Obedience (10 page)

The family sat on gray steel folding chairs under a canvas pavilion on a frame of chrome-plated tubing. The girl stood behind the two rows of chairs. Dave watched from a distance as the minister read words at the head of the grave, but it wasn’t the minister he watched. Nor, more than casually, the family. It was the girl. She stood rigid, fists clenched, appeared to force herself to look at the casket with its burden of flowers, to make an effort to listen, remember, respect—then she would turn sharply and look away, biting her lips. Why? What made her grief seem more painful than that of all the other mourners? Why did she look as if she wanted to break and run? The teen-aged boy kept watching her too, worried. Dave suspected he was in love with her.

The ancient words of comfort from the prayerbook neared their end. The middle-aged son got off his chair, stooped for a handful of earth, scattered it into the grave. In benediction, the high voice of the squat, bespectacled minister drifted to Dave on the oven-hot air, and he turned away and trudged across the fragile grass, back to the Jaguar at the end of the long line of parked cars that had made up Le Van Minh’s cortege. He switched on the engine, waited till the vents in the burled instrument panel blew cold air at him, shut the car door, lit a cigarette, and read his watch. Half past eleven. Cecil was going to be surprised. Dave smiled and swung the softly rumbling car out onto the new blacktop of the lane. He was surprised, himself.

A car swung past him, a dented ten-year-old Japanese hatchback. Scuffed leather carryalls lay tangled in shoulder straps in the back. The kind that photographers stowed cameras in, lenses, light meters, film. A wrinkled bumper sticker said
READ THE HARBOR BULLETIN
. The car’s exhaust pipe pumped brown smoke onto the blacktop. Dave followed it closely. At the folded-back wrought-iron gates of the old cemetery, the driver half stopped to let street traffic pass. Dave pulled up beside him, and tapped the Jaguar’s horn. The hatchback driver was a fat kid with a beard. He winced at Dave. Dave rolled down the Jaguars window.

“Let me buy you a cup of coffee,” he called.

The bearded one cocked a doubtful eyebrow, read a wristwatch. “I have to get back to the paper.”

“I work for the Public Defender,” Dave called. “I need your help. It won’t take long.”

The fat kid shrugged unhappily, pointed up the block. “Follow me.”

The place was a shack on a corner, with an open-air counter, three stools, a strong smell of hot grease. Coffee came in Styrofoam cups. The kid, whose name was Marlon Thornberg, ate doughnuts with his coffee. Dave said:

“Do you write or just take pictures?”

“I do it all,” Thornberg said, spraying crumbs. “We all do it all. It’s a small paper for a daily.”

“Do you take turns on every story?” Dave took out a cigarette. “Or do the Le’s belong to you?”

“Don’t smoke around me,” Thornberg said. “I have asthma.” He watched Dave put the cigarette back into the pack. “The Le’s belong to me.” He licked chocolate frosting off his fat fingers. “Why?”

“What have you learned?”

“Le Van Minh, his mother, wife, two sons, daughter, daughter-in-law, and two little grandchildren came here when the Americans decamped in 1975. Le was a successful businessman there, but he had to leave everything behind to the Communists, okay?” Thornberg picked up a second doughnut and eyed it hungrily. “They were given permanent residence status here.”

“Two sons?” Dave said. “I only saw one today. Am I right? The one who delivered the eulogy, the one who picked up the handful of dust?”

Thornberg washed chewed doughnut down with coffee. He nodded. “That was Le Tran Hai. The oldest son. His brother died a few weeks ago.” He took another big bite of doughnut. “He was only thirty.”

“I thought I’d seen the obituary. How did he die?”

Chewing, Thornberg pointed at his stuffed mouth. He finally swallowed, slurped more coffee. “Died in his sleep. It happens to young Vietnamese males. Nobody knows why.”

“What did he do for a living?”

“Worked for his old man. So does Hai. The younger son—his name was Ba. You know how they get those names?” He poked the remainder of the doughnut into his mouth. Dave looked away at the scruffy street. The hearse passed, the limousines, some of the cars that had made up the funeral procession. “The first born is always Hai, the second Ba—nicknames, really.” He licked his fingers. “And it doesn’t matter if it’s a boy or a girl.”

“Died in his sleep. It must have been a shock. Did Mr. Le take it badly?”

“You couldn’t tell it from how he acted,” Thornberg said. “But his daughter told me it broke the old man’s heart. He loved Ba the most of all his children. Ba was no good as a worker. He was a dreamer, a poet. The old man would have let him sit in his room and write. But to be fair to Hai, he insisted Ba do his share at the warehouse.”

