Obedience (12 page)

“No, I do not.” Hai was indignant. “What sort of man?”

“An Asian, stocky build, well-dressed. I thought it might be Don Pham, but I was too far away to be sure.”

“This is incredible.” Hai sat down in his desk chair again, hands to his head. “What do you think was going on? We haven’t had any thefts. Not for months.”

“What about drugs?” Dave said. “Suppose Don Pham has arranged for drugs to be brought over here from the Golden Triangle concealed in your crates of stereos and VCRs?”

“Impossible.” Hai held hands up, palms outward. “Customs would have discovered it.” He snatched up the telephone on the desk. “We will get Rafe up here to explain.”

Dave took the receiver from him and put it back. “Not now, please. It’s not Rafe I’m after. It’s Don Pham. And I don’t want Don Pham to know that. Not yet.”

“You think it was he who killed my father?” Pain flickered in his face. “How I wish I had insisted on going with him that night.” He struck a fist on the desk.

“Pham has a crew of little thugs in black who carry machine guns to do his killing for him. A witness saw two of them at the marina near the time of your father’s death.”

“My father was killed with a small pistol,” Hai said.

“They didn’t have their Uzis that night,” Dave said. “Maybe to make your father’s murder look different from the slaughter at the Hoang Pho restaurant.”

Hai’s eyes opened wide for a second. He said something, but not in English. He was pale, and when he stood up he did it shakily. “I must go now. Busy day, busy day.” He headed again for the door.

Dave said, “Were the men killed at the Hoang Pho friends of your father’s?”

“No.” He yanked the door open. “We knew nothing about that. Nothing.” And he was off, hurrying between the busy desks of his clerical staff, bursting out the main office door, and almost running away along the rattly catwalk.

“He’ll tell Rafe Carpenter what you saw,” Tracy Davis said. She sat across the table from Dave at a Newport Marina restaurant. Beside the table wide plate glass let them look across a plank deck at glossy white pleasure craft moored in long rows. The water was calm, and reflected the flame colors of the sky at sunset. She poked around in a big salad, looking for any chunks of crabmeat she might have missed. She gave up, laid her fork down, took another sip of margarita from a bowl-size stem glass. She looked at Dave through those green framed glasses. “He’ll tell him you’ve got his bank records.”

Dave polished off the last of a plateful of scallops sautéed in brown butter. “I sincerely hope so.” He touched his mouth with a napkin, laid the napkin beside his plate, and gave her a smile. “That was the idea.”

“It’s dangerous,” she said. “You said you were fed up with being shot at. Now look what you’ve done. Set yourself up to be murdered like Mr. Le.”

“Not quite.” Dave took cigarettes from his jacket pocket. He held out the pack to Tracy Davis, she took a cigarette. With a slim steel lighter, he lit it for her, lit his own. “Mr. Le didn’t know it was coming.”

“We ought to tell Lieutenant Flores,” she said. Flores was in charge of the Le murder investigation. “Turn the papers over to him, let him handle it.”

Dave said, “It’s too early. The papers don’t tie Carpenter to Le’s murder. And I can only guess the meaning of what I saw on the docks yesterday.” He smiled at her worried freckled face. “If he’s up to no good, and he knows I’m on his trail, he’ll try to find out what I know, won’t he?” A blond young waiter in white shorts, white shirt, white socks, white deck shoes, poured coffee for them, asked if their meal had been all right, and went away. “He’ll come to me. Maybe after that we can go to Flores.”

“What if it’s what you think?” she said. “That he’s handling Don Pham’s drug import operation under cover of working in Le’s warehouse? Why won’t he tell Don Pham you’re onto him? Why won’t it be Don Pham who comes to you?”

Dave shook the idea off. “Carpenter wouldn’t be so stupid. You only have to meet Don Pham once to know he isn’t the type who gives anyone a second chance. No—Don Pham would be the last person Carpenter would tell.”

“I hope so,” Tracy Davis said glumly. She tore open a little paper packet of sugar and emptied it into her coffee. She poured cream into the coffee, found her spoon, stirred the coffee. She glanced up at him. Solemnly. “He gave you a second chance.”

“Yup.” Dave tasted his own coffee. “And that puzzled me until I had time to think about it.”

Tracy Davis put out her cigarette. “Why did he?”

The boy in white picked up their plates. Dave asked him to bring brandies. Dave said to Tracy Davis, “Why did you come to me?”

She blinked surprise. “Why did I—?” She was indignant. “Are you comparing me with that—that—?”

