The Eternal Summer (Chuck Restic Private Investigator Series Book 2)

by Paul MacDonald

  “I need to jump early,” I said to the five people in the room and to several more on the phone, “but before I do, I just want to echo what Bill and Walt have said about keeping the focus on the big picture. I have nothing really to add,” not that anyone would care if I actually did have something to add, “but I do want to say that I am in full agreement with everything that’s been said.”

  And with that, I rose from the table a good thirty minutes before the meeting was over and, having said nothing at all of any significance, I got the smiling nods of approval from the folks in the room, as if I had just imparted some great scrap of wisdom that would last for generations.

  “Thanks for all your help,” someone commented without even a trace of sarcasm.

  I did have a legitimate conflict that kept me from staying the entire hour. I had an appointment to meet a Mr. Li in Chinatown. The previous evening, Valenti impressed upon me the importance of setting up some time with him as he was convinced Li had a hand in his granddaughter’s disappearance. Exactly what kind of role he played was hazy.

  “You can do anything you want,” he told me after leading me back to the car to see me off. “You can dig into my past if that makes you feel better. You can talk to any and every one remotely connected to me. But do me one favor — talk to Li first.”

  I promised him I would. What I didn’t promise was that I would do it with Hector. The knife-wielding tattletale was a nuisance and as such, unnecessary to the investigation. I instructed Hector to meet me at the office at eleven but left for the meeting with Li at ten.

  ***

  The sign for the “Society for the Preservation of Chinese-American Culture and Heritage” wasn’t wide enough to hold all the words and had to be laid out in two rows. The narrow storefront masquerading as its headquarters literally sat in the shadow of Valenti’s proposed new art museum. The glass display windows were wallpapered in “Yes on 57” posters and created a dizzying collage of red and gold.

  I entered the small office and felt like I had stumbled upon a miniature version of the Eighteenth National Conference of the Communist Party of China. The narrow room was lined on each side by around a dozen chairs occupied by middle-aged Asian men wearing near-identical suits and ties. No one said anything but all eyes were on me. At the far end was the unassuming “chairman” who was about half their age and looked like a former skate urchin from Huntington Beach. It was the same man I ran into outside Jeff Schwartzman’s office. He rose from behind a long table to greet me.

  “Mr. Restic,” he said and pressed his hand into mine. “I’m Gao Li. Thank you for reaching out.”

  “Well, thank you for meeting me on such short notice.”

  “Please have a seat,” he said and motioned to a chair in front of the long table.

  I casually glanced behind me to see if anyone else was going to join, but no one made any such move. I reluctantly took a seat with my back to the rest of the room. What at first resembled a conference now felt more like a tribunal.

  I sat down before Li’s penetrating gaze. For a man in his late twenties, he exuded a lot of confidence. Li spoke first.

  “Mr. Restic, I am a proud man,” he began. “And come from very proud people. Ours is a story of struggle. And Chinatown is the living proof of that struggle.” I shifted uncomfortably in the hard chair. One thing the corporate world had taught me was to recognize when a long speech was coming. This one exceeded even my worst expectations.

  Somewhere around the fifteen minute mark I added an “I understand” even though I understood very little. They were the words of the village elder in a trite, period-piece movie spoken by an American kid in a baggy sweatshirt. He spoke about present day Chinatown like it was a cultural jewel of Chinese history. He didn’t mention that half the restaurants were Vietnamese and the other half served Chinese food but were owned and operated by Vietnamese. The migration of the Chinese out of Chinatown was decades in the making. Alhambra and Arcadia to the east was where the real Chinese-American community resided.

  “But we will never forget the road we’ve taken to arrive here,” he further explained. “Nor the treatment we were subjected to along the way.”

  I was then forced to listen to the entire history of the Chinese struggle in Southern California culminating in the “holocaust” of 1938 when the city decided to build a train station in Chinatown. To make room for the new structure they “tore at the fabric of the Chinese community” and “ripped families from their homes” and “dropped them in a desolate spot in the city,” the current location. Left unsaid in this narrative of Chinese diaspora was the Italian community the Chinese displaced in settling in the new neighborhood. Also left unsaid, was the money made by men like Mr. Li’s grandfather in the whole affair. Valenti had coached me on this part of the young man’s narrative. And although I didn’t want to be the old man’s pawn in some disagreement between profiteers, I didn’t appreciate being spoken to as if I were one of the perpetrators behind said holocaust.

  “Was your grandfather active in real estate at that time?” I asked innocently enough. I achieved a cessation of the lecture, but was then subjected to its opposite form of torture — the silent treatment. “I apologize if I offended you,” I told the young man.

  “A wise man makes his own decisions,” he intoned. “An ignorant man follows public opinion.”

  “I beg your pardon?” I snapped.

  Li was taking the “village elder” role too far. He could spout Confucian pearls until he was blue in the face but no punk kid was going to call me an idiot to my face. And no one, and I mean no one, was going to trade pithy one-liners with a corporate hack like me and expect to come out on top.

