Divine Fury (7 page)

 
“
Taai gwai la. Taai gwai la.
”
 
(“That’s too expensive.
 
That’s too expensive.”)

Lee stopped and had a butcher quickly chop a duck into bite-sized pieces.
 
He continued on, letting the duck – sitting in a Styrofoam box held by a plastic bag with handles – swing by his side.
 
He turned down a side street and went into a three-story building that was an assisted-living home where his grandmother lived.
 

His grandmother was 84, small and thin.
 
At times, she was forgetful but could be vivacious if she wasn’t too tired.
 
She was an early riser and would be up, probably watching television.
 
This was her latest passion.
 
She seemed particularly devoted to reruns of Designing Women and Law and Order.

"
Ni hau ma, lai lai
," said Lee.
 
His grandmother averted her gaze from the television to her grandson.
 
She broke into a wide smile.

“Enzo,” she said, holding her arms toward him for a hug and leaning forward in her recliner.
 
He set the duck down on a table and complied.
 

He sat down and she looked at him happily through her thick glasses.
 

“You’re looking great,” Lee said.
 
He meant it.
 
There was something different about her.

His grandmother nodded toward a covered dish sitting on her dresser that had a brown powder in it.

“Master Chu give me Chinese herbs,” she said.
 
“Make me feel better.
 
Help me digest the food better.”

Lee had introduced his tai chi coach, Master Chu, to his grandmother.
 
They were close in age and Chu had become very protective of her.
 
He often chided Lee for failing to visit her sufficiently, although Lee dropped by every two or three days.
 
  

 
Lee removed the lid from the dish, picked it up and smelled the greenish brown powder.
 
It had an earthy, mossy odor.
 
He took a small pinch, dropped it in the palm of his other hand, and licked it.
 
The grittiness of it instantly filled his mouth.
 
He felt as if he had just tasted dirt.

“Yuck,” he said.
 
“That’s horrible!”
 
He moved his tongue around trying to get the gritty feeling out of his mouth.

His grandmother chuckled.

“Take with water,” she said.
 
“Not dry.”
 
She tittered again, covering her mouth.

Then, she pulled herself to her feet, walked to her dresser and rummaged around in one of the top drawers.
 
When she found what she was searching for, she closed the drawer and sat down again.
 
She handed a small photograph to Enzo.
 
It was old.
 
A pretty young Asian woman smiling into the camera while her portrait was taken.
 
It was his mother.
 
Lee guessed she was 19 or 20 when it was taken.
 
It was hard to tell.
 
But he knew his mother had had little contact with her parents after she turned 21.
 
That was when her romance and eventual marriage to his Scottish-Italian father had created a rift that never healed.

“It was lost,” his grandmother said by way of explanation for the photograph.
 
“I found it yesterday in another book of photos. Your mother.
 
So pretty.”

His grandmother had reached out to him over a separation created by mutual stubbornness after his mother and his grandfather had both died.
 
Lee’s own father had died in a car accident when he was a child.
 
His grandmother had shown Lee scrapbooks she’d hidden from her husband that were filled with photos and mementos from his mother’s early days.
 
She had even collected articles that Lee had written during his reporting career.

Lee hadn’t realized how deserted he felt without his mother.
 
He had a few cousins scattered around, but none who felt like close family.
 
Gaining a grandmother and having a family of two was vastly superior than his lonely family of one.
 
He relished having his grandmother only blocks away.
   

Then, Lee saw that his grandmother had another photo that she’d placed along the arm of the chair where he couldn’t see it.
 
She held it to him.
 
It was of another pretty Asian woman, maybe in her late 20s.
 
This photo looked recent.
  

“Chu’s friend,” she said by way of explanation.
 
“Friend’s daughter.
 
Very nice.
 
Very pretty.
 
Maybe you meet?
 
Like her?”

Lee had to grin.
 
The idea of his grandmother and Master Chu playing matchmaker and rescuing him from his bachelorhood struck him as hilarious.
 
He could picture the two of them conspiring together.
 
They must have seen many arranged marriages in their day.

His grandmother was not amused, however.

“You getting too old,” she said, tartly.
 
“You need a family.
 
Not girlfriend, girlfriend.”

Now he thought he understood the motivation a little more clearly.
 
