by Lis Wiehl
They were just finishing their food—Charlie appeared to be having no trouble polishing off his—when a small Chinese man came in the front door.
Kenny Zhong. Charlie and Mia exchanged a look.
Kenny came up to their table. “Mia, Charlie,” he said, inclining his head. “How nice to see you here again.”
“The food’s always good,” Charlie said, putting the last forkful into his mouth.
“I understand you have been asking questions about one of my employees,” he said with disconcerting directness. “Or should I say, my ex-employee. Would you like to speak in my office?”
Ex-employee. Mia exchanged a look with Charlie as they both got to their feet. As Charlie reached for his wallet, Kenny waved his hand. “No, no, it is my pleasure.”
“I insist.” Charlie’s voice had enough steel in it that Kenny didn’t persist.
Mia caught a glimpse of the bills as Charlie laid them on the table. It was enough to pay for their meal twice over. Maybe it would be a start on helping Chun get out of whatever situation she was in.
Kenny took Mia’s elbow and steered her through a narrow hallway, with Charlie following. They went past a kitchen where cooks tended woks nestled in flames, down a short hall, and into his small office. Mia and Charlie sat in two chairs that looked like they had been retired from the dining room after they had gotten too battered. The only thing that wasn’t utilitarian was the large fish tank behind him, filled with a half dozen silver fish that swam in sync with one another.
“So why were you asking about Lihong?”
Kenny’s expression was mild, but she remembered the way he had yelled at the young man, not knowing he was being observed, and then dealt him a stinging slap.
Mia had spoken with Lihong twice. He had called her Mrs. Scott. And he had tried to tell her something about Scott, saying, “He help.”
His words had lit a tiny wavering flame of hope in Mia. Sure, Scott had cheated on her, and he had helped many of his clients avoid taxes, but he had also drawn the line at assisting a drug dealer with money laundering—a decision that had ultimately cost him his life. However Scott had helped Lihong, it had made it possible for Mia not to be so angry at him.
Mia answered Kenny Zhong’s question with a question. “You said Lihong no longer works here?” She did not want to get him into trouble.
Kenny shook his head. “I had to let him go two weeks ago.”
“The last time I was here, I happened to talk to him. He said that Scott had been helping him.”
Kenny’s brows drew together. “Helping him? Did Scott tell you about it?”
“No,” Mia admitted. But by that time Scott hadn’t really been talking to her. Not about anything that mattered. “And then Lihong asked if I could help him.”
“But help him with what?”
“That’s just the thing. He seemed to know only a few words of English. And he seemed frightened. He left before I could figure out what he wanted.” She skipped over the part about how Kenny had yelled at him and then slapped him.
Kenny’s face smoothed out. “I am too soft. People come to me with very low-level language skills. They do not realize that in America you must speak English to get a job. But I still try to help out people from my homeland. Lihong was one of those people.” He shook his head, his expression changing to one of disgust. “And how did he repay me? Every time I came looking for him, he was out in the back taking a cigarette break. We have a saying. ‘When a lazy donkey is turning a grindstone, it will take a lot of breaks to pee and poop.’ I told him again and again that it wasn’t acceptable, but he wouldn’t listen.”
Mia nodded, remembering the flare of Lihong’s lighter, how it had revealed how thin his face was, how drawn.
“But it turns out he had taken advantage of me in other ways as well,” Kenny continued. “And that was probably how he wanted Scott to help him. With something illegal.”
Mia blinked. “Illegal?”
“Two weeks ago, I learned that Lihong’s papers were false. Of course I fired him on the spot. He may have asked Scott to help him get a better set of documents.”
It felt like she had swallowed a boulder. She hadn’t even considered that possibility when Lihong had said Scott was helping him. To Lihong, a better set of false papers would have been a good thing, allowing him the flexibility to find employment somewhere else without the risk of being deported.
“Do you look at the papers for all your restaurant workers?” Charlie asked.
“Certainly. But I’m not an expert. If it looks right to me, how am I to know it’s wrong?”
