“Who went to Hong Kong for his health shortly after a deposition apparently made Milwaukee too warm for him. If this mess really is tied to Vance Hayes in some way, it’s interesting that bad guys who get involved in it find ways to make sudden trips overseas.”
“I’m not sure what you’ re saying.”
“Hayes makes a lot of trips to Southeast Asia with no good reason to go there, and no evidence that the bad reason is drugs. Low-life hoods and rough customers keep showing up in the background with money suddenly coming out of their ears just when they need to change climates. How do you put it together?”
How do I put it together? What, I smoke a couple of cigarettes and all of a sudden I’m Harriet Vane? “Excuse me, Lord Peter, but as you were such a great help with that unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Scotland Yard wonders if you’d do your bit on this little matter of the lawyer in the lake.”
Still, Washington’s question intrigued her, so as they walked into Curtin Hall and headed for the stairs to the second floor she took a stab at an answer.
“I suppose it could add up to sexual tourism,” she said.
“I suppose the same thing. So the next question is, how does sexual tourism in Southeast Asia get people killed in southeast Wisconsin?”
They strolled into a tiered, one-hundred-twenty-seat lecture room where Melissa would soon be teaching ninety-eight freshmen who’d tested their way out of Survey of English Literature I.
“You want me to say honor killings,” Melissa said as she set a book and lecture notes on the desk, “so I will. Although I associate them more with Islamic regions.”
“Don’t kid yourself. Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, or stone cold atheist, there’s plenty of places right here in the USA where messing with the wrong guy’s sister can get your cranium ventilated for you.”
“Wrong guy’s sister? Where did that come from?”
“Nguyen has a record, and he knows how to handle a gun.”
“Maybe so,” Melissa said, “but he’s a long way from the scariest guy in this little drama.”
“I’d like to show you something,” Washington said, snapping open an ancient black fiberglass Samsonite attaché case.
“I’ll be happy to look, but in about seventeen minutes you’ll be competing with Much Ado About Nothing,” Melissa said, glancing at her watch.
“I mentioned that when we searched Dreyfus’ studio we couldn’t find the copies of Soldier for Hire magazine that you’d noticed. But after Hayes’ death, the Lake Delton police found these in the hotel safe, where Hayes had left them as soon as he checked in.”
He laid a snapshot and a copy of Soldier for Hire on the desk. Melissa examined the photograph. It looked like the one from 1960s Saigon that Rep had found in Polly Albright’s garage.
“Now look at the magazine.”
“I have, actually. I’d noticed a copy in Dreyfus’ studio, and after everything that happened I asked a colleague to send me some back issues and I glanced through half-a-dozen of them. It seems aimed at gun nuts, anti-government fanatics, and survivalists. It has more phallic substitutes per column inch than anything I’ve ever read before, including Mandate and Tropic of Cancer.”
“I’m blushing,” Washington said, “but I’ll bet you can’t tell. Look at the classified ads.”
Melissa obediently flipped to the small-type pages in the back of the magazine. The three- to six-line ads here offered survival manuals, freeze-dried food that would last for decades, correspondence courses for people who wanted to become private investigators, services to find loved ones reported as missing in action in Vietnam, and vast arrays of exotic weaponry. After thirty seconds of skimming, Melissa’s eyes fell on a circled ad in the lower third of the middle column:
PEST CONTROL
Extermination services. Quick, efficient, no
questions asked. Results guaranteed.
“I can’t believe this,” she said. “It sounds like a hit-man looking for work. Can that possibly be legal?”
“I’d need more than this before I went to a DA. Point is, let’s say Dreyfus sent Vance Hayes the altered calendar picture, along with a copy of Soldier for Hire magazine with that ad circled. What would you conclude?”
“That Dreyfus was trying to blackmail Hayes without leaving an explicit paper trail.”
“Right. Connect the dots for me.”
