Unless he turned on Ilya. Then God help him.
Kateryna returned to cutting vegetables—sawing rather than chopping in case he knocked her arm. I approved. Dmitry would not catch her unaware again. Ilya, on the other hand, did not even notice his father’s approach.
I tensed for action, eager to bust through the screen door and bash the karambit’s hilt onto the bridge of Dmitry’s ugly snubbed nose. Sensei’s voice whispered in my mind and calmed me down. Patience, Lily-chan. Your moment will come.
I was counting on it.
Dmitry peered over Ilya’s shoulder and scoffed. “What is this? How are you going to make the grades if you waste your time drawing pictures?” He crumpled the paper and tossed it at Kateryna. “Where are those books you’re always buying him? The chubby ones made of cardboard that are supposed to teach children how to read. Shouldn’t he be studying those?”
She didn’t answer.
“Well?”
She mouthed something too quiet for me to hear. Whatever it was, Dmitry didn’t like it.
“See. That’s what I mean. You’re stupid.” He flicked Ilya’s shoulder hard enough to make him flinch. “Go study your books until dinner. Go on.”
Ilya jumped off the stool and hurried out of the room.
Dmitry poured more vodka. “I’m going to watch the game. Call me when the food is ready.”
When he left the kitchen, I stepped into the backyard light and waved until I caught Kateryna’s attention. She froze. I mimed holding a phone to my ear and faded back into the shadows before Dmitry entered the family room. Kateryna would either call or she wouldn’t. At least I had let her know I would be there for her if she changed her mind.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Like most restaurants in downtown Culver City, Wong’s Hong Kong Inn catered to the business crowd. So by the time I wheeled my bike through the back door, the kitchen was deserted except for Uncle and DeAndre. The two of them were always the first to arrive and the last to leave: Uncle because he thought he owned the place. DeAndre because one day he hoped he would.
I stopped in the shadows of the entryway nook, where my bike and I could blend in with the mops and buckets, and watched the men put the kitchen to bed.
“Anything else?” DeAndre asked as he hung the last of the pots on the wall.
“Go home already. What more I need from you?”
DeAndre smiled as if he had received a compliment, which might have been the case. With Uncle it was hard to tell. “Okay, then. See you tomorrow.”
Uncle grunted and flicked his wrist to shoo DeAndre out of his kitchen, and in the process, launched a handful of dried beans straight at me. They bounced off my helmet as I swung it up to deflect the predicted attack—it paid to remain vigilant in Uncle’s company.
DeAndre, on the other hand, stumbled in surprise as the beans pattered onto the floor. “Damn, girl. I didn’t hear you come in.”
He bent to pick up a garbage bag and saw the beans. “Oh man, I didn’t see these, either.”
“Leave it,” said Uncle.
“You sure?”
“What, you live here now? Go already.”
I nodded. “Go home, DeAndre. Lee will clean up the mess.” I glanced over my shoulder. “Won’t you, Uncle?”
He snorted in response. “You late,” he said, disregarding my comment so completely that I checked the floor just to make sure I hadn’t imagined the beans.
“I love you too, Uncle.”
“Bah! Too much talk of love. Not enough talk about respect.” He nodded at a plastic wrapped plate sitting on the prep counter. “Eat your food.”
I chuckled. Uncle or Baba always made me a plate of extras. Sometimes, they left it on the counter. Other times, I found it in the fridge. Regardless, it was always there.
“I’ll take it upstairs and pop it in the microwave.”
“No need. Tastes good as is. I know. I fix it.”
I laughed. Everything Uncle fixed was good. The moment Baba had tasted Uncle’s sizzling shrimp in that hole-in-the-ground restaurant in Shanghai, he knew he wanted the man cooking in his kitchen. And since working as a secondary chef in a low-level restaurant had barely kept Uncle above poverty, he had jumped at the chance to move to America. Twenty-four years later, Lee Chang had a small house, US citizenship, and a wife.
I smiled. “No microwave. Got it.”
He huffed his assent and collected his jacket to leave. “And turn off light. All the time you waste.”
He walked out the door grumbling in Mandarin about how young people in Shanghai were so much smarter and more respectful than their Los Angeles counterparts. He didn’t mean it. Needling me was an indirect way of showing he cared. The only Chinese person I knew who gave me direct compliments was Gung-Gung. And since he only did that when Ma was close enough to hear, it always felt more like a dig at her than praise for me.
I shook the ill thoughts from my mind. This was not the night to unravel cultural mysteries. Time to put heavy thinking away, mount my bike on the wall, and carry my dinner up the stairs—preferably without alerting Baba, whose sedan was still parked outside.
I tiptoed along the edges of the steps to keep them from creaking. As expected, Baba had left his office door open. If this had been a luckier day, I might have made it to my apartment without him noticing. But today was not a lucky day.
“Bring your dinner in here, why dontcha.”
He hadn’t looked up, so I couldn’t just wave. And after Uncle’s comment about disrespectful youths, I didn’t feel good about fabricating a reason why I couldn’t join him.
“You’re here late,” I said, pausing in the hallway, uncertain whether to accept or decline his invitation.
