Obedience

by Joseph Hansen

  Along with bowls of beansprouts, fresh mint, coriander, chilies, a bowl of steaming pho came to him in the hands of one of the boys who had to be brothers or cousins to the girls. It must have been a big Vietnamese family occasion that let Cotton get a job here even late at night. Pho was a broth made with spicy beef stock filled with square noodles and meat. It was good, but he ate it without attention. He was frowning over Le’s murder. The twenty-two was the reason he hadn’t quit. It kept bothering him. If the doll-boys Cotton had seen were the killers, why hadn’t they brought their Uzis? As an implement of slaughter nothing was surer than an Uzi. If its size was against it, then the next choice would be a .357 magnum or a nine-millimeter automatic. Professionals didn’t use twenty-twos. Worse, Tracy Davis had told him it was a pistol the police lab said the bullet had come from.

  Cha gio turned out to be the Vietnamese version of egg rolls. Not a rifle, a pistol. A twenty-two pistol was a target-practice gun. Did anybody hunt even small game with a twenty-two pistol? Let alone large game? Let alone man? It could kill. In Le Van Minh’s case it had. But ordinarily it simply wounded. He knew of cases where a twenty-two bullet had bounced off a skull, a shoulder blade, a femur, leaving no more than broken skin or a bruise. A plate of rice rolls replaced the plate he’d emptied of cha gio. Through their translucent wrappings he saw tiny shrimp. This bullet had gone in at the base of the skull, and traveled upwards. The mark of the professional? Or simply blind luck?

  The waitress who had taken his order brought the dish she’d promised him he’d like. Ban cha, a platter of charbroiled pork with spicy carrot sauce, noodles, pickled vegetables. He liked it, but again ate it absentmindedly. Were the murders back there, in that cheerfully lighted corner where a Vietnamese grandfather, a young couple, and two little girls laughed and chattered over tall goblets filled with what looked like multicolored jello—were those murders somehow connected to the murder of Le Van Minh? Plainly, this was an area dense with Vietnamese. The restaurant wouldn’t be this busy if it had to draw from afar. So, that the killings had happened near each other on the map might mean nothing. He worked on his plate of succulent pork.

  He’d stopped in at the Times building this morning and read the accounts of the shooting of the four businessmen here that night weeks ago. Two had been importers. Like Le. A third sold industrial properties. The fourth was a funeral director. No motives for their murders had been discovered. Police asked the cooperation of the Vietnamese community, it was politely promised, but never given. The Times said rumors were widespread of an underground terrorist group. But were its roots in the angry divisions between factions in the war-ravaged homeland? Or in illegal immigration, drugs, prostitution, gambling here? No one would say. Dave washed down his flan with French iced coffee laced with cream.

  His tiny waitress had taken the little tray with the check and his American Express card on it, but a stout, short, moon-faced man brought it back. Dave had noticed him moving among the lunchers, stopping at this table and that, smiling affably, speaking a few words, joking and, when he thought Dave wouldn’t notice, studying Dave uneasily. He took a pen from a jacket pocket and handed it to Dave.

  “Everything satisfactory?” He spoke English with a French accent. Dave nodded and uncapped the pen and bent to sign the receipt. He handed the pen back with a smile. “Better than satisfactory,” he said with a smile, and meant it. He glanced around. “I’m odd man out, though, right? An intruder?”

  The man looked shocked and pained. “Not at all. We welcome everyone who enjoys good food.”

  “Then I’ll tell people,” Dave said. “This place is a real find.” He tilted his head to indicate the shabby street, its shabbier surroundings. “A little unexpected in this district.”

  The man gestured at the tables, gave a Gallic shrug, a wry smile. “As you see—” He grew somber. “But you may assure your friends, it is quiet here. Entirely safe. One may park on the street, walk on the street without fear.”

  Dave stood up. “But not sit in that corner.” He jerked his head at it. “Not late at night.”

  The moon face went white. “Shh. M’sieur, please.”

  “Who did it?” Dave asked. “Who were they? Why?”

  The man took Dave’s arm and steered him into an alcove. “Who are you?” he hissed. “What kind of questions are these?”

