A Hard Light

by Wendy Hornsby

  “Civil servant,” Mike said. “Almost retired civil servant.”

  “Age?” The way Mareno said the word, it sounded like an accusation.

  “You have a space on the F.R. for the age of every also-present on the street? I don’t think so.”

  “You’re young to be retiring,” Mareno said.

  Mike ran a hand down the side of his craggy cheek. “I’m old enough. When are you eligible?”

  “Two years ago,” Mareno said, suddenly chummy, a colleague, a brother in blue, as it were. He had outed Mike. “I have twenty-seven years on the job. And you?”

  “In sixty-five more days on the job, I’ll have my twenty-five.”

  “Mike Flint, huh?” Mareno wore a tooth-sucking grin as he gave Mike a careful going-over. “LAPD. I know who you are. Anything you want to contribute, Detective Flint?”

  “Yeah,” Mike said. “One thing. Get the guy.”

  CHAPTER

  18

  “Do you have to take Oscar out to Trona today?”

  A sudden rain, whipped by a bitter wind, pelted our backs as we walked toward home.

  “The sooner the better,” Mike said. “Pop can behave himself for only so long.”

  “But he’s been great, Mike. One more day won’t make a difference, will it?”

  “When he wants a drink, one more minute is too long.” Mike shielded his eyes with his hand. From the rain or from me? “You don’t understand how it is.”

  “If you can wait until Mareno finishes with me, I still want to go with you. He said it would take a couple of hours to go through the mug shot books.”

  “It’s late already. I should have headed out first thing this morning.” He checked his watch. “Staying clean over Friday night might be asking too much of Pop.”

  As it turned out, staying clean all of Friday morning was asking too much. I don’t know when Oscar slipped out of the house and bought his booze, but he was loaded by the time we got back home at just past ten-thirty.

  “Mikey, boy.” Oscar, so quiet at breakfast, had come to life. “Had a little accident in the other room. But don’t you worry about it. I’ll get it fixed right up. Hey, honey, Mikey ever tell you about the body shop I had me? Nice place. It was a real nice place, wasn’t it, Mikey?”

  “Until the law shut you down.” Mike peeked into my workroom, sighed, closed the door. “Where’d you get the money for booze, Pop?”

  Oscar furrowed his brow. “I musta dropped my wallet. I went inside there looking for it, but the damn thing didn’t turn up. I found some of my money, though, up there on the little girl’s dresser. Don’t know how it got all the way up the stairs. Musta been walkin’ in my sleep again.”

  If Mike had been a hitter, Oscar would be dead. He clenched his fists and backed up, put himself out of striking range. “You went into Casey’s room?”

  “Good thing I did, cuz someone put my money up there.”

  “How much did you take?”

  Weaving on his feet, Oscar struggled to keep his balance while he fiddled around trying to get money out of his front pocket. He pulled out a wadded dollar bill and some change. “This is all that’s left. Where’d you put the rest of my money, Mikey? I want to go out for a while, see some friends of mine. I don’t have any walking-around money on me. Suppose you could spot me a little something? Tide me over?”

  “It’s raining, Pop. I’ll drive you. Why don’t you go wash your face and get ready.”

  “Thank you, boy. Nice of you to offer.” Oscar shuffled off toward the downstairs bathroom. “Won’t be but a minute.”

  Mike, chagrined, began looking under chairs and sofa cushions as soon as Oscar was out of the room.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “Ask Casey how much Pop took from her room and I’ll pay her back.”

  Tucked behind a throw pillow on Grandma’s wingback chair he found an unopened bottle of Wild Turkey. He handed me the bottle and got down to reach under the sofa. “He tossed the workroom looking for money, but I don’t think he broke anything. You want to go up and check Casey’s room for damage? God, I can’t believe he went in there.”

  Mike’s arms were longer than Oscar’s, but he still had to stretch to reach out the second bottle, this one half gone. I wondered if Oscar might have kicked it there when we came in and surprised him.

