Little Mountain (10 page)

         Sam took Fitchie’s list and picked up the telephone, starting with the name that Fitchie had called earlier.

        
“Yes, hello?”
The voice belonged to an Asian woman, her voice pitched high.

         “Yes,” Sam said in Khmer. “My friend tells me to meet him in front of Paradise. He’s on his way and I forget how to get there. Where are you, please?”

         The woman gave an address, sounding pleased that she didn’t have to struggle with English. Of course, Sam already had the address, and had no immediate plans to go there. “What kind of place do you have? Do you sell videos?”

         “No, this is a restaurant. We open at eleven. Maybe you and your friend like to eat lunch here.”

        
“Maybe so.
But my friend Mister Chea must have his soup. Do you serve
kao poun?
”

         “No, we don’t. You come, though, and we show you our menu.” The woman didn’t seem to react at all to Chea’s name. Sam had hoped for something dramatic: a gasp of terror would have been perfect. That wasn’t likely, given the commonness of the Chea surname. But even a simple
Ah, that’s the name of our owner
would have done for now.

         Within thirty-five minutes, Sam had gone through Fitchie’s list of seventeen names. Most had raised-in-Rhode-Island accents, and Sam marked
x’s
next to each of their names until there was one name left; the phone rang thirty times before Sam hung up. He headed for the parking lot. At least the list of Khems was shorter, and the names were local.

At the first apartment, a tall woman opened the door a few inches and peered out at Sam and his badge. She unhooked the chain and opened the door, but she did not invite him in. She nursed a baby that she cradled in one arm. Alarm filled her eyes.

         “Khem is my husband,” she said in Khmer. “He’s at work. What is the problem?”

         “There is no problem. I just need to ask him some routine questions.” In the woman’s arms the baby’s eyes were closed, its black eyelashes fluttering from a dream. Her white blouse draped around her breast, creating a private world for mother and child.

         “What routine questions?”

         “What does he do for a living, ma’am?”

         “He’s a computer programmer. We have lived here for three years.”

         “What is your landlord’s name?”

         “Mister Peters.” She gave him the landlord’s address and phone number; he thanked her and left. Later he would double-check her information, but for now it seemed to lead nowhere.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Had they felt safe in America, free from the madness of the killing fields? Had they consoled each other over their loss, one by one, of children and parents and friends? Had they finally begun to feel peace until Bin Chea opened the door?
Until Mrs. Chea saw his blood on the walls?
The poor woman could be forgiven some confusion
¾
unless she’d planned to lie,
then
panicked.

         Sam headed back toward 11th Street, where the killing had occurred. What were the possibilities? Okay, Mrs. Chea might be lying. Why would she have an extra bowl of soup on the table? Was she expecting someone at any minute, or had someone just left? Could she have hired someone to slaughter her husband?
A woman like that, who looked so much like his own grandmother?
No, she’d been distraught last night, unless she was a very good actress.

         But what Cambodian could not act? Acting had once been a survival skill. Act uneducated. Act stupid. Act happy. That way you survived.

         Why would she want to kill her husband, anyway? There were as many possible motives as there were sins. Of course, greed wasn’t a bad vice to start looking at. It would be worth finding out who owed what to whom, and for how long. How much did the widow stand to gain?

         And who owned the tenement house that had burned? Well, that was a job for arson investigators. Sam had enough to do anyway. Soon Fitchie could tell him about the insurance and the phone calls to Long Beach. Or the answer might lie in a business venture gone wrong. Or it might lie in unfinished business from half a planet away. Who were Bin Chea’s business partners over the years?

         It was something else to check.

Gonzalez had told Sam about questioning Viseth, who had a sheet for hotwiring a Mazda and for breaking into the Asian Store. No one would testify against him, though. If Sam had his way, Viseth would be making license plates by now.
Might have to cover his butt with one.

         He parked at the base of the hill and walked up to Teeda Kim’s apartment, which
was
two houses up the street and on the first floor. Floorboards creaked inside the apartment, but no one answered Sam’s knock.

         No one answered at the Lacs’ door either. Maybe they were avoiding him. Sichan Lac’s bruises suggested a lot about Nawath, and about
whoever
else lived in that apartment. Nawath was either beating her or simply not protecting her. Either way, he was a shit.

         Sam knocked on Li Chang’s door. She would be at work by now, but maybe he could speak to her brother or sister-in-law.

         Someth Chang answered the knock. He stood barefoot, and wore trousers and a tee-shirt; behind him, the apartment smelled like cooking rice.

         “Can you tell me who else lives on the second floor with Nawath and Sichan Lac?” Sam asked.

         “Sorry, but I don’t spy on my neighbors. You will have to speak to them yourself. His mother and their son Ravy live there, I can tell you that.”

         “Do they get along with each other?”

         “That is none of my business.”

         “Do
you
get along with them, sir?”

         “What are you suggesting?” Someth’s look turned wary.

        
“Nothing.
They are good neighbors, then?”

