Obedience Read online

  “My whole point in going to those clubs,” Dave said, “was to get them to surface, whoever they were. No, I didn’t know—not that it would happen so soon. All the same, I ought to have called you at work.”

  Cecil gave a dry laugh. “That way I could have brought a camera crew.” He kicked the other leg into the trousers, fastened the waist button, buckled the belt. He picked up his jacket, untangled it from its hanger. He came to Dave, put arms around him, and a kiss on his mouth. He smiled. “Hey, it’s not you I’m mad at.” He shrugged into the jacket. “It’s how I didn’t handle it. How they humiliated me.”

  “They had guns,” Dave said. “It wasn’t a fair fight.”

  Cecil grunted, glanced at the room, the unfinished meal on its tray on a swing table over the bed. “Let’s get out of here.” He yanked open the door and barged, long legged, down the busy corridor. Nurses dodged. Interns with clipboards flattened themselves against walls. A green-clad orderly dropped his mop. Dave half expected Cecil to leap over a lavender-haired lady in a wheelchair. “Why did you bring me here, anyway? Not a thing in the world the matter with me.”

  “You were limp and cold,” Dave said, “and I could hardly hear you breathe.” Trying to keep pace with him, Dave remembered the lifetime of cigarettes he’d smoked—right now, his own breathing was doubtful. “Pham is no doctor. He could have overdosed you. I figured I could bring you here, or wait and call the undertaker—right?”

  “It’s cool.” Cecil worked up a smile. Elevator doors opened. Worried-looking families carrying bouquets and new teddy bears crowded out. Cecil and Dave stepped into air damp with the smell of flowers. The elevator doors closed. Cecil pressed a button. “You forget it, I’ll forget it.”

  “Two things I’ll be happy to remember,” Dave said. “First, Pham hasn’t made Cotton Simes as a witness, and second he doesn’t connect you to Cotton Simes. At least I don’t think so.”

  “Did his doll-boys kill Le?” Cecil asked.

  “He says not.” The elevator stopped, the doors opened, they stepped into a lobby teeming with the bandaged and bewildered. “I’ll check you out.” Dave started for the desk.

  Cecil caught his arm, shook his head, urged Dave toward the glass entry doors. “They’ll phone when they discover my empty bed. That will be time enough.” He pushed out into sunshine, heat, the rustle of wind in trees. “Meanwhile, it will add some excitement to their dull routine.” He drew air in gratefully, and skittered like a kid down broad steps. Dave followed slowly, groggy for lack of sleep. Cecil spun around in the lane, arms held out, grinning. “Man, it is so great to be out of there. Nothing I hate worse than hospitals.” He gave a shiver. “They keep reminding me of those times when it was you in the bed, and me sitting all night beside you, wondering if you’d live or die.” He took Dave’s arm and they climbed the gritty steps of gloomy parking levels. In the Valiant, rolling back down to earth, he added, “What happened to your promise to quit?”

  “I couldn’t get the twenty-two out of my mind.” Dave waited for slow traffic to pass, then swung onto a curving lane, over-arched by three branches, and headed off the campus. “The twenty-two makes me think Pham could just possibly be telling the truth. That someone else killed Le.”

  “Which brings you back to Andy Flanagan?” Cecil said.

  “If he owned a twenty-two pistol, the police can’t find it. Not on his boat, not underwater.” At a stoplight, Dave lit a cigarette. “Which of them there did own a twenty-two pistol? A retired schoolteacher on a pitiful pension living out her sunset years at the Old Fleet, with no place else to go? A young man almost destroyed by bungling doctors and usurious hospitals? With a wife and baby and hardly enough strength to breathe in and out, let alone start over again?” Dave turned the rattly car up Laurel Canyon. “A once famous jazz singer nobody gives a damn for anymore? Even if she can sell the Starlady—after that money’s gone, then what?”

  Cecil stared at him. “You talking about Lindy Willard?”

  “What I’m talking about is that I’ve only interviewed three or four of the boaties.”

  Cecil nodded. “Which leaves eighty-six to go.”

  “That’s a lot of bunks and lockers to search,” Dave said.

  “I’d call that a good reason to quit,” Cecil said,

  Dave swung the Valiant, rattling and complaining, into the broad, clean-swept driveway of Kevin Nakamura’s tree-shaded stone and glass service station. He switched off the engine, twisted out the cigarette, stumbled out of the car.

