by Jay Brandon
They had Linh’s wife and had already made the first delivery. Having secured Khai’s blessing to make the second, Chui walked away, toward the stairs. Khai shook his head as he would have over an overeager child, and went off to his study and the pleasure of his contemplations.
To say that to the Vietnamese, newly come to America, Houston was like a jungle would be inaccurate. A jungle would have been comforting by comparison. Houston was a giant city, exposed to the sun and reflecting everything in the glass buildings. It offered no place to hide. There were one hundred thousand Asians in Houston. Many of them didn’t speak English, didn’t have any skills America wanted, didn’t understand or care about anything they saw on the TV news. The urge to re-create the countries they had lost was irresistible. To cling together, to find a base and build a world they understood, barely impinged on by the one they did not. But to cling to the old ways was to allow old evils to flourish. It wasn’t only honest men who had escaped from South Vietnam. Men of wealth and power, however obtained, knew that the new Communist rulers would resent that power and confiscate that wealth. They had good reason to flee the new regime. And once established in America, some of them had seen the opportunity to revive their enterprises. Khai was only one of several who began charging Vietnamese merchants for protection.
The new Asian society was even more vulnerable to organized crime than it had been at home, because the community here was so ingrown and afraid of the world surrounding them. The immigrants had no place to turn for help. The devil they knew was preferable to the white-skinned devils they did not. In the scramble to find a place for themselves, there was no time to try to fight the old enemies.
It didn’t even occur to most to try to fight. They lived with a system their ancestors had lived with. A Vietnamese businessman might try to escape paying the graft only in the way his American counterpart would cheat on his taxes: not openly, as if it were his right to be free, but sneakily, fearfully, telling no one. There was no organized resistance.
There was, however, the occasional maverick like the pawnbroker Linh who refused to pay. Khai knew that Linh had not been a merchant in the old country; he had been of a higher class. Maybe that accounted for his stubborn refusal to pay. He wasn’t familiar with the system. But that could be no excuse. Linh’s attitude was dangerous for everyone. Others knew that he didn’t pay protection. They watched to learn if there would be consequences.
The old man was terribly stubborn, though. Harassing his customers, even smashing his shop window, had had no effect on him. He had told Khai, “I will spend everything I have to replace a thousand windows before I will pay you a penny.” To Khai’s face he had said that, and other merchants had heard about it. It was then that Khai had initiated the Days of the Hand.
At almost the same time, he had heard that the American pawnbroker was asking to see him. By that time Khai had other worries on his mind. He had almost forgone the meeting with Daniel Greer. Now he was immensely grateful he had not. Always see to the small matters, he reminded himself. One never knew when a small matter might offer a solution to a larger problem.
The larger problem was that the gangs in Houston had grown fat. Inevitably, they had begun to prey on each other. At first their conflicts had amounted to little more than pushing and shoving over fringes of territory. But Khai controlled far and away the richest territory. The others would not give up. Rivalry had erupted into war between Khai and his largest competitor, Tang. War was dangerous and bad for business. It called the attention of police to their profitable enterprises. Everyone feared that, but intemperate Tang still pushed. The attempt on Khai’s own life had been the last straw. He had retaliated creatively and now wanted to end the war before Tang could arrange an even more vicious reprisal. But how? Tang himself was inaccessible to Khai.
Then had come Daniel Greer. Khai was delighted with the results of that interview. He had never before given any consideration to the American pawnbroker. He was not Vietnamese, he was not subject to Khai’s influence. But now Khai saw a chance to use him. He would kill Linh, as he’d already arranged, and on top of that charge Daniel Greer for the favor. That was the mark of a good businessman: to get paid for doing what one planned to do anyway.
Khai was an ambitious man whose ambition had taken a great leap forward there on the dirty city street. He saw now the possibility of exerting his influence over Greer. He need not limit himself as he’d always assumed. If he could exercise his power over American businessmen as well as Asians, the whole city would be open to him.
It had actually been lack of ambition that had been holding Khai back. He hadn’t raised his head out of the muck to look around. When he did he discovered that not only did Daniel Greer have a wife, but the wife had a rich father. A rich city councilman father. It was beautiful. All sitting there waiting for Khai, once he had the initiative to look for it.
He was smiling when Chui came to see him in his study, but the smile disappeared when the door opened. Khai was all business.
“Have John Loftus call Daniel Greer. We don’t want him going to the police.”
“He has already tried,” Chui said. “He is not home. Maybe still looking for her.”
“Have him keep trying. See that the man stays quiet.” And then Khai forgot about Daniel Greer. Raymond Hecate was more important. He began to smile again.
Part Two
IN THE SHADOW OF THE TOWERS
Chapter 5
MONDAY
Why the fuck didn’t somebody show me this as soon as it happened?”
Detective Steve Rybek was waving a police report under the nose of the civilian clerk who had delivered it to him a minute earlier. The clerk looked bored.
