Obedience (14 page)

Dave said, “For me.” Kicking aside shiny metal plates, knobs, switches, he walked to the foot of the crane where great bolts anchored it to a foot-thick concrete base. A man lay there, very still, one leg bent under him in a way only possible for the dead. “Not in time for him.”

Cecil came up beside him. “Is it Carpenter?”

Dave nodded. “I was wondering where he was.”

Cecil knelt beside the body; “He didn’t just fall,” he said. “He was shot. Time after time.”

“You’re not the only one looking out for me,” Dave said.

Cecil squinted up at him. “Don Pham?”

“His Ninjas.” Dave nodded at Carpenter’s corpse. “Get his keys for me.” Cecil found them, stood, handed them to him. “Thank you,” Dave said, “and for saving my life. Again.” He put the keys into a pocket, gave Cecil a kiss, a one-armed hug. Water from Cecil’s sleeve oozed between his fingers, cold as the grave. He shuddered inside himself, and pulled the hand away. “Let’s find a phone,” he said.

Stripped of their wet clothes, and wrapped in police-issue blankets, a blue one, a khaki-colored one, they sat in the back of a Harbor Police car. Not handcuffed, but not exactly free, either. The rear door of the car was open. Lieutenant Raoul Flores, a thick man of forty, stood outside, hands on the car’s roof, leaning in at them. His skin was the smooth brown of a fine Aztec pot. His eyes were small and black and without humor. His white strong teeth would have served a smile well. But Flores didn’t smile. Not tonight. He said grimly, “This should not be news to me, Mr. Brandstetter. I should have been told about all of this.”

Tracy Davis stood beside him. “That was my fault, Lieutenant. I was going to tell you tomorrow.”

“It was your fault, and it was Mr. Brandstetter’s fault, and it is not something I can lightly dismiss. An apology is not enough.”

A gurney passed, small wheels bumping over the wharf’s rough planks, mincing the glass fragments. White-clad ambulance attendants pushed the gurney towards a van with open rear doors, lights on the roof turning round and round, red, amber, white. It stood among four more police cars on the wharf, doors also open, radio speakers crackling now and then with the staticky code words of a female police dispatcher. Uniformed men, men out of uniform, prowled the pier with flashlights. Two clambered around high up on the crane. In the bright open doorway of the warehouse, a bald plainclothes man talked to Le Tran Hai and made jottings in a notebook. Hai looked grumpy. He was without a necktie. His hair was tousled from sleep. Flores lit a Mexican cigarette. The sharp sweetness of its smoke brought back memories to Dave of boyhood trips to Baja with his father fifty years ago. Flores pointed at the gurney.

“That man would be alive now, if you had come to me with your information when you were supposed to.”

“It wasn’t hard evidence,” Dave said.

“He tried to kill you.” Flores’s tone was rich with sarcasm. “And somebody killed him. I find it difficult to believe these things happened because he was a saint.”

“What we had didn’t prove any wrongdoing,” Dave said.

“You saw him meet and pay off a drug smuggler down here the day of Mr. Le’s funeral,” Flores said.

“You’re upset, and I don’t blame you, but you mustn’t let it interfere with your thinking,” Dave said. “I saw him meet a man off a power launch and give the man two attaché cases. I don’t know who the man was. I don’t know what was in the cases.”

“You got his bank records,” Flores said. “He was banking money he never earned, spending money he never earned.”

“But Le Tran Hai says it couldn’t have been from smuggling. All their shipments are inspected. Customs haven’t turned up any drugs.”

“Then Carpenter was ripping off inventory,” Flores said. “It’s the commonest sort of crime on the docks, you know that. So common they don’t even bother to report it when and if they discover it. And smart thieves, working inside a place, the way Carpenter did for the Le’s—they make changes in the bills of lading. It can go on for years.”

Dave shrugged. The blanket slipped from his shoulders. He felt cold and pulled it back up. “Did Le Tran Hai call you after I showed him those bank records of Carpenter’s?”

Flores snorted in disgust. “You know the damn Vietnamese. Would they admit it if a crime was committed by an employee? Hell no. He won’t admit tonight what happened here was anything but an accident. It’s some crazy chink code of honor. Was it Don Pham”—Flores liked changing subjects abruptly—“Carpenter met here that day?”

“Maybe,” Dave said, “maybe not. He was too far away.”

“But you think I’m wrong, holding Andy Flanagan for the murder of Le Van Minh. You think Don Pham was behind it?”