  Nakamura, in crisp suntans, came bowlegged and grinning across the tarmac. His eyes very nearly disappeared when he smiled. “What are you? Fed up with the jalopy?” He held out the small cowhide case of the Jaguar’s keys.

  “I’ll take those,” Cecil said, and Nakamura tossed them to him over the top of the Valiant. Cecil loped away and out of sight behind shiny clean service bays. “You look beat,” Nakamura said. “Everything okay?”

  “It will be when I’ve had twelve hours sleep.” Nakamura laughed and wagged his head. “You’ll never retire. You like playing cops and robbers too much.”

  “I’m too old for it.” Dave touched the Valiant with his shoe. “Get rid of this. I won’t be needing it again.”

  Nakamura’s eyebrows went up. “You sure?”

  Dave nodded wearily. “Give whatever you get for it to your favorite charity.”

  “That’s me,” Nakamura said.

  And Cecil rolled up in the Jaguar.

  When pounding on the door below woke him, the light in the sky above the open roof window was ruddy. The air had cooled. He squinted at the bedside clock. Its red numerals said it was five forty-five. He groaned, pushed himself into a sitting position, swung numb legs over the bed side. Blinking, blowing out air, he looked around for the blue corduroy robe. There it was, draped over the two-by-four railing of the loft. He lit a cigarette, wavered to his feet, fumbled into the robe. Muttering because he hadn’t the energy to shout, he tottered down the stairs. Making for the door, broad pine planks cool under his bare feet, he combed back his hair with his fingers, rubbed a hand down over his face. He said hoarsely, “Who is it?”

  “Open up, Sherlock. I want to talk to you.” It was Ken Barker, a captain in the homicide division of the LAPD. Dave had known him for twenty years, as he’d come up through the ranks from plain detective. They had begun on bad terms. But they’d butted heads so often, enmity had turned to grudging respect and finally to what they both knew was friendship, though a stranger watching them together might not guess it. Dave worked two locks and pulled open the door. Barker, heavy now, almost as thick through the middle as across his massive shoulders, glowered at him. He had steel gray eyes that never relented. The broken nose between them gave him the toughest look on the force. Dave stepped back to let him pass, and closed the door again.

  “You woke me up,” Dave said.

  “I didn’t know you ever slept,” Barker said. “How do you find the time, making all the trouble you do?”

  Dave smiled thinly, held up his hands. “Not guilty.” He turned and went away toward the bar. “Sit down. I’ll fix you a drink.”

  Barker dropped his bulk into one of the leather wing chairs. His voice rumbled, echoing off the high pitched roof and bare rafters. “You checked Harris into UCLA hospital in the wee small hours. OD’d on morphine. He an addict?”

  Dave was still so tired, he seemed to be watching himself in a slow-motion film as he got glasses, Glenlivet for himself, Jack Daniels for Barker, filled the glasses with ice cubes, uncapped the bottles, poured the drinks, recapped the bottles. He carried them to the hearth, handed Barker the sourmash, sat down on the raised brick surround of the fireplace, tasted his drink. “Why ask me? You’ve already been to see him at Channel Three.”

  Barker grunted. “It figured he’d phone and warn you.”

  “Wrong. Phones here are unplugged.” Dave threw him a half smile. “No—I just know how you work.”

  Barker’s mout
h twitched. He lifted his glass to Dave, and drank from it. “Ah. That hits the spot.” Dave thought it should. Barker kept damned bad liquor in his office—the only place he’d ever offered Dave a drink. “Harris denied it. Said it was an accident.”

  “I’ve never known him to lie. What can I say?”

  “You keep morphine around here?” Barker asked. He glanced towards the bathroom at the foot of the stairs. He glanced at the sleeping loft. “You want to show me? You want to show me the prescription?”

  “There’s no prescription,” Dave said. “No morphine.”

  “What happened?” Barker said.

  “I’m working a case for a public defender in San Pedro County.” Dave outlined the story—the trouble at the Old Fleet, Le Van Minh’s murder, Andy Flanagan’s arrest. “I’m trying to turn up another suspect. In doing so, I bumped a hornet’s nest. The head hornet came here last night to warn me off. I wasn’t home, yet, and Cecil got stung.”

