Obedience (19 page)

“This is my house.” Flores turned, face dark with anger. “Nobody talks to me that way in my house.”

Dave slid back a door to a patio. “Fine. We’ll talk outside. Your neighbors ought to hear this.” He stepped out. The light was gray. Dew lay on metal lawn furniture in the patio. Spanish Dagger was a tall ghost in a corner of the wall. “You can’t even protect secrecy in your offices. Don Pham knew Tracy had phoned Cotton as soon as you did.”

Flores stayed by the stove. “You can’t prove that.”

“His boys snatching Cotton from the
Starlady
prove it.”

“Hundreds of Asian kids dress that way,” Flores said.

“And you managed to net seventeen—wonderful,” Dave said. “What did you do, raid the corner noodle stand?”

“Who says the ones who took Simes were Don Pham’s boys?”

“Maybe they weren’t, but I don’t think we’re going to learn whose they were—not from you. Why isn’t that lineup window dressing? Why did you really bring Cotton back?”

Flores’s eyes narrowed. “To get the truth.”

“For the citizens you serve—or for Don Pham?”

“Goddammit, you apologize for that.”

“When you rescue Cotton.” Dave pushed out through a plank gate in the patio wall. The hinges squeaked as the gate flapped shut. And in the kitchen, the kettle whistled.

C
ECIL KEPT NODDING OFF,
and Dave let him out at a taxi stand, so he could return to the canyon and get some sleep before he had to go to work. Dave had an appointment. He steered the Jaguar toward the docks. Twice he saw the dark limousine prowling the streets. Still trying to find the dear departed? He had his doubts. Early morning fog hung over the docks. A motorcycle stood chained to one of the uprights of the double-wire-mesh gates. He touched the machine. It was warm. A glance at his watch told him he was five minutes late, and he hurried down the zigzag staircase. The air was damp and cold. He ought to have brought his trenchcoat. Mist clung to his hands and face. Stacked crates kept him from seeing the door of the Le warehouse. When he stepped around the last stack, Herman Steinkrohn raised a hand to him. He wore a white crash helmet, boots, a brown leather jacket with a fur collar.

“What’s this all about?” His boyish face was puzzled.

“Thanks for coming.” Dave grinned briefly. “What it’s about is how risky it is to say to me, ‘If I can ever do anything for you, let me know.’ It can cut into a man’s sleep.”

The blond kid laughed. “It’s okay. I meant it.” He frowned. “But what are we going to do?”

“We’re going to find out what’s in the latest shipments to Le Electronics from the Orient,” Dave said. “Other than what’s stenciled on the outside of the crates.”

Steinkrohn squinted. “I don’t get you.”

“You know,” Dave said, “that Rafe Carpenter was killed down here night before last?”

The boy looked grieved. “Yeah. They told us. We felt like going home, most of us. But you can’t do that. Not without union approval. And it’s a hassle to get that.”

“You don’t know why he was killed?”

Steinkrohn tilted his head. “He fell from the crane.”

“Is that what Mr. Le told you?”

“Isn’t it true?”

Dave told him what seemed to him to be true.

Steinkrohn whistled surprise. “Oh, wow. But Rafe? Are you sure? I mean, he was, like so—so—”

“Wholesome?” Dave said. “Straight arrow?”

“Yeah, right.” Steinkrohn said this softly. But something bothered him. “Still, how could he be bringing drugs through here? The feds are here every time a shipment comes in. A dude called Priest. He’s a main man at Customs.”

“And he has a team of uniformed inspectors open every crate and go through it, top to bottom, does he?”

“Well, no—” Steinkrohn took off the crash helmet and ruffled his yellow hair. “Actually, they don’t do anything. They play cards. No, Mr. Priest checks all the manifests, right along with Mr. Le.”

“And that’s it?” Dave said.

“That’s all I ever saw him do,” Steinkrohn said. His blue eyes showed confusion, then recognition. “It wasn’t enough, was it?”

“What do you think?”

“I never thought about it before,” Steinkrohn said. “It wasn’t any of my business. My business—”

“I know. Your business was to load the crates onto a forklift truck and store them inside.”

“You’re saying Mr. Priest was in on the drug smuggling? Rafe paid him to only pretend to check the shipments?”

“After somebody else paid him.”

“Who would they be?” Steinkrohn said.

“The ones who shot him,” Dave said. “I don’t know who they are. Not for sure. I’m trying to find out.” He gave the kid a little smile. “You ready to get to work?”

