The Chinatown Inheritance

December, 1947. Lily Chen walks into Jack Malone's office with two wills, a dead father, and a theory about how he died. The official story is heart failure - a sick man whose time came. But Franklin Chen called his daughter ten days before he died, said he'd found something wrong in the business accounts, and promised to explain on Saturday. He died on Thursday.

The trail leads to Chinatown, a fraudulent ledger hidden by a 78-year-old woman who has been keeping secrets since 1906, and a family inheritance that someone was willing to kill to collect.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

The Chinatown Inheritance, an old-time radio drama in the style of Philip Marlowe.

SPEAKER_04 0:04

December in Los Angeles. The rain had come back the way it always did. Apologetic, like a bad guest who leaves and returns and pretends the first visit went better than it did. I had my feet on my desk and a cup of coffee that had given up on being hot and was now just brown and present, which is more than you can say for most things. The Marchetti case had paid my rent through Christmas and left enough over for a new pair of shoes I hadn't bought yet. Things were quiet. I had begun to suspect they wouldn't stay that way. I was right. She came through the door the way certain people come through doors, like she'd considered the entrance and decided to do it correctly. Young, maybe twenty five, in a charcoal wool suit that was expensive without advertising it, Chinese American with the particular careful posture of a woman who had spent her life walking into rooms that hadn't expected her and deciding not to make it anyone's problem. She was carrying a leather briefcase and the specific expression of someone who had already tried the easier options.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Mr. Malone, my name is Lily Chen. I was referred to you by Elena Marchetti.

SPEAKER_04 1:06

That was a door opener. I took my feet off the desk. Mrs. Marchetti is a generous woman. Sit down, Miss Chen.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

She said you were discreet. She said you found things other people couldn't find through means other people wouldn't use.

SPEAKER_04 1:20

She's more complimentary than I deserve. What can I do for you?

SPEAKER_01 1:23

My father died three weeks ago. Franklin Chen. He was sixty-eight. He'd been ill, and the death itself was not a surprise. What has happened since the death is a surprise.

SPEAKER_04 1:35

Tell me about what's happened since.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

My father had a will. I have seen it. I witnessed it two years ago. It leaves the entirety of his estate to me. The business, the property in Hancock Park, the accounts, approximately two hundred and forty thousand dollars in total value. Last week, an attorney named Henry Beaumont presented a second will to Los Angeles County probate. This will, dated eight months ago, leaves everything to my father's brother. My uncle Raymond.

SPEAKER_04 2:08

A second will.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

A forged will, Mr. Malone.

SPEAKER_04 2:11

That's a serious allegation.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

I have the original. I have two years of my father's correspondence in his own hand. The signature on the Beaumont will does not match any other signature my father produced in forty years of business documents.

SPEAKER_04 2:25

Have you taken this to the police?

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Detective Santos at the Sixth Street Station looked at the documents for eleven minutes and told me that contested wills were a civil matter.

SPEAKER_04 2:35

Santos.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

You know him.

SPEAKER_04 2:37

We've met. He's not wrong about the civil matter part. But 11 minutes is a short look for $240,000.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

It was a short look for a Chinese woman contesting a document on behalf of a Chinese family. I want to be precise about what happened and why.

SPEAKER_04 2:53

Understood. What do you want from me?

SPEAKER_01 2:55

I want you to find the proof that the second will is a forgery. I want to know who produced it and how. And I want to know I want to know whether my father's death was what they said it was.

SPEAKER_04 3:07

His death was reported as natural causes.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

He was 68 and he had been ill. Heart trouble. The doctor was not surprised. But my father called me ten days before he died. He said he needed to tell me something about Raymond. He said he had found something in the business accounts. He was going to come to me on Saturday.

SPEAKER_04 3:29

He died on Thursday. What was he going to tell you about Raymond?

SPEAKER_01 3:32

I don't know. He didn't say on the telephone. He said it wasn't a telephone conversation.

SPEAKER_04 3:38

What do you know about your uncle's finances?

SPEAKER_01 3:40

Raymond has worked in my father's import business for eleven years. He manages the purchasing side. Suppliers in Hong Kong. Shipment logistics. He has a salary of $400 a month. He lives in a house in Los Feliz that I once heard my father say cost more than a house in Los Feliz should cost.

SPEAKER_04 4:00

I'll take the case, Miss Chen. My rate is $15 a day plus expenses.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Mrs. Marchetti said to trust you. I am going to do that.

SPEAKER_04 4:08

Tell me where to find Raymond.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

He'll be at the office. Chen import and export on Alameda. Two blocks from the rail yard. But Mr. Malone. Raymond knows about me coming to see you. I told Henry Beaumont I was pursuing private options, and Beaumont tells Raymond everything. Assume he's expecting someone.

SPEAKER_04 4:29

Good. I'd hate to show up somewhere I wasn't expected.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

One more thing. My father had a particular habit. When he found information he wanted to protect, he kept it with May Ling.

SPEAKER_04 4:39

Who is May Ling?

