Obedience Page 12

  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.”

  12

  THE 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.”

  He smiled gently. “What about answers?”

  She stiffened. “What do you mean?”

  “What exactly are you doing here, Miss Nguyen?”

  “I am visiting. My father was an old friend of Mr. Le’s. My father could not come. He sent me to represent him. It is merely a courtesy visit.” She edged Dave a little patronizing smile. “These things are not so well understood in the Western world.”

  “Your father will be shocked to learn Mr. Le has died.”

  “He knows. I telephoned him when it happened.”

  “It touched you deeply, didn’t it?” Dave said. “You were more upset than anyone in the family at the funeral. I don’t understand that. The Les have been in this country since 1975. The Nguyens have been in Paris, isn’t that right? You were only a child thirteen years old. Why did you feel so close to Mr. Le?”

  Thao shook her lovely head. “Come into the house,” she said. She had seen something beyond Dave’s shoulder. He turned, just in time for a glimpse of the tiny, wrinkled, aristocratic old woman he’d seen coming down the church steps after Le’s funeral. Her expression now seemed full of hate. Then the glass-paneled doorway in which she’d stood was empty. Thao plucked his sleeve urgently. “Please. Come into the house.” She pushed a red door wide and he followed her into coolness, stillness, a smell of incense.

  She closed the door, and broke the stillness by clapping her hands. In a moment, a young woman who might have waited tables at Madame Le’s stood at the end of a white hallway, daylight from a window at her back. “Tea,” Thao said to her. The young woman gave a quick nod and disappeared. “This way,” Thao said to Dave, and led him into a long living room with windows facing the sea, filled with clear morning light. The carpets were Chinese—camel’s hair with blue and rose traditional designs. The furniture was Western and comfortable, covered in handsome fabrics, cool colors. Bric-a-brac stood on low polished teak tables, bud vases, porcelain figurines, graceful some of them, some subtly comic.

  And everywhere, on every surface, family photographs in silver frames, in Plexiglas boxes. Some were from the old days in Vietnam. Most were from the times since, the times in California. At the beach, at Disneyland, on snowy ski slopes in the mountains. The children were young, the children were grown, the children had children of their own—babies, toddlers, in grammar school plays, in Little League uniforms. But never a picture of Nguyen Hoa Thao.

  “This is your first visit here,” Dave said.

  “That is true,” she said, and sat demurely on a couch opposite the chair he had taken, hands folded in her lap. “My father kept hoping to be able to come himself. At last the stubbornness of your government and his own failing health persuaded him this would never happen. I am his only living child. By now, I was a grown woman. So he sent me.”

  “With messages for Mr. Le? Letters? Instructions?”

  “Instructions?” She blurted the word before she could stop herself. Color rushed into her face. She shook her head. “Not instructions. My father did not give a man like Mr. Le instructions.”

  “I understand Mr. Le was in your father’s debt.”

  She shook her head again. “No. He long ago repaid the money my father lent him in nineteen seventy-five.”

  “All debts aren’t paid in cash,” Dave said.

  “I—I—” She grew angry, or pretended to. “What do you mean by these questions? You say you came here to see me. I do not understand that. The man who murdered Mr. Le is in prison. Some clochard, some, how you say, ragamuffin, who lived at that marina Mr. Le owned. I know nothing of this man.”

  “I believe that,” Dave said, and smiled. The miniature servant came in with a tray, which she set on the table. Thao nodded, and the girl went away. Thao picked up the handsome flower-painted pot to pour the tea. Dave said, “What I have trouble believing is that your only errand in coming here was to convey your father’s friendship and respect for Mr. Le. I think he had business with Mr. Le, and he sent you to conduct that business.”

  She set down the teapot and handed Dave a cup of tea, steam curling on its clear amber surface. She took up her own cup. Her hand was not trembling. She sketched him a smile. “And what sort of business would that have been?”

  “Business that Mr. Le’s enemies didn’t want transacted. Business that got Mr. Le murdered.”

  “Enemies? Mr. Le was upright and honest in all his dealings. He was a great benefactor of the Vietnamese community here. He was beloved. You were at the funeral. That is where I saw you. You saw how many came. The church was full. What enemies would such a man have?”

  Dave shrugged. “Enemies that would first kill four men like himself, responsible, wealthy Vietnamese businessmen meeting late at night in a restaurant. And then would kill Mr. Le’s favorite son, Ba. And then would kill Mr. Le himself. And last night would try to have me killed.”

  Her eyes showed concern for him, but her face was a mask. And her hands were still steady.

  “Why did you come here, Miss Nguyen? If you tell me, maybe, just maybe, we can stop any more deaths. The death of Le Tran Hai, of Madame Le, maybe even of Le Rieng Quynh and her husband, Matt Fergusson.”

  At that name she gave a start, her teacup rattled in its saucer, color left her face. But all she said was, “My visit here is wholly innocent. You are imagining things. What sort of enemies are these that so trouble your mind?”