“Sure.” Steinkrohn nodded. “Only, how do we get in?”

Dave drew a packet of keys from his jacket pocket and tossed them to Steinkrohn. The boy caught them, peered at them. “These are Rafe’s keys. I see him use them every morning.” He stared at Dave. “Where did you get them?”

Dave didn’t think Steinkrohn wanted to hear. Not really. “You know which one fits these locks?” he asked.

“Sure, but—” Steinkrohn didn’t finish the thought. His eyes widened, he yelped, “Look out!” and somebody landed on Dave’s back and bore him down to the deck. There was savage yelling. Dave glimpsed Steinkrohn wrestling with a kid about half his size, all in black, face masked. The creature on Dave’s back was banging his shoulders and neck with karate chops. Dave twisted this way, that way. It did no good. He tensed, and heaved upward. The way a bronco dislodges a rider. It worked. He scrambled to his feet. The small black figure yelled and launched itself at him again. Dave spun out of the way. The boy staggered on past him. Steinkrohn had his little ambusher in both hands, raised him over his head, and with a roar like a grizzly bear’s, threw him off the dock into the water. The other masked boy ran at him, screaming. Steinkrohn grinned, stepped aside, stuck out a foot, and the boy went head over heels, wailing, off the dock to join his friend.

Breathing hard, heart hammering, Dave leaned against the warehouse wall, and rubbed his neck and shoulders. Steinkrohn came to him. “You okay?”

“I’m too old for hand-to-hand combat,” Dave gasped. “You did a nice job. You going to fish them out?”

“They’re swimming away.” Steinkrohn pointed across the water where freighters loomed in the fog. “Back to Vietnam, I hope. What did they want?”

Dave pushed away from the wall, and limped off.

“Where you going?”

“To check out a limousine,” Dave said. “Come along, if you want to.”

Steinkrohn walked beside him, the heels of his motorcycle boots clunking on the planks. “This is better than TV,” he said. “I thought real detectives led dull lives.”

“When they don’t,” Dave said, “they wish they did.”

Steinkrohn looked into his face worriedly. “You don’t sound like you feel too good.”

Dave began to climb the steps up to the street. “I smoke too much, drink too much, eat too much rich food.” He stopped, leaned against the rail to catch his breath. “In short, I abuse my health. It doesn’t help when strangers join in.” He pushed on. They reached the street.

“Jesus, there is a limousine. How did you know?”

“It’s been following me for hours.” Dave tried the door on the passenger side. It wasn’t locked. The boys had been in a hurry to catch him. He bent and stretched bruised muscles, to reach into the glove compartment. He handed Steinkrohn a slip of paper.

“It’s the mandatory insurance thing,” Steinkrohn said.

“I haven’t got my glasses. What’s the owner’s name?”

“Le Huu Loi,” Steinkrohn said.

“And do you by chance happen to know who that is?”

“Sure,” the boy said. “Mr. Le’s grandmother.”

The fog had burned off. The sun was well up. Through the opaque wired glass of the warehouse windows, midmorning light slanted down on the dozens of clear plastic bags Dave and Steinkrohn had laid out on the tops of crates still not opened. They’d stopped after crow-barring the tops off five. Scores of new television sets, stereos, VCRs sat around in no order at all, shrouded in heavy plastic.

Dave had climbed to the catwalk and the office at the rear to make some telephone calls. And soon a crowd, police, Customs officers, Drug Enforcement agents, Coast Guard and Harbor Patrol officers, reporters, photographers, television sound and camera people, was milling around ankle-deep in packing materials, Excelsior, die-cut cardboard, and molded white Styrofoam on the concrete floor.

The transparent bags held white powder. Pure heroin. That was what the DEA and Customs officials called it—grim men in business suits. Warren Priest had been one of these, but not for long. Priest had soon gone off in handcuffs, and Raoul Flores had departed with men in blue uniforms to try to find Chien Cao Nhu. Armed DEA agents had followed. Dave watched them go with a wry feeling that Chien would not be at his fancy boatyard this morning, that Chien would be in that limbo which at the moment also concealed Don Pham, a place whose location somebody knew, but nobody dared name.

Dave looked down from the offices and, through the steel lattice work of structural supports, watched things grow calm and begin to get methodical on the floor below. The news crews left. Feds in neat jackets and slacks tagged the bags of heroin and loaded them into the trunks of unmarked cars parked outside the warehouse doors, where the glancing sun gave the vehicles a shine they didn’t commonly enjoy. Uniformed Customs officers went to work prying open crates Dave and Steinkrohn hadn’t got to. There were long aisles of them, stacked high. To probe them all would take days.