“Then how did you figure out it was wrong?”
Did Kenny hesitate? “Another worker told me.”
And what had Lihong said to her, at least what had her phone translation app said he said? He pay, so they will look the other way. Your husband is trying to help. Was Kenny bribing someone to look the other way about people’s immigration status? Maybe he had decided, for whatever reason, that it wasn’t worth keeping Lihong.
“Why didn’t you report his immigration status to the authorities?” Mia asked.
He leaned across his desk. “We all have problems within our family.” He looked at her for a long moment. “But we don’t talk about them outside our family.”
Mia heard the subtext. As far as the wider world was concerned, Scott had died in an accident. Scott’s mistakes had died along with him. They hadn’t been paraded before the public.
“Do you have an address for Lihong?” Charlie asked.
Kenny shrugged. “I do not know where he is.”
“Are any of the staff here friends with him?” Mia asked.
“No.” A decisive shake of the head. “He worked here for less than a year and he kept to himself.”
“A man’s body was found in Puget Sound two days ago,” Charlie said. “Mia thought it looked like Lihong. I have a photo of the man’s face on my cell phone. Would you mind looking at it?”
He stiffened. “I am not sure I could be of help, but of course I will look.”
Mia didn’t say anything. Officially, Charlie should be showing Kenny a sketch made by a forensic artist, not a snapshot of an actual corpse, especially one that wasn’t in the best shape. But Charlie had never been one to play by the rules, and clearly there had been no love lost between Kenny and Lihong.
Charlie pulled his cell phone from his pocket, found the photo, and handed it over.
Kenny looked at it for a long moment. He pressed his lips together. Then he handed it back. “It could be him. But with the condition of his face, I am not certain. I am sorry.” He tilted his head. “Did this man kill himself?” The thought did not seem to particularly bother him.
“The cause of death is still being determined.” Charlie scrolled forward. “Let me show you another photo. There were some marks on his wrists. They looked like burns.”
When he saw the second photo, Kenny nodded. “Those are burns from the edge of a wok. I do not know if it is Lihong, but I believe whoever it is worked at a Chinese restaurant.”
CHAPTER 25
Mia sat slumped in the car, the side of her forehead resting against the cold window. Charlie had moved the car down the block, where it was half hidden by a Dumpster. She squinted at the clock on Charlie’s dash. “I can’t believe it’s after eleven and they’re all still working.”
Charlie was watching the Jade Kitchen with a small pair of binoculars he had taken from his glove compartment. Kenny had driven away hours ago. When Chun finally left, their plan was to follow her home to see if she would be more willing to talk when she wasn’t surrounded by witnesses.
With a sigh, Mia pulled out her cell phone and called home.
“Hey, Kali,” she said after the other woman answered. “I hope I didn’t wake you up.”
“I was still awake.”
“I’m afraid I’m not going to get home until pretty late. Probably not until well after midnight.”
“Oh.
Okay.” Kali’s voice was flat. She sounded exhausted.
“Is everything all right? Are you having problems?”
Kali had had chemo two days before, as she did every Wednesday. It seemed like each treatment left her weaker. She had lost all interest in food, and there were days Mia feared she had lost interest in life as well.
Now she sounded like even the simple act of talking required too much of an effort. Had she been throwing up again? Was she dehydrated? She had had to go to the emergency room once before for IV fluids.
Mia calculated how long it would take her to get home. Her car was still at the parking structure, but if it was really bad, Charlie could just drop her off and she would take Kali’s car.
Charlie had taken his binoculars away from his face and was now watching Mia.
“No, no, I’m fine.” Kali’s tone was unconvincing.
“Well, something’s wrong. I can tell.”
“Eldon and Gabe got into a little bit of a fight.”
“A fight?” Mia thoughts flashed to Eldon’s fists, as big as hams. “Was anyone hurt?”
