Obedience Page 16

  He yanked open a desk drawer, scrabbled in it, brought out a knife. The blade flashed in the window light. Dave threw himself across the desk, gave a wide, painful swing of his left arm, struck Hai’s wrist, and the knife went flying. “No—I must die, I must die.” Hai dropped to the carpeted floor, groping for the knife, and Dave was down there shouldering him away, grabbing the knife, struggling to his feet. He said, “You can’t kill yourself. Who’ll look after the business, the family, your wife and children?”

  Hai sat on the floor, rumpled, sobbing. Dave stuck the knife into his waistband, bent and helped Hai to his feet. There seemed no strength left in the man. Dave got him into his chair. “I’ll get you some water.” A cooler waited in the outer office where the computer screens stood in rows mute and gray as gravestones. He took a paper cup of water back to Hai, who accepted it blankly, drank it, sat staring at nothing, cup in his hand. Dave’s heart labored. He was short of breath. “I’ll tell you one thing,” he said. “It may make you feel a little better. It wasn’t Rafe Carpenter who killed your father.”

  Hai’s head jerked up. “It wasn’t?”

  “He was playing cards that night, and the men with him all say he never left the game. Neighbors. I checked with all of them. An avocado grower, and two businessmen—hardware, mixed concrete—none of them connected to shipping, importing, anything like it. They only knew Carpenter slightly. No reason I could find for them to lie for him.”

  “Then who did kill my father?” Hai said.

  A DEA officer appeared in the doorway, a pink-skinned young man, going bald. Roche—was that his name? “We don’t need to keep you any longer today, Mr. Le. We’ll be sealing the warehouse, and we’ll advise you when we’ve finished our work here. I think you supplied us with all the data we’ll need. If not, we’ll be in touch. Everything will have to be thoroughly vetted. We’ll need to interview all your employees, so I’m afraid it’s going to take a few days.”

  “No problem.” Le Tran Hai spoke the words dully. He pushed up out of his chair. “I will, of course, cooperate in every way.” He tried to work up a smile and failed.

  “Thank you.” Roche came inside to shake Dave’s hand. “And Mr. Brandstetter—thank you, sir. You’re as good as your reputation.”

  Dave smiled. “What are you talking about?”

  “We worked with Warren Priest for years and never caught him. It only took you one day.”

  “He got careless,.” Dave said, “and I got lucky.”

  The loft smelled of sunlight and pine sap. Cecil sat up naked in the broad bed under the open skylight, knees clutched in his arms, and glowered, watching Dave shed his jacket, tie, and shirt. “You cut me out of the biggest story of the month.” Dave was desperate for sleep. He wasn’t up to hours like the ones he’d just kept, not anymore. He felt bruised in every part of his being. A hot shower would help, but he hadn’t the strength left for it. He sat on the bed’s edge and gave a groan. Cecil said, “You knew what you were going to find, and you didn’t tell me.”

  “I apologize,” Dave said, prying off shoes, peeling off socks. “I didn’t think.”

  “Don’t give me that. You never stop thinking.”

  “Okay. That limousine bothered me, all right? I had a hunch about it.” He unbuckled his belt, unlatched the waist band, ran down the zipper, and hiked his butt to get his trousers off. “I couldn’t shake the idea that I’d seen it before. And of course, I had. At Mr. Le’s funeral.” He folded the trousers indifferently, and tossed them at a chair. They slipped off the chair to the floor, and he didn’t care. “I wondered if I’d been wrong about Hai—that maybe he was after me. But whoever it was”—Dave tossed away his briefs, lay back on the bed with a sigh, and shut his eyes—“I didn’t want you hurt, okay? You’ve been hurt often enough, because of me.” He yawned.

  “Getting that story wouldn’t have hurt,” Cecil grumbled. “It would have helped. Who was in the limousine?”

  Dave told him, trying to keep from drifting to sleep.

  “You didn’t care if Steinkrohn got hurt?”

  “He handled it like an everyday occurrence.”

  “You’re lucky he was there waiting for you.”

  Dave turned on his side. “You didn’t miss the story. The story isn’t over yet.” He groped out for Cecil. “Come on. Curl your fine brown frame against my back.”

