Dark Rivers of the Heart (11 page)

“Welcome, Mr. Grant.” He had a musical accent as European as it was Chinese. His hand was small, but his grip was firm.

“Thank you for seeing me,” Spencer said, feeling as disoriented as he might have felt if he had followed Alice’s white rabbit into this windowless, Tiffany-illumined hole.

Lee’s eyes were anthracite black. They fixed Spencer with a stare that penetrated him almost as effectively as a scalpel.

The escort and erstwhile napkin folder stood to one side of the door, his hands clasped behind him. He had not grown, but he now seemed as much of a bodyguard as the huge, bald receptionist.

Louis Lee invited Spencer to one of a pair of armchairs that faced each other across a low table. A nearby Tiffany floor lamp cast blue, green, and scarlet light.

Lee took the chair opposite Spencer and sat very erect. With his spectacles, bow tie, and suspenders, and with the backdrop of books, he might have been a professor of literature in the study of his home, near the campus of Yale or another Ivy League university.

His manner was reserved but friendly. “So you are a friend of Ms. Keene’s? Perhaps you went to high school together? College?”

“No, sir. I haven’t known her that long. I met her where she works. I’m a recent…friend. But I do care about her and…well, I’m concerned that something’s happened to her.”

“What do you think might have happened to her?”

“I don’t know. But I’m sure you’re aware of the SWAT-team raid on your house last night, the bungalow she was renting from you.”

Lee was silent for a moment. Then: “Yes, the authorities came to my own home last evening, after the raid, to ask about her.”

“Mr. Lee, these authorities…who were they?”

“Three men. They claimed to be with the FBI.”

“Claimed?”

“They showed me credentials, but they were lying.”

Frowning, Spencer said, “How can you be sure of that?”

“In my life, I’ve had considerable experience of deceit and treachery,” Lee said. He didn’t seem either angry or bitter. “I’ve developed a good nose for it.”

Spencer wondered if that was as much a warning as it was an explanation. Whichever the case, he knew that he was not in the presence of an ordinary businessman. “If they weren’t actually government agents—”

“Oh, I’m sure they were government agents. However, I believe the FBI credentials were simply a convenience.”

“Yes, but if they were with another bureau, why not flash their real ID?”

Lee shrugged. “Rogue agents, operating without the authority of their bureau, hoping to confiscate a cache of drug profits for their own benefit, would have reason to mislead with false ID.”

Spencer knew that such things had happened. “But I don’t…I
can’t
believe that Valerie is involved with drug peddling.”

“I’m sure she isn’t. If I’d thought so, I wouldn’t have rented to her. Those people are scum—corrupting children, ruining lives. Besides, although Ms. Keene paid her rent in cash, she wasn’t rolling in money. And she worked at a full-time job.”

“So if these weren’t, let’s say, rogue Drug Enforcement Administration operatives looking to line their own pockets with cocaine profits, and if they weren’t actually with the FBI—who were they?”

Louis Lee shifted slightly in his chair, still sitting erect but tilting his head in such a way that reflections of the stained glass Tiffany lamp painted both lenses of his spectacles and obscured his eyes. “Sometimes a government—or a bureau within a government—becomes frustrated when it has to play by the rules. With oceans of tax money washing around, with bookkeeping systems that would be laughable in any private enterprise, it’s easy for some government officials to fund covert organizations to achieve results that can’t be achieved through legal means.”

“Mr. Lee, do you read a lot of espionage novels?”

Louis Lee smiled thinly. “They’re not of interest to me.”

“Excuse me, sir, but this sounds a little paranoid.”

“It’s only experience speaking.”

“Then your life’s been even more interesting than I’d guess from appearances.”

“Yes,” Lee said, but didn’t elaborate. After a pause, with his eyes still hidden by the patterns of reflected color that glimmered in his eyeglasses, he continued: “The larger a government, the more likely it is to be riddled with such covert organizations—some small but some not. We have a very big government, Mr. Grant.”

“Yes, but—”

“Direct and indirect taxes require the average citizen to work from January until the middle of July to pay for that government.
Then
working men and women begin to labor for themselves.”

“I’ve heard that figure too.”