  Mike repeated, “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault, Mike.”

  He looked around the room, assessing hiding places, I supposed. “Do you know how much money Casey had in her room?”

  “Couldn’t have been much.”

  Mike’s face was red. He held that half-full bottle like a cudgel. “I should never have brought him here.”

  “What was the alternative, sweetheart?”

  “Sometimes I think I’m doing him no favor when I bail him out.” He turned away from me. “Maybe I should just leave him be.”

  “Whatever you think is best.”

  He took a big breath and let out a long sigh. “I better help Pop get his things together.”

  I poured the Wild Turkey down the kitchen sink and then packed a lunch and a Thermos of coffee for the car. Mike wouldn’t be able to take Oscar into a restaurant on the way out to the desert. Too risky.

  Oscar seemed happy when he was belted into the passenger seat of Mike’s Blazer. His time-worn suitcase lay flat on the backseat. A few changes of clothes, that’s all he had left. Anything of value that came his way tended to get “lost” and ended up in the window of a pawnshop.

  “Have a good trip, Oscar,” I said. “Take care of Mike for me.”

  “You bet, honey. Too bad you can’t come along. Boy, we could have us some fun.”

  I kissed his cheek and he pinched my butt. I hoped Mike hadn’t seen, because he didn’t need another beef to hold against his father.

  “Don’t look for me before midnight.” Mike embraced me. “If you have any problems with Mareno, call my partner, Cecil.”

  I said I would.

  He promised to call. He promised to be careful driving in the rain. And he promised not to blame himself for Oscar’s weaknesses.

  The neighbors started calling, four of them before Mike left, six more before my appointment with Detective Mareno. I told them all the same thing: No one saw the shooter, but police were looking for a white Ford driven by a man with a short dark crew cut and pale blue eyes.

  At the appointed hour, I took a stack of videotaped interviews and Arlo with me when I drove over to the South Pasadena police station, a small building only a block from the murder scene. Mareno didn’t seem to like the idea of an extra party in the bull pen until Arlo started talking.

  “It’s real strange.” Arlo pulled computer printouts from his briefcase and laid them in front of Mareno. “Maggie called me when she thought some a-hole was following her. I ran the numbers, but the tags on the Ford were phonies all the way. A dead end.”

  He pulled one sheet out from the middle of the pile. “But the name she gave me came back.”

  “The name’s a phony, too, Arlo.” I reached for the sheet. “A lot of people over the years must have called themselves Elwood Dowd. He was a character in a big James Stewart movie.”

  Arlo had his smug grin in place when I looked at the mug shot in my hand, as if he had successfully pulled off a card trick. “That’s your man, isn’t it, Maggie?”

  E. P. Dowd, looking quite a bit younger than he had sitting under the dome light of his car last night, took a fair picture, both full-face and profile. The bar under the picture read, “Metropolitan Police, London.”

  Mareno chewed his bottom lip while he studied the mug shot. “This is the man you talked to?”

  “Looks like him,” I said. I pulled out the snaps I had taken on the freeway and found the best shot of the driver. I laid it next to the mug shot; a dead bang match. “Who is he, Arlo?”

  “Jean-Claude Steinmetz. Trafficker in bootlegged antiquities. He’s the chief conduit between Mideastern and Asian gr
ave robbers and the marketplace. Need Imperial Roman coins? Syrian marbles? He’ll find ’em. He’ll also smuggle the stuff out of the country of origin and get you whatever documentation you need to bring it home.

  “I’m surprised he’s in the country,” Arlo said. “FBI wants him. But so do a lot of agencies. There must be something big going down if he would risk showing himself.”

  I told him about the missing collection from Da Nang and the invasion of Khanh’s home a week ago. While I talked, I scanned the dossier that Arlo had downloaded from Interpol.

  Several nations wanted Steinmetz for questioning in situations that ranged from theft to murder. Greece charged him with treason in absentia for smuggling out of the country a fifth-century B.C. Athenian bronze that was now on exhibit at the Getty Museum in Malibu. Steinmetz was charged, but never caught.

