Lee Jin In "Orange, Peeling"

The second-story man turned out to be… a woman, of substantial temerity and aptitude. Not only was she able to determine, in the darkness of a mid-October night in 1937, the exact fire escape, and floor, of the room she was intent upon infiltrating; she was able to sidestep the unwelcome attentions, both benign and hostile, of neighbors and cops alike. Until she was not.

This was scarcely an accident, for she knew New York City well, and she was on a mission…

Professor Kent Radford was missing! His friend and colleague, Professor Miles Pritchard, received an unwelcome phone call from a police detective, summoning him to visit Radford’s residence, near their university campus. Because of their shared field, chemistry, both men had lent their expertise, from time to time, to Uncle Sam. To his student aide, Pritchard confided, “I hope this does not become a Federal case — in a literal sense.”

Pritchard arrived at Radford’s home — along with that student, a striking young woman with raven hair and a piercing interest in her attentive gaze. Ed Hines, the irritable senior detective in charge, waved them over, where he and the other cops, most of them in uniform, huddled in the study, near an expansive oaken desk. Hines frowned at two of his coworkers for taking an unprofessional look at the young woman, whose age he guessed at early twenties; she paid no mind to their attention. “Not the best time to bring your daughter, or…wait, is she family? Or, maybe, something else? She don’t look much like you.”

Pritchard grinned at the policeman, who was young enough to be his son. “I’m flattered by the suggestion, Detective, but this is my secretary, Lee Beaufort — a very bright girl. I think she’s going to make a fine scientist herself one day, in fact. A new Madame Curie, perhaps?”

Hines scrutinized the young woman, who did not so much as blink. “You don’t look French to me. No offense.”

“My father came from France,” Lee answered. “He was a merchant marine. He met my mother when he visited China. Before the Great War.”

“French and Chinese, huh?” Hines tried to compute the result. “So… what does that make you? Citizenship-wise, I mean?”

Lee allowed herself the faintest trace of a smile, so faint it was more felt than seen. “I was born and raised in San Francisco,” came her serene rebuttal. “It makes me an American, sir."

“Is that right?" Hines tried to ignore her hint of derision. "Well, you’re in the big, bad Apple now, Miss Beaufort. Just what can you tell us, about this Professor’s activities in the past, say, week?”

^^^^

In fact, Hines did not know how right Pritchard was, about his student aide, for Lyon Jin-Beaufort — Lee to her friends and coworkers — was more than a promising future chemist. Far, far more.

A young uniformed cop retrieved a scrap of chewing-gum wrapper, deposited on the floor. He offered it to Hines, who held it up to the light and squinted at it. “Damn, this guy needs to go back to handwriting class,” he griped. “Okay, I think I… yeah, okay, this looks like a number for... it's ‘Haberman Heights’? That’s that joint, above the old speakeasy. Turned into housing.” Then he made an error: a murmured recitation of the phone number, which Lee could make out, owing to her extraordinary sense of hearing, and an ability to read lips she had been unwilling to share with members of law enforcement.

The cops rummaged through Radford’s desk, and poked their noses into every corner, under every pillow, book or drinking cup, resting wherever Radford — a scientific Klieg light, but legend has it, a bit of a ditz at home — had placed it.

They overturned the mattress, and looked under the box springs. They threw open every desk and dresser drawer, and dumped their contents out onto the floor. In their apparent rush to locate something of value that could indicate a current location for Radford, inevitably the police would have to ignore clues that a more patient investigator might find useful. Such as the scrap of bright orange cloth; that caught Lee’s eye.

She pocketed it, for reasons she could only chalk up to intuition, and casually, in no apparent hurry, as if this all bored her somewhat, drifted to open closets that held the absent professor’s wardrobe. Lee glanced, with a dream-like and enviable lack of urgency, at his overcoat — and several shirts. So mildly did her hand dart inside to pull open the jacket and pull down the collars and cuffs of several of the shirts that she could have anticipated Hines, harrumphing as he charged over to shoo her away, with seconds to spare.

Which, of course, he did.

Pritchard told them all he knew, about Kent Radford’s activities. Kent was not a married man, since his wife had left him for a colleague; she and her husband lived in England, and Radford’s son was in the Army, stationed somewhere in Europe, “if I recall,” said Pritchard. Hines took down their contact information, from both Pritchard and his comely student, and sent them packing.

Lee had seen no evidence of any orange cloth used to stitch up Radford’s shirts or coat, but she knew the torn scrap was a clue, somehow. “Where does Doctor Radford like to go, when he’s in the city?” she asked her faculty advisor. “Might be helpful to try there, if they’ve got a phone.”

“If the police need to know that, they’ll be in touch,” Pritchard suggested. “I see this case has captured your imagination, Lee! I must confess, it’s got me worried… I trust this policeman, Hines. I’ve known him, for years, and he’s always been of impeccable character, however gruff he may appear to be, at first.”

Lee preferred to keep her own counsel on Hines’ integrity, or lack thereof, later consulting the telephone directory for assistance. She thought that the numerals on the chewing gum wrapper must go with a phone number, and played a hunch. A correct one. The switchboard operator even — once Lee claimed to be “in the employ of” the N.Y.P.D. — supplied an address to go with the number.

