The Deepest Cut (34 page)

Vining took her two-way from her pocket and keyed it. She went to the shop’s back door and opened the lock. PPD officers led by Sergeant Terrence Folke came through it. The front door buzzed when another pair of PPD officers and two San Gabriel PD. officers entered.

“What’s going on?” Li asked.

“We’re arresting you on an outstanding bench warrant from last year,” Vining said. “You did not appear at a scheduled hearing regarding late child-support payments.”

An officer handcuffed Li while another searched him and recited his rights.

“I paid everything I owed,” Li spat. “That court hearing was total bullshit.”

“Judges don’t like to be kept waiting, Marvin.” Vining saw a new side of Li. She saw the angry punk who acted on an adverse comment in a crowded restaurant by opening fire. From her pocket, she took out folded papers and opened them in front of Li’s face with a flick of her wrist.

“Search warrants for your computer and telephone records.”

Folke picked up a BlackBerry from Li’s desk. An officer was unplugging Li’s laptop.

“Thanks, Terrence,” Vining said to the sergeant as she headed toward the back door. “I’ll talk to you at the station, Marvin.”

Before she left, Folke told her, “We’ve got a car en route to pick up Victor Chang.”

In the alley behind the shop, Vining saw Auntie Wan getting out of her car.

Vining gave her a quick wave and kept walking.

THIRTY-FOUR

V
INING DROVE TO SAN MARINO AND TURNED ONTO HUNTINGTON
Drive, where many of the city’s small businesses were located on a stretch lined with century-old magnolia trees. She found a parking spot in front of the two-story, midcentury building where Pearl Zhang maintained her office.

At the side of the building, she climbed an outside stairway of cement slabs connected by steel rails. For a city with sweeping mansions, the commercial buildings were modest, many homely enough so that only the locals loved them, and outsiders found little to entice them here. Vining walked a second-floor catwalk and found Zhang’s suite. A plastic plaque beside the door said
RED PEARL ENTERPRISES.

She entered a small lobby where a young Asian woman sitting at a disorganized desk was on the telephone. She was wearing a beige ribbed turtleneck sweater in spite of the warm weather. Her black hair had been hastily pulled back and fixed with a claw clip behind her head. Loose strands had broken free all over.

The desk was almost overflowing with file folders, scraps of paper, three-ring binders, and sales flyers. Perched precariously in each corner were glass vases of silk flowers, partially filled with clear plastic that resembled water, which at first glance made it appear that the clever fakes were fresh blooms. The area might have been organized at some
point, but the order had eroded just as wind and water can reduce a mountain to a pitted shell.

A credenza behind the desk and a bookcase were similarly cluttered. A straggly potted philodendron on the bookcase struggled toward the light. Someone had draped its pale, almost bare vines around the edges of the bookcase and across a nail supporting a large calendar from the Quon Yick Noodle Factory. There were souvenirs commemorating the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

Two new-looking leather chairs were against the wall on either side of a small table that had another dusty, ersatz vase of flowers and was strewn with brochures advertising Red Pearl’s various property offerings.

Given Vining’s brief encounters with Pearl Zhang, the office was not what she’d expected from someone who was so elegantly attired and polished. Vining had the feeling of visiting a stranger’s fastidious home only to open the refrigerator and find it crammed with spoiled food.

The young woman acknowledged Vining with a quick wave while she continued her telephone conversation in Chinese.

The suite was small. A short hallway led from the lobby with a few doors on either side.

When the secretary showed no indication that she was close to ending her phone call, Vining pulled back her jacket to make sure the woman saw the badge on her belt. She also took a business card from her pocket and set it on the desk.

The secretary quickly ended her call. “Sorry, sorry. Can I help you?”

“Is Pearl Zhang here?”

The secretary again picked up the phone receiver and punched buttons on the keypad while watching Vining. She spoke urgently into the phone in Chinese, keeping her voice low. Almost before the secretary had ended the call, a door opened and Zhang stepped out.

“Detective Vining. How nice to see you. Please come into my office.”