  Dave tasted the tea. It was spicy and flowery. “Drug smugglers,” he said. “Did you ever meet Rafe Carpenter?”

  She nodded. “He was a valued assistant to Hai at the warehouse. He was shot and killed last night. Hai was terribly upset. He regarded Mr. Carpenter as a friend. He means to help Mr. Carpenter’s widow and his little son.”

  “Then he doesn’t believe Carpenter was using the Le import business as a cover to smuggle in drugs fro
m Asia?”

  Her eyes widened for a moment. “Was he?”

  “I think so.” He told her what he’d seen on the dock the day of Le Van Minh’s funeral. He told her about Carpenter’s bank statements and what they suggested. “And Lieutenant Flores of the Harbor Police agrees with me.”

  “Hai said nothing of this. Not in my presence.” Dave drank some more of the splendid tea. Outside somewhere small children laughed. A ball bounced. “How did you happen to meet Carpenter?”

  “He came once to dinner with his family. And occasionally he stopped by during the day with Ba, to settle questions of business with the elder Mr. Le.”

  “So he knew the layout of this house, did he?”

  She looked puzzled—“Qu’est-ce que c’est ‘layout’?”

  Dave gestured. “The arrangement of the rooms.”

  She made a move. “I do not know. I suppose so.”

  “Do they all open off the center compound? Every apartment with its separate entrance?”

  She nodded. “Almost all, yes.”

  “He and Ba were friendly, were they?”

  “Of course, why not?” She smiled wanly. “Everyone loved Ba. Such a dear, gentle boy. A poet.” Now her face clouded. “You said a moment ago he was—murdered?”

  “It seems probable to me.”

  “But, but he died of what they call Sudden Death Syndrome. It is a disease that kills young Southeast Asian men. The doctor showed us magazine articles. Their breathing stops in their sleep, their hearts stop beating. No one understands why. Ba had been to the doctor because of some small discomfort in his chest one day at work. But it was nothing. Then this. It was terrible.” Tears trickled. She blotted them with her napkin. And suddenly she was angry again. “But what you say is far more terrible.”

  “It may not be true,” Dave said. “But with all the other killings, it’s important to know.” He set down his cup and saucer and stood. “I’d like to see his room, if you’ll show me, please.”

  She eyed him doubtfully. “For what reason?”

  He smiled. “Sometimes rooms and the things in them can tell a lot about the one who lived there. More than any of us suspect.” He moved off. “Is it the way he left it?”

  She rose. “Nothing has changed,” she said. “It was the wish of his father. He went there often, and sat for hours after Ba died. Alone.”

  She led Dave into the courtyard. The small children he’d seen at Le Van Minh’s funeral—Oriental faces and spun-gold hair that shone in the clear morning sunlight, passed a big candy-striped beach ball between them and their pretty little mother. The ball dropped often, at which they all laughed. Now the mother—what was her name, Quynh—saw Dave and let the ball drop. It rolled into the lily pond and floated, spinning. She spoke a terse phrase to Thao, and then confronted Dave, looking up at him, solemn, urgent.

  “Mr. Brandstetter? Yes. Matt described you to me. He said you believe he killed my father. Well, I wish to say to you that you are mistaken. I was with him at Madame Le’s restaurant that night. He never left until we both left together to come home here. We did not go to the Old Fleet Marina. He did not kill my father.”

  “He told me he was alone,” Dave said.

  She shook her head firmly. “Only to protect me.”

  Dave looked at Thao. “She wasn’t here?”

  Thao looked at Quynh. Her face was blank. Her voice when it came was toneless. “It is as she says. Come.”

  She crossed the courtyard and slid open a glass panel at the front, beside the moon gate. She stepped inside, and drew the curtain back. Dave cast a glance over his shoulder. Quynh and the children had vanished. He stepped after Thao into a neat and dustless room. On the walls hung framed color photographs cut from nature magazines—odd creatures, a black and white lemur, a big-eyed tarsier, a golden frog. The bed was carefully made up, a narrow bed, with a plain beige coverlet. Books were stacked on the floor beside it. On a coffee table were a television set, a VCR, and more books. Wall shelves held a stereo, turntable, tape deck, records, video and audio tapes, books again. On a small desk under a window that framed a landscape of bamboo rested a typewriter. Beside it were strewn pages typed and scrawled over with pencil. A dictionary lay open. He picked this up. Under it was a manila folder. This he opened and found verses neatly typed—no pencil marks.

  “He was making a book of his poems,” Dave said.

  “At the university, they encouraged him to do this,” Thao said. “Ba was thirty-two, and long out of college, but his instructors there continued to be interested in his talent. They believed Ba had an important voice.”