^^^^

Lee dressed for a night’s prowling and caught a cab, then another, then a train to get to the building. She glanced inside the lobby of the apartment, manned by a bored-looking guy, maybe twenty years old, who read his battered copy of Ernest Hemingway’s newest novel, To Have and Have Not, without glancing at her. She sighed in relief, having been spared his possible attempt to make time with her — and his ability to identify her to Hines and his ilk.

Ducking around the side of the building, she located the right fire escape, and began her ascent to room 34-C.

Violating the sanctity of the locked room required a trivial effort on her part, and she was inside. Dressed in black tights, with a mask to match obscuring a memorable face, Lee moved to the closet and pushed it open, finding several men’s long-sleeved shirts, and an overcoat to match the clothes in Professor Radford’s own home.

She wielded a tiny U.V. flashlight, with which she was able to find the orange inner lining of one jacket had indeed been torn. She dug out the scrap of the cloth she had retrieved from Radford’s house, and matched it to the lining of the jacket. Pulling on the lining further, she was able to spy a sheaf of damp papers stuffed under the lining, as if it had been sewn shut over them.

She enjoyed a moment of satisfaction, as she realized her hunch had paid off, before the lights snapped on in the apartment, and heard a hammer click on a pistol behind her.

“Don’t turn around,” said a youngish man, twenty-five at the most, with a note of alarm mixed with anger. “Let me see your hands!” Lee was in no mood to be shot, so she raised her hands, empty so far as her interrogator could see, in the universal gesture of compliance with armed authority. “That’s good. Like your approach. You supposed to be with the circus or something? Unfortunately for you, lady, this room is under investigation. Don’t move, while I cuff —”

For his troubles, he was rewarded with a solid thump, to the back of his head!

Lee spotted the new arrivals, and the collapsing young detective, in the mirror across the room. They appeared to be standard-issue gun thugs, one a broken-nosed muscle man, the other a wiry, twitchy sort. Twitch sneered at the vision of a shapely mystery woman clad in black tights. “Looks like we broke up good times for you, flatfoot,” he taunted. “Don’t worry, we’ll be sure to make up the difference. Come here, chickadee, and be quick about it. On second thought… Waldo, drag her over, I like it when they put up a —”

The brutish Waldo took exactly one step to comply with his confederate’s wish — which was all the steps he had in him before Lee threw something, from her left hand, onto the floor! A cloud of purple smoke erupted, from a spot maybe a yard from where the moaning detective was rubbing his sore head — driving him to scramble away! Lee danced past him, flattening her right hand to drive it against Twitch’s neck. He yelped in pain, and his knees seemed to give way, as he had suddenly been deprived of sufficient oxygen.

Waldo seized Lee’s neck, with what she had to admit was a staggering force, a genuine astonishment in his gaze. He blinked at her with what an observer might have called a child-like wonderment — no easy feat, for such an ugly mug to muster. Lee favored him with a determined smile… and raked her left fingernails across his cheek. Contained in her fingernail polish, the powerful, fast sedative was enough to put the gunman to sleep, almost before his chin hit the floor.

“Help,” someone gasped; Lee remembered to throw the window open to let the smoke disperse, into the night air. She pulled the young cop over to gulp a few lungfuls of ordinary air, before she seized him by his collars. “Who — what — is going on?” he babbled.

“I don’t have time to explain,” Lee hissed. “A college professor named Radford is missing.” She had learned to alter the sound of her speaking voice, ages before; there was little chance this stranger would be able to identify her to Hines. “You’ll be all right now.”

“Yeah, we know,” the cop said, when he wasn’t choking. “We think he used this place for some reason.”

She spun on one heel and turned to go. “Maybe he did. Or maybe, someone else did,” she said, “but he is connected, to this room, and to these bums. Do you know a Detective Hines?” The cop gave her a nod. “Good, notify him that you have some suspects, and some evidence that he may be either a victim or a conspirator. Start by checking the linings of his overcoat.”

"Say, just who are you, anyhow?” She was almost to the window, knowing the smoke would have reduced any opponent’s ability to offer her much in the way of menace, before he choked out, “I swear, it’s this city, it’s full of crazies. Now, we got these vigilantes, running all over the place. Like that Irish dame, in Hell’s Kitchen; they say she packs a wallop worse than Joe Louis! Maybe you two know each other?" He remembered to handcuff the gun thugs to each other.

Lee stepped through the open window, onto the balcony. The city was dark — but hardly asleep, and by no means, silent. “Call me Lee Jin,” she said, with a smile he could not see, “for I am but one of many.” She was in rapid descent, a phantom in tights, before he could offer further commentary.

As her feet came into contact with the pavement at last, she removed her mask and donned her heavy coat again. She would follow her lead to any dank corner of the city it took her, until she had her answers. If Radford were in cahoots with miscreants... if he were their hostage — she would discover it! Her morning promised to be quite busy.

© Eric Wolf 2021.

[Smash crime with the Convincers: https://vocal.media/fiction/moxie-in-midnight-for-everybody.]