  I kept going back to the first section of the document, Steinmetz’s early career. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1969, and then—and this is where I got stuck—worked as a Southeast Asian specialist for the United States Agency for International Development. Scotty had spent two tours in Vietnam under the aegis of USAID. Everyone knew the organization was a front for the CIA, and other nefarious activities.

  I stood up and started to pace. “It makes sense that Khanh Nguyen and her friends are somehow involved with this Steinmetz. He may have brokered the treasures they lifted from the Da Nang museum, if that’s what he does. But why is he following me around? What can I possibly have that he wants?”

  “He made no demands?” Mareno asked.

  “Nothing. He seemed happy just to spook me.”

  “Your only connection to the museum was the victim, Mrs. Nguyen?”

  I had to mull over that question before I was ready to answer. There had been times when I would have given just about anything to have my ex-husband disappear off the planet. I never wished him ill. I simply wanted him to go away. Far, far away. Here was my one big chance, and I couldn’t bring myself to mention him.

  Tabloid TV: “Prominent attorney, former husband of filmmaker Maggie MacGowen, shown here with his teenage daughter, was implicated today in a brutal murder.”

  No way. I had been in the business long enough to know how that scenario played out. Casey didn’t need either the attention or the pain that came when your face was a news lead-in, a sound bite on three channels at five, six, and eleven.

  I stonewalled Mareno on Scotty. I wouldn’t even give him an oblique entrance by suggesting he call the Nguyen family attorney. I merely shrugged my shoulders and said, “As far as I know.”

  My dad said that seventy-eight percent of the time I change my plans. I thought his figure was high, even if he included plans that changed more than once. That is, I had accepted Scotty’s invitation to dinner Friday night, then had decided to go with Mike to the desert. And in the end I stayed home to talk with Mareno. In between, I never called to cancel with Scotty. We were still on for seven o’clock. I decided that this was an appointment I needed to keep.

  “Detective Mareno, I need a favor,” I said. “Steinmetz knows where my daughter’s school is and he knows what she looks like. If I go get her, I’m afraid he’ll try something. Can you help me?”

  “We’ll pick her up, sure,” Mareno said. “Do you want her taken home?”

  “Home wasn’t safe for Khanh,” I said. “Casey wants to go to San Francisco this weekend. Now’s the time.”

  I located my father by having Uncle Max paged by his office. They were in an antiquarian bookstore in West Hollywood, haggling over the price of an early edition of Huckleberry Finn.

  “Did your mother put you up to this?” Dad asked.

  “Of course not,” I said. “Why would you think so?”

  “A minute before you paged, I called and asked her how much we have in the checking account. She wouldn’t tell me.”

  “I need your help. There’s been a shooting in the neighborhood, and after those men last night, I want Casey out of town until things cool off. I’m being overprotective. Indulge me.”

  “Indulge me,” Dad said. “Under the circumstances, I want my little girl to blow out of town, too, until things cool off. I want you to come with Casey.”

  “I’m waiting for Mike to get home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Seventy-eight percent of the time …”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said. “Come hell or high water.”

  CHAPTER

  19

  Khanh’s wake started without her. The county coroner wouldn’t release her remains until after an autopsy. A week, the coroner told Sam Nguyen. Maybe two. Prayers began immediately: A violent death during Tet left the deceased’s passage into the next world especially difficult, and the family especially vulnerable.

  I tried to reach Minh Tam at the hotel because I thought he should know what had happened to his cousin Khanh before he heard the news on TV. There was no answer in his room, he wasn’t in the hotel’s dining room, bar, or coffee shop. Even the barber hadn’t seen him. I wasn’t worried about him—almost no one knew how to reach him—but I asked Mike’s partner, Cecil Renfrew, if he would send someone over to check. Cecil promised he would go himself.