  “‘Fine Brown Frame’ is a Nelly Lutcher number,” Cecil said. “Lindy Willard never sang that one.” But he did as Dave asked. And Dave smiled contentment. Cecil said, “What do you mean, the story isn’t over? Rafe Carpenter’s father set up the deals at the Far East end, and Rafe took care of the shipments once they arrived. Isn’t that how it was? And the not so priestly Mr. Priest covered for them for a price. And Chien Cao Nhu was the buyer here. What more is there?”

  “Who killed Le Van Minh?” Dave said.

  “Why wasn’t it Andy Flanagan after all?” Cecil said. “With that little gun he tossed on Norma Potters boat?”

  “Because Don Pham doesn’t think so,” Dave murmured. “I haven’t found the killer for him, yet. When I do, he’ll pay us another visit.”

  “I can hardly wait,” Cecil said.

  Dave laughed and fell asleep.

  17

  SLEEKLY GROOMED, LE THI NGA was as commanding as she’d looked coming down the church steps behind the coffin at her husband’s funeral, a woman in control, not just of a chain of successful restaurants and the staffs who ran them for her, but of herself. She had heard Dave’s name and read his license, undismayed. Why? Surely Hai had told his mother of the calamity at the warehouse, and that Dave had triggered it. Yet she’d calmly ordered a bottle of white wine and a plate of fresh, spicy little shrimp appetizers, and sat with him in a quiet booth of Madame Le’s Pearl of Saigon restaurant, only an hour before the lunchtime rush, relaxed, attentive, wearing a polite and patient smile.

  She was as unlike her son-in-law, the nervous, harried Matt Fergusson, sweating and stammering through his interview with Dave here the other night as could be. And Dave remembered fat and frightened little Hoang Duc Nghi, in his shiny eatery down at the waterfront—with his speech about going to sleep in fear, waking up in fear, learning to live with it. Surely Le Thi Nga had gone through the same harrowing times, experienced the same losses, the same narrow escapes. Beyond those, she’d just had a husband shot to death, and had buried a grown son. Yet, sipping her wine, nibbling on the small edibles, she seemed almost serene. He wondered how she did it.

  “Was it the truth Quynh told me?”

  Listening to his story, his questions, she had looked unwaveringly into his eyes. Now she looked away. “My children were taught from the beginning always to be truthful.”

  “But we don’t remain children,” Dave said. “Life puts strains on what our parents taught us was right and wrong. Sometimes those strains are too great.”

  She picked up the dewy green bottle and refilled Dave’s glass. “You have lived long,” she said with a smile, “and you speak wisely.”

  “I think she loves her husband very much,” Dave said.

  A wry smile twitched Madame Le’s perfect mouth. “Very much,” she agreed. “Enough so that she dared to argue with her father, who did not want her to marry an American.”

  “He didn’t like Matt Fergusson?”

  “Liking,” she said, “was not the question. He felt it a breach of tradition. He wanted Quynh to marry someone from her own culture and background.” She gave Dave a quick grim glance and looked away again. “Children of mixed race have a terrible life in Vietnam.”

  “And here?” Dave said. “They look well and happy.”

  “My husband did not believe that would be so,” she said, “and he was stubborn, but Quynh’s love was stronger than his angry denials. In the end, she won his permission.”

  “And you?” Dave wondered. “How did you feel about it?”

  “I was the one who introduced Matt to the family,” she said. “I found him w
orking at a place called Al Fresco in West Los Angeles, and I saw at once that he was exceptional. My little enterprise”—the wry smile came again—“had grown from one tiny cafe to two and three and four, and I was desperate for someone to take on half of the duties, someone young, intelligent, energetic. Matt was all of these things, and he had no prejudices against Vietnamese people. He loved our ways, our culture, he understood with his heart.”

  “And he and Quynh fell in love. Would she lie for him?”

  Madame Le opened her eyes wide and laughed. “Ah, you are not to be deflected from your purpose, I see.”

  “Nguyen Hoa Thao was there that morning,” Dave said, “and Quynh looked at her. I thought there was some special meaning in that look. And she asked Thao if it wasn’t true that she, Quynh, had been here at this restaurant with Matt the night Le Van Minh was murdered. And after a pause, Thao said to me that it was true. It didn’t convince me.”

  She frowned. “And you wish me to say—?”

  “Wasn’t Quynh right there at your house when Andy Flanagan telephoned your husband to come to the docks that night?”

