The big receiving bay doors opened and Scotty was wheeled in on a coroner’s gurney, the bed a big fiberglass pan instead of a mattress. The coroner on duty was an old man named Lipski. He greeted Mareno: “Bring your own bucket this time, Detective?”
Mareno covered his mouth with his hand and looked sick.
“Don’t stand too close to Mareno, ma’am,” Lipski warned me. “He has a history.”
Scotty was wrapped in a heavy plastic sheet. As Lipski folded the sheet away from Scotty’s face, someone set the brake on the gurney, making it sway. Scotty’s corpse rocked gently back and forth, moving the way a living man stirs in his sleep. Mareno gagged, turned green, reached for support, and touched Scotty’s leg by mistake. He fainted before he could snatch his hand away, dropped to the cold floor like a rag, bam, right at my feet.
Having to take care of him gave me something better to do than go to pieces. He was embarrassed when he came to, muttered apologies, made jokes about opening his eyes and seeing the coroner’s meat wagon with its doors open, waiting.
“Maybe I should hang it up,” he said, sitting on the floor still with his back against the wall. “Maybe I’ve seen all the shit I’m ever supposed to.”
Lipski, giving him a drink of Coke, laughed at the suggestion. “Hang it up, Mareno? Not you. The job’s like sex to you; it’s messy, but you can’t get enough of it.”
Mareno laughed then. “What’s sex? I don’t remember.” Then he glanced at me, standing there next to the remains of my former husband, and he blushed furiously.
“Sorry,” he said, deeply chagrined. “No disrespect intended.”
And none was taken.
Scotty had looked like a wax doll. Waiting for Mareno to come back into the assembly room, I turned my face into the crook of my elbow and tried not to see Scotty’s face.
How strange it is, I thought, the way a long relationship evolves. In the beginning constant sex, nearly uncontainable passion. Then after a while a deeper, more thoughtful sort of love emerges. Less sex, maybe, but no less passion. Looking back, I tried to remember when Scotty began to grow restless. When had the passion disappeared? Certainly it was on the wane before we moved into the San Francisco house.
One weekend stood out. We were working on the house shortly after we bought it. I was stripping old, dark stain off the oak wainscoting in the dining room, and Scotty was doing something in the basement. I remembered thinking, as I worked alone upstairs and he worked alone downstairs, that something was very wrong between us.
Scotty didn’t like working with his hands. He was such a perfectionist that he never felt satisfaction with much of anything he did. Don’t come downstairs, he had told me. He didn’t want me to see his outbursts of temper.
But I went down anyway, on the pretext that I needed a hand with something. What I really wanted was to talk to him before we got any farther in debt over the house. I had decided that I wanted a trial separation. What was the point of staying together? We rarely saw each other.
At first, when I went down to the basement that day, I couldn’t find Scotty. I could hear him, hammering away somewhere. When I called out to him, he answered from inside the wall. Actually inside the wall.
His reaction was so strange when he saw me; he was way too happy. We hadn’t had sex for over a month. Too tired he’d say. Too much on his mind, the job, the new house, too much light coming in the new bedroom windows.
That day, right there on the cold, newly poured concrete floor, we had enjoyed each other with passion I thought we had lost forever. We christened the new house. Later, he painted a red heart on the spot, a commemoration, he said, of something perfect.
Maybe I was dreaming as I sat there in the police station, waiting for Mareno to come back. Because when I imagined that day in the basement, it was Mike’s face I saw in my mind’s eye, and not Scotty’s.
I hadn’t thought about Scotty as a husband for a very long time. How rare that day had been. It seemed to me that the only time Scotty was ever really happy was when he had a deal nearly set. Working on the house only made him cranky. What had he been so happy about that afternoon?
One other time Scotty had come close to that level of sweetness—the day of the San Francisco earthquake. When the shaker came, he was out of town on business, as he generally was. We were already separated. Scotty was so worried about Casey and me that he chartered a plane to get home to us.
