Obedience (22 page)

“You can ask her.” Dave nursed a paper cup of cold coffee and tilted back his chair. “But I doubt she’ll tell you. Anyway, you’re processing Flanagan out, are you?”

Flores shrugged. “No way to tie him to the weapon. Kenny, Le Tran Hai’s teen-aged son, knew Thao had the gun.” Flores smiled faintly. “Had a crush on her, used to go to her room when she wasn’t around and paw through the drawers of her dresser, touching her things. She wore quite a perfume, did little Miss Thao.”

Tracy wrinkled her nose. “It’s still in this room.”

“And he found the gun there?” Dave said.

“It got to be routine with him, taking it out and handling it,” Flores said. “Sometimes he thought he’d kill himself with it. There in her room, on her bed.” Flores chuckled ruefully and shook his head. “Fifteen-years-old. She wouldn’t even look at him, and he was dying of love for her.” Flores blew out air and nodded.

“Yeah. It was always there in the same drawer. Until the day after Le Van Minh was killed. Then Kenny couldn’t find it anywhere.”

“The others didn’t know?” Dave asked. “Quynh and Matt?”

Flores shook his head. “It wasn’t a conspiracy. Hell, she bought it when she was only two days off the plane from Paris. She knew all along old Le wouldn’t give in.”

“She had doubts,” Dave said. “Or she’d have killed him sooner. When I talked to her, she was aching to get home to that French boy. She hung back until the last moment, hoping Le would relent. There surely would have been easier opportunities to kill him, living right there in the house with him, night and day.” Dave lit a cigarette and blinked at Flores through the smoke. “How did she manage it? How was it Don Pham’s boys didn’t see her?”

Flores shrugged. “It is not exactly Disneyland’s Parade of Lights out there. It was dark, there was no one around, but even if there had been, she was so angry she says she would not have noticed. She parked her rental car up the street, pulled off her shoes, and ran after him out the dock, and when she was right behind him put the gun to the base of his skull and pulled the trigger. The noise shook her up—not a man falling dead at her feet, no, but the noise—and then she heard someone coming, and ran. She threw the gun away. She meant for it to go into the water, but now we know where it went. And she ducked into the shower rooms there, and shut herself into a toilet booth, and then when nothing happened, she peeked out, and the only human in sight was old Le lying dead, and she took a chance and ran back to her car.

He looked at Tracy. “Yes, counselor. She was read her rights. She waived the right to have an attorney present and gave the statement voluntarily.” He smiled thinly. “No way could anyone have stopped her.” He nudged a cassette recorder on the desk. “Listen to it, if you wish. You will see. All facts freely given, and much remorse, much weeping.”

“She was full of remorse at Le’s funeral,” Dave said. “But I expect it’s remorse for herself. It usually is.” He got to his feet. “I have work to do.”

Flores squinted. “What else is there?”

“There’s Cotton Simes,” Dave said.

“My people are working on that,” Flores said.

“Gall them off.” Dave went to the door. “By now Don Pham knows what happened to Warren Priest. And if that doesn’t bring him to me, the news about Thao will. And if Cotton’s still alive, I have a hunch he’ll bring him too.”

“I want to be there,” Flores said.

Dave pulled the door open. “Sorry, but my house is way out of your jurisdiction.” He walked out.

Cecil was playing backgammon with Amanda and others at Madge Dunstan’s house at the beach, which meant he’d stay the night, and Dave sat in the dark, alone. It was the last time. Once this night was over, he was through with the investigation game. Sig-Sauer dark and heavy beside him on the long couch of the rear building under the rafters, the high roof, he sat on the couch, smoking cigarettes, sipping whisky, and not looking at the face of his watch when his lighter flamed, not wanting to know how long he’d waited since that would change nothing.

Outside, the canyon had grown quiet. No more crickets shrilling love songs in the brittle, brown September brush. The muted roar of traffic that drifted up from Laurel Canyon Boulevard had thinned out. Now and then a car labored up Horseshoe Canyon Trail. At such moments, he sat up straight and listened. But all the cars passed. Or so he thought. Did he drop to sleep? Maybe.

Something woke him. Quick light footsteps on the pine stairs from the sleeping loft. Up on the loft itself, his ears told him someone dropped in through the open skylight and landed with a thud on the bed. Someone slid out a drawer of the pine chest where he commonly kept the Sig-Sauer. He snatched the gun up, jumped to his feet, jacked a cartridge into the chamber, drew breath to shout at the intruder. And from only a few feet away, the strong beam of a flashlight dazzled him, and a voice right behind him said, “Drop it, Mr. Brandstetter, please.” Dave dropped it.