  “Wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

  “As he told you—an accident.” Dave set his glass on the bricks. He got up to get cigarettes and lighter from the bar. It seemed a long time since he’d opened the new pack there, with the doll-boy watching it as if it were a grenade. It was only fifteen hours ago. He lit a cigarette, put pack and lighter in a pocket of the robe, went back to Barker. “It might have been a lot worse.” He sat on the hearth again, and drank again. “They could have killed him.”

  “You get nice visitors,” Barker said.

  “It’s hard to find words,” Dave said.

  “You didn’t report it to us. You going to report it to the police department down in San Pedro County?”

  “I’ll tell Tracy Davis when I see her. She’ll tell the police.” He gave Barker a blank, wide-eyed look. “I mean, won’t she? It’s her duty, isn’t it?”

  “This happened in my territory,” Barker said heavily. “And it happened to a friend of a friend of mine. A flake, but a friend, and I don’t like that.” He drank deeply of his Jack Daniels. He thumped the bottom of the thick glass on the chair arm and the ice cubes rattled. “And I’m not going to let it happen again.” He fixed Dave with that cold steel stare of his. “If San Pedro won’t protect you, I will.”

  “This crowd is through with me.” The fire screen was accordioned back. Dave flicked ashes into the grate. “They won’t come again.” He gave Barker a sidewise glance. Barker didn’t look persuaded. “Honest. I don’t think so.”

  Barker snorted. “What do they think?”

  “That I now know I was wrong about them, and that I’m going to leave them alone from here on out.”

  Barker heaved his bulk up out of the chair. He looked down at Dave. Skeptically. “And will you?” He wheeled like a truck and headed for the door. “Not if I know you. If there’s an excuse to go after them, you’ll go after them, regardless of the risk.” He pulled the door open. Dusk had come and filled the courtyard with shadow. He turned back. “Who are they, Dave? I need to know.”

  “A Vietnamese named Don Pham, who runs gambling clubs in San Pedro County.” Dave rose and limped on leaden legs to tell Barker the other activities Pham had admitted to. Or bragged of. “He had two nasty little thugs with him. They dress in black jeans, black turtleneck jerseys, sometimes cover their faces with black handkerchiefs. Favorite weapon, the Uzi. There may be only two”—he shrugged bleakly—“there could be twenty.”

  “With the morals of weasels,” Barker said. “I know the type. They’re hell to catch. They’ve got the law-abiding Vietnamese here terrified. Nobody dares tell on them.” He sighed. “And the Vietnamese are only part of the picture. There are Samoans, Tongans, Filipinos, Koreans, Laotians, Cambodians.” He gave his head a grim shake. “It’s a restless world today, and we seem to get whatever it shakes out. They come here without education, without any language but their own—crime is what keeps them eating.” He took a step or two away across the bricks. He looked up at the sky, where there was still some dying daylight. “I’m just as glad I’m retiring. This mess needs a new kind of cop.”

  “That will be nice,” Dave said. “The old kind was a pain in the ass.”

  “Hah!” Barker said. “Look who’s calling who a pain in the ass.” He peered at Dave through the twilight. “You don’t want me to post a man up here? To keep an eye out?”

  “If you’ve forgotten,” Dave said, “I haven’t. People who try to guard me get shot. Joey Samuels still isn’t back at work—is he?”

  “He will be,” Barker said. “Stop feeling guilty. It wasn’t your fault. He was doing a job. It happens to police officers. They know it. They’re fatalists. It tends to limit their friendships. Only other cops understand.”

  Barker was lonely and wanted to talk. Dave said, “I can dress. We can have dinner together. Max Romano’s.” But before he could finish speaking, he yawned.

  “Go back to bed,” Barker said, and lumbered off.

  After that, Dave slept the clock around. Almost. No way could he not be aware of Cecil’s coming home from work at midnight. Very few nights in recent years had he tried to sleep before that happened. Cecil moved quietly, but Dave took in that he was down below, heard him locking up, water running in the pipes as he showered, the click of switches as he turned off lamps, his footfalls on the stairs. Familiar floorboards creaked as he moved on the loft, shedding his clothes. The bed jarred gently as he slid under sheet and blanket. Dave felt the warmth of his long, lean body, and smiled to himself. Now he could really sleep. And sleep he did.