“Okay,” Melissa said, as fascinated by the intellectual challenge as she was appalled by its implications. “Somewhere, somehow, Dreyfus stumbles over the old picture of Vance Hayes’ brother with Xu Ky in South Vietnam. He learns that Hayes has been helping Xu Ky for years. Maybe he has an inkling from his softcore on-line business that Hayes has unhealthy predilections. Maybe he finds out about Hayes’ unusual trips to Southeast Asia and figures that’s what they were about.”
“Uh huh,” Washington said. “Maybe he even gets his mitts on one of Hayes’ credit card numbers when Hayes was buying something reflecting that unhealthy taste you talked about.”
“So the theory becomes even more vile. Dreyfus concludes that Hayes was extracting sexual favors from Xu Ky—like access to Sue Key when she was barely a teenager—in exchange for the services that he provided. I’m not a lawyer, but I hope that would amount to extortion and rape.”
“I’m not a lawyer either, but it sounds to me like it would.”
“Okay. Dreyfus wants money from Hayes, but he doesn’t tell him to pay up or Dreyfus will go to the cops. Hayes would know that Dreyfus couldn’t do that without putting himself in the soup as well. Instead, Dreyfus threatens to expose Hayes to Nguyen, leading to a once-in-a-lifetime experience for Hayes. If Hayes accuses Dreyfus of blackmailing him, Dreyfus will say that Hayes was just reading too much into a couple of innocent curiosities.”
“Not a bad theory, right?”
“Right,” Melissa said, as she noticed early-arriving students begin to drift into the room. “But you clearly had all this figured out yourself. Why are you running it by me?”
“Because whether it’s Nguyen or someone else, that stronger and tougher guy you mentioned is still out there, and I don’t want the body count going any higher. If I don’t get a line on Leopold in a few days, I’m going to ask for some unorthodox help from you and your husband.”
“Neither of us is known for orthodoxy.”
“Meanwhile, don’t let your guard down—with Nguyen or anyone else. Like the newsies say, if your mother says she loves you, check it out.”
“Always good advice,” Melissa said.
As Washington left, she sat on the top of the desk, closed her eyes, and tried to compose herself for the lecture to come. Shakespearean comedy seemed breathtakingly trivial at the moment. After a few deep breaths, she thought she had herself calmed down. Chilling or not, she told herself, Washington’s idea was still just a theory.
“Good afternoon,” she said to the now fully assembled class. “After two weeks of howling on the moor with King Lear, we’ve earned a little dessert. We’ll be focusing on Much Ado About Nguyen.”
“I thought Ben Jonson wrote that,” a smart alec in the front row said.
***
Rep’s phone rang just as he was about to leave his hotel room for dinner with his client and the associates. He answered the phone anyway. If it was the client with a change of plans, this was the time to find out.
“Hello, Mr. Pennyworth,” a deep, smooth, comforting voice said. “Roger Ormsby here, returning your call.”
Rep blanked on the name for a second, then remembered the message he’d left at the funeral parlor that had handled Vance Hayes’ burial.
“Thanks for calling back,” Rep said, glancing at his watch. “I know it’s almost eight o’clock in Indianapolis now. I was expecting to hear from you tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, of course. At difficult times like these, however, we try to be as available to the family as we can.”
Oops.
“Ah, actually, this is about an, ah, interment you have already taken care of. Over a year ago.”
“Yes, of course. There are no…difficulties, I trust?”
“Just a question that occurred to me recently. The decedent was Vance Hayes. I remember an honor guard and a flag-draped coffin at the burial, but I’m sure Hayes never served in the armed forces. I was just wondering who authorized the military honors.”
“Yes, of course,” Ormsby said. “This is a matter of great sensitivity to veterans’ groups, so we’re pretty careful about it. Ordinarily the family provides us with a DD-Two-fourteen. That’s a Defense Department form documenting discharge from the armed forces.”
“What if there is no such form?”
“Then we check with the Defense Department or the VA ourselves. Or a local VFW or American Legion post will check for us.”
“Well, then,” Rep said cautiously, “perhaps I was mistaken about Mr. Hayes’ service. Was the appropriate documentation presented in his case?”
“One moment, please.”
