[Georgia 03] Fallen

her, but Will decided to keep that to himself. “What was Evelyn doing mixed up with the cousin of the guy who runs all the coke in and out of the southeastern United States?”
    “Hector was a car salesman, actually.” She glanced at him. There was something like humor in her eyes. “He sold Cadillacs.”
    That explained why the man’s name hadn’t come up on Will’s vehicle search. He was driving a dealer car. “Hector had a Texicanos tattoo on his arm.”
    “We all make mistakes when we’re young.”
    Will tried, “What about the letter A that Evelyn drew under the chair?”
    “I thought we were calling that an arrowhead?”
    “ Almeja rhymes with ‘Amanda.’ ”
    “It kind of does, doesn’t it?”
    “It’s slang for ‘cunt.’ ”
    She laughed. “Why, Will, are you calling me a cunt?”
    If she only knew how many times he’d been tempted.
    “I suppose I should reward your good police work.” Amanda pulled a folded sheet of paper from the sun visor. She handed it to Will. “Evelyn’s phone calls from the last four weeks.”
    He scanned the two pages. “She’s been calling Chattanooga a lot.”
    Amanda gave him a curious look. Will glared back at her. He could read, just not quickly and certainly not under scrutiny. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s eastern field office was in Chattanooga. He’d called them constantly to coordinate meth cases while he was working in North Georgia. The 423 area code appeared at least a dozen times in Evelyn’s phone records.
    He asked, “Is there something you want to say to me?”
    For once, she was silent.
    Will pulled out his cell phone to call the number.
    “Don’t be stupid. It’s Healing Winds, a rehab facility.”
    “Why was she calling there?”
    “I had the same question.” She signaled, pulling into the next lane. “They’re not allowed to give out patient information.”
    Will checked the dates against the numbers. Evelyn had only started calling the facility in the last ten days, the same time period in which Mrs. Levy said that Hector Ortiz’s visits with Evelyn had picked up.
    Will said, “Chuck Finn lives in Tennessee.”
    “He lives in Memphis. That’s a five-hour drive from Healing Winds in Chattanooga.”
    “He has a serious drug addiction.” Will waited for her to respond. When she didn’t, he said, “Guys get clean, sometimes they want to unburden themselves. Maybe Evelyn was afraid he would start talking.”
    “What an interesting theory.”
    “Or maybe it took clearing his mind for Chuck to realize that Evelyn was still sitting on her share of the cash.” He pushed on. “It’s hard to find work with a rap sheet like Chuck’s. He was kicked off the force. He spent serious time in prison. He’s got his habit to battle. Even if he’s clean, no one would go out of their way to hire him. Not in this economy.”
    Amanda dropped another dollop of information. “There were eight sets of prints in Evelyn’s house, excluding hers and Hector’s. They’ve identified three. One set belonged to Hironobu Kwon, another belonged to Ricardo the heroin mule, and another set belonged to our Hawaiian shirt aficionado. His name is Benny Choo. He’s a forty-two-year-old enforcer for the Yellow Rebels.”
    “Yellow Rebels?”
    “It’s an Asian gang. Don’t ask me where they got the name. I suppose they’re very proud to be hillbillies. Most of them are.”
    “Ling-Ling,” Will guessed. That was who they were going to see. “Spivey said you should talk to Ling-Ling.”
    “Julia Ling.”
    Will was surprised. “A woman?”
    “Yes, a woman. My laws, how the world has changed.” Amanda glanced in the rearview mirror and darted into the next lane. “The nickname comes from the now-disproven perception that she’s not very smart. Her brother likes to rhyme things. ‘Ding-a-ling’ turned into ‘Ling-a-Ling,’ shortened to ‘Ling-Ling.’ ”
    Will had no idea what she was talking about. “That makes sense.”
    “Madam Ling is the outside boss of the Yellow Rebels. Her brother Roger still pulls the strings from inside, but she runs the day-to-day. If Yellow is making a play for Brown, then it’s being made by Roger via Ling-Ling.”
    “What’s he in for?”
    “He’s serving life for the rape and murder of two teenage girls. Sixteen and fourteen. They were tricking for him. He didn’t think they were pulling their weight, so he strangled them to death with a dog leash. But not before raping both of