“Not really, expect maybe bruised feelings. There was some shoving and name calling. I’m not sure who started it, but I sent Eldon to my room. I didn’t feel right disciplining Gabe so I didn’t tell him to do anything. He went to his room anyway.” The two women had talked about how Kali could deal with Brooke if Mia wasn’t there, but Mia had assumed Gabe was too big to be concerned about. Obviously erroneously.
“Could you do me a favor and give the phone to him?”
Kali’s breathing grew labored as she climbed the stairs. “Gabe,” she called, “your mom’s on the phone and she wants to talk to you.”
After a moment Gabe said, “Yeah?”
Just the way he grunted that one word made Mia grit her teeth. “Kali says you and Eldon got into a fight. What the heck happened, young man?”
“I just lost my temper.” A long pause, as if he were calculating what he could get away with. “Sorry. And I already said sorry to Eldon.”
Probably with the same lack of enthusiasm. “You’ve been losing your temper a lot lately.”
An exasperated sigh. Mia didn’t need a video feed to know that Gabe was rolling his eyes.
“Please don’t start talking to me about puberty. Because if you do, I’m going to hang up right now.”
“Gabe!” She fisted her free hand and knocked it against her lips. What should she do? What was her priority? Her kid? Her job?
She remembered something Anne, who worked down the hall, had once told her.
“My rule is, wherever my feet are, that’s where my heart is,” Anne had said, looking down at her flats. “So now when my feet are at work, my heart stays at work. And when I’m at home, my heart stays at home. I don’t split my attention anymore.”
Easy enough for Anne to say. While she did have four kids, she also had a husband who could backstop her. Still, Mia decided to put her advice into practice. Her feet were in Charlie’s car, so that’s where her attention would be.
“We’re going to have to talk about this more tomorrow morning. For right now, I expect you to behave yourself. Don’t start any arguments and don’t respond to any. When I come home, I don’t want to hear there were any more problems tonight. Okay?”
“Okay.”
He still sounded sullen. But she would deal with him when her feet were in the same room as he was. She tapped the button to disconnect.
“Everything all right?” Charlie asked. He must have figured it wasn’t too bad because he had put the binoculars back up to his eyes.
“You probably heard the high points. Eldon and Gabe got in a fight. Nobody was hurt. I don’t even know what it was about. Maybe it’s partly my fault. I didn’t ask Gabe before I moved another kid into his room. And not just any kid. You’ve seen Eldon. He must weigh like two hundred twenty, two hundred forty pounds? He takes up a lot of space.”
“He’s two forty, easy,” Charlie agreed. “But he’s also so mellow he always looks half asleep.”
“I wish some of that would rub off on Gabe. It seems like lately he’s got a hair-trigger temper. Last week I had to ground him because he threw his glass against the wall.” Mia remembered how they had all stared at the milk trickling down the wall, the curved pieces of glass gleaming on the floor. Even Gabe had looked surprised.
She remembered her feet and where they were. “I guess I’ll worry about it when I get home.” Bringing herself back to the matter at hand, Mia asked, “Do you think Kenny was telling the truth?”
“About what? Since Scott was his accountant, it’s pretty likely there’s a lot Kenny doesn’t tell the truth about, starting with the IRS and probably moving out from there.”
Mia had found a note to Kenny that Scott had written shortly before he died. He had warned him that, when compared to his credit transactions, Kenny seemed to be underreporting his cash and that the IRS was going to notice. Scott hadn’t spelled out any remedy. At least not in writing. But she had since learned that he had helped other clients hide money from the IRS.
“I think Scott probably helped him get better at hiding things.”
“And didn’t you tell me Scott had to warn Kenny about—what was that term?”
“Guan-xi.” Mia pronounced it gwan-she. “I guess in China they say, ‘No guan xi? No good!’ Kenny tried to spin it as being all about building relationships.”
