The Detective & the Chinese High-Fin Read Online Free PDF Page B

travels fast.
    Or was it just nothing ? Just a guy sitting on a lot full of warehouses, minding his own business?
    Somehow I doubted that.

5
    T he next morning after a nice, mostly traffic-free drive, I got to the downtown Los Angeles police station around 10:45. I went up to the detectives’ floor and told a tired, cynical female police officer who I was and that I was there to see Mike Ott.
    â€œYou have an appointment?”
    â€œYep. It’s for eleven.”
    She picked up a phone, got Ott on the line, told him that a man named John Darvelle was here for his eleven o’clock.
    I mouthed to the officer, “Tell him I’m early.”
    She ignored me. Then hung up. “Ott says you’re three hours late. He’s not available now. You’re going to have to wait. Sit over there.”
    She pointed me to an area in front of her desk but also off in a corner that could only be described as cripplingly depressing. Two little blue grammar-school-style chairs, both with cracks in them, and that’s it. No coffeemaker. No coffee table. No out-of-date magazines. Nothing.
    But I’d known that Ott would make me wait. I was prepared for it. So I went over and sat down in one of the little blue chairs, then pulled out a book I had brought, a book I had already read, a book I like to reread from time to time. It’s called Sizzling Chops and Devilish Spins . It’s a book about Ping-Pong and how to get better at it. I read it for about fifteen minutes, then peered over the top of it and said meekly to the officer, “Can I get some water in a small paper cup?”
    She glared at me.
    Thirty-seven minutes after that, the officer said to me, “Ott’s ready. You can go on back. You know where he sits?”
    â€œI’ll just look for the perfect hair.”
    Truth is, I did know where he sat. I’d been there lots of times. I walked behind the officer’s desk, then back through the detectives’ floor until I found him. He was on the phone, but he motioned for me to sit down.
    Detective Mike Ott was fifty-three. And he did, in fact, have one of those heads of hair that just defy logic. Gray now, but thick, literally as thick as the hair on the head of a teenager. It pissed me off. I looked at the sharp part running down his head, a plethora of hair going one way, a plethora of hair going the other way. I thought, He’s probably one of those guys who has a comb at his house. I’ve literally never used a comb. These days, I zip my hair downwith a head shaver to about a half inch all over. Keeps my receding hairline looking tight, as opposed to the other option: sickly and sad. But even before my Oster head shaver became one of my closest friends, I still never used a comb. A brush, maybe, or my hands, but never a comb. Not once.
    I watched Ott finish up his call. Below the hair was a face carved out of stone, a face made up of right angles, with smallish gray eyes and bone-dry skin made even drier and older-looking by years of stress and smoking.
    He hung up the phone. “You’re late.”
    â€œI was early. Got here at 10:45.”
    â€œYou know, I know I asked you to be here early, which was inconvenient for you. But, bottom line, I’m giving you business and you’re still a pain in the ass.”
    Ott looked at me for a long time with that strong but tired stone face. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t defend myself against his accusation. I just sat there. Eventually he picked up a big file on his desk. “Here’s the situation.”
    He didn’t open the file. He put it back on his desk and continued. “Case is over a year old. Well over. Fifteen, sixteen months. You may remember it. It got a little press. Short version is this: Rich guy walks out of his house in Hollywood one morning, about to get into his car, takes a bullet to the chest. Bullet came out of a pistol from seventy-five, eighty yards away. Guy drops