In the last episode of Special Delivery, Rocky suspected that James Wong knew the location of the statue Il Pollice Nero, which he must recover for rich wife and con artist Jesse Weller or else place his sister Amanda in serious danger. Rocky is staking out Wong's office in his secretary's car to avoid detection:
The top of James Wong's Alfa Romeo had its cloth top up on it as it lounged in the alley next to his office, the rain was pelting it with all its might. I had been sitting there about an hour and nothing had happened. The old man in the grocery that had tipped Wong to my presence the time before hadn't shown his face. The constant rain must have hidden the car from my view.
Wanda's car, a black Ford she bought new off the lot a year ago, was comfortable enough. She kept it clean. More importantly, it was also common as a cracker, making it easy to disappear into the background. For entertainment I brought along that morning's Chronicle, a packet of chewing gum, three apples in a paper bag, and a box of pretzels. No telling how long this was going to take.
The rain diminished into a slight drip and a barrel-shaped Chinese man with drooping eyes stepped out of the noodle parlor downstairs. I lowered the newspaper and gnawed on my second stick of gum. He looked both ways and slipped his hand out to catch the mist on his palm before he decided against it and went back inside. In half a minute the rain returned to full strength and poured down the windshield like a waterfall.
Two hours passed. I watched a few friends and neighbors skip in out of the deluge but none of them turned out to be James. And then his car moved. I never saw him get in it but it was backing out of the alley and on the turn I could see the man I was waiting for was crouched behind the wheel. His sunglasses were on despite the overcast. He looked to be in a hurry and he drove like it.
James Wong turned on Lake Avenue and kept to the side streets, which was going to make things tougher. He was going so fast it was hard to tell if he spotted me and was trying to lose me or he just wanted to get where he needed to go, but once he found a cross street called Kilmartin he didn't make a turn to the left or to the right, just kept on going until he was smack in the middle of a residential section, and a pretty pricey one at that. The streets had black plaques poured into the concrete of the curbs to tell you the addresses. No parking along the streets so you could see the plaques. By the time he made his turn he was practically out of my line of sight, but I saw it: he dropped off into a driveway to the left. I was there in a second. His car was obscured from my view by a tall shrub in the front yard. The house was a wide ranch, suitable for four or more. The plaque at the curb read: 438.
I couldn't park on the side so I continued on. The next cross street over wasn't as exclusive so I settled at the corner, where I could get a decent view of who came in or out. The rain let up a little and made it easier on me, but it didn't take long. Only five minutes passed before Wong's car jumped out again and whipped up the street past me at the same speed he was going before. This time he had a passenger, and the passenger was female. I grinned and thought, You dog, you.
Now he was doing his best to keep me away. He was making turns he didn't need to take and slowing down when he normally wouldn't have. Maybe he spotted me and maybe it was just a precaution, but no matter what it was hard to keep up with him. At Lincoln he turned right and I knew the city well enough to know that no matter what he had to come out the other side at Underwood, so I sped off and got to Point B. I pulled off and waited at the corner for him to come out. Two minutes passed and he wasn't showing, so either he turned completely around on a tight side street or his destination was on Lincoln.
I retraced my steps and watched along the road for someplace he could pull off. I found it soon enough. A small parking area behind a ragged, rusting metal fence. It sat along a white block building with room enough for three or four but I could only see one: a tow truck, large enough to hide an Italian sportscar behind it. I took a chance and dove in and I was right.
There was only way into the building, a badly-painted blue door with a dusty window in it, sitting tight at the top of three metal stair-steps. I got out slowly and made me way over to it. Along the way I caught a whiff of expensive perfume, the kind that overpowers a man and takes his wallet and his bus passes. Whoever she was, she wasn't with James just to have something to do on a Thursday afternoon.
The door was clear and open and led up another set of metal stairs to a balcony and a second floor. The air smelled of machine parts, rust and oil, and the concrete floor was covered in dust and soot, with footprints dancing around in circular patterns like an Arthur Murray course on pep pills. In other words, not the kind of place you generally take a nice girl. The statue is here, I thought.
Another door at the end of the balcony, and another thought: No one is here to stop me from following him. It didn't make sense. If the Nationalist Chinese took the time to steal the statue, they wouldn't drop it off in some abandoned building and leave it go, so why was it here? It was a question that would be answered the moment I opened the door.
A wide concrete floor below, empty save for a large, open crate. Three figures on the floor: James Wong, in a lightweight beige suit and a floral tie, the woman he brought, a tiny but well-built number with burnt-red hair, who was wearing a brown suit and a red, wide-brimmed hat, and a half-finished lady carved in marble with no clothing at all and a thumb that, even at the distance I stood from her, appeared as black as pitch.
Why did James Wong take the statue and what is he planning to do with it? Find out next week in The Adventures of Rocky Stone!
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