SPEAKER_01 4:40

She runs a tea house on Ord Street in Chinatown. She knew my father for forty years. She was his I don't have the precise word. Confidant. Archivist. She is a very old woman who has kept the secrets of half of Chinatown since before I was born.

SPEAKER_04 4:57

You think your father left something with her?

SPEAKER_01 5:00

I think if there was something to leave, that's where it is.

SPEAKER_04 5:04

I looked at the two wills side by side on my desk for a long moment. The original was clean, the signature of a man who'd signed his name the same way for decades. The second one had the right letters in the right order, and something slightly wrong about all of them, the way a copy of a painting has all the right colors and none of the right weight. I put on my coat. $240,000 was a lot of reasons to forge a document. It was also a lot of reasons to help a sick man along before Saturday. I went to find Raymond Chen. Chen Import and Export occupied the ground floor of a building on Alameda that had been built to be functional and had succeeded without trying for anything else. Loading dock on the south end, offices on the north, the smell of salt water and packing materials and whatever had come through last. A man at the front desk sent me down a hallway to a corner office with a window that looked out over the rail yard. Raymond Chen was standing at that window with his hands behind his back when I knocked, and he turned around with the particular ease of a man who had been waiting for exactly this.

SPEAKER_02 6:06

Mr. Malone, Raymond Chen. Please come in.

SPEAKER_04 6:09

You were expecting me.

SPEAKER_02 6:11

Henry Beaumont mentioned my niece had retained a private investigator. I assumed you'd want to speak with me. I prefer to get these things out in the open. Can I offer you something? Coffee?

SPEAKER_04 6:23

I'm fine. Let's talk about the will.

SPEAKER_02 6:25

Of course. Though I imagine Lily has told you her version, which is that the second will is a forgery.

SPEAKER_04 6:31

Is it?

SPEAKER_02 6:31

My brother was a complicated man, Mr. Malone. He loved Lily. He also, in the last year of his life, had significant concerns about whether she was suited to manage a business of this complexity. He came to me. We had many conversations. I was I was surprised by the will, yes. But I was not surprised by the reasoning behind it.

SPEAKER_04 6:53

What concerns did he have?

SPEAKER_02 6:54

Lily is brilliant. Educated at UCLA, speaks three languages, but she has no interest in the import business. She's told her father this directly. Franklin worried the business would be sold, the relationships he'd spent thirty years building would be dissolved. He wanted continuity.

SPEAKER_04 7:13

That's a reasonable story.

SPEAKER_02 7:15

Is there a question behind that observation?

SPEAKER_04 7:17

A few. Your brother called Lily ten days before he died, said he'd found something in the business accounts, said he was going to tell her about it on Saturday.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

I'm not aware of that conversation.

SPEAKER_04 7:28

He died on Thursday.

SPEAKER_02 7:29

He did. His heart had been weakening for two years. His doctor was not surprised. Neither was I. It was a very hard loss.

SPEAKER_04 7:38

Mind if I ask about the purchasing accounts? What about them? Your brother ran a $200,000 operation importing goods from Hong Kong. You managed purchasing. I'd be interested in seeing the ledgers for the last couple of years.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

Those are business records. I'd want Beaumont to review any request before I made them available to a private investigator.

SPEAKER_04 7:59

Of course, one more thing. Did your brother have a relationship with a woman named May Ling? Tea House on Ord Street?

SPEAKER_02 8:05

May Ling has been a fixture in Chinatown for a very long time. My brother knew many people in the community.

SPEAKER_04 8:12

But he knew her specifically.

SPEAKER_02 8:14

I think any further questions should go through Henry Beaumont, Mr. Malone. I've tried to be cooperative, but I'm also a man in the middle of grieving my brother while my niece challenges his final wishes. I hope you'll understand if I limit what I discuss without counsel present.

SPEAKER_04 8:30

Perfectly reasonable. I'll be in touch. I went back down the hallway and out through the loading dock because I wanted to see the operation and because the man at the front desk had a direct view of the hallway, and I wanted to see what he did when I came back through. The answer was that he picked up the telephone before I reached the door. Raymond Chen was making a call before I hit the sidewalk. When a man who's been perfectly reasonable all through an interview reaches for the phone the moment you leave, you've touched something. I went to find Mayling. The tea house on Ord Street had no sign outside that I could read and didn't seem to need one. It was a single room with six small tables, a counter along the back wall, and the smell of something being steeped that had been steeped in that room for decades. Three old men at a table near the window looked up when I came in, and then looked back at their cups in the particular way of people deciding I wasn't their problem. There was no one behind the counter. Then she came through the curtain from the back, and I understood immediately what Lily had meant by the particular authority of a person who has nothing left to lose.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

You are the detective.

SPEAKER_04 9:33

Word travels.

SPEAKER_00 9:34

Lily Chen called an hour ago. She said you might come. Sit.