  Dave took out the folder and showed the man his license. He told him who he was and who he was working for. “You’re near the Old Fleet Marina. That’s where Le Van Minh was murdered night before last. You knew him. He owns this building, isn’t that right?”

  The round head nodded, eyes anxious. “I had met him, yes. It is how I learned of this place.”

  “And your customers who were killed, Mr. Phat, Mr. Tang, and the others. Did they know him too?”

  “Perhaps—I don’t know.” He gestured helplessly. “But it had nothing to do with me. I am a simple restaurateur, M’sieur. These were wealthy men. I am not of their kind.”

  “And you have no idea who slammed in here late that night and slaughtered them?”

  “No one knows—not even the police.”

  “Someone does know,” Dave said. “Maybe a lot of people know, but they’re all too frightened to say. Isn’t that how it really is, Mr.—?”

  “Hoang Duc Nghi,” the short man said, and shook Dave’s hand. “People may well be frightened, Mr. Brandstetter. Our world is not your world. In our world for as long as most of us can remember, the nights were filled with terror, and sunrise promised only death. To Americans, violence, bloodshed, torture are for watching on the television.” His smile was wan. “Television is the American’s world.”

  “Is that such a bad thing, Mr. Hoang? Compared to living in terror? If your people won’t tell the police who these killers are, won’t things just get worse?”

  Hoang laughed. “The police? What reason have we to trust the police? You don’t understand.” He put a hand on Dave’s arm. Urgently. “Let it alone, Mr. Brandstetter.” He glanced nervously out at the room. “We may be being watched right now. If it is known that you are investigating these matters, you may have been followed here. You may be a marked man. If I am seen talking to you, so may I.”

  “Then you do think there’s a connection between Le’s murder and the ones that happened here?”

  Hoang shook his head desperately. “I never said so.”

  “Tell me where to start looking,” Dave asked him.

  “Impossible.” Hoang took Dave’s elbow, put a friendly arm around him, walked him toward the door. He wore his most affable face, and smiled not only up at Dave, but around at the others in the room, in case any of them were noticing. He opened the street door for Dave, and not quite but almost pushed him out onto the sidewalk. Something tugged at Dave’s jacket pocket as he stumbled into the sunlight. The pocket must have caught on the door latch.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Brandstetter,” Hoang said. “Thank you for coming.” Back turned on the diners, so they couldn’t see the warning in his eyes, he said the opposite of what he meant: “Come again soon.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Hoang.” Dave smiled, raised a hand in farewell. “I’ll do that.” He walked along the gritty, cracked, sunstruck sidewalk to his Jaguar. He started the engine and air conditioner, let the brake go, and remembered the pocket. Frowning down, he felt for a tear and didn’t find one. But something was in the pocket. It had been empty. The suit had only just come back from the cleaner. He didn’t remember putting anything into it. It must have been Hoang. Dave’s fingers closed around two smooth little cubes. What? Some Vietnamese equivalent of after-dinner mints? He pulled them out and sat staring at them.

  They were a pair of dice.

  “He isn’t here.” Lindy Willard shielded her eyes with a hand. She wore white sailor pants and a bikini top and sat at a metal table atop the superstructure of the dazzling white Starlady, eating croissants, drinking what looked like tomato juice. “Who’s wanting him?” Her voice was powerful and
easy, as it sounded when she sang. But she no longer looked like the Lindy Willard Dave had gone many times to hear at the Melrose Cavern twenty years ago. She’d taken off weight, but it had wasted her instead of making her look younger. Her rusty hair was thin and frazzled. “I’ve seen you on television, haven’t I?” She set down her drink, stood, came to the railing, studied him. “That insurance detective. Brandstetter—that’s who you are. Big time. What you want with a little fish like Cotton Simes?” Her glorious voice echoed off the water, off the sea wall. “You mean to tell me those family jewels aren’t his?”

  Dave laughed. “Can I come aboard?”