We were okay. A crack in the basement floor—right through the red heart—and a back wall had come down. The foundation needed to be rebolted, and some things fell off shelves, there were plumbing problems. The repairs were costly, but compared to our neighbors, like Lyle, the damage was relatively mild. But Scotty came jetting home to help make the house secure again. We slept together the night of the earthquake for the very last time.
Someone kissed the back of my neck. Was I asleep? Had I actually been touched? I opened my eyes and looked into the tired face of Mike Flint.
I sat up. “How’s Oscar?”
“Settling in.” He gave me a going-over, from my matted hair to the hole torn in the side of my boot. Then he gently touched a bruise on the point of my cheek with the tips of his cold fingers. “Miss me?”
I walked into his arms and held on. “Scotty’s dead.”
“I know.” His voice was like gravel. “You okay? You been checked out by a doctor?”
“I don’t need a doctor.” I tried not to cry, but I was so relieved to see Mike that I let my guard down. “I have to tell Casey, but I don’t want to tell her over the phone. I talked to my dad. He said she’s asleep. I want to be in Berkeley before she wakes up.”
“What are you going to say to her?”
“A soft variation on the truth. Any ideas?”
“It’s okay to go soft, as long as you tell it to her straight.” He kissed the side of my head. “Who’s calling Linda?”
“Mareno says he will. I think it’s better to hear the bad news from the police than from the ex-wife, don’t you?”
“I don’t think there is a good way to hear bad news. Did Scott have other family?”
“None,” I said. “Just us. Goddamn Scotty. Whatever the hell he was involved in, why did he have to put us into the middle of it?”
“When you figure it out, let me know.” Mike turned to Mareno. “Can I take Maggie home now?”
“If you’re going to be with her, okay. We haven’t brought the suspect in yet, and we don’t know what he might be up to.”
“We’re going to book as soon as we get cleaned up,” Mike said. “Maggie needs to get to Berkeley.”
Mareno nodded approval. “Let me know how to reach you.”
“Count on it.”
Mareno gave me a hug, an odd farewell to get from a hardened old cop. He said, “Take care.”
We left Leon sleeping in his chair, a better place for him at the moment than his empty studio apartment.
The Blazer’s dashboard clock said midnight when we pulled into our driveway.
Mike yawned. “We can get a few hours’ sleep.”
“Pedro was a scam artist,” I said, as we walked toward the house, “who got in over his head.”
“Where did that come from?”
“I’ve been thinking,” I said. “Pedro had quite a lot of cash on him. Where did he get it?”
“Probably, he earned it.” Mike unlocked the back door.
“Didn’t use a bank? Usually took his pay in cash to keep it off the books? Stashed his mad money in his socks, had a little in every pocket where he could get his hands on it.”
“He’d still have his money if he had kept his clothes on.”
“He’d have his money if he used a bank, too.” I turned on the kitchen light. “But he was a scam artist and his cash was his bait. He wanted to attract a little something, instead he landed a shark.”
“Fish analogies, huh? Why are you thinking about Pedro?”
“I’m talking about Scotty.” I reached for Mik
e’s arm. “I need you to drive me somewhere, before we head out.”
CHAPTER
24
The old farmhouse in Westminster was dark. Dogs barked in the distance. A light drizzle fell.
I lifted the wire latch off its nail and pushed open the backyard gate.
“It’s not too late to change your mind about knocking on that door,” Mike said. “Anything this Yuen guy knows tonight, he’s going to know in the morning.”
“Tomorrow morning might be too late.”
Inside the garage, the baby, Eric, started to cry.
Mike looked at me, seemed resigned. Then, with a deep sigh, he walked ahead of me and knocked on the door.
Ralph Yuen peered out through the door, sleepy-eyed yet alarmed. When he recognized me he relaxed, though he still seemed puzzled.
“Miss MacGowen.” With a glance into the dark room behind him, he flipped on the outside light and stepped out, pulling the door closed. We stood huddled under the narrow eaves, trying to stay dry.
“Sorry to bother you,” I said. I introduced Ralph Yuen to Mike. “I wonder if you would help me?”