  Madame Le drank some of her wine. She picked up and set down again another of the little appetizers. She studied him, drew a breath, and asked, “If I were to tell you that, yes, she was at home, what would this mean to you?”

  Dave was lighting a cigarette. He looked at her across the flame. “What would it mean to you?”

  “That since you never believed Andy Flanagan killed my husband, and it now seems out of the question that Rafe Carpenter did so, you have decided Matt must have done it.”

  “Deciding is for judges and juries.” Dave drank wine and gently smiled. “But I do wonder where he was that night. Had something gone wrong between him and Mr. Le?”

  She blanched, jerked, knocked over her glass. Wine splashed her dress. She wiped at it with a napkin, Was she angry or afraid? Whichever, her composure was gone. “Of course not. What a thing to suggest.”

  “I didn’t suggest.” Dave said mildly. “I only asked a question. I think Quynh and Thao and Matt share a secret. Something between them they don’t want anyone to know. What would that be? Can you guess?”

  She stood. “Haven’t you harmed the Le family enough? Claiming that Ba was murdered. Digging up his poor little body. Ruining my husband’s business, of which he was so proud. Humiliating my wonderful son Hai.”

  “That was Rafe Carpenter’s doing,” Dave said.

  “Leave us alone, Mr. Brandstetter. Have we no right to our secrets? Who says you should know them?”

  “Murder,” Dave said. “Murder says so.”

  After learning from a waiter at Al Fresco what he had expected to learn, Dave hung up the gritty receiver of the shopping center pay phone and turned away gloomily. Noon sun blazed down on the vast spread of glassy storefronts, the rows and rows of parked cars. Angrily he wished it all gone, wished the brown hills open as they’d been fifty years ago when he was young. Wished the white-faced cattle back on the oak-shadowed hills, wished for the drowsy green of endless orange groves along narrow, dusty roads. Not mile after mile of tract houses beside eight-lane freeways.

  Moodily he flapped out of his jacket as he trudged to the Jaguar. When he opened its door, heat poured out. He tossed the jacket inside, switched on the engine so the air conditioner would blow out the oven air. Standing beside the car, waiting for this to happen, he was glum. The aim of his work had never changed, to get at the truth no matter who got hurt. That would maintain, if he kept at it into the next century. But he wouldn’t. He hadn’t the stomach for it anymore. Let somebody else do the wrecking after this—of lives, of hopes, of fortunes. The wrong-doers he didn’t give a damn for. It was the blameless ones.

  He got into the car where the air was cool now, slammed the door, drove out of the vast parking lot onto a wide white concrete boulevard streaming with traffic. Miles to the east, he found a quiet hilly enclave of new condominiums and town houses on winding streets, with handsome lawns and plantings. The place where Sam Dupree lived faced the photogenic rolling green acres, ponds, tree clumps of a golf course. Dave pushed a bell button, chimes sounded on the other side of a carved front door, and he tried to think of a replacement for the tired phrase “with a heavy heart.” Nothing came to him.

  The boyish man of fifty who opened the door wore a trendy unbleached muslin shirt and jeans and was barefoot, but he still managed to look dapper. He peered at Dave uncertainly. He looked past Dave, seeming to think somebody he knew might be with him. Or should be. Wariness was in his tone that rose on the one simple syllable. “Yes?”

  “Sam?” Dave smiled and held out a hand. “Dave Brandstetter. We met at Whit Miller’s in Malibu. His annual New Year’s bash. Remember? When was it? Nineteen eighty-one?”

  “Ah, yes, of course.” Dupree had a ready smile. A little too ready, a little too eager to please. You ran into this with young, scared homosexuals—or used to once upon a time. The way a dog wags its tail, they turned on the smile, the charm, desperate for acceptance, forgiveness, attention, love, table scraps, bones, anything, but just don’t kick me. What he saw in Dupree’s manner was a snatch of badly faded film. Dupree shook Dave’s hand. “How are you? You look splendid. What brings you out this way?”

  “A case I’m working on,” Dave said.

  “Oh? Sandy Fine told me you’d retired.” He said it accusingly, annoyed at having believed the wrong gossip. “What sort of case?”

  “The usual,” Dave said. “Murder.”