  “Come have some breakfast. I’ve got more Bloody Marys here than are good for me, anyway.” Dave boarded the Starlady without falling this time, and climbed to where she sat at the table again. “Sit down, please.” She pushed toward him a basket of croissants nestled in a gingham napkin. She poured from a frosty pitcher, and handed him the glass. “I don’t get a lot of callers. I’m a has-been, you know.” She lit a cigarette and gave a throaty chuckle. “And let me tell you, it’s got its points. For one thing—go ahead, eat, honey—a has-been don’t have to suffer fools gladly.”

  Dave laughed again. “You haven’t tried me yet.”

  She sobered. “Oh, darlin’, you no fool. Those talk shows sell stupid by the square yard. You get on there, and it reminds people there’s such a thing as a human brain.”

  “I have a lot of your recordings,” he said.

  “Uh-huh, and the gray hair to show for it.” The wonderful laugh came again. But it didn’t light her eyes. They were sad and tired. “Well,”—she drank from her glass—“it was fun while it lasted.” She sighed and this time the chuckle was mechanical. “Only I thought it would last forever. I should have saved my money.”

  “Aren’t people coming to the Vine Street these nights?”

  “A few.” She waved a hand with long, enameled nails, amused, dismissive. “Mostly just to see if it’s true I’m still alive. I sing to a lot of empty tables.”

  “Why the boat?” Dave said. “Why the Old Fleet marina?”

  “The boat was some record executives way of paying me when he went bankrupt. And since I couldn’t sail away to luxurious retirement in Tahiti, I ended up living on it in the cheapest berth I could find. Now they putting us out of here, I guess I’ll sell it if I can find a fool to buy it, and move to a rose-covered cottage in Watts.”

  “Jazz is making a comeback,” Dave said. “You’d be welcome anywhere.”

  She held up both hands in protest. “You sat around airports lately? O’Hare, Kennedy, Dallas, Atlanta? Waiting for planes that never take off? You tried to get comfortable on an airplane, lately? Oh, darlin’—spare these old bones. No way is Lindy Willard going on the road again.”

  “Make records, then,” Dave said.

  “What for? They don’t sell.”

  “They’ll always sell to me,” Dave said.

  She laughed and wagged her head. “Oh, baby, I am glad you showed up this morning. My heart was in my shoes.” She sighed. “You see, Cotton’s left me.”

  “What do you mean?” Dave frowned and sat forward.

  “Packed up and took off” Her face sagged into tired lines. “Said he’d be back. Sometime.” Her laugh was bleak. “Sometime never.”

  “Took off for where?” Dave said.

  She eyed him. “What’s wrong? He’s scared, isn’t he? Whimpered in his sleep last night, tossed and turned. I asked him, but oh, no, nothing wrong, just he’s overworked is all.” She smiled wryly. “Now that is truly a joke.”

  “Where’s he gone?” Dave said.

  Her look was guarded. “Why do you want to know?”

  “I want to protect him—if I can.”

  “Gifford Gardens,” she said. “His sister. Opal.”

  “Her last name Simes too?” Dave said.

  She nodded. “Schoolteacher—no use for men.”

  “Who else did he tell where he was going?”

  She looked at the greasy water, the seedy boats, the cracked, stained seawall. “Who would he tell around here? Andy Flanagan, the black man’s friend?”

  “Flanagan’s in jail,” Dave said. “Cotton wouldn’t tell them at Hoang Pho, would he?”

  She cocked her head, frowning, eyes narrowed. “How’d you know about Hoang Pho?”

  He gave her a thin smile. “It’s my job to know.”

  She sat very still. “Cotton didn’t tell you what he saw the night those Asian gentlemen were shot.”

  “He told that TV reporter who brought him home last night. Traded the information for a spot on the late news.”

  “Was that child a reporter? Damn. I warned Cotton never to tell nobody. A reporter! God give me strength.”

  “It was off the record,” Dave said, “for my ears only.”

  “When it’s gangsters, first thing you learn in the music-business is see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”

  “He saw them again when Le Van Minh was killed.”

  She put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, my God.”

  “Maybe he’ll be safe in Gifford Gardens,” Dave said.

