he can give us about how to approach this.”
“Great!” exclaimed Chan. “So the answer is no. There really is nothing we can do. I tell you, Captain, one of these days I won’t be able to hold back anymore. I’ve always wanted to see what that guy’s house looks like on the inside. How the other half lives. I feel like it’s getting harder and harder to resist paying him a visit.”
“Take it easy, David,” said Yamamoto. “We may be this close to getting at the guy. Finding a way at him through his kid might be the ticket.”
Chan threw his hands up in the air. “Kid gloves, Victor. It’s always going to be kid gloves with the Yus.”
“No it won’t,” said Kauhane. “We’ll get there.”
“Oh, come on, Captain, you know we won’t,” said Chan. “We won’t, guys. Take my word for it. We are never going to get that guy. He’s Superman, and we got no kryptonite.”
Lanning Lee 