Ormsby couldn’t completely disguise his disappointment at the news that this call wouldn’t lead to another stiff making its way into the velvety discretion of his funeral home, but he kept his tone professional.
“Yes, of course,” Ormsby said after nearly a minute. “The Hayes situation was out of the ordinary. The deceased had no family members involved in the planning. The overall arrangements were made by the trustee of the deceased’s estate.” Namely Ken Stewart, Rep thought. “The issue of military honors was brought up by a third party, rather late in the day. He couldn’t produce a DD-Two-fourteen, but we received an official letter from a Colonel Englehardt, retired and writing in his capacity as VFW liaison, confirming that Mr. Hayes was entitled to military honors.”
“Did Colonel Englehardt provide any details?”
“Well, that was the unusual aspect of it. His letter didn’t actually say that the deceased had served. He said, ‘I can confirm without qualification that Vance Hayes has merited the honors contemplated by Title Ten of the United States Code, and accordingly a burial detail is authorized and will be provided through this post.’ No specification of branch or date of discharge. But he enclosed an official flag, which we used to drape the coffin. So that was that.”
“I see,” Rep said, trying to hide his impatience. “And who would the third party who got Colonel Englehardt’s attention be?”
“Yes, of course. I can’t really see why this would be confidential. It was a Mr. Walter Kuchinski. He seems to have covered the additional expense out of his own pocket.”
“Thank you,” Rep murmured. “Thank you very much.”
He hung up before Ormsby could say, “Yes, of course” again.
Chapter 23
Neither the Milwaukee white pages nor information had a listing for Xu Ky when Melissa checked them that evening. Melissa didn’t think Rep had the number. He’d apparently picked up only odd scraps of trivia about her, like the “weapon of Mass destruction” joke.
Whoa. Hello.
Melissa called Internet Explorer up on her computer and punched Archdiocese of Milwaukee into Google. No home page headings for liturgical directors (much less for their assistants), so she clicked on “Parishes.” The Milwaukee Archdiocese had a lot of parishes.
She tried to think of Catholic saints associated with Asia. The only one she came up with was Francis Xavier, who lost his life bringing Christianity to Japan. She knew this much only from a pious video she and Grammy Seton had watched together on a VCR (a Sony, in fact, which added a certain poignancy to the saint’s heroic sacrifice). No help here, for St. Francis Xavier hadn’t made it onto the canon of Milwaukee parish patrons. A quick scroll disclosed no other obvious possibilities. She’d just have to go through the parishes one by one.
Luckily for her, St. Anselm’s on South 6th Street appeared early in the alphabetical listing. It offered a hefty total of six Sunday masses. The schedule included a “Bilingual Mass English/Spanish,” a mass in English without music, i.e., a short one, and, at eight o’clock on Sunday mornings, a “Vietnamese mass.” The site noted that lectors and Eucharistic ministers met every Wednesday evening at seven-thirty.
Melissa reached St. Anselm’s at seven-fifty, which was almost too late. Even in the church’s muted light, she could tell from the fidgety body language of the first people she saw that tonight’s meetings were about to break up. She spotted two collections of about a dozen people each gathered just in front of the sanctuary, on opposite sides of the church. The leader of the nearer group was recapping who would cover the nursing homes, the hospitals, shut-ins, and so forth. Eucharistic ministers. She turned toward the other group.
They were focusing at the moment on how to pronounce “Achimelech” in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese. Nearly hidden within a double semi-circle of listeners, a speaker with a reedy, oddly melodic voice finished her review of that topic. Then she reminded lectors doing the second reading at each service not to leave their pews to go up to the sanctuary until the choir had finished singing the responsorial psalm.
“Our choir master doesn’t like you walking on the choir’s lines,” she said in a gently mocking tone. “People can wait an extra twenty seconds to hear from St. Paul, so save your humble assistant liturgist a little heartburn, okay? That’s about it. God be with you and have a blessed week.”