“The computers were down, Steve. The dispatcher can’t remember everything. He sent a patrol car to cruise the neighborhood, but they didn’t see anything. It wasn’t until the uniformed officers filed their report that—” “Everything that happens in one of those neighborhoods is supposed to come straight to me.”
“And it has. There it is. You’ve got it in your hand. It only happened two days ago.”
“Two days ago.” Rybek rolled his eyes and looked around as if hoping to find a higher form of intelligence with which to communicate. “You know how much heat I’ve taken in the past two days? You know how much sleep I’ve had? First they start blowing up white people, now you tell me they’re kidnapping white women?” The clerk, who was a white woman herself, looked undistressed. “It’s just a routine missing person. Probably got nothing to do with Vietnamese.”
“Oh, thanks for that insight, Sherlock. I guess I don’t even need to look into it, since you can just mystically know what’s behind it. They oughtta make you the detective.”
The clerk just stared at him, a civil servant unintimidated by abuse. Rybek walked away muttering loudly enough to be heard, “What’s the point of having a goddamned task force if no one tells the goddamned task force anything?”
He drove to the pawnshop in his unmarked car, thinking as he drove what a joke that was. The car was “unmarked” only in that it didn’t have a giant shield and “Houston Police” on the sides. But it was the same make and model as the marked police cars, and its license plate said texas exempt. It wouldn’t take a criminal mastermind to puzzle out what would drive such a car. Besides, the idea of any cop slipping unobtrusively into a Vietnamese neighborhood was ludicrous. The city actually had two Vietnamese police officers now, but neither was assigned to the Vietnamese task force. Only a month out of the academy, they were assigned to regular street patrols. Maybe after they had some experience they’d be some use in handling Vietnamese crime, but in the meantime there were only white and black and brown officers trying to win the trust of yellow people, which was a laugh riot.
Rybek cruised through the neighborhood before finding a parking space. He knew the area as well as you can know a place whose inhabitants won’t tell you more than the time of day. He knew most of th
e businessmen, how long they’d been in Houston, how many times they’d been burglarized, who they paid for protection. He wondered what an American business was still doing in this neighborhood anyway.
Rybek filled the doorway of the pawnshop. The owner glanced up at him nervously. Rybek had that effect on people. He had a vague hope that middle age would distinguish him with graying temples or something like that, but in the meantime he was mired in his midthirties and still looked like a thug. He was of average height, which made his shoulders seem all the broader. Rybek looked like a wrestler not many generations removed from Eastern Europe. He and Lech Walesa would not have seemed out of place at the same family reunion.
“Can I help you?” the pawnbroker said.
“You can take your hand out from under that counter without blowing my leg off. I’m a cop.” He opened his wallet to show the badge and advanced with it, but he didn’t expect that to be his ticket to a joy-filled welcome so he wasn’t surprised when the owner’s face stayed hard and his hands stayed under the counter.
“You Daniel Greer?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m Detective Rybek.” He stuck his hand out so the guy was forced to bring his hand out empty and shake with him. Neither of them evinced any pleasure in the contact. Like most cops, Rybek considered pawnbrokers at best semilegitimate fronts for gun dealers and fences. Check a stereo in a pawnshop and find a serial number that’s been scraped off. Too bad the guy didn’t run a perfectly respectable business that would welcome cops hanging around—say, a doughnut shop—but that couldn’t be helped.
“Saturday night you reported your wife missing, Mr. Greer. Is she still missing?”
Daniel started to speak and ended up licking his lips instead. He tried again and came out with “I’m not sure, to tell you the truth.”
Rybek looked at him steadily. “Have you heard from her?”
“No.”
“Heard from anyone? A ransom demand?”
“Oh, no. Nothing like that at all.”
“Okay, I have to ask, have you checked with her parents, see if she just went home to Mom and Dad?”
“I checked with a friend of hers who’d be the first person she’d call. She didn’t know anything. I don’t think Carol would go home to her parents. Anyway, I haven’t talked to them. I’d rather not worry them until I know something definite. They and I...” His voice trailed off.
“Yeah,” Rybek said with a trace of sympathy. “I saw their address. Kind of a dream come true for them to have a pawnbroker for a son-in-law?”
Daniel almost smiled. “Their very words.”
Rybek was leaning on the counter and looking out at the street. They both were. “You have any children?”
“Not—no.”
“Okay. She disappeared from right around here, right?”
“Yeah. They were having a street fair—Listen, I seem to be repeating myself. Are you just checking on my story?”
Rybek was still looking out the window. He had seen more interesting street life in his time. There was hardly anyone outside. Two young Vietnamese men had appeared across the street, standing there idly, but they seemed to have nothing to do and no interest in anyone. They didn’t look across the street. They didn’t seem to look anywhere in particular. The two were dressed similarly, in black dress pants, jackets, and cowboy boots. One of them wore a leather jacket with fringes.
Rybek turned back to Daniel. “I have a special slant on this. I’m with what we call Special Crimes, specifically looking into crimes that take place among the Vietnamese. Which you’re not, obviously, but I get reports on anything unusual that happens in a neighborhood like this one.”