  Arlo drove me to the Nguyen home in San Marino. There were more guards, and this time uniformed policemen stationed on the grounds, and no one was allowed to drive through the gates. Arlo let me off in front, and waited while I showed a picture ID and let the rent-a-cop run a handheld metal detector over me and the gifts I carried.

  “Miss MacGowen.” Khanh’s elder son, Sean, greeted me at the door, very formal as he bowed. He wore the white muslin hood of mourning.

  I had known Sean since he was in grade school, and now he was finishing a master’s degree in business administration, preparing to move into the family businesses: restaurants and liquor stores. Though he was somber that evening, I could still see in him the playful little boy who used to have water balloon wars with Casey. I returned his bow when my impulse was to hug him.

  He said, “My father will be pleased to see you.”

  “How is he?”

  “He has been very quiet. I think he doesn’t realize yet what has happened.”

  “What happened is beyond comprehension. I will miss your mother. I know she loved you very much.”

  “She always spoke well of you.” Sean took the flowers and the basket of fruit I had brought with me. He hesitated before he asked, “You saw her?”

  “Yes.”

  “How …” He struggled to maintain composure, and could not finish his question.

  “It happened very quickly, Sean.” I touched his arm. “She felt no pain. When I saw her, the police had covered her and were protecting her modesty. She looked very dignified.”

  He nodded, though I don’t know whether my answer fit his question. “My father is inside.”

  Sean led me into the living room where perhaps three dozen friends, relatives, and business associates milled around, many of them familiar to me from the old days. The air was heavy with burning incense. Taped temple chants played in the background.

  An altar set up against the near wall was covered with offerings, mostly baskets of fruit and flowers. Sean set my basket among them and I added the flowers I brought, a lei made of plumeria blossoms—frangipani, Khanh called them, her favorite. I had also brought a framed photograph of Khanh, a picture that I had taken several years ago, but I held on to it because the family had already placed a large formal portrait of Khanh on the altar.

  I followed Sean’s lead and bowed to the portrait—an old, studio-made black and white that showed Khanh, who always found things to laugh about, with a stern face, her black hair sculpted into a stiff pageboy. Khanh would have laughed at the portrait. As I bowed to her, I silently reminded the spirits she believed in that here was a truly good woman and they should receive her.

  When I stepped back, the family waited in a formal receiving line. Beginning with an elderly aunt, each bowed to me in turn. />
  Sam seemed devastated, shell-shocked. He moved like a robot when he reached for my hand, and bowed. “It is kind of you to come and pray with us, Maggie.”

  “Khanh was always a good friend.”

  Sam bowed again.

  “I want you to have this picture of Khanh,” I said. “This is how I remember her.” The snap was a color close-up of a very lively Khanh, a wide smile showing her straight, white teeth and the mischief in her dark eyes.

  Sam ran his hand across the protective glass, smiling through his tears. “I never saw this before, Camera Lady.”

  “I took it years ago, up in the Muir Redwoods,” I said. “Scott and I had recently separated and I was feeling sad. Khanh flew up one day just to tell me that she was a friend and not community property. We went for a walk among the redwoods and I took this picture. I think it captures her well.”

  Sam had mist in his eyes, but he smiled. “Life is ephemeral. It is better not to hold on to it. Will you light some incense for my wife?” He gave me three joss sticks and helped me light them from an altar candle.

  When new arrivals came, I excused myself so that Sam could greet them. I noticed that he held the Muir Redwoods photograph of Khanh tight against his chest all the time I was there.

  The room was hot and airless. I wasn’t sure how long it was appropriate to stay, or how social I needed to be. A uniformed maid passed among the guests with a tray of drinks. I took a glass of wine, steeled myself, and looked around for a friendly face among Scotty’s associates.

  “Maggie, sweetie.” The voice I dreaded, Sheila Rayburn, the wife of Scotty’s law partner. “Didn’t you get my message? I called you this afternoon. Mortie and I had dinner with you-know-who last night and when he said you were in town, I vowed that you and I were going to get together. Do you realize how long it’s been?”