“Just finishing up some orders.” He glanced at me over the wire rims of his glasses. “And waiting for you.”
Great.
I stared into the shadows behind him as he typed away at his computer. Better to say nothing than to dig myself deeper into trouble. Besides, the sinister backdrop fit my mood.
Baba’s office doubled as storage for the restaurant. Stacked tables and upended chairs. Scrapers and knives protruding from crates. Oddly-shaped equipment hiding in the dark like monsters in a cave. The rumble-tumble from the washer and dryer added to the effect.
I was projecting my darkness onto him. There wasn’t anything sinister about Baba’s tattered brown couch, or his chipped wooden desk, or his creaking leather office chair, and there certainly wasn’t anything sinister about my bear of a father. In fact, the only sinister element in the entire building was me.
And the silence.
He still hadn’t told me why he was waiting, and if I knew my baba, he wouldn’t. He’d simply wait for me to digest the information and make a decision. If I left, I’d prove Uncle right, and would spend the rest of the evening berating myself for my lack of respect. If I stayed, I’d find myself in a conversation I didn’t want to have.
Lose-lose. An apropos end to an unlucky day.
The cushions of Baba’s couch were so worn-down from use they were difficult to sit on without sinking. I perched myself on the edge and set my mixed-plate dinner on the coffee table. When Baba still didn’t turn around, I picked up my chopsticks and ate. The eggplant was soft and yummy and the chili paste cleared my head. It tasted so good I didn’t care if he never turned around. But wouldn’t you know, the moment I stuffed my mouth with a big chunk of deep fried tofu, he swiveled his chair to face me.
I chewed.
He creaked back in his chair and laced his fingers over his belly.
I pinched a floret of broccoli and nibbled at the edges as if I had buckets of time and not an ounce of stress.
A noise escaped Baba’s tightly sealed lips that sounded suspiciously like “Uh-huh,” which could have meant a variety of things, but tonight I was pretty sure meant, “You can’t fool me.”
I put down the sticks. “Okay, spit it out.”
“Of what?”
“You.”
“Why does anything have to be ‘in the way’?” Most of the time I found Baba’s North Dakota idioms charming. Tonight was not one of those times.
“It doesn’t,” he said. “But it is.” He frowned as I gnawed at another piece of broccoli. “You know, you used to be more forthcoming.”
“Oh, right.”
“It’s true. Even when you were hiding your ninja lessons in the park.”
I put down the broccoli. “Wait. What? You knew about that?”
“We both did.”
“Ma knew about that, too? Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t she make me quit?”
He sighed. “Why do you always think she’s against you?”
I shook my head. I had no answer.
“Well, if you guys knew I was keeping secrets, how can you say I used to be more forthcoming?”
“With your feelings. With your fears. You always came to me, Dumpling. You always let me help.” He took off his glasses and rubbed the weary from his eyes. “Ever since your sister—”
“Was murdered,” I interrupted. “Rose was murdered.”
He flinched. My words had struck him deeper than my karambit ever could.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“We all have our own ways of handling grief. Your mother delved deeper into her work, and in many ways, you did the same. But here’s the thing.” He leaned in, rested his elbows on his knees, and peered into my eyes. “I don’t know what your work is.”
We sat that way for an impossibly long time: him in his chair imploring me to answer, me on the couch wishing I could be anywhere else but in that office. But I wasn’t. And if I didn’t want to destroy the dearest relationship I had in the world, I had to speak. I took a breath, gathered my courage, and prayed I wasn’t making an irrevocable mistake.
“What do you want to know?”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Baba knew me well enough to know that too broad of a question would invite an equally broad response, so he took his time formulating his words. When he felt satisfied, he looked me straight in the eyes and said: “Are you endangering your life to protect others?”
Dang, he was good.
I could have hedged on whether or not scaling buildings, spying on assassins, or even disarming guns from wife abusers constituted life-threatening risk, but I couldn’t deny that protecting Kateryna Romanko had almost gotten me killed. There wasn’t anything subjective about a Ukrainian thug trying to cleave my skull with a hatchet. Baba had found the perfect words.
“Yes.”
He exhaled long and slow. “Thank you.” His whisper sounded so much like a prayer that I couldn’t tell if he was speaking to me or to God. “And this began after your sister was killed?”
“Nine months later, but yes.”
During those nine months, I had stopped competing for the UCLA Wushu team, dropped out of college, and dedicated all of my time to training with Sensei. My mission had been to find Rose’s killer, turn him over to the cops, and make him pay—not necessarily in that order. Sensei understood and trained me accordingly. It was a grueling and dangerous process.
“And when you came home with that gash on your head,” Baba said. “It wasn’t from training, was it?”
“No.”
Both my parents had gotten used to my martial arts injuries, but aside from the time I cut my leg twirling Wushu broadswords or the time I miscalculated my Ninjutsu defense against Sensei’s live katana, none of my training injuries bled anywhere near as profusely as that gash. It had taken nine stitches to repair the damage from that criminal’s crowbar.
Baba nodded. “And how do you decide who to help?”
