Free Chasing the Dragon by Domenic Stansberry Page A

entirely comfortable in them. If there was one thing that struck Ying about the man it was the nose. An admirable nose—ancient in its profile, big as a peninsula. It made you unlikely to forget his face in the future.
    The man’s hair was short-cropped, unlike his father’s, and this accentuated his features. Ying saw the family resemblance. He had stood in this same doorway a couple weeks back talking with the father Giovanni. But Ying was with Toliveri now, and the man in the doorway was Dante Mancuso.
    “Hi, Toli,” Mancuso said. His voice carried a note of irony. It was a natural irony directed at the order of things, of which Toliveri was only the most recent manifestation. “You still with Homicide?”
    “Sorry to get you up at this hour.” Toliveri shied backward, straightening himself. On the way over, Ying had suggested Toliveri lead the questioning, at least at first. It seemed to make sense. Toliveri and Dante were acquainted; they knew each other from the neighborhood as well as from their time on the force. Already, though, Ying was beginning to think this was a mistake.
    “If we could come in for a moment?” Toliveri asked.
    “Is this a social call?”
    “I wish so. I haven’t seen you for so long.” Toliveri paused, trying to be gracious in his way. “This is Detective Ying. He used to be with Special Investigations.”
    “Who’s he with now?”
    “Do you mind if we come in?”
    Mancuso nodded, but he kept himself wedged in the doorway.
    “There was an incident,” Toliveri said. “And we were wondering if you could help us out.”
    Instead of revealing the uncle’s death up front, Toliveri was holding back to see how much Dante would reveal on his own. To see if the man would contradict himself or come out with some detail that gave his involvement away. But Dante had been a detective, Ying thought, and would not be so easily taken in. This was obviously a Homicide detail, and there was no way the two of them would be here at this time of night if it didn’t have to do with a murder. Still, Dante seemed to warm to Toliveri, though perhaps this was pretense as well; it was hard to tell who was working who. In the meantime, the two men turned their shoulders in such a way as to exclude him from the conversation. The old neighborhood thing.
    “What kind of incident?”
    “We’ll give you the details in a minute. It would be better, more helpful, if you could tell us where you were this afternoon.”
    “I’m in town for my father’s funeral.”
    “I know. I’m sorry. I liked your dad.”
    “I appreciate your sympathy. Especially in the small hours of the morning like this.”
    Toliveri laughed at Dante’s remark. It was an uncomfortable laugh and made the detective look foolish.
    “So tell me, what’s this about?” Dante asked. He was not smiling.
    “Where were you this afternoon?”
    “What time? Just tell me exactly the time you want to know about, and I’ll tell you where I was.”
    “About two.”
    “Two,” Dante hesitated. “About that time, I walked up the hill to see my Uncle Salvatore. Up Union. You know where that is, don’t you?”
    “Your uncle’s? Yes, I know where it is.”
    “We were supposed to get together. Discuss some family business. But he wasn’t there.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean I knocked on the door—but he didn’t answer.”
    “And then?”
    “I came back here.”
    The two cops looked at one another. The game had gone about as far as it could go.
    “What’s going on?” Dante asked. “What’s this about?”
    Ying took over now. “I’m sorry to tell you this. You’re uncle’s dead.”
    “No.” Dante looked genuinely confused. A little too genuine, maybe. “No,” he said again. “It’s my father who died. We buried him Tuesday.”
    “I’m sorry. But your uncle was shot to death earlier today. He was found on the floor of his office, upstairs in his house.”
    “Jesus,” said Dante. And in the instant he uttered