“When government grows so large, it also grows arrogant.”

Louis Lee did not seem to be a fanatic. No anger or bitterness strained his voice. In fact, although he chose to surround himself with highly ornamented French furniture, he had a calm air of Zen simplicity and a distinctly Asian resignation to the ways of the world. He seemed more of a pragmatist than a crusader.

“Ms. Keene’s enemies, Mr. Grant, are my enemies too.”

“And mine.”

“However, I don’t intend to make a target of myself—as you are doing. Last night, I didn’t express my doubt about their credentials when they presented themselves as FBI agents. That would not have been prudent. I was unhelpful, yes, but
cooperatively
unhelpful—if you know what I mean.”

Spencer sighed and slumped in his chair.

Leaning forward with his hands on his knees, his intense black eyes becoming visible again as the reflections of the lamp moved off his glasses, Lee said, “You were the man in her house last night.”

Spencer was surprised again. “How do you know anyone was there?”

“They were asking about a man she might have been living with. Your height, weight. What were you doing there, if I may ask?”

“She was late for work. I was worried about her. I went to her place to see if anything was wrong.”

“You work at The Red Door too?”

“No. I was waiting there for her.” That was all he chose to say. The rest was too complicated—and embarrassing. “What can you tell me about Valerie that might help me locate her?”

“Nothing, really.”

“I only want to help her, Mr. Lee.”

“I believe you.”

“Well, sir, then why not cooperate with me? What was on her renter’s application? Previous residence, previous jobs, credit references—anything like that would be helpful.”

The businessman leaned back, moving his small hands from his knees to the arms of his chair. “There was no renter’s application.”

“With as many properties as you have, sir, I’m sure whoever manages them must use applications.”

Louis Lee raised his eyebrows, which was a theatrical expression for such a placid man. “You’ve done some research on me. Very good. Well, in Ms. Keene’s case, there was no application, because she was recommended by someone at The Red Door who’s also a tenant of mine.”

Spencer thought of the beautiful waitress who appeared to be half Vietnamese and half black. “Would that be Rosie?”

“It would.”

“She was friends with Valerie?”

“She is. I met Ms. Keene and approved of her. She impressed me as a reliable person. That’s all I needed to know about her.”

Spencer said, “I’ve got to speak to Rosie.”

“No doubt she’ll be working again this evening.”

“I need to talk to her before this evening. Partly because of this conversation with you, Mr. Lee, I have the distinct feeling that I’m being hunted and that time may be running out.”

“I think that’s an accurate assessment.”

“Then I’ll need her last name, sir, and her address.”

Louis Lee was silent for so long that Spencer grew nervous. Finally: “Mr. Grant, I was born in China. When I was a child, we fled the Communists and emigrated to Hanoi, Vietnam, which was then controlled by the French. We lost everything—but that was better than being among the tens of millions liquidated by Chairman Mao.”

Although Spencer was unsure what the businessman’s personal history might have to do with his own problems, he knew there would be a connection and that it would soon become apparent. Louis Lee was Chinese but not inscrutable. Indeed, he was as direct, in his way, as was any rural New Englander.

“Chinese in Vietnam were oppressed. Life was hard. But the French promised to protect us from the Communists. They failed. When Vietnam was partitioned in nineteen fifty-four, I was still a young boy. Again we fled, to South Vietnam—and lost everything.”

“I see.”

“No. You begin to perceive. But you don’t yet see. Within a year, civil war began. In nineteen fifty-nine, my younger sister was killed in the street by sniper fire. Three years later, one week after John Kennedy promised that the United States would ensure our freedom, my father was killed by a terrorist bomb on a Saigon bus.”

Lee closed his eyes and folded his hands in his lap. He almost seemed to be meditating rather than remembering.

Spencer waited.

“By late April, nineteen seventy-five, when Saigon fell, I was thirty, with four children, my wife Mae. My mother was still alive, and one of my three brothers, two of his children. Ten of us. After six months of terror, my mother, brother, one of my nieces, and one of my sons were dead. I failed to save them. The remaining six of us…we joined thirty-two others in an attempt to escape by sea.”