“There’s only one daughter, the young one I saw with the two little kids and the young Anglo?”

“Her names Quynh.” He pronounced it “Queen,” and he spelled it for Dave. “Her husband’s named Matt Fergusson. He pretty much runs those restaurants for Madame Le.”

“Who’s the other beautiful girl?” Dave said.

“Family friend. Visiting. Lives in Paris with her father. Name’s Thao.” He leered. “Outstanding, right?”

“She’s very attractive,” Dave said, “and very cut up. Le’s widow owns restaurants?”

“Vietnamese food.” Thornberg made a face. “I don’t know how people can eat that garbage.” He leaned in at the service window. “Got any more of those chocolate doughnuts?”

“Does she own Hoang Pho?” Dave said.

A brown hand came out the service window. It held two more chocolate doughnuts in a paper napkin. A voice spoke words Dave couldn’t make out. Thornberg struggled to dig money from the pocket of a sausage-tight pair of jeans.

“I’ve got it.” Dave laid two dollars in the hand.

“Thanks,” Thornberg said. “What name did you say?”

“Hoang Pho,” Dave said, “the Vietnamese restaurant down near the Old Fleet Marina. Where those businessmen were machine-gunned not long ago.”

“Jesus, what a story that was,” Thornberg said. “Talk about doors slammed in your face. Nobody, but nobody, was going to say word one about that.”

“You could ask Don Pham,” Dave said.

Thornberg, about to bite one of the new doughnuts, did not bite. He raised his eyebrows. “The gambling boss?”

“Him.” Dave nodded. “The Hoang Pho?” he prompted.

“No, that belongs to Hoang Duc Nghi. It’s not one of Madam Le’s. Hers are at Newport Harbor and near the university, places like that. Upscale.” Thornberg bit his doughnut, and said with his mouth full, “Not really, but almost.” He frowned while he chewed, drank coffee, set down the empty cup. “Public Defender’s office? Who’s being defended?” He blinked. “You mean Andy Flanagan, the one who shot Le?”

“The one they jailed for shooting Le,” Dave said. “The PD doesn’t think he did it. And I’m beginning to agree.”

Thornberg grunted, ran his tongue around his teeth, thought for a minute. “You think it was Don Pham?”

“Gambling isn’t his only interest. And he has a team of little thugs who dress in black and carry Uzis. Rumor has it they were at the Old Fleet the night Le was killed.”

“Which could connect Le’s murder with the ones at the Hoang Pho?” Thornberg said. “Yeah. I see where you’re coming from. Heavy.”

“I didn’t read your story about the Hoang Pho killings,” Dave said. “The one in the L.A.
Times
said an employee of the restaurant described the killers. It didn’t give that employee’s name. Did your story give the name?”

“The police didn’t release it,” Thornberg said.

“And you didn’t dig him up yourself?” Dave said.

Thornberg laughed glumly. “Hoang couldn’t remember any names. He didn’t have any records. Sorry.” For the first time Thornberg seemed really to look at Dave. “I think I know you, don’t I? From somewhere?”

“I don’t think so.” Hastily Dave left his stool. “I appreciate your help.”

“Hey.” Thornberg’s fat-boy face in its frame of bushy black beard lit up. He snapped his fingers and pointed.
“Newsweek.
They did a profile on you last year, right? Sure.” He got his bulk off the creaky stool, eager, excited. “I have to write about this. How come you’re on this case? It can’t be insurance—Flanagan hasn’t got a dime.”

“Off the record,” Dave said, “the Public Defender is his half-sister, okay? She cares. She hired me.”

“The best in the business, yeah. Oh, boy.” He started toward his car. “Let me get my camera.”

“Not today,” Dave said. “There’s no story, yet.”

“You’re the story,” Thornberg said. “You’re famous.”

“I need to keep a low profile on this,” Dave said. “You help me with that, and I promise, when it’s over, I’ll give you an exclusive interview.”

“Oh, sure you will.” Thornberg slouched away.

Dave called after him. “Meantime, I wouldn’t write about Don Pham, either, if I were you. Not if you want to go on eating the health foods you so enjoy.”

“I know, I know.” Thornberg got into his car, slammed the door, started the clattering engine. “Thanks for the doughnuts,” he said sulkily, and drove off in a cloud of oily smoke.