Zhang’s appearance was as picture-perfect as the night Vining had first seen her tromping across the rubble of the Hollenbeck Paper
building construction site. Her skirt suit was understated, but the cut and fabric weren’t anything that could be procured off-the-rack. She held out her hand as Vining approached. Rainbows cast from the sparkling diamonds that adorned her watch, rings, necklace, and earrings drew Vining’s attention in spite of herself. The glint was enough to put one’s eye out. Her bloodred nail polish again matched the color on her precisely outlined lips.

Shaking Zhang’s fine-boned, smooth hand made Vining feel as if hers was a weathered baseball mitt. Zhang had the same aura of composure and steely resolve as when she’d seen Scrappy’s body, suggesting that she was a woman who handled whatever life threw in front of her, and then stepped over it in her designer stilettos.

Zhang led the way into a small office. The décor was minimalist in comparison to the lobby. It was furnished with a blond-wood desk in a simple Danish design with two matching chairs in front. A credenza was against a wall. Other than Zhang’s pale pink leather desk chair, there was no other furniture. The desk was empty except for an open laptop computer, a multi-line telephone, an iPhone, and a round, cut crystal paperweight. The top of the credenza held photographs of her son Ken in crystal frames.

Vining privately observed that the woman liked cut glass. She pushily walked to the photos and began picking them up.

“What a cute baby Ken was. Look how chubby.”

Zhang peered around Vining. “That was his first birthday.”

Zhang was in a couple of the photos with Ken as a baby and young child. She seemed ageless, but her financial situation had matured. In one photo, Ken was four or five years old, looking adorable in a suit with a bow tie and short pants. Zhang was standing beside him, holding his hand. She was also decked out, looking slightly trashy in a snug sheath dress in glossy purple fabric. Gardenias were pinned to her slicked-back hair. Dramatic eye makeup and bold lipstick fought each other for dominance on her face. Vining wondered about the path that had taken Zhang from Ross “dress for less” to Armani and diamonds.

“And here’s Ken all grown up,” Vining said.

Most prominent among the photos was a large recent shot of Ken wearing a tuxedo with a boutonnière. He was leaning against a tree
with arms folded, lips barely turned up at the corners. His gaze was steady, expression confident. He looked much older than seventeen and ready to take on the world. Vining imagined him plowing through a string of girls like Emily before he was finished. As polite as Ken was in person, Vining was certain she detected in his eyes an arrogance that said, “Life is a game.”

Maybe so,
Vining thought,
but my daughter’s not going to be one of your pawns.

Zhang pointedly took the photo from Vining’s hands and returned it to the credenza. As she was straightening the frames, she said, “Detective Vining, I assume you’re here with news about who committed that murder on my property.”

“The investigation is still under way. I’m here on another matter.” Vining took out her digital camera, turned it on, and showed Zhang the photo she’d taken of Victor Chang in his dog hat, flipping off the camera. “Do you know this man?”

The edges of Zhang’s red lips tightened slightly. She took a perfunctory glance and moved to sit behind her desk. “I do not.”

Vining didn’t sit, but stood over the desk. “No? Take another look.” She turned the display toward Zhang.

“I don’t need another look.”

“His name is Victor Chang. His street name is Kicker. Your son Ken knows him.” Vining handed her copies of the yearbook photos of the San Marino High School photography club and the group of friends in which Victor had his arm thrown over Ken’s shoulders.

Zhang’s eyes brightened as she looked at the images. “My son is popular with his schoolmates. He has many friends. Perhaps, Detective, you can get to your point. I don’t have a lot of time.”

“The point is that while Victor Chang was a high school honor student, he was also associated with a very violent criminal gang called Hell Side Wah Ching. He’s implicated in a string of violent robberies of local Asian-owned businesses and the shooting death of a Hong Kong businessman and his girlfriend.”

She set the gruesome crime scene photo on her desk.

Zhang’s red lips trembled and two fine, vertical lines appeared in
her forehead. She flipped the photo facedown and glared at Vining. “The purpose of your visit is still unknown to me, Detective.”

“I want to know whether Ken has any involvement with a gang or criminal activity.”

“My son is not in a gang.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know my son. How dare you come here and ask these questions and show me this horrible picture.” Zhang shoved the photo with her index finger, sliding it toward Vining. “My son is a good boy. He’s an honor student. He’s an accomplished pianist. He tutors disad-vantaged children in his spare time.”