  She said grimly, “From Vietnam terrorists, maybe. Not from his neighbors. Gifford Gardens!” She gave a shudder.

  “I’ll need the address there,” Dave said. “And the phone number, too, please.”

  She pushed back her chair. “I’ll get it for you.” She walked toward the ladder. She always walked as if she was sheathed in sequins. “Then I will burn that page of my little black book, and wipe all memory of it from my mind.”

  5

  GIFFORD GARDENS WAS TRACT houses on land bulldozed of trees and brush beside a creek. Slapped up out of green lumber to answer a housing shortage after World War II, its builders hadn’t told eager buyers how the creek overflowed every winter. It took the county years to line the creekbed with cement slabs to stop the flooding. And by then, nobody much wanted to live there. Gifford Gardens became a slum in the sun and that was what it still was.

  Dave had worked on a case out here a few years back. It might have been yesterday. The stores fronting the street that paralleled the creek were still vacant, neon signs broken, paint flaking. Maybe everything was a little bit dingier than when he’d last seen it. But the ragged winos—black, white, Latino—seated with their brown-paper-bagged bottles along the curbs, or shuffling down the soiled and trash-blown sidewalks looked no different.

  When he was here before, the old Gifford mansion, all jigsaw-work porches, scalloped shingles, cupolas, had stood on a hill, dominating the place. The last Gifford had still occupied it then, a half-crazy old man, who spied on the town through binoculars from an attic window. Now Dave looked for the mansion, looming up through its untrimmed trees. It was gone. From an intersection where he stopped for a traffic light, he got a clear view of the hill. Banners fluttered off wires above tarmac parked with glossy used cars.

  As if joblessness, hunger, and all that went with them weren’t enough, gangs kept the town cowering. The Edge were young blacks who roved the streets in rebuilt Mustang cars. The GGs were Latinos. Drive-by shootings were common, where grandmothers and little children died as often as gang members. Not the shackiest house was safe from break-ins. No one with sense brought a good car out here. Dave was driving an old pale yellow Valiant, creased along a door and fender by some long ago sideswipe. Kevin Nakamura garaged it for him up in the canyon, the tank full of gas, the engine tuned, but with strict orders never to wash it.

  Dave turned it left up Guava Street now. He was wrong. There had been changes. A little prosperity had combined with a lot of despair and householders had bolted steel bars over their windows. They were painted black, and bore stingy ornamentation, but they were there to prevent crime. If you somehow had managed to buy a TV set, maybe you could hang onto it, instead of having it vanish to feed some crack addicts habit. If it meant jailing yourself, too bad. Here was Opal Simes’s address.

  The house w
as neatly painted pale green with dark green trim. A big avocado tree bent over the roof. Old ground ivy covered the front yard. A concrete front stoop with wrought-iron railings had pots of begonias standing on it. The effect was peaceful, well-ordered. What spoiled the effect was a ten-foot-high chainlink fence with razor wire on top and a padlock on the gate. A brindle pit bull, heavy in the chest, broad of muzzle and piggy of eye, came around a corner of the house, trotted down the straight strip of walk between the ground ivy, and stood with its nose to the gate wire, looking at him. It didn’t bark. It didn’t growl. It didn’t have to, and it knew it didn’t have to.

  He drove away, and found a pay phone in a half booth of cracked glass panes clinched in steel. The phone abutted the white painted brick side of a liquor store, just a step from the sidewalk, in a rutted hardpan parking lot. This had once been a hangout for the GCs. Today, at the alley end of the lot, a Mustang sat, its sandpapered doors hanging open, four young blacks inside, leather jackets, dark glasses, cans of beer. He felt them watching him as he put a quarter into the telephone and punched the gritty steel buttons with Opal Simes’s number. School would start soon. She should be at home. She was.

  He told her his name, and that he was working for the San Pedro County Public Defender’s office on a murder case. “Your brother knows me, and that could make trouble for him—if it hasn’t already. I have to reach him right away.”

  “Carlton?” She acted surprised. “Why, Carlton isn’t here. I haven’t seen him in weeks. The Arts Festival is on in Los Angeles. He’s working. He’s an entertainer.”