Murder on Bamboo Lane

by Naomi Hirahara

  We wait for the elevator to open.

  “Cortez, I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I shouldn’t have kept things from you.”

  “Were you just playing me? With your aunt? Was that what this was?”

  “No, it wasn’t anything like that.”

  The elevator finally opens. “Do me a favor.”

  Anything, I think.

  “Lose my personal number,” he says before getting in.

  • • •

  I immediately text him Susana’s cell number. She’s not going to be happy that I’ve leaked her personal digits to an LAPD homicide detective. I don’t know who I feel the worst about. Him, Susana or myself.

  I spend the rest of the day patrolling the produce market with Armine, an assignment we call “rat patrol,” because late in the afternoon, rats come out of their hiding places to nibble on wilting lettuce leaves or mushy tomatoes left out on the street.

  Armine senses that I’m not in the mood for small talk, and we just ride a giant loop over and over, stopping only once to direct a schizophrenic homeless woman who has lost her way.

  Completely depleted by the end of the day, I ride the train home feeling like all the energy has been drained from my body. My legs feel wobbly, and I’m not even sure that I’ll make the short walk back to my house.

  I open the door and a white floppy mass jumps on me.

  “Nay, what have you done with Shippo?”

  Shippo is dressed in a white doggy T-shirt with wings coming out of his sides.

  “Can you figure out what the party’s about?” Nay asks.

  I shake my head. Abuse a Pet Day? I bend down to rub Shippo’s neck, but he’s too excited to sit still.

  Nay extends her arms out toward my living room. “Ta-da!”

  There are red tissue paper heart chains and photos of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln hanging on my walls. On the table is a chocolate cake with a plastic red heart on top.

  “Ah, Valentine’s Day already passed, Nay.”

  “And what did you do? Nothing. So this is a combo Valentine’s and President’s Day. I got all of this at the ninety-eight-cent store down the street, V-day stuff seventy percent off. Just cost me five bucks,” she says with pride. “And Shippo is President Cupid, of course.”

  Just kill me now.

  I take a closer look at the cake. A crooked message in pink icing: “To Hell with Men.” Apparently customized by Nay.

  “I thought that you would need a pick-me-up.”

  I furrow my brows.

  “Benjamin called me. Said that his sister was representing Tuan. He was kind of upset. I think that his exact words were, ‘Why is Ellie helping that douche bag?’”

  I can’t believe Sally has already mentioned something to Benjamin. What happened to confidentiality?

  “And seeing that Detective Yum didn’t give you anything on Valentine’s Day—”

  “We’re not even friends anymore.”

  “That’s probably not true.”

  “Yes, yes, it is.”

  Nay puts her hand on my shoulder. “Well, you got me, girl. And we have Shippo.”

  And with that, our cupid farts.

  FOURTEEN

  SIXTH STREET

  Mac should have realized that I was in no mood to deal with his crap today. First of all, when I don’t get enough sleep, I have this weird Asian eye thing in which one eye looks bigger than the other. My shorts are stained from where Shippo threw up on them after accidentally eating some of the chocolate cake, and I didn’t realize it until I was halfway to work. And, of course, there is the permanent sneer on my lips.

  “You’re almost late for our morning briefing,” he says at the sign-in window. It’s as if he is checking up on me.

  I sign in, then turn to him. “If there’s something you want to say to me, then just say it, please.”

  Uniformed officers turn in response and stare.

  “I know that you don’t care for me for some reason,” I continue. “That’s fine. Let’s just have it out, then.” I hold my helmet at my hip. Waiting.

  Mac tries to make a joke, then looks around at the other officers. Nobody laughs. “I don’t have any problems with you,” he finally says.

  “Fine,” I say, stomping into our morning meeting with our captain.

  I must be sending out rays of bad juju, because the two seats next to me remain empty during our meeting. When Johnny finds out that he’s assigned with me, he almost visibly shudders. What is wrong with all the men in our station today?