He put his hands together and bowed.
I handed him a snapshot of Scotty. “Do you know this man?”
He held the picture up to the light and studied it. He said, “I did, once.”
“Tell me how you knew him.”
Yuen studied me for a moment, suspicion growing. “Is it Miss or Mrs. MacGowen?”
“Scott MacGowen was my former husband. He was killed tonight.”
“Killed?” Yuen took a step back, seemed to bristle all over. “That is why you are here? But I know nothing.”
“You know more than I do,” I said. “I need some help. What can you tell me about Scotty?”
“So long ago.” Yuen took a deep breath. “He was our conduit. I don’t remember exactly what his official role was in Vietnam. But we used him for many years to move museum pieces secretly between Vietnam and Europe.”
“He was the legal advisor to the American cultural attaché,” I said. “‘We’ means you and Bao Ngo?”
“Yes. And our associates.”
“Khanh Nguyen and Minh Tam?”
“And others. Except Minh Tam did not participate so much. I believe Minh Tam only wanted to make sure the collection was preserved. He is a very idealistic man. His participation was limited to sending the true treasures out for safe-keeping in Swiss vaults. The rest of us were not averse to selling an item here and there for profit. Scott MacGowen arranged the sales so that the movement of funds and artworks could not be traced back to us.”
“Did he get fair prices for you?”
Yuen smiled. “We were thieves. What could we expect?”
I handed him one of the pictures I had taken on the freeway shortly after my other visit to his house: the white Ford and its three occupants. “Know anyone here?”
“I told you, it has been a long time.” He pointed to Dowd. “But he is not much changed. His name is Steinmetz. He was very loyal to your husband, Mrs. MacGowen. And he was perhaps the main reason why we did not complain about the terms of sale your husband arranged.”
“He was loyal to Scotty?”
“Like a brother.”
Mike held my elbow. “Find out what you wanted to know?”
“One more thing, Mr. Yuen. May I borrow your catalogue from the Da Nang museum?”
“Certainly.”
“Can you point out which items were sold and which were sent to Swiss vaults for safekeeping?”
“I’ll do my best.”
The first flight out of Los Angeles put us in San Francisco at seven. We had crossed the northern edge of the storm just past Santa Barbara, and descended through a perfectly clear, brilliant blue sky.
At seven-thirty, a taxi dropped us in front of my house.
The morning was typical San Francisco winter weather: crisp and clear. From the front porch, we had an unobstructed view over the rooftops of the Marina District, across the Bay at the bottom of our hill to Sausalito on the far side of the water; the Golden Gate Bridge looked like no more than quick, deft strokes of orange-red against the deep blue of the cloudless sky.
I stopped to record the familiar scene in my mind’s eye in case I never saw it exactly that way again.
“Here’s where it began,” I said. “When someone wanted to buy the house.”
Uncle Max came out the front door. “Your dad is bringing Casey over. They just left Berkeley.”
I gave Max a hug and said, “Thank you.”
“How is my Maggot holding up?”
“One more task, Uncle Max, and I think we’re there.”
Max embraced Mike, and Mike tolerated it.
I led the way into the house and down the stairs to the basement.
“What are we going to find down here?” Max asked.
“If I’m right, buried treasure.”
“Interesting. Whose is it?”
“That’s the big question, Uncle Max,” I said. I flipped on the basement lights. “Let’s see if it’s here, then we’ll worry about whom it belongs to.”
In the cupboard where we kept camping gear, I found the long-handled ax we used for chopping firewood. Remembering the day I had found Scotty inside the wall, I tapped along the paneling with the butt of the ax until I heard a hollow echo. Scotty had put up a false wall. Unless someone had a set of the original blueprints to work with, no one would notice.
“There has to be an entrance of some kind,” I said. “Scotty wouldn’t have time to take down the whole wall every time he wanted in.”
“In where?” Max asked as he felt along the wood.
“But I don’t have time to fuss with it.” I offered the ax to Mike. “Do you want to do the honors, or shall I?”
