Philip Kerr - Gridiron

'I was wondering what time you and your people left the piazza last night. Maybe you saw something.'

'About five o'clock. Same as usual.'

'I'm sorry, you are — '

'My name is Cheng Peng Fei.'

'Where are you from, son?'

'Hong Kong. I'm a visa student at UCLA.'

'And your friends? Are they mostly students?'

'Mostly, yes.'

'Did you ever run across the security guard at the Yu building? Big guy. Black.'

'Is that the man who's dead?'

'Yes, it is.'

Cheng Peng Fei shook his head.

'We've seen him. That's all. There's another guard too, isn't there?

Mean looking whitey. We've seen rather more of him.'

'You ever go inside the building?'

'We have thought about it, but we'd probably get busted. So we just stay beside our fountain handing out leaflets, that kind of thing.'

'It was sure different in my day,' said Curtis as they neared the corner of Fifth.

A bum pushing a shopping cart paused briefly to collect a cigarette butt off the sidewalk before continuing in the direction of Wilshire. A tall black man wearing grimy Nike Air Jordans, track-suit pants and a baseball cap coming the opposite way was forced to side-step the cart and stopped to curse the bum before continuing on his way.

'When I was a kid a protest really was a protest.'

'What were you protesting about?'

'There was only one thing people protested about back in those days: Vietnam.'

'Better than going there, I guess.'

'Oh, I went. It was when I came back I got involved. What exactly is your beef with the Yu Corp?'

Cheng Peng Fei handed over a leaflet.

'Here, this'll explain everything.'

Curtis stopped, glanced over the bill and put it in his coat pocket. Then he nodded towards an advertising boarding on a shelter for the DASH, the Downtown Area Short Hop bus service. The ad showed a handshake between two disembodied arms, one of them wearing the uniform of the LAPD. The headline read:

As partners

LAPD

AND YOU

CAN BE A

LETHAL WEAPON

2

FIGHT CRIME

Cheng Peng Fei was bright enough to understand what Curtis was suggesting. He shrugged and shook his head.

'Really, if I knew something I'd tell you, Sergeant, but I can't help you.'

He was shorter than Curtis by a head and, at a hundred and twelve pounds, just over half as heavy. Curtis placed himself in front of Cheng, close enough to have kissed him, and regarded him with a mixture of suspicion and contempt.

'What are you doing?' said Cheng. Trying to retreat he found himself pressed up against the wall on the corner of Fifth and Hope.

'I'm just trying to see inside your inscrutable little head,' said Curtis, holding him firmly by the shoulders. 'So that I'll know why you're lying to me.'

'What the fuck are you talking about, man?'

'Now you're absolutely certain you never met Sam Gleig?'

'Sure I'm sure. I never even heard his name until now.' Cheng started to curse the policeman in Chinese.

'You ever heard of Miranda, college boy?'

'Miranda who?'

'Miranda vs. the State of Arizona, that's who. Fifth Amendment stuff. Guidelines that include informing arrested persons prior to questioning that they have the right to remain silent — '

'You're arresting me? For what?'

Curtis turned Cheng around and handcuffed one hand expertly.

'- anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. And that you have the right to an attorney.'

'What is this? You're crazy.'

'These are your rights, schmuck. Now, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to cuff you to the streetlight there and then go and collect my car and come back and pick you up. I'd go back there with you, only I figure it might inflame some of your friends to see you being arrested and I'm sure you wouldn't want to cause any trouble. Not to mention the embarrassment you might experience. This way you're only going to be embarrassed in front of a few passing strangers.'

Curtis hauled Cheng's thin arm around the streetlight and snapped on the other manacle.

'You're fucking crazy.'

'Besides, while I'm gone it'll give you a little time to reflect on that story of yours. Time to reflect. Time to think of another.' Curtis looked at his watch. 'I'll be back in five minutes. Ten at the most.' He pointed up at the Gridiron that loomed over them, reducing the surrounding buildings to visual insignificance. 'Anyone asks, you just stopped to admire the architecture.'

'Bullshit.'

'Now, there I have to agree with you, Cheng boy.'

'The tape's running, Frank.'

Cheng Peng Fei glanced around the video room at New Parker Center.

'What tape?'

'We're recording this interrogation on video,' said Curtis. 'For posterity. Not to mention your protection. Is this your good side?'

Coleman sat down alongside Curtis and facing Cheng Peng Fei across a table on which there was only one object: a tyre wrench wrapped in a polythene bag. Cheng pretended it was not there.

'It's so your lawyer can't say we beat a confession out of you with this tyre wrench,' said Coleman.

'What's to confess? I haven't done anything.'

'Please state your name and age.'

'Cheng Peng Fei. I'm twenty-two.'

'Do you wish an attorney to be present?'

'No. Like I said, I haven't done anything.'

'That's your tyre wrench, isn't it?' said Coleman.

Cheng shrugged. 'Could you recognize yours?'

'Yours is missing from the trunk of your car,' said Coleman. 'I checked. This wrench was thrown through the windshield of a car belonging to Mitchell Bryan, an architect working at the Yu Corporation building. A red Lexus. This wrench has your fingerprints on it.'

'Well, if it's my wrench it would, wouldn't it? I had a flat and I changed the wheel. I drove off and left my wrench on the road.'

'The incident with the wrench happened in the parking lot at the Mon Kee Restaurant on North Spring Street,' said Coleman. 'Just a few blocks from the Gridiron.'

'If you say so.'

'When we searched your apartment we found a Mastercard receipt for a meal you ate there on the same night that Bryan's windshield was smashed.'

Cheng Peng Fei was silent for a moment.

'All right. So I smashed a windshield. But that's all. I know what you're trying to do here. But even if your premise is correct and I did smash the windshield of one man working at the Gridiron, it does not make your conclusion, that I murdered another man working there, at all certain. Even if you had ten thousand such premises, it would not establish your conclusion.'

'Are you studying law, by any chance?' asked Curtis.

'Business Admin.'

'Well, you're right, of course,' Curtis allowed. 'This wrench alone would not make it certain. Of course, it might make it easier for us to show you had a motive: your fanatical opposition to the Yu Corp and its employees and agents.'

'Bullshit.'

'Where were you last night, Cheng?'

'I stayed home and did some reading.'

'What did you read?'

' Organizational Culture and Leadership , by Edgar H. Schein.'

'No shit.'

'Any witnesses?'

'I was studying, not partying. I was reading a book.'

'When you do party,' said Coleman, 'what do you drink?'

'What kind of a question is that?'

'Beer?'

'Sometimes beer, yeah. Chinese beer. I don't like the taste of American beer.'

'Scotch?'

'Sure. Who doesn't?'

'Me, I can't stand the stuff,' admitted Coleman.

'So what does that prove? I drink Scotch, you don't drink Scotch, he drinks Scotch. This is like my English class. Can we try the past indefinite now?'