  “Just like TV.” Dupree clapped his hands. “Jessica Fletcher in drag.” Again he peered past Dave’s shoulder. “Are the cameras rolling?” He patted his hair—not a gray strand in it. “May I run back to makeup? Is there time?”

  Hadn’t he just come from there? No middle-aged man’s skin was naturally that smooth. Dave said, “May I come in?”

  “Am I a suspect?” Dupree shivered with delight.

  Dave said, “Matt Fergusson is a suspect.”

  Dupree stopped smiling and looked his age. “Oh, God,” he whispered. He backed into a hallway. “Yes, yes. Come in, come in.” Dave stepped past him, Dupree closed the door and walked away quickly. Dave followed him into a living room of white French furniture, scattered newspapers, a half-empty coffee cup. A wide window overlooked the golf course. Dupree set a tiny motor singing that closed the curtains. Before the light was gone, Dave saw and picked up from a coffee table a padded leather photo album. Dupree turned, stared blankly at Dave, said, “What are we doing in here? Come to the kitchen.” The kitchen was built around a center burner deck. Lots of cupboard space. Hanging pots. Hanging bunches of herbs and peppers. Cutting boards. Three ovens. Dupree stood in the midst of it, hands raised, unable to think what to do. At last he said, “Yes, of course. A drink.”

  Dave laid the photo album on a counter and turned its pages. They held photograph after photograph of Sam Dupree with young, blond, blue-eyed, good-looking Matt Fergusson—at the beach, in mountain snow, on cruise ships, in a gondola on a canal in Venice, on camels in Egypt, the long ends of striped turbans blowing. The photos were dated in ballpoint. The trips had ended six years ago. After that the photos were mostly of Fergusson solo. On a diving board at an apartment complex pool. Eating at a patio table set for two. Sometimes the photographers shadow showed. It was always Dupree’s shadow. Dave turned another page. He got a glimpse of Fergusson naked lying on a rug asleep in front of a fireplace, of Fergusson naked, grinning seductively from a rumpled bed. A hand came and firmly closed the album.

  “It didn’t stop when he got married,” Dave said.

  “He insisted it had to.” Dupree stroked the album cover wistfully. “I was desolated, but I know when I’m beaten, and I agreed.” A rueful smile twitched his mouth. “I made the best of it, tried to forget him. Kept myself busy remodeling Al Fresco, improving the menu.”

  “It’s a nice place,” Dave said. “I eat there sometimes. For the pêche chocolat flambé. I didn’t know
it was yours, or I’d have looked you up and said hello.”

  “I’m sorry you didn’t.” Dupree spoke absentmindedly, but now he seemed able to act. He found glasses and ice cubes, tomato juice, lemon peel, Worcestershire sauce and vodka, and put the drinks together while he talked. “I even wrote that cookbook I’d been threatening to for years. Just what the world needed. One more cookbook. But I had cartons positively gravid with recipes. Sorting them and deciding which to use and which to throw away kept me occupied. When I wasn’t occupied, I tended to weep.” He came and put a glass into Dave’s hands. He smoothed the pouches under his eyes. “And you know what that does to one’s beauty.”

  “Right.” Dave tasted the Bloody Mary. It had an uncommon lot of vodka in it. He gave a soft whistle and lifted the glass to Dupree. “Un bebida fuerte.”

  “I hate a wishy-washy drink,” Dupree said.

  Dave said, “So you respected the marriage, but Fergusson couldn’t cut it, and he came back, and the two of you took up your relationship as before.”

  “Well, hardly. I mean, the Ming empress of a mother-in-law keeps him working day and night. If he gets over here once a week, it’s a miracle from God, and you know how stingy She is with those.” Dupree drank from his glass and grew solemn. “It’s Mr. Le’s murder you’re investigating, right?”

  “Has Fergusson talked to you about it?”

  “He was absolutely devastated,” Dupree said.

  “Why? It was Madame Le who gave him his break.”

  “It wasn’t that. It was that Mr. Le was always kind to him, and the night he was killed, there’d been a terrible row at dinner, and Matt had screamed at him that he was a heartless old tyrant and other cordialities of that sort. And now, of course, he was wracked with guilt.”

  Dave frowned. “What was the argument about?”

  “The marriage. I mean”—Dupree waved a hand in a gesture of hopeless incomprehension—“it happened six years ago. There are two lovely children. Little dolls.”