The flashlight came toward him. A lamp lit up at the end of the couch. One of the doll-boys stood there in a tight black turtleneck and jeans, pointing an Uzi at him. Another reached around him and scooped up the automatic from the couch. Another unlocked the door to the courtyard, and squat, pock-marked Don Pham came in, looking grim. He had Cotton Simes by the arm. Cotton had bought clothes in New York with Dave’s money. Safari jacket, slouch hat. A doll-boy followed him, gun stuck into Cotton’s back. The one who had been noisy coming in through the skylight now came down the pine plank stairs from the sleeping loft. He said something in Vietnamese—probably that he hadn’t found the gun. Don Pham snarled at him, and he shut up. He sat on the stairs, Uzi across his knees, and watched.

“It was these two,” Cotton told Dave. He nodded at the doll-boy by the lamp, the doll-boy at his back. “They were the ones that killed the men at the Hoang Pho.”

Don Pham stared at him and grew red in the face.

“You have now killed not only your foolish self,” he said in his grating voice, “but your friend here. Do you realize that?”

“He’s not that easy to kill.” Cotton’s eyes were wide and frightened, but he gave Dave a grin. “You don’t get old like him without you got the brains to protect yourself at all times. A nothing little pimp like you—you think he’s gonna let himself die in your kind of company?”

Pham struck him across the face. The blow turned Cotton’s head to the side. He stood that way, eyes closed, as if in a pose for his mime act. Don Pham said, “Sit down and keep your mouth shut. I am sick of your empty-headed chatter.” He shoved Cotton at the couch. Cotton fell onto it awkwardly. “You sit down too, please, Mr. Brandstetter.”

Dave sat down. Cotton was staring at him as if his heart would break. Dave told him, “Don’t feel bad. He never meant to let either of us live anyway.”

“Why did you send for me? You said—”

“I didn’t send for you. It was Lieutenant Flores’s doing. He and Mr. Pham here have a working relationship.”

Pham’s eyes opened wide. “We do?”

“Don’t you? I’ll believe you before I believe him.”

Pham nodded, sat down on the raised hearth. “No, we don’t. But he is a fool. I always know what he is doing. I have people in his office.”

“But not in mine,” Dave said. “That’s why you’re here.”

“I should have killed you along with Carpenter on the docks,” Pham said. “It will take me months, years, to find another Warren Priest.”

“I do hope so,” Dave said. “But you’d lost him, anyway, you know. When I spotted him, eating lunch at Hoang Pho, he was discussing a deal with Chien Cao Nhu.”

Pham squinted. “Chien Cao Nhu? The boat dealer?”

“You know him?” Dave said.

Pham shook his head. “I have only seen his name, on the sign at his place of business.”

“It’s a front. It was a front in New York State not long ago, but some rival there made things hot for him. Then a grand jury got into the act. So he came to California.”

Pham grated out what must have been a Vietnamese curse. “Where is he? Why wasn’t he arrested along with Priest?”

“For the same reason you weren’t. The police can’t find him. I expect he’s out at sea,” Dave said. “And won’t be back for a while. Carpenter was working with him too—did you know that?”

Pham made a face. “I knew he was double-crossing me. When I saw those bank statements you got, I knew that. But I didn’t know it was Chien. I didn’t know who it was.”

Dave raised his eyebrows. “You saw those bank statements? Ah. Your source in the police department found them on Tracy Davis’s desk, and used a copying machine, right?”

Pham gave him a tight little smile that didn’t last. “He was taking in twice what I was paying him.”

Dave said, “Maybe you should have paid him better for his loyalty, when he killed Le Doan Ba for you.”

“Carpenter was careless, and young Ba saw what he never should have seen. It was up to Carpenter to remedy his mistake.” Pham snorted. “It was no proof of loyalty. It was to save his own neck.”

“And yours,” Dave said.

“Who was this girl who killed Mr. Le?” Pham said.

“It’s a long story.” Dave rose. “I’ll need a drink.”

“Please.” Pham motioned him down. He called to the doll-boy on the stairs, gave him instructions in Vietnamese, pointed to the bar in the shadows under the loft. The small figure went where he was told. Bottles and glasses and ice clinked back there. Pham said, “Nguyen is her family name. But it is as common as Smith in this country. It told me nothing. She had been here some weeks before Rafe happened to mention her to me. And all he knew was that she was a cause of family friction. Why did she kill Mr. Le?”

“Her father was a cabinet member in Saigon in the last days before the U.S. withdrew from Vietnam. He escaped with a lot of money the U.S. claims he had no right to.”

Pham tilted his head. “Escaped?”