The docks weren’t what they had been. Other harbors got most of the shipping now. Nothing much was doing here. Nobody was around. Freighters sat rusting in sluggish water that mirrored them, turning to slate gray their bands of red and yellow paint. They flew flags of Greece, Panama, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and flags he couldn’t name. It seemed as if Pier Nine had only one operative warehouse—the rest looked boarded up. Double gates that would have let him drive the Jaguar out on the wharf were locked. A sign was strung to the mesh. Hand-lettered on a shirt cardboard with a blue magic marker pen, it explained about the funeral, and that business would be suspended for the day out of respect for the dead.

Well, he didn’t need to drive out there. He could walk. He went down a splintery set of stairs beside the truck ramp. What drew him was a car parked by the warehouse doors—a new car, four-door, paint glossy, windows glittering in the glare of the sun. There was a second car, farther on, but that one was old and battered, probably the wheels of the security guard. Assignments like this paid minimum wage. Whoever took them couldn’t afford fancy transportation. A security guard would belong here. But who else would—on the day of Le Van Minh’s burial?

He passed through the crisscross shadow of the crane he’d seen from the Old Fleet, hoisting a freight container off a ship. He walked on between stacks of enormous empty crates that smelled of pine sap in the heat. He bent and peered inside the handsome car. It smelled of newness. On the floor behind the front seats lay a new baseball glove. That was all there was to look at. Dave stepped back and studied the car, frowning. Had it rolled along to the cemetery in the funeral procession? No. Its wine-red color he’d have noticed. Now he memorized the license number.

He winced up at the white fence of the warehouse.
LE ELECTRONIC IMPORTS, LTD
. Weather was hard on signs by the ocean. The black lettering was beginning to scale. He moved to the enormous doors. Bolted and locked several times over. A door of human dimensions was set into one of the giant panels, but when he tried it, quietly, it wouldn’t budge. It was a big warehouse. He hiked along to the far corner. The side wall had windows in it, but high, and of opaque wired glass. None was open for him to look in through or climb in through, if he found a way to get up to it. He heard the engine of a power boat, started toward the sound, and a voice said:

“Hold it right there.” A skinny old man was pointing a revolver at him. The man wore suntans with blue oval patches on the sleeves and on one shirt pocket. The patches were stitched in gold
DRYCOTT SECURITY SERVICE
S. “What’s your business here? Don’t you know you’re trespassing?”

“I didn’t know that,” Dave said.

Wind off the water stirred the old man’s thin white hair. His faded eyes looked past Dave. Anxiously. Worrying about the power boat. He motioned with the gun barrel. “Well, you are, and I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“I’m an investigator for the Public Defender’s Office.” Dave reached for the folder that held his license. The old man jerked the gun and made a sound like “Hup. Keep your hands where I can see ’em. You got business here, come when it’s open.” He kept glancing nervously toward the boat. “Closed today. Funeral.”

“The funeral’s over,” Dave said. “I was there.” He turned now to see what the old man was seeing. It was a sleek white cabin cruiser, a forty-footer. A muscular young Asian in the prow, naked to the waist, wore a red neckerchief. He saw Dave and the security guard, turned, shouted something astern. And the boat veered off, started to make a circle in the harbor, and the circle took it out of sight, behind a freighter. Dave looked at the old man. He appeared relieved. He almost forgot to scowl at Dave.

“On your way, now. Come back tomorrow.”

Dave trudged back up the thick, tarred planks of the pier, climbed the zigzag steps, got into the Jaguar, and drove away. He didn’t look back. He was sure he was being watched, by the guard, and by the red neckerchief on the boat. But he didn’t drive far. He swung off into a side street, made a right turn, and another right turn onto another side street, and left the Jaguar there. He walked in the shadow of shop awnings back to where he could see the wharf. He pushed open a shop door and found himself in a real estate office. A desk that faced the window had a blowsy blonde woman seated at it. She wore a lot of paint and junk jewelry. She blinked warily at him. He showed her his license.

“May I sit there for a few minutes?”

“Well”—she looked from him to the license and back again, flustered—“I really don’t think I—”

While he looked out the window, watching the power cruiser approach the wharf, he got out his wallet, took a fifty-dollar bill from it, laid it on the desk. He gave her his warmest smile. “That’s for your trouble,” he said.

She stood up, looked around for advice, but since the place was empty, didn’t get any. She made a quick grab at the bill, flinched a smile at Dave, and backed away. Scared but intrigued. “Yes—all right,” she said.