         “I have no complaints. I just avoid them.” Someth looked as though he wanted to close the door.

         Sam raised his eyebrows expectantly. “Why?”

         “They just are not my type.”

         “How are they different?” Mouse Cop rubbed against Sam’s leg,
then
slid quietly into the apartment, following the smell of the chicken from the kitchen stove.

         “As I said, I don’t interfere in other people’s business.
But if any man treated my sister--” Someth left the words hanging in the hallway.
“Never mind.
It’s none of my business,” he said, and closed the door.

         Maybe Someth was more suspicious of the police than his sister was. Or maybe the neighbors were the problem.

         Sam waited for a few minutes on the second-floor landing, where a window faced out to the street. Soon an Asian man walked toward the house; he was about thirty years old and had thinning black hair. He looked over his shoulder as though he knew he was being watched, and flicked a cigarette into the gutter. He disappeared onto the porch. The front door slammed.

         Nawath seemed unpleasantly surprised to see Sam.

         “We have only four people in our apartment,” he said.
“Me, my son, my wife, and my mother.
Why do you want to know?”

         “I am investigating your landlord’s murder.”

         “Yes, that was a terrible shame. I have nothing to tell you.
I
certainly didn’t do it.”

         Sam stood in Nawath’s path. “No one is accusing you. I simply need to know more about Mister Chea, and about the people who knew him.”

         “Officer, I have two rules for myself: I keep my trousers zipped, and I keep my mouth zipped. I wish I could help you, but I can’t. Will you please let me in my apartment?”

         Sam stepped aside and let Nawath pass. He’d wanted to ask Nawath about his wife’s bruises, but decided on caution for now. Even if she were to file a complaint and Sam made an arrest, Nawath would most likely be out in time to beat her up before supper.

Later in the afternoon, thunderheads moved in: huge, towering clouds like mountains.
Low, gray, racing east.
Sam pictured a body floating in the water, and wished his mind wouldn’t play those tricks of jumping from clouds to mountains to Little Mountain to death. Anyway, the clouds should bring rain to cleanse the anger from the air and soothe people’s frazzled tempers.

         Nearby, a dump truck rumbled across the abandoned B & M railroad tracks, and its thud-thud-thud blended with the approaching thunder. What a welcome sound. Come on, rain!

         Big wet drops began to fall, first one, then two,
then
a dozen, landing like his daughter’s juicy kisses on his face.
Smack!
Smack!
They were cool and welcome. The hot, stale air began to dance. A plastic cup twirled in the air and fell like Trish at her first ballet recital. If he didn’t get into some shelter quickly, he’d be drowning in kisses. As he bounded up the front stairs of the four-decker next to Bin Chea’s, the skies opened up.

         Chea’s next-door neighbor introduced himself as Tuch. “They slashed his tires,” he told Sam. He sat on the living room couch in short pants and a tee shirt, and sipped from the Tsing Tao beer that Sam had declined. The tattoo on his upper arm showed a lotus and a dagger, with a slogan in Khmer that said ‘Love and Death.’ His eyes were a striking green.

         “They have no values, these kids,” he said. “They learn nothing from our old
country,
they learn nothing from our new one. Little shits, that’s all they are. I know one of them, because his father works with me, packing boxes eight hours a day.
Strange person, that one.
He’s from Battambang Province--the city itself, I think. Anyway, his youngest is one of the boys that Chea chased, probably born in Cambodia in the middle of the Khmer Rouge time. The boy wouldn’t remember much about Cambodia. He’s way too young, but he and his friends like to call themselves the Battboys. That insults the good name of Battambang.”

         Sam agreed. The western province of Battambang had been his home, too. “How many are there?”

         “I don’t know. Chea had waved a crowbar at a half dozen of them, but there might be more. They cut all four tires before they got away.”

         “Which way did they go?” Sam was sure that Chea had never filed a complaint with the police.

         Tuch pushed back a curtain with his beer bottle and pointed out the front window.
“Across the playground.
I watched outside this window. They disappeared over a fence and behind those houses, and I haven’t seen them since. Maybe they’ve disappeared for good.” Outside, the neighborhood had darkened under a dirty blanket of clouds that threw down sheets of rain. Lightning flickered across the rooftops.

         Tuch turned to Sam. “Did you ever sleep outside in a thunderstorm?”

         “I try to forget.”

         “Everybody tries to forget.
Everybody but me.
My brother knew he’d be taken away, but said he’d be calm. Nothing to do but accept his fate, he said. Two soldiers came for my brother one night. I could see their faces in the flash of lightning when they hit him. Maybe someday I will see one of them here in Lowell, and I will remember. Lightning will strike
them
.”

         Dark figures had struggled in the rain, ghosts against a purple sky. The light was like a flashbulb that froze the streaks of blood on his friend Boreth’s face. A minute later, lightning split the sky again and showed three figures headed toward the forest. By the third flash, the ghosts had dissolved from view.