“You had a use for me,” Dave said. “And so did he.”

She stared. “What use?”

Dave shrugged. “He didn’t say, did he? So, all I can do is what I always do in the way I always do it. For you. For that half-brother you bad-mouth so often it has to mean you love him.” Dave gave her the corner of a smile. “That’s what you want. What Don Pham wants, I don’t know. He thinks I don’t need to know. But you and he are alike in this—you don’t believe I’m going to deliver.”

“What if you can’t?” she said. The boy set snifters of brandy on the table. Tracy picked hers up and moved it round and round, watching it moodily. “What if you fail him?”

“He’s a man who can’t afford mistakes,” Dave said. “And he doesn’t think I’m going to fail him.” He lifted his glass and gave her a smile. “Why don’t we drink to that?”

She fretted. “I can’t believe he expected you to nail him for drug smuggling. How would that suit his plans?”

Dave cocked an eyebrow, shook his head. “Damned if I know.” He tossed back the brandy. “We’ll see, won’t we?”

H
E FOLLOWED STREAMS OF
red tail lights inland from the coast along miles of broad clean freeway. Before he reached it, a glow in the sky above the hills told him the shopping center was there. A spur of fresh black tarmac curved upward between hills, and when he got to the top, the shopping center sprawled bright below him. Five minutes later, he swung into a vast parking lot landscaped with slender young trees, and crowded with cars, waxed finishes reflecting rainbows from a riot of neon signs.

Show-windowed shops framed the lot on three sides—women’s wear, beauty parlors, toy stores, book and record shops, jewelers, auto parts suppliers, furniture salesrooms, restaurants of many kinds. The American ones boasted steaks grilled over mesquite fires, barbecued ribs, New York bagels, Boston scrod, New Orleans crab, Maine lobster. There was a fake London fish and chips shop. There were Italian places, French, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, West African. He worked his way toward Madame Le’s Pearl of Saigon.

Inside, the place was a far cry from the cool pastels and hard plastic surfaces of the Hoang Pho. Madame Le had chosen Far East motifs—carved screens, cinnabar and black lacquer, rattan furniture, heavy bamboo beams, palm-leaf roofing, slow-turning ceiling fans, the Joseph Conrad, Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene look. Shadows. Mystery. Intrigue. The spicy food smells perfuming the air were no different from those of the Hoang Pho. The tiny young woman who led him to a table in a sheltered booth was like the one at Hoang Pho. So were the other waitresses and waiters, young, slight, black hair, black eyes, skin smooth as ivory. He ordered brandy and coffee and asked:

“Is Mr. Fergusson here tonight?”

She blinked, looked at him warily, “You want to see Mr. Fergusson?”

“Please,” Dave said. She glanced off someplace, undecided, and he dug out the folder and opened it so she could see his license. “I’m with the Public Defender’s office. I need to talk to him about the death of Mr. Le Van Minh.”

“Ah.” Dave’s official standing made her brows twitch. She dipped her head. “I will speak to him.” She scurried away. Silver clinked softly on china, glassware tinkled, voices murmured around him in soft rosy light. In a few minutes, the tiny young woman came back with his brandy and coffee and, seeing that he was smoking, fetched him a bulky soapstone ashtray carved with dragons. “Mr. Fergusson be here soon.” With another frightened nod she vanished.

It wasn’t exactly soon. Dave had time to finish the cigarette, drink half his coffee, half his brandy, and light another cigarette. He pushed back a jacket cuff to see his watch, and when he looked up Fergusson was standing there, young, yellow-haired, rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed, a little sweaty, and giving off kitchen smells. He had got out of an apron and into his jacket hurriedly. Its collar was turned up at the back. One shirt collar point stuck out.

“I’m Fergusson,” he said, “what can I do for you?”

Dave introduced himself and said, “Sit down. Tell me about the night your father-in-law was killed.”

“I told it all to the police,” Fergusson said. “As you can see, we’re very busy tonight. Can’t this wait?”

“The police report says you were here at the restaurant, working on accounts.” Dave nodded at the bench opposite him. Fergusson gave an impatient look around him at his domain and with a sharp sigh sat down. On the seat’s edge. He didn’t relax. “Until midnight. But alone. You have no witness.”

“What’s wrong?” Fergusson scowled. “The police have Andy Flanagan in jail. It’s an open and shut case.”

“The Public Defender doesn’t think so,” Dave said.

“Well, I certainly didn’t do it.” He laughed—not a happy laugh, an angry laugh. “You think I killed Mr. Le? That’s crazy. He’s done more for me than—You’re crazy.”