“To Paris. He can’t come to the U.S. or they’ll prosecute him for embezzlement. But he evidently wanted to do business here, and since his sons were killed in the war, he sent his daughter. Thao.”

“Why to the Le’s?” Pham said.

Dave began explaining. The boy in black brought a tray with drinks. Pham’s was tall—vodka, gin? The others were whisky on ice in short glasses. One for Cotton, one for Dave. Dave drank from it. It wasn’t his best whisky. He lit a cigarette, went on with the story, down to the point of Le Van Minh’s murder. Then he said:

“But you wanted to protect Mr. Le that night. You failed, but your young friends here followed him down to the Old Fleet with that idea—right?”

“I had been keeping a watch on him for a long time. He was friendly with Mr. Tang and the other who were plotting to fund shipments of heroin here from the East. This is my territory. I could not allow this.”

“Mr. Le would have been killed at the Hoang Pho too, if he’d been there. Why wasn’t he?”

“I told you before. He was a man of rectitude. When he heard what was being proposed, he wanted nothing to do with it. He was shocked that these pillars of the local Vietnamese community would consider such a thing.”

“So why did you continue to watch him?”

“Nothing puts a man so much in danger as his unwillingness to tolerate the frailties of his friends.”

Cotton asked, “Is that what Confucius say?” He had poured his whole drink down his throat in one gulp. It was bringing back his lost impudence.

Pham glared at him. Cotton popped his eyes.

Dave snubbed out his cigarette. “Phat and Tang and the other two in the plan were dead. Why go on guarding Mr. Le?”

“Who knew if the plan was dead? Perhaps others still lived who could go on with it.”

“And they might try to kill Mr. Le to keep him from telling what he knew?”

Pham nodded. “And Mr. Le could be of use to me, if the plan was put in action.”

“Of use how?”

“With a little prompting from me, he could expose the plan to the authorities and put an end to it. So … I watched over him. My agent heard Mr. Le shout where he was going when he left his house. But my agent’s car wouldn’t start. He went on foot to find a pay telephone to alert me. I sent two others”—he glanced at the boys in black—“to see that Mr. Le came to no harm. But the warning call had been too slow. He was dead when they got there.”

“And they didn’t even see the girl,” Dave said.

“They left at once. They did not want to be accused.”

He smiled wryly. “How ironic that Mr. Le’s death had nothing to do with my interests. I had no need of you.”

“Don’t be too sure,” Dave said. “You don’t know yet who it was those wealthy men your troops here slaughtered at the Hoang Pho planned to finance.”

Pham narrowed his eyes. He hitched forward on the bricks of the raised hearth. “And you do?”

“And you also don’t know who would be brokering the opium at the Asian end of the operation.”

“You’re boasting,” Pham snorted. “It’s impossible.”

“Check it out,” Dave said. “You’re Vietnamese. Don’t you have friends or acquaintances or associates in France? Get in touch with them, and have them keep watch on Nguyen Dinh Thuc in Paris.”

Pham was all attention. “The girl’s father?”

Dave nodded. “If they watch his house, I think they’ll see that he’s got an American visitor. A harmless-looking, skinny old man from California.”

“Nguyen sent the girl to become a U.S. citizen to front an importing business for him?”

“She’d look pretty selling bric-a-brac,” Dave said. “While the skinny old man handled what was tucked away inside the figurines.”

“Who is this skinny old man?” Pham said.

“Holland Carpenter.” Dave snubbed out his cigarette. “Rafe Carpenter’s father.” Dave finished off his whisky. “He took a flight out from LAX to Paris the day after Le Van Minh’s funeral. That was an interesting day. Did I ever tell you about it? I went down to the docks that day, to the Le warehouse, and I was surprised at what I saw. Rafe Carpenter, handing over a pair of attaché cases to Chien Cao Nhu, who had arrived in one of his glossy boats. The old man was there, helping Rafe out, dressed as a security guard.”

“Damn Rafe Carpenter,” Pham snarled. He made a few comments in Vietnamese, and stood up. “Time to go.” He glanced around the room. “We don’t want to spatter blood all over here. The next tenants should not be faced with such a cleanup job.” He caught Dave by surprise, yanked him to his feet. He was strong. Cotton jumped off the couch, bowled over the doll-boy assigned to him, and ran for the door. “Be cool,” Dave called after him. He was worried the Uzis would start chattering. They didn’t. Instead, another doll-boy stepped through the open door and pushed the thin black nose of his gun into Cotton’s midriff, who stopped with a yelp. “No need to kill me,” he said. “I won’t say anything. Did I say anything before? I didn’t tell the police. Not one word. I am a mime. My art is silence.”