Except for the DEA, other law enforcement personnel slowly cleared out. It seemed to Dave as if he had talked to every one of them. As for the news people, after answering the questions of the eighth television reporter, half blinded from still photographer’s strobelights, he’d fled up here—and found Le Tran Hai seated at his desk, stunned, motionless. He had answered a thousand questions, had laid all his records in the hands of DEA agents, had sent his warehousemen and office staff home with instructions to stand ready for questioning. What was left? Dave sat down across from him. Hai’s dull eyes gradually focused. He asked hoarsely:

“What is my grandmother’s car doing here?”

“She wanted to stop me having Le Doan Ba’s body exhumed for an autopsy. It looks as if she lent the car to a pair of street punks and paid them to beat me up. They followed me all night. Luckily they didn’t jump me until Steinkrohn was here to act as my bodyguard.”

Hai said something in Vietnamese that sounded like a curse. In English, he said in a broken voice, “We are disgraced. We are destroyed. My poor father.”

“I’m not going to bring charges against your grandmother,” Dave said. “And no one believes you knew about Carpenter’s drug smuggling. You’re not destroyed. Forget that. It’s a thriving business. The DEA will clear you, this trouble will pass and be forgotten.”

Hai heavily shook his head. “I was not alert. It was my responsibility to see that the laws were strictly obeyed by this company in all its dealings.” He looked bleak. “I cannot live with such dishonor.” He made a strange, stiff gesture to indicate what had happened out there in the warehouse. “To allow a hateful poison to enter this country which had been so generous to us—” He struck his forehead with the heel of a hand. “How stupid I was.”

“It was Rafe Carpenter who committed the crime,” Dave said. “It was Rafe Carpenter who was stupid, and venal, and a good many other sad things. Not you. He betrayed you.”

Hai jumped out of his chair. “I have no excuse. I am not blind. I ought to have seen.” He turned his back, and pummeled his head with his fists. “I was a fool to trust him. The gods have spoken plainly. My young brother dies. My father is killed. This business is corrupted. All because of my stupidity.” He faced Dave, tears running down his face. “From this day, the whole world will sneer when the name of Le is spoken.”

He yanked open a desk drawer, scrabbled in it, brought out a knife. The blade flashed in the window light. Dave threw himself across the desk, gave a wide, painful swing of his left arm, struck Hai’s wrist, and the knife went flying. “No—I must die, I must die.” Hai dropped to the carpeted floor, groping for the knife, and Dave was down there shouldering him away, grabbing the knife, struggling to his feet. He said, “You can’t kill yourself. Who’ll look after the business, the family, your wife and children?”

Hai sat on the floor, rumpled, sobbing. Dave stuck the knife into his waistband, bent and helped Hai to his feet. There seemed no strength left in the man. Dave got him into his chair. “I’ll get you some water.” A cooler waited in the outer office where the computer screens stood in rows mute and gray as gravestones. He took a paper cup of water back to Hai, who accepted it blankly, drank it, sat staring at nothing, cup in his hand. Dave’s heart labored. He was short of breath. “I’ll tell you one thing,” he said. “It may make you feel a little better. It wasn’t Rafe Carpenter who killed your father.”

Hai’s head jerked up. “It wasn’t?”

“He was playing cards that night, and the men with him all say he never left the game. Neighbors. I checked with all of them. An avocado grower, and two businessmen—hardware, mixed concrete—none of them connected to shipping, importing, anything like it. They only knew Carpenter slightly. No reason I could find for them to lie for him.”

“Then who did kill my father?” Hai said.

A DEA officer appeared in the doorway, a pink-skinned young man, going bald. Roche—was that his name? “We don’t need to keep you any longer today, Mr. Le. We’ll be sealing the warehouse, and we’ll advise you when we’ve finished our work here. I think you supplied us with all the data we’ll need. If not, we’ll be in touch. Everything will have to be thoroughly vetted. We’ll need to interview all your employees, so I’m afraid it’s going to take a few days.”

“No problem.” Le Tran Hai spoke the words dully. He pushed up out of his chair. “I will, of course, cooperate in every way.” He tried to work up a smile and failed.

“Thank you.” Roche came inside to shake Dave’s hand. “And Mr. Brandstetter—thank you, sir. You’re as good as your reputation.”