After Sarah’s death, his grandmother had first worried about his sadness and depression.
 
As that lifted over time, she’d recently met a couple of women whom Lee dated for short times.
 
Perhaps that moved his status from simply unmarried to confirmed playboy with his 40s in sight.
    
 

 
“C’mon,” he said.
 
“I’m not even 40 yet.
 
I’ve still got time.
 
You know men can have children when they’re older.”

His grandmother’s lips pressed together in a thin, unyielding line.
 
She took the photograph from him, turned it over, and handed it back.
 
It had a name and telephone number on it.
 
She didn’t say anything more.
 
She just stared at him through the thick glasses… blinking…waiting.

“Okay,” he said finally, rolling his eyes.
 
“Look.
 
I’ll think about it, okay?”
    

She gave him a small smile, a tiny nod, and said, “Thank you, Enzo.”

Lee knew he wasn’t likely to call the girl.
 
An arranged relationship?
 
What were the chances?
 
He was just happy he had mollified his grandmother.

And then Lee realized why his grandmother looked different today.
 
Her hair was darker.

“Umm…by the way, your hair looks a little different today,” he said.
 
“Are you coloring it?”
 
   

She blushed like a school girl.

“It…it not your business,” she said.
 
 
    

Chapter 8

“YOU GODDAMN MORON,” growled the Terminator over the latest of the never-ending succession of prepaid cell phones he was using.
 
“I should let them roast your ass.”

 
When the computer whiz he’d sent to breach the USF Medical Center’s computer system had called him in a panic nine days earlier to report that his partner had killed a witness, The Terminator had been speechless for once in his life.

 
He was certainly no choir boy himself.
 
He had personally engaged in blackmail and extortions many times, not to mention threats of bodily harm.
 
It was how he got politicians’ friends to give him compromising information and how he got the politicians themselves to drop whatever election, legislation or appointment he was paid to torpedo.
 

 
But not murder.
 
And, particularly of someone who was almost a passerby.
 
That made it a lot worse under his own code of ethics.
 
It wasn’t like someone up to his neck in the dirty side of politics who had, after all, chosen to swim with the sharks.

But it was done.
 
He couldn’t change it.
 
All he could do was try to limit the damage.

The Terminator had sent the computer whiz, Oscar Wilkins, to the Bahamas and intended to keep him there for at least three months or until this had blown over.
 
He had considered all the options, even having both his occasional employee and the guy he had let him hire as backup – the trigger-happy goon – killed and dropped into San Francisco Bay.
 
But that wasn’t his style.
 
He wasn’t the fucking Mafia after all.
 

After making sure the gun had been tossed into the Pacific,
 
he’d flown the backup to his home in Chicago.
 
He was lucky the guy lived there and not in California where he would have been more likely to get caught up in whatever effort the local police put into the murder investigation.
 
From what the computer whiz told him, the pair had been careful to remove any incriminating evidence that could tie them to the crime.
 
He just hoped they had done a good job.

Otherwise, the Terminator just checked his own backup plan.
 
He was like a climber testing all his ropes and equipment to ensure everything was working and in place if he needed it.
 
 
He had two passports in different names, several offshore bank accounts where 90 percent of his wealth was stored and condos in both Belize and Thailand owned by subsidiaries of subsidiaries of his main company, La Vista Security.
 
And, he kept his records and computer files in a way that he could destroy them all within minutes, confident that no amount of forensic reconstruction would recover anything meaningful.

If anything happened, the Terminator was confident that he could disappear for a year or two and then return with a new identity and stay comfortably below the radar.

But he had no patience for Wilkins complaining that he missed his wife and wanted to leave the Bahamas and return to California.

“No!” he shouted into the phone.
 
“Stay right where you are!
 
Go catch a fucking marlin!”
          

* * *

Brent Daggart stood in front of the window in his corner office at Soldiers of Christ Ministry that overlooked the Pacific Ocean and watched the passenger jets strung out over the ocean in intervals as they prepared for their landings at the Los Angeles International Airport.
 
Below him, he could see the people walking the beach, hands in pockets studying the sand in front of them and occasionally gazing out to sea.
 
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d walked idly on the beach.

In the reflection of the window, Daggart could barely see his face and the small lump just below the bridge of his nose, the relic of an old injury.
 
He rubbed his finger up over it and then back down.