SPEAKER_04 9:39

I sat. She set the tea in front of me and stood on the other side of the counter and looked at me with the eyes of someone who had been evaluating people for 70 years and was no longer interested in being polite about it. You knew Franklin Chen.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

Forty-one years. He came to this city from Hong Kong in 1906. He was 19 years old, and he had four dollars and a letter of introduction to a man who was already dead. I gave him a job carrying boxes. He built something real. With his hands and his mind, and more patience than men usually have. He deserved a better death than he got.

SPEAKER_04 10:14

What kind of death did he get?

SPEAKER_00 10:15

The kind that looks like the kind a sick man gets. Which is convenient when you want a sick man to die before a particular Saturday.

SPEAKER_04 10:23

You know what he was going to tell his daughter.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

He told me first. He always told me first. Raymond has been stealing from the business for four years. Small amounts at first, then larger ones. Franklin found a discrepancy in the Hong Kong accounts three months ago. He traced it back through six different arrangements and found that Raymond had taken nearly sixty thousand dollars over four years through false invoices and supplier payments to companies that did not exist.

SPEAKER_04 10:52

Sixty thousand.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

Franklin documented everything, every invoice, every false company, every payment. He put it all in a ledger, and he brought it to me six weeks before he died. Because he knew Raymond would look in his house and his office, and he knew no one looks in an old woman's tea house for anything.

SPEAKER_04 11:11

You have the ledger.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Franklin wanted to confront Raymond himself, give him a chance to explain, or confess, or return the money quietly. He was a man who believed in family, even when family did not deserve it. He waited too long.

SPEAKER_04 11:26

And when he died before he could confront Raymond.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

And when a second will appeared in the hands of a lawyer Raymond had been meeting with for three months, you knew what it meant. I am seventy-eight years old, Mr. Malone. I have watched this city for fifty years. I know what it means when a sick man dies two days before an inconvenient conversation. I knew. I have been waiting for someone to come who could use what I know.

SPEAKER_04 11:52

The three old men at the table near the window stood up in unison with the coordinated calm of people who had a procedure for this and were executing it. I turned around. He was large in the way that required recalibrating your understanding of what a room could contain. Victor Song. I placed him from description. Raymond's arrangement for problems that required a physical solution. He stopped just inside the door and looked at me with the specific patient look of a man who had been asked to deliver a message and would deliver it as efficiently as possible.

SPEAKER_03 12:23

Mr. Malone, Mr. Chen would like you to stop asking questions about his family's private affairs.

SPEAKER_04 12:29

That's a polite way to put it. He is a polite man. Tell Mr. Chen that polite is noted. Tell him I'll be in touch.

SPEAKER_03 12:35

That wasn't the full message.

SPEAKER_04 12:37

I figured. He was fast for a big man, which they often are, because people assume they won't be and stop planning for it. The table he put me into was more structurally sound than it looked, which was the only thing I could say in its favor. The three old men at the other table had not moved. May Ling had not moved. I got up with the specific deliberateness of a man reminding himself that he has been hit before, and it has always eventually stopped. Message received. Good evening, Mr. Malone.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Sit down again. There is more tea.

SPEAKER_04 13:06

I sat down again. My ribs had opinions about it. The three old men returned to their cups as though nothing had happened, which was, I suspected, a skill they had developed over many years in a neighborhood where things happened. He knows I was here.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

He is known since you left his office. There is a boy on the corner who watches for him. There are always boys on corners who watch for men like Raymond.

SPEAKER_04 13:27

If I come back tonight, will the ledger be here?

SPEAKER_00 13:30

If you come back tonight, I will give you what Franklin left me. But Mr. Malone, Raymond will know, and Raymond will move before morning if he thinks the ledger is going to be found.

SPEAKER_04 13:40

Then I'll need to move first. The arithmetic was this Raymond had a ledger to recover, a will to defend, and a private investigator who was now holding a bruised rib and a strong theory about how Franklin Chen had died. He had Victor Song, and he had Henry Beaumont, and he had sixty thousand dollars of reasons to make sure the ledger never saw the inside of a courtroom. What he didn't have was a 78-year-old woman who had been keeping secrets in Chinatown since 1906 and had decided, at the end of things, to stop. I went to find Detective Santos. I needed someone with a badge for what came next. Santos took more convincing than I'd have liked, which was on me for expecting less than it took. But when I laid out the timeline, the phone call, the convenient Thursday death, the will that appeared in the hands of Raymond's attorney three weeks later, he went quiet in the way detectives went quiet when the pieces started pointing the same direction. He made a call to the county medical examiner about Franklin Chen's autopsy. The examiner had noted elevated levels of digitalis in the blood work. He had attributed it to the medication Franklin had been prescribed for his heart condition. He had not noted that the levels were three times what the prescription would produce. Santos came with me. Mailing was behind the counter. The tea house was empty. She looked at Santos with the careful neutral expression of a woman who had been navigating law enforcement in this city for fifty years and had developed a very specific protocol for it.

SPEAKER_02 15:04

Ma'am, Detective Santos, LAPD.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

I understand you have documents relevant to an ongoing inquiry.