  “Don’t you feel a little ghoulish?” Cecil said. He brought plates to the table in the cook shack. It was going to be another hot day. The door stood open. It wasn’t yet seven o’clock, and the still air was oppressive.

  Horn-rimmed reading glasses on his nose, Dave was checking the obituary columns. The name “Le” was where he expected it. “Maybe.” He took off the glasses, frowning. “I’m trying to remember. There was another Le listed here not long ago.”

  “Sounds like it might be a common name,” Cecil said.

  “True, but the mortuary was the same. The church was the same.” Dave folded the paper, laid it aside.

  Cecil set a plate in front of him. Fried cornmeal mush. Thick rounds of Canadian bacon. Eggs sunny-side up. Cecil brought a stoneware jug of Vermont maple syrup to the table, pulled out a chair beside Dave’s and sat down. He wore a long yellow and black tanktop stenciled LAKERS, ragged white cutoffs, white golfer’s cap pulled low over his eyes.

  “This looks delicious,” Dave told him. “So do you. And smiling all over, too. What’s up?”

  “Jimmy Caesar and Dot Yamada get back from vacation today.” Cecil cut pats of butter onto his golden squares of hash. He set the butter plate down. “‘Free at last, I’m free at last.’” He poured syrup over the mush, cut a bite from the bacon, a bite from the mush, speared both with his fork, filled his mouth, hummed, and closed his eyes. When he’d chewed and swallowed and gulped down some coffee, he said, “Today, we build those bookshelves.”

  Dave hated to cloud all that joy, but he gave his head a shake. “I’m sorry.” He tapped the folded paper with a finger. “I’ve got a funeral to attend.”

  “You mean Le’s?” Cecil squinted. “Why?”

  “The usual reason.”

  “He was rich and powerful.” Cecil broke a yolk on one of his eggs, muddled a chunk of the crisp fried mush in it, filled his mouth again. “People will be there who don’t mean anything. Most of them.”

  “I want a look at the family.” Dave tucked into his breakfast. It tasted as good as it looked, and he was very hungry. When it was time to breathe again, he said, “And I want to see if Don Pham shows up.”

  “Stick a needle in his butt for me,” Cecil said. “What connection would there be?”

  “He seems to know the Le’s.” Dave drank coffee. “And he’s in the drug business.”

  “Le was an importer,” Cecil said. “Electronics. From the Orient.” He tilted
his head. “You saying suppliers were sending Pham opium inside the VCRs?”

  “Suppose Le had found out about it? Pham’s doll-boys went to the Old Fleet for a reason—and it wasn’t to watch late TV with Norma Potter. I have only Pham’s word they didn’t kill Le, and he carefully did not say they didn’t go there to kill him, and my hunch is that if they didn’t do it, it was only because somebody else got to him first.”

  “You have a mind like a whip.” Cecil mopped up the egg yolk and syrup on his plate with a last chunk of mush. He grumbled, “You are in this to the end, aren’t you? That retirement jive was jive and only jive, right? And I am going to be here alone today, sawing up boards, banging my thumb with a hammer while you—”

  “The funeral’s this morning.” Dave looked at his watch, gulped coffee, wiped his mouth with a napkin. “I’ll be back by noon. We can take turns banging our thumbs.”

  “You say.” Cecil scraped his chair back, stood and gathered the plates. Gloomily. “When you get out there, you’ll find a dozen reasons not to come home.”

  Dave stood, put a kiss on his mouth. “Knowing you’re here, nothing less than wild horses could keep me away.”

  Cecil grunted, walked off. “Not too many of them around the harbor.” He set the dishes in the sink. “But knowing you, you’ll find them.” He turned on the hot water tap.

  Dave paused at the door. “Why not come with me?”

  Cecil shook his head. “One ghoul per family is enough.”

  8

  THE VIETNAMESE METHODIST CHURCH was white stucco, a try at Spanish mission style that had got the proportions wrong. There was too much height to it, not enough spread. Its location was against it too, on a corner in a dying neighborhood of dejected brick storefronts and thick, spiky-trunked old date palms on trash-strewn parking strips. A sea wind that smelled of spilled oil waved the half-dead palm fronds above rows of sleek, showy automobiles at the curbs, FUNERAL on a white card behind each windshield.