“I think he was behind the killing of Phat, Tang, and the other Vietnamese businessmen at the Hoang Pho. I have a witness who saw the same little gangster types there as came to my house with Pham the other night, and tonight so obligingly shot Rafe Carpenter.”

“What witness? Why haven’t I talked to him?”

“You have. He doesn’t trust the police.”

“But he trusted you? I want to talk to him.”

“He’s in New York, and he doesn’t plan to come back.”

Flores’s eyes narrowed. “Who do you mean—that black faggot dishwasher? He claimed he hid in a trash module in the alley, and saw nothing.”

Cecil drew an angry breath, and Dave said quickly, “Lieutenant, let’s stick to the subject. I figured Le’s murder was a leftover from the Hoang Pho killings, so Don Pham was responsible for it too. But he denies that, and I believe him.”

“Why—is he a friend of yours?” Flores said. “He told you he deals drugs, isn’t that what you said?”

“No—the weapon was wrong. Yes, he told me he deals drugs, but that may just have been bragging. If he dealt drugs, you’d know it, and you’d have him in jail for it by now, isn’t that right?”

“I know he deals drugs,” Flores said drily. “Getting him into jail for it is something else. If he isn’t your friend, why are his boys bodyguarding you?”

Dave grunted. “I’m not sure they were his boys. I didn’t get a good look. But if they were, the honest to God truth is, Lieutenant, I don’t know why.”

“Come on, Brandstetter. When Tracy here hired you, I went to the library and read up on you in magazines. And nobody ever wrote anyplace that you were stupid.”

“They also never wrote I was a mind-reader,” Dave said. “Don Pham wants something from me. I’d bet on that. But I don’t know what it is.”

“No idea?” Flores said. “No idea at all?”

“Possibly it connects to the Le family. Pham knew I’d never let him hire me to investigate them, so he pointed me that way, and set his boys to follow me.”

“And when you turn up what he wants, they will hustle you into a car and take you to Don Pham so you can tell him, and after that, they will no longer be your bodyguards, will they?” Flores said. “They will be your executioners. They enjoy that. They do it well. Again and again.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Tracy Davis cried.

Flores pulled his head out of the car and looked at her in exaggerated surprise. “Ah, counselor—you are a woman, after all.” He gave a short, sharp laugh, took a last drag on the Mexican cigarette, and flicked it away in a long arc. He watched its little red spark wink out in the dark water. He said to Tracy Davis, “You may well worry. You brought him into this. His death will be on your head.”

“Don’t listen to him, Tracy,” Dave said. And to Flores, “What point would there be in killing me?”

“You are joking,” Flores said. “Don Pham will act on the information you gather for him. And if you are still living when he does this, you will know who was behind it. And as a man of honor, you will tell the authorities, and Don Pham will go to prison. Simple, no?” Flores leaned into the car again, and said to Cecil, “Mister Television Reporter, why don’t you save the life of your friend one more time tonight? Drive him home and make him stay there.” His terra cotta face was close to Dave’s, his warm breath cloying from the tobacco. “Go home,
viejo.
Let us young dudes have a chance, okay?” Now he did smile, but it hadn’t been worth waiting for. It looked like a snarl. “Trust us. We can do the job. It is what the citizens pay us for.”

“They also pay you”—Dave sneezed—“to shut down illegal gambling establishments.” He sneezed again. And a third time. “To get prostitutes off the streets, and”—he sneezed and shivered and wiped his nose on a corner of the blanket because there was nothing else for the purpose—“and to lock up drug pushers.” He blinked watery eyes at Flores and smiled. “I think you need all the help you can get.”

Flores sighed grimly, slammed the door shut, walked around, got into the car behind the steering wheel, and slammed that door. He started the engine. It sounded as if it didn’t have many miles left in it. “I will take you to your car. Where did you say you parked it?”

Cecil knocked nails into the bookshelves that flanked the fireplace, strung a cord between the nails, and hung their wet clothes on the cord to dry. He was naked and, moving lean and lithe in the flickering orange light of the fire in the grate, looked like the First Man, home from the hunt. Dave, just out of a hot shower, stood drying his hair in the bathroom doorway, and watched him. He ached, his nose ran, he was getting a sore throat, but what he saw made him smile. He got into blue warm-up pants, pulled up the hood of a blue warm-up top, and tied the strings. He went toward the bar that lurked in shadow at the far end of the long room.

“Hold it,” Cecil said. “Wait for the pot to boil.”