She darted her finger toward Vining. “If he was white, you wouldn’t be here. That’s what this is about, isn’t it? The inscrutable Chinese people. Outwardly respectable, putting on a proper face, while behind the scenes, we’re criminals, taking advantage of anyone, especially our own people. How racist.”

She stood. Her voice was even yet seethed anger. “You’re looking for any reason to keep my son away from your daughter. I know the questions you’ve asked about me and my background. Your insinuations that I have done something illegal and dirty to get where I am in life. Ken told me he doesn’t feel welcome in your home. Don’t worry about my son and your daughter. I will forbid him to go near her or any daughter of a police officer. Good-bye, Detective.”

Vining didn’t know if Zhang was being truthful about her son’s involvement in criminal activity or even if she was aware of it, but she’d gotten what she wanted.

THIRTY-FIVE

V
INING RETURNED TO HER CUBICLE ON THE SECOND FLOOR OF THE
PPD and picked up a voicemail message from Azusa P.D. homicide detective Gary Blanco, returning her call.

Azusa was about a dozen miles east of Pasadena and was where Sandra Lynde had been murdered during a convenience-store robbery over twenty years ago. Sandra was the mother of murdered LAPD vice officer Frances “Frankie” Lynde, whose battered body had been dumped beneath Pasadena’s Colorado Street Bridge. Vining and Kissick had solved that sordid case.

Auntie Wan had admonished Vining to appease the ghost that follows her. Vining thought that Frankie’s spirit should have been appeased. Vining had seen to it that Frankie’s killer had paid for her murder, big time, yet Frankie’s ghost would not leave her in peace. Maybe, Vining thought, she was overlooking the obvious. Justice for Frankie was not complete. Her mother’s murder remained unsolved. Maybe that was why Frankie’s spirit was still restless. Or maybe not, but it was worth a try.

Detective Blanco had left the response for which Vining had hoped. He would look into the long-cold Sandra Lynde homicide.

Vining called Dispatch and asked them to get in touch with Officer Frank Lynde, Frankie’s father, a twenty-five-year veteran with the
PPD. He was a mountain of a man, rotund and florid-faced, and a steady cop, even and predictable. The only time anyone had seen Frank lose control was when they’d found Frankie’s body. He quickly got back to her.

Vining kept her explanation simple. “Sandra’s murder has been on my mind. Blanco said the lead detective on the case moved out of state twelve years ago and no one’s looked at it since. Fresh eyes and all.”

Frank’s voice was gruff, fitting his size and appearance. “In the early years, I used to check in on it, but time has a way of getting past you. Now with Frankie dead, too …”

“I understand, Frank. I just wanted to let you know.”

Vining ended the call. She felt the same hollow sadness she’d experienced after her other recent interactions with Frank Lynde. Talk about a dead man walking …

Before she had a chance to move on to the next thing, she got a call from Sergeant Terrence Folke whose officers were going to pick up Victor Chang.

“Nan, Chang is in the wind.”

“What happened?”

“The guys surveilling Newcastle say that an hour ago, Chang leaned his arrow against a lamppost and walked away. We’re looking for him, but no luck yet.”

“Nobody followed him?”

“The mission of the surveillance was to watch who came and went on that block, not to keep tabs on anyone in particular. I’ve pulled four patrol units in and they’re going door-to-door, chasing through backyards. I put out an APB—”

“Crap.” She loudly exhaled.

“I’m sorry, Nan. But I do have new information about what’s going on in that block. After the guys in costumes go home around midnight, fresh teams arrive. They sit in their cars all night at each of those two corners of Newcastle. We’ve also discovered some interesting characters living on that block. There’s Drew Huebner, age thirty-eight. He was a mortgage banker with that big bank in town that the feds took over during the home loan crisis. Got laid off. Was arrested for soliciting prostitution in Hollywood. Runs an Internet porno site out of his home.”

“Nice.”

“We’ve also got a Mrs. Elena Irani, sixty-three, who has a habit of shoplifting.”

“Uh-huh.”

“There’s a mother and daughter who are especially interesting. Grace Shipley, age forty-two, and Meghan, age twenty. They live at twenty-five-eighteen Newcastle, right in the middle of that stretch that’s being guarded.”