“Boat people,” Spencer said respectfully, for in his own way he knew what it meant to be cut off from one’s past, adrift and afraid, struggling daily to survive.

Eyes still closed, speaking as serenely as if recounting the details of a walk in the country, Lee said: “In bad weather, pirates tried to board our vessel. Vietcong gunboat. Same as pirates. They would have killed the men, raped and killed the women, stolen our meager possessions. Eighteen of our thirty-eight perished attempting to repel them. One was my son. Ten years old. Shot. I could do nothing. The rest of us were saved because the weather grew so bad, so quickly—the gunboat withdrew to save itself. The storm separated us from the pirates. Two people were washed overboard in high waves. Leaving eighteen. When good weather returned, our boat was damaged, no engine or sails, no radio, far out on the South China Sea.”

Spencer could no longer bear to look at the placid man. But he was incapable of looking away.

“We were adrift six days in fierce heat. No fresh water. Little food. One woman and four children died before we crossed a sea-lane and were rescued by a U.S. Navy ship. One of the children who died of thirst was my daughter. I couldn’t save her. I wasn’t able to save anyone. Of the ten in my family who survived the fall of Saigon, four remained to be pulled from that boat. My wife, my remaining daughter—who was then my only child—one of my nieces. And me.”

“I’m sorry,” Spencer said, and those words were so inadequate that he wished he hadn’t spoken them.

Louis Lee opened his eyes. “Nine other people were rescued from that disintegrating boat, more than twenty years ago. As I did, they took American first names, and today all nine are partners with me in the restaurant, other businesses. I consider them my family also. We’re a nation unto ourselves, Mr. Grant. I am an American because I believe in America’s ideals. I love this country, its people. I do not love its government. I can’t love what I can’t trust, and I will never trust a government again, anywhere. That disturbs you?”

“Yes. It’s understandable. But depressing.”

“As individuals, as families, as neighbors, as members of one community,” Lee said, “people of all races and political views are usually decent, kind, compassionate. But in large corporations or governments, when great power accumulates in their hands, some become monsters even with good intentions. I can’t be loyal to monsters. But I will be loyal to my family, my neighbors, my community.”

“Fair enough, I guess.”

“Rosie, the waitress at The Red Door, was not one of the people on that boat with us. Her mother was Vietnamese, however, and her father was an American who died over there, so she is a member of my community.”

Spencer had been so mesmerized by Louis Lee’s story that he had forgotten the request that had triggered those grisly recollections. He wanted to talk to Rosie as soon as possible. He needed her last name and address.

“Rosie must not be any more involved in this than she is now,” Lee said. “She’s told these phony FBI men that she knows little about Ms. Keene, and I don’t want you to drag her deeper into this.”

“I only want to ask her a few questions.”

“If the wrong people saw you with her and identified you as the man at the house last night, they’d think Rosie was more than just a friend at work to Ms. Keene—though that is, in fact, all she was.”

“I’ll be discreet, Mr. Lee.”

“Yes. That is the only choice I’m giving you.”

A door opened softly, and Spencer turned in his armchair to see the napkin folder, his polite escort from the front door of the restaurant, returning to the room. He hadn’t heard the man leave.

“She remembers him. It’s arranged,” the escort told Louis Lee, as he approached Spencer and handed him a piece of notepaper.

“At one o’clock,” Louis Lee said, “Rosie will meet you at that address. It’s not her apartment—in case her place is being watched.”

The swiftness with which a meeting had been arranged, without a word between Lee and the other man, seemed magical to Spencer.

“She will not be followed,” Lee said, getting up from his chair. “Make sure that you are not followed, either.”

Also rising, Spencer said, “Mr. Lee, you and your family…”

“Yes?”

“Impressive.”

Louis Lee bowed slightly from the waist. Then, turning away and walking to his desk, he said, “One more thing, Mr. Grant.”

When Lee opened a desk drawer, Spencer had the crazy feeling that this soft-spoken, mild-looking, professorial gentleman was going to withdraw a silencer-equipped gun and shoot him dead. Paranoia was like an injection of amphetamines administered directly to his heart.

Lee came up with what appeared to be a jade medallion on a gold chain. “I sometimes give one of these to people who seem to need it.”