Free The Blue Dragon by Ronald Tierney Page A

the hills. I could feel the moisture on my cheeks as I descended the Saturn Street Steps. In moments I couldn’t see beyond the railing, and it seemed as if I were floating in a cold, barren limbo. At the bottom, a short, damp walk through a quiet residential neighborhood brought me to Castro and Market, a transportation hub minutes from the heart of the city.
    The Municipal Railway cars were crowded, and everything smelled of wet wool and influenza. Off the train at Powell station. All was quiet there. Perhaps for the first time, there was no tourist line for the cable cars. All the musicians had departed, and those who preached damnation had had their hellfires drenched.
    Only a few straggling souls scurried across the open area, umbrellas suddenly swept up like cups on stems.
    It could have waited, I told myself. I searched Market Street for taxis. Never in the rain. Never, never in the rain.
    I walked and walked until finally I was at the soft, undefined edge of the financial district. Here the cold, clean buildings buzzed with electronic debits and credits. Here too was the beginning of North Beach and Little Italy. All the great food and coffee and pastry and a sleazy sprinkling of X-rated video arcades and lap dancers.
    Here was FastMail the branch closest to Chinatown. It was a hole in the wall that had a counter at one end. The room was lined on one side with packing and mailing materials and on the other with rows and rows of keyed boxes with numbers on them. Personal mailboxes.
    The key in my pocket said 314. I followed the logical path to a medium-sized mailbox. There were letters inside addressed to Mrs. Ho—a newsletter from a hospital, envelopes from Pacific Gas and Electric and from Pacific Telephone. There was a postcard from a jeweler announcing a sale. The box was full. Advertisements mostly.
    More important, there was a large manila envelope containing several sheets of legal-sized paper.
    A will. Mrs. Ho’s will.
    I’d found what I was looking for. Maybe more. Instead of using a lockbox in a bank, Mrs. Ho had used her mailbox as a place to keep a copy of her will. Or someone had.
    My hands were cold as I unfolded the papers. There were two sets. One in English. One in Chinese. I moved quickly through the English version, skipping the words common to all wills.
    There was the name—the lone benefactor.
    Out in the cold rain and back in Chinatown, I walked up the street that ran by the sad, empty playground. The wind whipped the swings, the chains making a hollow sound as they clanged against the metal swing set. The rain was horizontal.
    The apartment building looked more ragged and old in the dismal light. I buzzed.
    Ray came to the door, smiling. “You are very brave detective,” he said. “You come out on a day like this. Very brave.”
    I climbed the steps. The door to 4B was ajar as usual. I called out his name. Wallace Emmerich didn’t answer. I edged inside.
    I looked around. He wasn’t there.
    I had started back down the stairs when I remembered the narrow stairway to the roof. At the top, the door to the roof was propped open. The rain was still strong, and now the wind was slashing out as well.
    Wallace Emmerich, in his long dark-blue robe, was trying to throw a sheet of plastic over some of his plants. It was sheer madness. As soon as he got one corner secure, he’d move to another only to have the first rip free again.
    “Mr. Emmerich!” I called out. The wind blew his name back against my own ears.
    He couldn’t hear me.
    I helped Emmerich secure the plastic over the plants. He didn’t question the act at all. We worked together until finally it was done.
    Then Emmerich looked at me. He knew then. He knew then that I knew.
    His look was one of pure anger.
    “So!” he yelled. “You’ll never prove it.”
    I went to him. The rain now drenched us both.
    “Oh yes I will. I have ,” I said, guiding his body to the door and down the steps. “I found the will,” I said when