“In America, otherwise known as bribes and kickbacks.” Charlie shook his head. “I think the guy in the morgue is Lihong, and I think Kenny knows it. He probably figured it was safer to hedge his bets. And you also can’t tell me he believes that all his workers are here legally. Financially, it probably makes more sense for him to look the other way. That way you can pay people below the market rate, because where else are they going to go? But maybe Lihong’s papers were so bad he decided he had to turn him loose. Or I guess it could even be like he said—that Lihong spent all his time out back smoking.”
“Or maybe Kenny fired him because he was complaining about the way they were being treated. Remember what Lihong told me? He said something about Kenny hurting them. In fact, I saw Kenny hit him.” Mia remembered the shock of it, Lihong cowering, his hand raised. Kenny hadn’t known he had a witness.
“Was he physically hurt?”
Mia didn’t know. “It was an open-handed slap.”
Charlie’s mouth twisted. “That would certainly sting, but would it leave a permanent mark? There were plenty of bruises on that body. Even if it does belong to Lihong, who’s to say the bruises were from Kenny? Maybe he got them after he was fired.”
“Didn’t you say they were in different stages of healing? Maybe they were accidental, like those wok burns.” Thinking of what Kenny had said, she asked, “Do you think Lihong could have killed himself? No job, no money, no papers, no English. He must have felt pretty hopeless.”
Charlie made a raspberry sound. “So how would that have worked? He stood naked in the Sound, fired the gun at his own back at what would have to be near point-blank range, yet somehow managed to make it so that the bullet didn’t punch through him and it didn’t leave any powder burns on his skin? I don’t think so. So please stop beating yourself up.”
Mia remembered Lihong’s face, the desperation warring with hope as he beckoned to her. “He was looking at me like I was going to save him. And instead, I just forgot about him.”
“You were in the middle of a big case, remember? In fact, you almost got killed. And it’s not like Lihong gave you a lot to go on. Besides, if Kenny’s right, and he was looking for help with illegal papers, there’s no way you could have helped him.”
“He got fired, he came looking for me, and he didn’t find me. Maybe he wasn’t desperate enough to commit suicide, but he could have been desperate enough to do something illegal. He wouldn’t have had a lot of other options for making money.”
It was irrational—she hadn’t even known Lihong had been looking for her�
��but Mia couldn’t help feeling she had let him down. Twice.
As Mia was speaking, Charlie lifted his head to stare at the restaurant. The back door had opened and the bow-tied manager walked out. He got into a small, dark Honda just as a white fifteen-passenger van pulled up at the back door. The rest of the restaurant workers—and certainly there were more than the fifteen the van should hold—shuffled out of the restaurant and started filing on. Even from this distance, their slumped shoulders and dragging footsteps made it clear just how tired everyone was.
Charlie started the car. “I’m starting to get the feeling Chun doesn’t live alone,” he said.
CHAPTER 26
Charlie followed the white van, hanging far enough back not to arouse suspicion but not so far that he might lose it. When it turned to get on the freeway, he got closer, leaving only one car in between. Even so he almost missed the van when it suddenly took an exit without signaling.
Was the driver trying to lose him? But as they started driving through a run-down area that paralleled the freeway, the van didn’t take any more evasive maneuvers. Used car lots and small, worn-out-looking houses were interspersed with strip clubs and restaurants offering pho or tacos. A car pulled up to a girl standing on the corner, and she leaned in to bargain.
Finally the van stopped in front of a shabby two-story house that had once been white. To the right was a windowless tavern. To the left stood a house with boarded-up windows and a listing FOR RENT sign in the yard.
“Home sweet home,” Mia said as Charlie drove past the workers who were beginning to climb out of the van. He circled the block and pulled into the trash-strewn 7-Eleven parking lot kitty-corner from the house.
“You still want to try to talk to Chun?” he asked. Thin seams of light showed on the edges of the windows, which appeared to be covered with newspapers. “’Cause there’s gonna be an audience.”
“At least the manager won’t be there.” She waved one slender hand at their surroundings: the cracked asphalt, the shabby buildings, the tags on any blank surface. “I’m sure when people dream about coming to America, this is not what they picture.”