“What are you talking about?” Dave turned and grinned at him. “By the way, Emperor, I love your new clothes.”

“Thank you,” Cecil said. He moved out of the firelight, headed for the door. “If you want to lose that cold, I have the answer.” He pulled the door open, and went out into the dark courtyard, the lights of the cook shack yellow on its far side. “Drink nothing,” he called back, “till you hear from me.” Laughing, shaking his head, Dave sat on the couch. Cecil could go naked if he wanted to. No one was likely to see and be shocked at two-thirty in the morning. And up here in the canyon, miles from the sea, the night was not cold. He was cold. And bruised, from that roll across the dock. His ribs hurt where Cecil had hit him in that flying tackle. He touched the place and winced. But cracked ribs had their point, particularly when he considered the alternative. He sat and watched flames licking a shag-barked eucalyptus log. Sea water dripped from the hanging clothes onto the raised brick hearth. Monotonously. He fell asleep. Cecil said, “Now then—ready for Dr. Harris’s magical mystery cure?”

“Huh?” Dave jerked awake. Cecil stood over him, holding a big tray of Mexican hammered tin. He set this on an end table under a lamp and switched on the lamp. A thick water tumbler was on the tray, what looked like two jiggers of whisky in it. A tea strainer. A long-handled spoon. A jar of honey. A lemon cut in. half. And the yellow enamel Japanese kettle from the cookstove, steam wisping from its spout. Dave blinked. “What’s all this?”

“Show and tell time.” Cecil knelt, rubbing his hands together eagerly. “Watch carefully, and in years to come, when Mother is no longer here to nurse you through your little sicknesses, you can do this for yourself.”

Dave laughed. “Mother is an idiot,” he said.

Cecil grinned. “But she loves you, don’t forget that.” He held the tea strainer over the tumbler and squeezed the juice from the two halves of lemon through it into the whisky. He used the spoon to stir the mixture. Next he unscrewed the lid of the honey jar, plunged the spoon into the honey, cranked the spoon around and brought it out, clotted with honey, and put the spoon into the glass and let the honey slide off it into the whisky and lemon. Now he picked up the kettle by its wooden handle and slowly poured hot water into the tumbler, stirring with the spoon slowly, steadily. Dave’s nose wasn’t working well, but the smell of the concoction was strong. Heady. He leaned over the steaming tumbler and inhaled.

“It can’t be medicine,” he said, “it smells too good.”

Cecil laughed. “Wait till you taste it.” He let the spoon rattle onto the tray, stood up, made for the bathroom. “Don’t drink it yet.” He was back in seconds. “Hold out your hand.” Dave obeyed. Cecil put aspirins into his palm. “Take those with it, climb in bed, and in the morning, you won’t even remember you had a cold.”

“Where would I be without you?” Dave said, and added hastily, “Don’t answer that.”

T
HE LE HOUSE
stood on a flat quarter acre carved out of a hillside with a view of the sea in the distance. The walls were white. Stands of bamboo sheltered roofs of red tiles. The roofs turned up at the corners from a walled forecourt of raked white gravel and flowering shrubs, broad shallow stairs led up to a moon gate of red lacquered lattice work into a spacious courtyard. The house itself was built around this. Terra cotta squares paved it. Banana trees and tropical plants grew leathery-leaved in corners. Golden carp swam beneath lily pads in a large pond in the center of the courtyard. Except for the rustling of the bamboo in the wind, all was silence here. It was meant to be a place away from the world, wasn’t it, peaceful, well-ordered? But if there were any such places, he knew this wasn’t one of them.

The young woman who had wept and anguished at Le Van Minh’s funeral came from the house. Nguyen Hoa Thao. In a simple dress of undyed pongee, high- collared, fastened with small cloth buttons and loops at the throat, a dress that showed how perfectly she was made, she stood looking at him without expression. Had she noticed him at the cemetery, watching her? He couldn’t be sure. She said in a low voice, “What is it? Why have you come here?”

“I’ve come to see you,” he said. “Miss Nguyen, is it?”

She narrowed her eyes, tilted her head. “Yes? That is correct.” She spoke with a French accent. She acted puzzled. “But why should you wish to see me? I do not know you, do I?”

He told her who he was, walked around the pond, showed her his license. “It’s about the murder of Mr. Le Van Minh.”

Nerves twitched in her porcelain face. “Ah, no. That is past now. The police. The newspapers and television. Surely there are no more questions to be asked.”