“Normally, at that time of night, you’d have been at the Le house with your wife and children, and all the Les, isn’t that right? You enjoy living there?”

“Of course. They’re the only family I ever had. I love them, they love me. What are you saying?”

“Your brother-in-law, Hai, said he argued with his father, tried to keep him from leaving the house in response to Andy Flanagan’s phone call. Why?”

“Come on,” Fergusson taunted. “Have you seen the Old Fleet Marina? That whole district? It’s not safe.”

“Yet Mr. Le insisted on taking nearly six thousand dollars in cash with him.”

“Hai was right. He should have gone along.”

“He looks strong to me. And Mr. Le was frail, isn’t that so? Couldn’t Hai have had his way if he really tried?”.

Fergusson shook his head sharply. “You don’t understand. It’s a question of custom, the way they do things back in Vietnam. Mr. Le was head of the family, the father, and his word was law. You’re not there to question his decisions. You’re there to obey. Oh, it’s one thing if he asks your opinion. But if he doesn’t, you don’t offer it. He was going to meet Flanagan and try to ease things for the people being dislocated—that’s what the cash was for.

“He pictured himself going around like Santa Claus handing out money to the boaties who needed it most. It was a bad idea, because it wasn’t enough—anyone could see that. Hell, there were ninety of them. Are. How far was six thousand going to go? And if he did give a few of them enough to really help, then the others would be all over him. There’d be no end to it.”

Fergusson’s shoulders sagged, he sat back in the chair, reached for Dave’s cigarette pack, took a cigarette from it, lit it with Dave’s lighter. “Thanks. It was a spur-of-the-moment reaction Mr. Le was having. Angry. And guilty. He wanted to shut Flanagan and the rest of them up. He didn’t like the bad publicity. He’d donated to good causes for years in the Vietnamese community. He didn’t like being made out a villain in the newspapers and on TV. He felt he had the right to sell what belonged to him, but he also felt sorry for the boaties. That was why he’d let them stay on way past the deadline.”

“And now he thought he’d buy them off,” Dave said.

Fergusson nodded wearily. “He wasn’t thinking clearly. He could be hot-headed. It was late. The call had woken him up. If it was morning, he’d never have tried it.” Fergusson sat forward, twisted out the cigarette, started to rise. “I have to get back to the kitchen. Short-handed tonight. Cooks always call in sick when it’s busiest.”

“Wait another minute,” Dave said. “I need to know two things, maybe three. First about Ba’s death.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Fergusson moaned. “We’ll none of us get over that. It’s so—incomprehensible.” He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “He was healthy as I am. Young, lightweight but wiry. And one night he goes to bed and just dies there. It’s weird. But it happens to young South Asian men. And medicine doesn’t have an inkling, not really. Stress, they say.”

“He wanted to be a poet,” Dave said. “Instead, his father made him work at the warehouse. I guess that might have caused stress. The young think these situations are never going to end, you know.”

“Yeah,” Fergusson nodded. Grudgingly. “Maybe you’re right. But he was a happy kid. He saw things differently from you and me—he could find little bits of beauty everywhere, point this out to you, that—a patch of paint peeling off a wall, the color of a leaf crushed in the street. He …”—Fergusson rubbed his mouth, frowning, hunting for words—“Life was full of beautiful surprises to him. It was so damned sad for somebody like that to die.”

“There wasn’t an autopsy,” Dave said. “Why not?”

“Old Mrs. Le,” Fergusson said. “Ba’s grandmother—she’s a Buddhist. They don’t believe in cutting up bodies after death. And if Le Van Minh ran the rest of us, she ran him.” He squinted. “An autopsy?”

“First, four prominent Vietnamese businessmen are murdered at the Hoang Pho restaurant. Then young Ba dies in his sleep. Then Le Van Minh is murdered at the Old Fleet Marina. All of these deaths within a few weeks of each other. Why should one be an accident?”

“Why should they connect?” Fergusson said.

Dave said, “You tell me. Did your father-in-law know Mr. Phat and the others at the Hoang Pho?”

“Of course. It’s a very tight community, the rich Vietnamese. He sat on committees with them. They ate dinner at each other’s houses.” Fergusson gave a little shudder. “He might have been with them that night, easy as not.”

Dave frowned. “Why do you think Le Tran Hai told me his father didn’t know those men?”

“Did he? Jesus, I can’t explain that. He’s smart. He’d know the police could look at his father’s Rolodex and find Phat and those others listed there. I never knew Hai to lie to anybody.”