“You think Vietnamese had something to do with this?”
“I don’t have any idea. But the circumstances make me curious. So do these Saigon cowboys hanging around on the comer over there.”
To Daniel the phrase sounded both knowledgeable and bitter, not like something the cop had made up on the spot. He wondered but didn’t ask if Rybek had been in Vietnam during the war. It would be embarrassing. Not like asking if someone had done something shameful, but a painful question, like asking if someone had lost a friend or lover. If the answer was yes Daniel couldn’t pretend to understand the cop’s feelings and he’d feel like a clod trying to do so, a tourist in someone else’s memories. Daniel hadn’t been to Vietnam, though he was the right age for it. So he just stood there and nodded his head knowingly.
“You know them?” he asked of the Saigon cowboys.
Rybek shook his head. “But I know the type. I’ve been investigating the gangs for almost a year now. There’s too many to keep track of, and they keep changing. But those—”
“Gangs? Like a mafia? I’ve heard rumors, but—”
“Mafias’d be more like it. There’s no one dominant one. But, hell yes, they’re out there. Wherever you have a large, cohesive ethnic group you have mafias.” For a moment he sounded like a sociology text, except for his peculiarly heartfelt tone. Daniel thought he must have done some passionate study of the subject. “These were thriving from the first boatload. They brought it with ’em like laundry businesses. Besides, it makes sense that they’d prey on their own kind. Who’d you rather steal from, hard-working gook families that half of ’em own their own businesses, or nigger junkies that don’t know where their next fix is coming from?”
Daniel paid little attention to this mini-lecture. He was thinking of what he needed to say to make the detective back off the investigation.
“I—I’m really not as worried as I was Saturday night. I think maybe I overreacted. I have a feeling she’s ... okay.”
Rybek looked at him steadily. “Has she done this before?”
“Gone away? Well, just for—overnight, maybe, once or twice.”
“Uh-huh,” Rybek said. He looked idly out the window again. “Well, I’ll tell you what. Here’s my card. I’ll be trying to check from the Vietnamese end, but that could take a while. If you hear anything, let me know.”
“I will, but—”
Greer’s tone changed abruptly. He had sounded almost breezy so far, but Rybek had seen that reaction before; it didn’t mean much. But now suddenly the pawnbroker seemed clenched tight, eyebrows to toes. He probably wasn’t even aware of it.
“I think she’s probably alive and well,” Daniel finished. “Don’t you?”
“I think she is,” Rybek said, looking him in the eye. “After this much time without a trace. She’d have turned up by now otherwise.”
That was a complete lie. Sometimes a body didn’t turn up for months. Sometimes never. The earth is full of unfound bodies. But the guy looked relieved, which was the purpose of the lie.
Of course, her still being alive would raise other spectres in the guy’s head soon enough.
“We’re not going to give up on it, Mr. Greer.” Rybek’s tone had hardened. “This isn’t some goddamn Third World country, not yet. A white woman can’t just disappear without somebody doing something about it.”
The pawnbroker looked away, then turned back and nodded and shook hands again, more warmly this time. Rybek hoped he had sounded convincing, because he did mean that one.
Daniel watched the cop leave. He wished he had said something stronger: No, do give up on it, Officer. Don’t look for her. But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to say that. What if the cop decided he wanted to hear it from Carol herself?
Daniel could still hear the voice on the telephone. It had awakened him from a troubled sleep in the very early hours of Sunday morning. A quiet, husky voice telling him not to worry, his wife was fine.
“Let me speak to her,” Daniel had said, wiping sleep from his eyes.
“No. Just listen. Don’t call the police.”
“I already have.”
The voice had made a heart-stopping pause. But finally it went on. “Then don’t call them again. If you hear back from them tell them everything’s swell. It will be if y
ou just keep quiet.”
“What have you done with her?”
“She’s fine,” the man’s voice had said again. “Nobody’s touched her. You just don’t do anything until you hear from me again. Go to work like normal. Look like a happy man.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Nothing yet. Just no interference. Understand?”
“But—”
“You’re starting to annoy me,” the voice had said. “And there’s only one person here for me to take it out on when I get annoyed.”
“All right, all right. Don’t—I won’t do anything. Should I start trying to get some money together?”
There had been another pause. This one seemed to signify amusement. “You don’t have enough,” the voice had finally said. “Just keep quiet.”
“I will,” Daniel had said, and the phone had gone dead in his hand.
Now he was afraid he hadn’t kept quiet enough. He should have told that cop his wife was home safe and sound. But what if the cop had checked on that?
Daniel found himself gripping the counter as if he would strangle it. That was all he could do.
Back at the station house, Rybek continued his speculations aloud to his partner. “Why would they keep her this long? A tall white woman who’d stand out among them like Judy Garland in Munchkinland? Why would they run the risk? Why would they take her in the first place?”
“Remember snuff films?” his partner said musingly. “I heard a rumor that the Vietnamese are reviving the genre right here. Maybe they’ve got a casting agency.”