  Our captain spends a lot of time discussing a serious accident yesterday in the Financial District that left another bike messenger critically injured. Traffic was tied up in four directions for an hour. Captain Randle keeps going on and on about the gridlock as if that’s more important than the cyclist in the hospital.

  Two special guests then arrive. Councilman Beachum, his frizzy, fried hair resembling tufts of plant growth at the seashore. He’s accompanied by the immaculate Teena Dang, the thirtysomething woman I met at Aunt Cheryl’s club, who I learn is his top aide.

  “I’d like to thank all of you in the Central Division for keeping our streets safe,” Beachum says to us. “Over the past eleven years, my goal has been to reduce crime in the district, and we’ve been successful so far.” Except for homicides like Jenny’s, I think. “We can’t let accidents get the best of us, either. Let’s work together to keep the streets open for everyone, motorists and bicyclists alike.”

  At the end of the meeting, Captain Randle assigns me and Johnny to patrol Flower Street. I’m thinking that the liaisons should be there instead for political reasons, but Johnny and I are probably the strongest cyclists. I’m not bragging; we’re the younger ones, and Johnny comes from a family of X Games stunt riders.

  I won’t sugarcoat it: riding a bicycle in an area like Flower Street is not recommended. Cars still definitely rule here. I’m not happy to be negotiating the narrow space between the cars and the curb. And neither is Johnny, ahead of me.

  We’re stopped at a signal, and I look behind me. About ten feet away is an Asian person on an old-school bike, a basket barely hanging from its back. It’s Quang Hai Phuong, the little nutcase.

  “Mr. Phuong!” I call, and then he takes off to the other side of the street, almost causing an accident. What is he up to? Was he following me?

  I tighten my grip on my handlebars and pump the pedals of my bike. “Stop, LAPD!” I call out to him. But the chase makes him go even faster.

  I’ve left Johnny at the intersection. He quickly follows me.

  “Eh-eh-eh-llie,” I hear him stammer behind me.

  All I can think about is the guy who spit in my eye. If Phuong thinks that he can have fun on my account, he chose the wrong day to be cute. I’m on the west side of the street; he’s on the east.

  He almost runs down a few people attempting to cross the street, causing one woman to spill her Starbucks on her expensive suit. She screams out an obscenity. In these parts, causing someone to waste their coffee or ruin their clothing are both unpardonable offenses.

  He makes a hard left on Fourth Street and when the light changes, I’m with the cars going east, too. I can see the back of his bicycle basket as he turns at the next walkway. I know that I probably have him trapped right now. Hope Street doesn’t connect from Fourth to Fifth. I think that I hear Johnny’s voice on my radio, but I don’t slow down to listen.

  As I turn, I can’t believe my eyes. Phuong has chosen to go down the Bunker Hill Steps, our sad version of the Spanish Steps in Rome. Ours has 103 steps instead of 138, but they are enough to wreak significant damage. With each devastating bump of his decrepit bicycle, something flies off—first the basket on the back, then his front tire, and finally Phuong himself goes over his handles and does a somersault in the air before landing flat on his back on the pavement.

  I take my bike down the escalator, excusing myself as I hold it aloft and squeeze past various business suits. Once I reach
Phuong, he is muttering dark and twisted words in Vietnamese. I notice that his lower leg is folded underneath him, and when I touch his ankle he shrieks in pain.

  Johnny bounces his bike down all 103 steps with ease and swerves right next to me. I tell him to call for an ambulance. “I think that he might have broken his ankle.”

  The ambulance takes a while to make it through the traffic, and I suppress the urge to stroke Phuong’s forehead. As a high school athlete who has had her share of injuries, I know this sucks. I offer my water bottle to him and he shakes his head, but then he rethinks it and takes a sip.

  When the paramedics finally arrive on the scene, I tell Johnny I’ll go with Phuong to the hospital. Johnny looks relieved to be separated from me and says he’ll inform Cherniss what has happened.

  In the ambulance, Phuong remains silent, but I can tell he’s in pain, because every time the ambulance rattles over a pothole, he grimaces.