  “It is better to conceal one’s knowledge than it is to reveal one’s ignorance,” I countered. “And you never answered the question about your grandfather.”

  From Li spewed forth a litany of threats to me and all white people, which were interspersed with hollow excuses that attempted to absolve his bloodline of choices it had to make. His head was a muddled mess of ancient Chinese philosophy, Marxist slogans, and self-help validations. He was living proof of another gem of the corporate vernacular: He had just enough information to make him dangerous.

  “On the phone you mentioned Mr. Valenti suggesting we meet,” he said curtly. He was back in his village elder persona. He seemed able to switch back and forth with ease, perhaps because he didn’t realize he was doing it. “Can we jump to the matter at hand?”

  “Of course,” I answered. But not sure exactly what matter he was referring to, I remained silent.

  “Is there a new development that you’d like to discuss?” he tried to tease it out of me.

  “Could you be more specific?”

  “Is there something we need to discuss regarding our…disagreement with Mr. Valenti?”

  And then the roomful of low-level party hacks suddenly made sense — they thought I had come with an offer to negotiate on the museum deal. Given the overall instability of this young man in sneakers, I didn’t want to break to him the bad news.

  “This is definitely awkward,” I told them. “But I don’t have an offer.”

  The gang behind began to murmur.

  “You said you are working for Mr. Valenti,” Li tried to clarify.

  “Yes, I am but—”

  “And that Mr. Valenti suggested we talk.”

  “—but I am working with him on an entirely different matter. Not the museum.”

  The murmuring behind me grew louder. Word spread quickly that what was once victory for the cause was not that at all. A couple of them got out of their chairs and spat words at me before shuffling out of the room.

  “You can’t push us around any longer,” Li shouted over them. “While you’ve gotten fat and lazy with your entitlements, we have risen to our rightly place.” He prattled on about the rise of New China and the fall of the West. It was tired prose. But behind it was an anger that went deeper than some riff over racial i
nequality. “We fucking own San Marino, dude!” he finished with a flourish.

  They were the first, honest words out of his mouth. And he was right. New Chinese money had poured into the tony enclave next to Pasadena, much to the chagrin of the old wealth residents. For a community that escorted anyone with a skin shade darker than alabaster to the city limits, the site of so many Asians gobbling up properties must have made their blue blood boil. And made men like Mr. Li extremely happy.

  I needed to extricate myself from this situation before it got out of hand. For the first time, I regretted my decision to leave the knife-wielding magician behind. I rose from the chair and faced off with Li.

  “Is there any message you would like me to deliver to Mr. Valenti?” I asked with all the formality of a Foreign Service officer.

  “Yes,” Li stammered, “yes, there is. Tell Mr. Valenti this.” Li then pulled out another of his proverbs:

  “Man’s power is only as strong as what he cherishes most.”

  As I walked out of the office I couldn’t help but think what a curious choice of words given the circumstances. I wondered what Valenti cherished most — his museum or his granddaughter.

  ***

  “Gao?” Claire laughed. “His name is Jimmy.”

  We met for lunch at a place between our respective offices. It was one of these small-bite restaurants that were all the rage in downtown. It featured two-chew plates that ran upwards of fifteen dollars per bite. The casual decor and “hey guys” wait-staff were meant to eschew pretense but succeeded in doing the opposite. It was the kind of place my ex-wife loved.

  “He introduced himself as Gao,” I told her.

  “He was Jimmy for twenty-five years of his life and only recently became Gao. He’s managing his brand,” she said.

  “Which brand is that?”

  “The kind that caters to new Chinese money.”

  Claire explained how, after the housing crisis, California was inundated with overseas money, as mostly Chinese investors pounced on attractive buying opportunities to enter the real estate market. For a while it was assumed that every cash offer in the state had its roots in the Far East. “Jimmy — now Gao — got in tight with that investor set.”

  “Seems like a smart move.”

  “He’s done very well for himself. He has a big house in San Marino.”

  “Yeah, I heard.”

  Claire was closely tied into the real estate development world in Southern California. Her law firm specialized in corporate contracts and securitization and her main client was Valenti. Career often came first with Claire.

  “How’d you get involved in talking to Jimmy?” she probed.

  “Valenti asked me to,” I replied.

  “He approached you?” She was just as surprised as I was when the old man called me. “What for?”

  “He wants help on a private matter.”

  This about sent her spinning off her chair with curiosity.

  “And you accepted it?” she asked with her face buried in the menu. She played it off casually.

  “I could use the money,” I explained.

  “You still have it in for him, huh?”

  “I could use the money,” I repeated. I wasn’t ready to tell her the real reason Valenti approached me, not because I thought she would use it to her advantage but because I held onto some vague notion of client confidentiality. I steered the conversation back to Li. “What is going on with the museum and this cultural heritage proposition?”

  “I’m biased but it’s safe to say that proposition has nothing to do with protecting some fragile, cultural heritage.”

