Changes – A Randall Lee Mystery by Charles Colyott

Yu Bei: Preparation.

Qi Shi: Begin.

Even after everything that has happened, I still practice Tai Chi every morning.

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I had heard the phone ring while doing my morning routine, but I let the answering machine pick it up. When I checked it, I found there were two calls from some cop, a Detective Knox. Said he had a few questions for me. After my shower, I grabbed another beer and headed down to the shop. I had told the detective to come on by in twenty minutes or so.

When a guy dressed like a character from Miami Vice walked in, I knew it was him. He was surprised that I was Caucasian. With a name like Randall Lee and  me running an Asian store, he thought I would be Asian.

When I was kicked off the police force, I opened a shop dealing with Asian remedies for health problems and treatments, such as acupuncture. I had grown up in Hong Kong, and during my time there, I had become proficient in both.

He told me there had been a murder of a Chinese prostitute and he needed a translator. No one would talk to him. The body had been found at the Taste of Asia shop in the bad part of town.  I could tell it had been staged as a mock funeral and they wanted her more than dead, they wanted her damned.

When I saw the body, she looked like a Smurf. The coroner said she probably died from a crushed larynx, but I knew he was wrong. Every blood vessel had burst. I told Knox I had seen something like this before. She was blue from head to toe because she was bruised, not  cyanotic.

Martial arts have some very specialized strikes. Things legends are made of. I showed them a pushing move that would compress and shatter the ribs, pop the lungs like balloons and crush the heart. The blood has nowhere to go, so it shoots outward and soaks into the muscles and tissues. If they were to check back later, they would see the blood had settled underneath her body. He had also missed that she was pregnant.

To me it was an assassination. A murder for hire. Who could be responsible? The Triad? It was unusual for something Triad related to happen in St. Louis.

When I returned to the store, Tracy and her friend were waiting. She had taken my business card and called back later to make an appointment. She had hurt her knee and was willing to give me the benefit of the doubt in treating it. She closed her eyes and I inserted the needle. She was amazed when she opened her eyes and saw I had done it and she never even felt it. I was having some very lewd thoughts about her and trying hard not to let them show.

When Knox stopped by the next day, he said Madam Chong, at the spa had kept saying deem mock. I told him it was just superstition, you know, the Death Touch. A secret deadly art. You touch someone in certain areas and they die hours later.  They had found her dead this morning. Heart attack. Yeah, right. With her dead, the investigation halted. When he left, he slipped me a copy of Mei Ling’s file. I guess, we both felt the same way, we weren’t done.

When I looked through my files, I saw where Madam Chong had come in for treatment. I had  never treated her for any heart problem. Back to the coroner’s office. Again I had to do his job for him. I showed him the one point that someone would have used to cause a heart attack and it wasn’t due to any martial arts. There was a hole in her elbow where someone had injected her with something. There was also adhesive around her mouth and wrists. I figured she was injected with Potassium, air or something similar, that couldn’t be traced.

Now we had two murders, one flashy and one not so much. One was planned and one was sloppy. Two different killers. Knox asked me why I would want to help and I, more or less, said why not.

Tracy came back for a check up and I sure was checking her out. I was old enough to be her father but was not having fatherly thoughts. I knew I couldn’t ask her out, but was surprised when she made the first move. I surprised myself even more by saying yes.

Triads are the Chinese Mafia. They start recruiting at a very young age. When I lived in Hong Kong, I used to get beat up a lot. One day a kid took a baseball bat to me. Someone stepped in to stop it. They called Wu Cai, a famous doctor, who used acupuncture, massage, and some herbs that allowed me to hide it from my dad.

I hung out at his place and bugged him so much, he took me under his wing. It all started with learning how to stand. I had to learn how to be still. I had to learn in stages, by standing I learned to relax, then I moved to a posture, then another posture. As I progressed he added Taoist texts and herbalism.

Tai chi is a health exercise, but Tai Chi Chuan is a martial art. It means Supreme Ultimate Boxing. It is an internal form of martial arts. There are meridians and acupuncture points, which are ways energy moves through the body, that can be used for or against you.

I never meant to get Tracy involved in the investigation, but she had served Mei Ling when she had come into the Outer Limit, the club Tracy worked at. She wasn’t likely to forget, because she paid with a hundred-dollar bill and told her to keep the change. Tracy and I became an item and she spent many a night at my place.

I told her how Mei Ling was killed. There are really two types of martial arts. External, like King Fu and Karate, rely on outer strength. The bigger guy usually wins. Internal, of which Tai Chi Chuan is the most well-known, uses kinetic energy, so it bounces around on the inside tearing someone up and breaking bones.

When they found Mei Ling’s apartment, they found a suitcase full of twenty-dollar bills four inches deep. What was going on with her? Blackmail? Selling inside information to the Eight Tigers? I found out she had another apartment in San Francisco. So I hopped on a plane to check it out. It looked like she had just walked out and was coming right back.

That was when Daniel found me. He took me to meet Tony Lau, her fiance. He was the son of Jimmy Yi Lau the boss of the Eight Tigers Society. They ran most of the rackets in San Francisco. The Taste of Asia parlors where Mei Ling worked belonged to him. But Tony was an artist and just didn’t seem the type to go around killing people. Could it be a revenge hit? But revenge for what?

    4 STARS – Would Highly Recommend To Others

The cover was very creative. Charles seems to have a knack for choosing cool covers. The title was appropriate, when you figure all the changes Randall went through as the book progressed.

It was well written and the plot was varied and detailed. Mixing humor with the martial arts, kept something very technical light and fun to read. The mystery and suspense lasted throughout the book, keeping me guessing as to who the real killer was.

When he talks about a carpet picnic (a picnic on the living room floor) it brought to mind Friday nights at my house when I was a kid. It was grocery night and after my parents got home from the store, my mother would spread a blanket on the floor and we were allowed to pick whatever snacks we wanted while we watched TV. We had a big family, so this was always a treat.

I loved his description of her cat –  looked like a wrinkly miniature gargoyle. It was a Sphynx, hairless and felt like a warm, dry peach. LOL

The characters were well-developed. The details Charles provided allowed me to picture each character as if I were actually seeing them. I like that Randall and Tracy hooked up even though there was such a large age difference. Made it seem very realistic. Who we love is out of our hands sometimes. It’s something we can’t control.

I don’t think there was a page, except in the very beginning, when Randall wasn’t beaten, battered, bruised, banged up, or broken. He appeared inept at times, as he stumbled his way through, not giving up until the mystery was solved.

I have read Black, by Charles, and this is quite different. I definitely will be looking for more books in the Randall Lee mystery series.

About the Author

Charles Colyott lives on a farm in the middle of nowhere (Illinois) with his wife, 2 daughters, cats, and a herd of llamas and alpacas. He is surrounded by so much cuteness it’s very difficult for him to develop any street cred as a dark and gritty writer. Nevertheless, he has appeared in Read by Dawn II, Dark Recesses Press, Withersin magazine, Horror Library Volumes III & IV, Terrible Beauty, Fearful Symmetry, and Zippered Flesh, among other places. He also teaches a beginner level Tai Chi Ch’uan class in which no one has died (yet) of the death touch.

You can get in touch with him on Facebook, or email him at charlescolyott@gmail.com.
Unlike his llamas, he does not spit.

Twitter:        @charlescolyott
Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/pages/Charle…
Website:     http://charlescolyott.wordpress.com/
Email:         charlescolyott@gmail.com

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