  As we travel to LA County General in Lincoln Heights, I think about how dedicated Phuong has been in following Tuan Le. Does he realize that his target has been detained by the police, and is soon to be released? Does he somehow think that I’m conspiring with Tuan? Then something occurs to me. If Phuong was indeed stalking Tuan, there’s a chance that he was watching him the night Jenny was shot.

  Once we arrive at the emergency room, Phuong is placed in a wheelchair. I’m surprised that, instead of being immediately seen by a physician, we are directed to the full waiting room. A form attached to a clipboard is placed in my hands. “I’m going to need an interpreter. Vietnamese speaking,” I say.

  An Asian woman with a round face and even rounder eyes comes to our aid. She wears a white lab coat. Her nametag reads VIVIAN.

  She is unruffled by the sight of my uniform, so I know that the presence of a police officer is nothing new to her. She quickly shoots questions to Phuong, and he answers, first reluctantly and then more openly. He likes her.

  After filling out the form, she rises.

  “Wait,” I tell her. “I need your help.”

  “I only do interpretation on medical matters.”

  “Thing is, I think that he may have been a witness to a murder of a young female college student. A Vietnamese American girl who was gunned down in the streets of Chinatown. Someone may be arrested for this soon. Any moment now. But I’m not sure if he’s the right person. I want to get the right person.”

  The interpreter hesitates and then sits back in the chair. She balls up her hand and rests her elbow on the chair’s arm. “Okay,” she agrees.

  “Can you ask Phuong if he was at the Goldfinger Gallery on this Thursday evening?” I take out my phone and point it to the exact day on my digital calendar.

  Vivian speaks to Phuong in Vietnamese. No response. Phuong’s eyes look faraway, detached.

  “Repeat it,” I request.

  Vivian does. Same (lack of) response.

  “I don’t think that he’s going to help you,” she tells me. “He told me earlier that he was one of those sent to a reeducation camp.” I have no idea what she’s talking about, which she can tell by the look on my face. “He was basically imprisoned for working for South Vietnam before the war. The new government was trying to indoctrinate him. Make him disavow his beliefs.”

  I finally get it. Phuong distrusts the government. I represent the government. OK, I don’t blame him. This time, however, instead of speaking to Vivian, I face Phuong directly. “Listen, I know that bad things happened to you and your family back in Vietnam. Bad things happened to my family, too. Right here in America.”

  I wait for Vivian to translate and then continue.

  “My grandparents did nothing wrong but had to go into camps during World War Two. They were barely teenagers.”

  Vivian addresses me. “Japanese?”

  “On my mother’s side.”

  She nods her head and explains my grandparents’ story to Phuong.

  “So now I work for the government. For the police department. I’m trying to make things better. I want to find the truth,” I say.

  Vivian interprets. Phuong listens. He studies my face carefully, most likely trying to identify my Asianness through the shape of my eyes or nose.

  I try again and touch my screen. “Were you at the Goldfinger Gallery that day?”

  Phuong finally nods and says yes in Vietnamese.

  “How long were you there?” I ask.

  “Until Tuan left the gallery,” he says through the interpreter.

  “Did something unusual happen that night?”

  Phuong narrows his eyes, as if he is replaying that evening in his head. “A couple of loud noises. A car backfiring, perhaps.” He explains that, after the first bang, he went to check down Hill Street. “A dog had gotten run over. There was a small crowd around the dog. An older couple was putting the injured dog in their car. A big car. A Cadillac.”

  “What about Tuan Le?”

  “He was in his gallery the whole time. He got in his car about midnight.” Phuong then followed Tuan’s vehicle until he parked inside of his loft. He was apparently there the rest of the night.

  I can hardly contain my excitement.

  Tuan Le’s stalker has become his alibi.

  • • •

  I know that Cortez doesn’t want to hear from me, so I write him an e-mail, proofread it and correct it at least two times. I don’t want to sound too casual, of course, but I don’t want to be too formal, either. Professional, that’s what I’m going for. I type in Phuong’s full name, cell phone, and even the phone number of his landlord. “You’ll need to secure a Vietnamese-speaking interpreter,” I write, then on second glance, I change it to: “A Vietnamese-speaking interpreter may be necessary.” I don’t want to assume that Cortez will need anything.