Amid mild laughter the semi-circles disintegrated to reveal a petite, chubby woman with a laughing-Buddha face and graying hair. She wore a denim shirt, a dark brown corduroy skirt, and black Converse All Star high-top basketball shoes with white socks. Melissa figured the odds at about fifty-fifty, and she played longer shots than that during the NCAA basketball tournament.
“Excuse me,” she said to the woman, “are you Xu Ky?”
“Yes,” the woman said as she looked over at Melissa. “New lector? I’m sorry, but I don’t recognize you.” Melissa noted with interest that Ky spoke English with a slight southern accent, something like Georgia filtered through west Texas: “Ahm sorruh, but Ah don’ recognize yew.”
“No. My name is Melissa Pennyworth. My husband represented your daughter in that legal case she had recently.”
“Oh, yes, my little calendar girl,” Ky said, rolling her eyes. “She should know better than to sign that silly paper. I oughtta be stricter with her growing up. She always have that trace of mischief. We can talk. Come.”
Ky led Melissa to the center aisle, where Ky genuflected and Melissa didn’t, then down the aisle to the vestibule. A door on the left side of the vestibule opened to a stairway, which led down to a large multi-purpose room. The sight of that room instantly brought parochial school recollections surging from the depths of Melissa’s memory: the din of indoor recess on torrential days, the whiff of macaroni and cheese on Lenten Fridays, the distinctive smell of mimeographed copies in a school that couldn’t afford a Xerox machine.
Several people from the groups upstairs gathered around coffee urns on the far side. Ky unstacked two orange, molded fiberglass chairs and set them at one of the lunch tables that were now pushed against the nearer wall. With a gesture she invited Melissa to sit, then ambled across the room and returned with two Styrofoam cups of coffee. Melissa gratefully took one of them.
“You were raised in the Church, I’m guessing?” Ky asked.
“In a way,” Melissa said. “My parents were lapsed Catholics. They had me receive the sacraments and go to parochial schools to placate my grandmother, but I didn’t end up buying into it. How could you tell?”
“When you passed the altar, you didn’t genuflect but you thought about it a little. For a non-Catholic there is nothing to think about.”
“That’s very perceptive.” Melissa wondered if skipping the genuflection had gotten her off to a needlessly bad start, and thought she’d better explain herself. “I did think about genuflecting, just to be polite. I didn’t do it because I decided it would h
ave been a kind of lie—passing myself off as something I wasn’t. As I said, I didn’t really buy into it.”
“I don’t wonder,” Ky said, nodding. “Having to go through the motions, form without faith, I’m surprised you didn’t turn into a snarling atheist.”
“That’s pretty much what I was in my late teens. By twenty-three or so I had mellowed into a complacent agnostic. Since then I’ve experienced a reduction in complacency.”
“Losing faith in your lack of faith?” Ky asked with a mischievous smile.
“Perhaps. But I’m nowhere near believing the way you do.”
“Better a searching agnostic than a complacent formalist. Better doubt about the truth than certainty in error. You are here, though, to talk about Sue. Her little legal scrap is all over, I think? She bought me a lovely porcelain miniature with part of the money she got.”
“That case is wrapped up,” Melissa said. “But then there was the burglary of her apartment and Max Levitan’s murder.”
“Yes,” Ky said as deep sadness clouded her face. “Truly terrible.”
“I don’t know whether Sue told you, but someone using a phony name has recently tried to pry information out of both me and her.”
Ky said nothing.
“I can’t make any sense out of it yet,” Melissa said. “The pattern seems troublesome, though, so it’s hard not to worry a little.”
“That is true,” Ky said, nodding. “I warn Sue when I give her Mr. Kuchinski’s name that once you start with a lawyer it goes on and on. The famous ancient Chinese curse was supposedly, ‘May your children live in interesting times.’ The American equivalent would be, ‘May your lawyer prosper and grow rich.’”
“That was the main thing I wanted to talk to you about. I know that you got Walt Kuchinski’s name from a letter that Vance Hayes wrote. But Vance Hayes practiced law in Indianapolis. I was wondering how you ever happened to cross paths with him.”
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