“Go ahead,” he said.
I said, “Stand back,” and swung the ax into the wall.
The paneling splintered. I swung again, and again, until there was a hole large enough to see four sets of floor-to-ceiling cupboards that Scotty the perfectionist had built against the original foundation wall.
Mike took the ax from me and used the pick end to pry loose a whole sheet of the paneling. Scotty’s room was narrow, just enough space inside to open the cupboard doors.
“I told you, Scotty was just like Pedro,” I said. “Scotty kept his mad money in his socks.”
“Who is Pedro?” Max asked.
“A dead fool,” I said.
Max gripped my arm. “Give me some background.”
“As soon as word got out that someone wanted to buy the house, bad things started to happen. The strangest thing was that Scotty wanted to buy the house, himself. When I learned that Scotty was the repository for artifacts pilfered from a museum, the pieces started falling into place. Who would Scotty trust to take care of a museum full of booty?”
Max thought for a moment. “Scotty never trusted anyone.”
“Exactly,” I said. “He stashed it right here, in his own basement. And he left it here when we split up because, first, he couldn’t safely move it. And, second, he thought I would stay in this house forever. The only time he worried about his stuff being discovered was after the earthquake. Remember? He chartered a plane and flew in?”
Max waffled his hands. “Vaguely, I remember. Your mother was afraid of a reconciliation.”
“It wasn’t me Scotty was reconciling with,” I said. “It was his stolen booty.”
Mike said, “Are you going to take a look or just talk?”
“I’m afraid to look,” I said. “You do it.”
All of the doors had padlocks. On three of the cupboards the locks hung open. Only the fourth was fastened. Mike went to the doors on the far left and opened them.
On the shelves, no glittering treasure. Nothing except empty wooden boxes, tufts of packing straw, torn scraps of yellowed paper wrappings.
The second set of doors was more promising. The shelves here were tightly packed with child-size shoe bo
xes from a cheap Taiwan manufacturer. He wedged one out and tossed the lid aside.
The box was brimful of stiff paper folders each roughly the size of a stick of chewing gum. Mike scowled. “What the hell?”
Max took a folder out of the box and opened it, showing us a micro-thin leaf of gold. “This is chi van, Vietnamese gold piasters. Except for American dollars, gold was the only currency Vietnamese tradesmen trusted. Still is.”
“How much is all of this worth?” Mike asked him.
“It’s peanuts,” Max said. “There isn’t enough gold in each of those boxes to make a decent neck chain. It’s garbage.”
We hit paydirt in the third cupboard, though the yield was hardly what I expected. A collection of small temple artifacts, old silver coins, and carved amulets of translucent jade. There were also some bronze pots and a short sword with a gold-inlaid hilt, large pieces of very old-looking jewelry with enormous, rough-cut stones that could have been sapphires and rubies. Maybe they were old glass, I couldn’t tell. The richest find was a dozen kilo wafers of gold stamped Credit Suisse. Hardly ancient artifacts. Hardly worth dying for.
I reached into a wooden casket, littering the floor with Styrofoam packing chips as I felt around. I nicked my index finger on something sharp, and came away holding a tarnished brass box about the size of a video cassette. The chased patterns on the lid were worn nearly smooth. Full of expectation, I raised the lid.
The box was lined with red silk so old that in places there was nothing left of it except frayed wisps, showing the dark wood insert in which eight hollows had been carved. Six of the hollows cradled little jade figures about the size of my thumb, each in a different dance pose. Temple dancers, apsaras. I knew where the missing two were: One had been in Khanh Nguyen’s purse with my name written on it. The other was in an evidence locker at the South Pasadena police station, smelling of salmon étouffée.
I handed the box to Mike. “Would you die for this?”
“I wouldn’t walk across the street for it.”
Max pulled a wooden crate about sixteen inches long and twelve inches high off the bottom shelf. On the side was stenciled: Bank of the Republic of Vietnam. Using the end of the ax, Max pried the lid off. Mike and I peered over his shoulder.
A Hard Light Page 24