  Proposition voting was a particularly maddening aspect of California politics. After years of gridlock in Sacramento, citizens began putting propositions on the ballot which allowed voters to set the course for their state. If approved, the government would have no choice but to abide by them, despite how unfair or fiscally reckless they were. These quickly became the tool of every special interest group within and even outside of California to advance their cause.

  I could never decipher what exactly I was voting on with these propositions and thus defaulted to voting no on all of them. I must not have been alone because the writers of these propositions began wording them in a way where a YES vote was actually a NO vote and vice versa:

  Are you in favor of not stopping a halt to the court-ordered decision to cease automatic funding for firefighter relief trusts?

  After that, I just stopped voting on them entirely.

  “Can you translate for me what this one is about?”

  “What they are all about,” said Claire. “Money.”

  The fight apparently wasn’t over the museum itself but over the land surrounding the museum. Cultural hotspots were all the rage in the downtown revitalization push and a boon to developers of high-end condos.

  “Who owns the land around the museum?” I asked naively. Claire’s smile gave me my answer. “And Gao wants a piece?”

  “It’s a brand thing,” she explained. “He wants to be the go-to man for foreign investors. A development in his backyard without him having a piece is a blow to his image,” she said. “The Chinese are very proud. He doesn’t want to lose face.”

  “Is the proposition going to pass?”

  “That’s the hard part about propositions — the outcomes are almost entirely random.”

  “How nervous is the Valenti camp?”

  “It’s nothing that can’t be overturned at a later date.”

  “But that would take a lot of time and a lot of money,” I added.

  “And Carl isn’t the patient type.”

  Shop-talk ended once the food arrived. Career might have been a priority for Claire but dining out was her real love.

  “You have to try these arrancini,” she gushed and held a plate out for me. “We had it last week and it was amazing.”

  “How is Mr. Teeth?” I asked casually. “Is he still trying to open a regatta on the L.A. River?”

  Claire humored me with a smile. Her boyfriend was a square-jawed square and product of some English-sounding, East Coast prep school. He could boil water and somehow make you feel inferior.

  “Todd and I are just friends.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t know,” I said.

  “Don’t go feeling sorry for me,” she shot back. “I met someone else. He’s got a great mind and a passion for what he does.” The latter was definitely a shot in my direction. “He owns an art gallery down the road and he’s really doing well. He was just featured in a Times piece about Next Gen galleries. He reps some big names and has some pretty amazing stuff.” That second-to-last word was a fixture in Claire’s vocabulary.

  “His family is wealthy?” I asked.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because no one owns a gallery and actually makes money off it.”

  That hurt her more than I intended.

  “You must be alone,” she surmised. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be so interested, and nasty about what I have going on.” That pretty much soured the rest of the lunch. I tried several times to right the ship but all my attempts fell flat.

  “I’m sorry for being a jerk,” I said.

  Claire didn’t acknowledge it right away. She waited until we had finished the meal and drifted out onto the sidewalk crammed with office workers returning from their lunch hour. She gave me a hug and whispered in my ear:

  “Get yourself a girl, Chuck.”

  ***

  When I got back to the office, my assistant was waiting for me by the entrance to our floor. She looked anxious and when I inquired as to why she was hanging by the door, she leaned in to whisper.

  “Mr. Restic, you have a visitor,” she said.

  I looked over her shoulder at the reception area where Hector sat on one of the leather couches and impassively watched a video extolling our corporate values that played on loop all day. It drove anyone within earshot to near insanity but it looked like Hector was hypnoti
zed by it.

  “Don’t worry, he can wait a little longer,” I told her and headed towards my office before Hector saw me.

  “But Mr. Restic, he said it was quite important that he speak to you. He’ll be out of the restroom shortly,” she explained.

  “Restroom? Who are you talking about?”

  “Sorry about that,” a voice boomed behind me. “Bacon hot dog didn’t sit right with me.”

  Detective Ricohr waddled his way towards us. His voice brought Hector out of his hypnotic state and he too came in my direction. The four of us stood there staring at each other. I spoke first.

  “What brings you here, detective?” I asked.

  Hector pulled a bank move straight out of the Blue Angels playbook. He quickly retreated out the glass doors towards the elevator banks.

  “I didn’t catch your name,” Detective Ricohr called out after him.

  “Hector,” the old magician shot back.

  “Hector what?”

  “Just Hector,” he answered and disappeared into the elevator car.

  “Just Hector,” the detective laughed.

  I gestured empathetically to his area of suffering. “I see your feet are still bothering you.”

  “And I thought I was getting better,” he replied and looked around. “Should we go to your office?”

  “We should be good here,” I replied.

  My assistant didn’t want to intrude and excused herself. She wasn’t more than a few feet away when Detective Ricohr threw his first question out.

  “So what do you know about Jeanette Schwartzman?”

  It was a cheap tactic to get a visceral reaction from me. I was familiar enough with the detective to not fall for it.

  “I know of her,” I answered, “but I have never met her.”

  “Carl Valenti’s granddaughter, right?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “I didn’t think you liked that man,” he said.