  I don’t copy the e-mail message to my aunt. After that scene in her office, I’m through with being her informant. If she wants to know what’s going on with the case, she can ask Cortez directly.

  I stop by a grocery store in Little Tokyo on my way home and buy two triangular rice balls—the kind where a plastic sleeve separates the nori—seaweed—from the rice to keep it crispy until eaten. On the train, I open the plastic wrap and secure the nori around the rice ball, then take a large bite.

  As I walk home, chewing, I think about the animal hospital on Figueroa, the main drag here. It’s one of the few twenty-four-hour emergency facilities for pets in the area. I took Shippo there once at two o’clock in the morning when I discovered that he’d eaten a small bar of hotel soap. The hospital’s not far from my house, so I decide to stop in before I go home.

  The same receptionist, whom I remember from before, is there at the counter this evening. She’s one of these people who remember pets’ names better than owners’ names.

  “How’s Shippo?” she asks when she sees me.

  “Good, good.” I wipe any stray bits of black seaweed from my lips.

  She registers my uniform. “I didn’t know you were a police officer.”

  “Yeah, it’s a recent thing.” I put a finger around one of my belt loops. “So, hey, I was wondering if you remember a dog being brought in late on a Thursday night at the beginning of the month. Hit by a car in Chinatown.”

  “Oh yeah, a couple of days before the parade. A pit bull, poor thing. Luckily, it looks like Romeo will recover.”

  I feel as though I’ve been punched in the stomach. Ramon? “Excuse me. Romeo, did you say?” The receptionist gives me a funny look. “Was the owner a Latino teenager, about this tall?” I raise my hand about two inches from the top of my head.

  “There was a Hispanic boy and an older couple, I don’t know who was the owner.”

  “I’ll need to get their names.”

  “Oh, I can’t give that to you. I can’t break client-patient privilege.”

  But the patient is a dog, I’m thinking.

  “Listen, this is very important. These people might have information about a murder.”

  M
y plea fails to have much effect on the receptionist. “I think that you’ll need a warrant or something like that.” She’s obviously seen one too many cop shows on television.

  Still, something on my face must have communicated the gravity of the situation. “I can tell you this,” she says. “Romeo is due back next month on the twentieth at three o’clock. If you happen to be here . . .”

  I’ll run into Romeo, I think. And most likely his owner. The twentieth, however, is weeks away. By then, the killer may be long gone.

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTH STREET

  When I go to work the next day, I expect Sergeant Cherniss to pull me aside and read me the riot act. I’m resigned to getting written up for encouraging reckless endangerment. I don’t know what Johnny reported to my superiors, but aggressively pursuing a bicyclist (a sixtysomething-year-old, no less) who didn’t appear to be a threat, and who ended up with a torn ankle ligament, does not bode well for the department or for me.

  When I come in, though, Cherniss is actually waiting for me outside of our meeting room, and directs me to go into Captain Randle’s office. Oh crap. How bad is this going to be?

  Captain Randle turns when I enter, as does the other person in his office. Cortez.

  Again? I think.

  “I was just informed that you have been given a special assignment.” By the way the captain is smiling, I know that he has no idea about what is really going on. “You’ll be working together with Detective Williams on the Jenny Nguyen case for a couple of days.”

  Cortez avoids making eye contact with me. “Yes, headquarters thinks that you may have easier access to some of our sources in the area.”

  “She’s a fine young officer,” Randle exclaims. Please, Captain, please stop, I’m thinking. “I have very high hopes for her.”

  Cortez and I walk outside to his police-issue vehicle in our garage. I wish I’d been informed of this “special assignment” before I stepped foot out of my house this morning. I feel weirdly exposed in my usual police-issue shorts and T-shirt with POLICE written across the back, and I wish I was instead dressed in the uniform that I had worn at my graduation from the police academy. At least my legs would be covered.