I sighed. “That time, it was a woman getting mugged in front of her house. I just happened to be passing by at the right time.”
I didn’t mention that the woman had been Aleisha Reiner or that I later discovered the house was a refuge for battered women. I didn’t want Baba to track her down.
“These days, I work for a non-profit organization that helps women suffering from domestic violence.” When he peered at me over his glasses I added, “And sometimes I just…help.”
Baba formed a steeple with his fingers and pressed it to his lips. As he hummed, I thought of the women I had rescued from their abusive husbands. I thought of all the good work Aleisha and Stan did at the refuge. And I thought of Rose’s rapist and killer roaming free all those years before I finally found him. How many women had he hurt? How many lives had he destroyed before he preyed on me? Even though I thought I had put an end to him, I couldn’t be sure because his death was never reported. So yeah. There was a strong possibility he was still out there hunting.
“What I do is important, Baba.”
“I don’t doubt it. But we have law enforcement for that.”
I shrugged. “They can’t help everyone.”
It wasn’t that the police didn’t care—they did, fiercely—or that they weren’t competent—LAPD had one of the most skilled departments in the country. But it also had one of the worst personnel-to-population ratios. There was a limit to how much they could do with the inadequate funding they were provided. So while new officers went unhired and existing officers had their salaries frozen, crimes went unsolved, perpetrators slipped into shadows, and deals were made for the greater good. Even when the criminals were caught, it didn’t mean the legal system would—or could—ensure justice.
“I have the skill, grit, and determination to save lives. How can you ask me not to do what I can?”
Whether he wanted to acknowledge it or not, Baba had raised me with this work ethic. Never half measures. Never leave a job for someone else to do when you can do it yourself.
Now it was his turn to sigh. “Okay, then. What can I do to help?”
I smiled. Typical Baba.
His support meant more to me than I could put into words, but when he leaned forward and squeezed my hand, I knew he understood.
“You’ll keep yourself safe, then?”
I nodded while he chewed over a thought or two.
“And if there’s anything I can do to help, you’ll ask? You can promise me that much, can’t you?”
I don’t think I ever loved my father as much as I did in that instant. Even terrified for my safety, with the barest amount of information, he trusted me and had my back.
“I will.”
He exhaled his relief. “Alrighty, then. I guess that’s that.”
We shared an awkward moment of unshed tears with neither of us knowing quite what to do.
“Well,” he said clearing his throat. “I’ve got more work to do before I head on home.”
I smiled without comment, picked up my plate, and walked around the coffee table to kiss his head. The vanilla-blond hair felt silky against my lips.
“I love you, Baba.”
He wrapped an arm around my hips and squeezed me into a hug. “I love you too, Dumpling. Don’t you ever doubt it.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
The next morning, I awoke feeling more at peace than I had in years. Although there wasn’t anything Baba could do to help, and while there were bound to be unforeseen consequences from sharing the truth, at least I could stop keeping this secret from my father. I wouldn’t tell him everything—no one deserved to suffer the burdens I had chosen for myself—but from this day forward, I would feel less alone.
I held my ceramic tea mug in my palms, enjoying the warmth. It would be another hot August day, but until the sun crossed overhead enough to shine down on my balcony garden, my apartment remained chilly. I took a sip of the Dragonwell and scrolled through the information on my computer screen.
I had learned quite a bit during yesterday’s meeting with Freddy Weintraub in his office, including the segmented way the Copper Li
ne would be built: first through Huntington Park beneath Santa Fe Avenue, then diagonally through Cerritos, the home of the massive shopping center and industrial park. The project would create new jobs and boost the economy—providing the Technical Advisory Committee voted to proceed.
I pulled up the Metro website to see who, besides Freddy, was on that committee. The thirty voting members were comprised of government officials representing a wide range of public interests. Eight of these were members of the League of California Cities, three were council members, two were mayors, and one was the vice mayor of Huntington Park who had been interviewed at the Hollywood and Highland Metro station just before my infamous lunch with Tran.
Interesting.
The vice mayor had seemed awfully gung-ho about having a Metro line run through her city. Had Tran inspired her enthusiasm? Was that why he was watching her during the interview? Or was he there because he worked for her?
A quick investigation showed nothing suspicious, tragic, or even noteworthy about the woman. The vice mayor was new to her office and, from what I could tell, had very little influence. She seemed to be exactly as she appeared: second in charge for a small city that could use the economic boom a new Metro line would provide.
I returned to the list of committee members, and this time, breezed past low-level officials representing bicyclists, pedestrians, and other ancillary public concerns, and focused on the big guns. I found two who piqued my interest. Both were top-level elected officials who represented communities in the path of the proposed Copper Line. And both had enough power to sway numerous votes.
Evelyn Young was a Chinese-American serving her second term as mayor of Cerritos—the Copper Line’s destination and a city with a significant Asian population, known for its retail and industrial centers. Mayor Young also served as the president of the League of California Cities. And since all eight of those city representatives were on the Technical Advisory Committee, Mayor Young had some serious clout. Nine votes out of thirty. That kind of influence could make Mayor Young a prime target.
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