  Dave laid the folder down. A page was still in the typewriter. Dave turned the platen. Words came into view. He dug reading glasses from his jacket pocket, put them on, bent to peer at the words. Summer seems endless/The small boy as small boy/Has of course a ball/Perhaps also a bat/An immense leather glove/Burnt with the name of a great hero/Or perhaps the small boy/Rushes into the kitchen/Snatches cookies from a plate on the table/Drinks milk and gets milk on his chin/And laughs and chatters/But the summer is not endless/A shadow approaches/The long shadow of his father/He smiles/How can he know how cold he will grow/In this shadow/How it will keep the sun from him forever/How sad it is, this shadow/To be evil/How helpless to be anything but evil … This was as far as Le Doan Ba had gotten with his poem before he lay down and died.

  Dave rolled the paper out of the typewriter, folded the paper and put it into a pocket. He looked at Thao. “I’ll return this later.” He took off the glasses, put them away, and said, “Do you remember? Was Rafe Carpenter here, by any chance, the night Ba died?”

  Frown lines appeared between her lovely brows. “Only the family,” she said. “Mr. Le, Madame Le, Le Hai, Le Ba, Quynh and Matt Fergusson, the children, and the servants. We were all asleep when Ba died.” She looked at the bed. “If only we had heard. The doctor said he had struggled for breath. Perhaps he cried out. But no one heard.”

  “And if Rafe Carpenter had come into the compound and stepped into Ba’s room, no one would have heard that either, isn’t that right?”

  “The gate is always locked at night,” she said. “No one could come in.”

  “Maybe Ba came out and let Carpenter in,” Dave said.

  “How can we know that?” She sat on the bed, smoothing the already bleakly smooth coverlet. “Ba is dead. Carpenter is dead.”

  “Someone knows,” Dave said. “Maybe Don Pham.”

  She blinked. “Who?”

  “A man who calls himself Don Pham. He seems to know the Le’s. Was he ever at this house, that you know of?”

  “No.” She gave her head a firm shake. “I heard him spoken of. By Mr. Le. By Le Tran Hai. Not pleasantly. A gangster, a racketeer. The sort who give the Vietnamese in the United States a bad name. His kind was hated by this household.” She eyed Dave curiously. “What a strange thing to suppose. That Don Pham would come here.”

  “It’s my job to suppose strange things,” Dave said. “Sometimes the strange things are the only ones that count.” He smiled. “Like your presence here. I find that strange.”

  “I will be leaving soon.” She gazed past him, out the window at the bamboo. She looked wistful.

  “Do you miss Paris?” Dave said.

  “Very much.” Her smile was wan.

  “Someone special? A young man?”

  Color came and went in her face, she lowered her eyes. “A young man, yes.” She raised her eyes, and their look defied him. Why? Because he was an old man, like her father? Standing coldly between two warm-blooded youngsters? “We are deeply in love.” Chin up, she made it a declaration that challenged the world. “We care for nothing but each other. It has been hard to be apart for so long. But, of course, my father is my father, and must be obeyed in all things.” She gave a little bow, whether mocking or not, Dave couldn’t gauge. She sighed, and forced a smile. “How will you ever be able to find out if someone killed poor Ba?”

  “Exhume the b
ody and conduct an autopsy.”

  “I saw him. There were no signs of violence.”

  “There are ways of killing that don’t leave any outward traces. That’s why autopsies are necessary.”

  “No.” The voice cracked like a whip. Startled, Thao looked toward it. So did Dave. The tiny old woman had come in. Silently. How long had she been standing there? Taking small steps, propped by a cane, she came toward him now. Thao got up to help her. She shook the girl’s hand away and came on to face Dave. Fury was in her wrinkled face, arrogance in her eyes. Her voice was scratchy. She spoke Vietnamese. Sharply to Thao. Then to Dave. Thao translated. “She says there will be no autopsy. She forbade it before. She forbids it now. She forbids it forever.”

  “It’s the law of the state of California,” Dave said.

  The old woman shook her head fiercely and spoke again in Vietnamese. Thao translated. “Not if the one who died had seen a doctor within twenty days of his death, and the death was from illness. And with Ba that was the way it was.”

  “If nobody suspected murder,” Dave said, “why did that question come up?”

  Thao said, “The doctor is also Vietnamese, and he suggested an autopsy because of studies he had read. Medicine does not understand this illness. He thought one more example might help solve the—how you say?—riddle.”

  “I see.” He looked into the old woman’s eyes. “And even to help keep other young men like your grandson from dying this way, you wouldn’t agree?”

  The old woman gabbled in her broken voice. Thao said, “It is not a decision she controls. It is sacred law. To mutilate the body of the dead is a sacrilege.”

  “Tell her it has to be done,” Dave said. He nodded to both women and moved off. The old woman screeched after him. He didn’t break his stride. He heard her cane thump the polished floor as she followed him, scolding. In the open doorway, he turned to face her, saying to Thao, “Tell her if it isn’t done, if we don’t prove Ba was killed and find the one who killed him, Hai could be next. She’s already lost one grandson. Does she want to lose the only one left?”