Obedience

by Joseph Hansen

  “You’ve met them?” Dave said.

  “Surprises you, doesn’t it? But Matt loves me, and he loves Quynh, and he loves those children, and nothing would do but we must all become friends.” Dupree made an unhappy face. “I hate that, but to keep the peace, I had them all here one Sunday. Of course, they have no idea what Matt and I are to each other. I was an ex-employer. An old friend.”

  “Yup,” Dave said. “The row at the dinner table?”

  Dupree sighed and shrugged. “I never got the straight of it. Originally, Mr. Le had fought against Quynh marrying Matt, all that awful old nonsense about mixing the races and so on.” Dupree gulped from his glass, wiped tomato juice off his lip. “But he’d given in, and he’d been sweet and generous to Matt and Quynh, and he’d doted on the grandchildren. And now, suddenly, he was demanding an end to the marriage.”

  Dave frowned. “For what reason?”

  Dupree shook his head. “Business? A debt owed to some old friend? Matt never finished telling me. He was too upset. His father-in-law was dead, and Matt had been ugly to him that night. He wanted to beg the man’s forgiveness. And it was too late.” Dupree blinked back tears. “It was heart-rending to watch him, poor child. He was really in agony.”

  “Surely you exaggerate,” Dave said.

  “I don’t,” Dupree said crossly. “Not this time.”

  “You didn’t think his agony might be about something more serious than a few words spoken in anger?”

  Dupree looked puzzled. “What are you saying? That Matt—oh, no, you’re wrong. Matt is not a suspect.”

  “He claims he was at the Pearl of Saigon, working on the books, the night Mr. Le was killed. But he can’t prove it. He was angry at the man. Why didn’t he kill him?”

  “We’re talking about the night of the eleventh, right?” Dupree said. “Well, forget it. He was here with me, and I can prove it because, with her usual exquisite sense of timing, my dear mother was also here. Torture. Matt and I get so little chance. And she didn’t leave till midnight.” He grimaced. “Probably for an urgent meeting of her coven.”

  Le Huu Loi lay in bed in a room where the blinds were closed. The carved elevated bedstead was large, and made her look tinier than ever. Her gray hair, elaborately put up with combs when he’d met her, lay spread on the pillow. Colors were muted in the darkened place, but he gauged the carved screens near the bed would glisten with nacre and cinnabar in sunlight, and that the carpet underfoot was rich with crimsons and blues. Quynh had ushered Dave into the room, and while he stood at the foot of the bed, she stood beside the old woman and held her bony hand. The rasp of the old woman’s voice had become today a whispering together of the brown, dry leaves of bamboo. Her eyes glittered, sunk in their sockets. She watched Dave, but she spoke Vietnamese again, and Quynh translated.

  “She asks your forgiveness,” Quynh said, without turning her flower face in Dave’s direction. “It was wrong of her to have you assaulted as she did. You are an official. She respects the government of the United States, and loves this country.” Quynh listened again for a moment. “She is most grateful that you do not intend to prosecute her.”

  “Tell her it’s all right, that I understand her reasons. Officials here don’t always deserve respect, but the exhumation of Ba’s body was necessary. Before coming here today, I spoke by telephone to the County medical examiner. He says that Ba was suffocated, as I thought. Someone took Ba’s life. It was no accident.”

  Quynh nodded. “The medical examiner telephoned this information to our doctor, and he came here with the news. She was up and about and vigorous before his visit. Now she is … as you see.”

  “Then tell her I am sorry for the loss of her grandson in this terrible way, and that I believe he was a fine poet, whose work she can take pride in.” He looked at the old woman and said, “I hope you will feel strong and well again soon. Thank you for your apology.”

  The old woman probably understood him, but Quynh translated anyway, and the old woman answered in Vietnamese, looking at him. She ended her words by opening and closing her eyes, and he bowed, turned, pushed curtains aside, and walked out into the sunlit courtyard. He heard Quynh’s voice murmuring for a moment in the shadowed room. Then she came out, and rolled the door shut behind her.

  “How is Le Tran Hai today?” Dave asked her.

  “He is meeting with our father’s attorneys.” She stood at the edge of the pool, watching the big, slow golden carp loaf in the shadows of the lily pads. “He believes he will be prosecuted and sent to prison.” She looked at Dave. “He thinks no one will accept that he knew nothing about it.”

  “What do you think?” Dave said. “He’s your brother. You’ve known him all your life.”

  “Hai is good and kind and honest, but sees only what is obvious.” Her smile was solemn. “He never understood what was not strictly—regular. He has no sense of humor or of play or of imagination. He was solemn even as a small boy, and always corrected me and Ba for the smallest childish misdoings. He was as stern with us as our father. More so. I am sure he knew nothing of what Rafe Carpenter was doing. He would read of such crimes in the newspapers, or see them on the television, of course, and, like father, he would be outraged and disgusted. Particularly if Vietnamese were involved. But that drug smuggling could be taking place under his very nose”—she shook her head sadly—“would simply never cross his mind. No, I must believe he knew nothing of it. But he is frightened, Mr. Brandstetter. And ashamed, since he ought to have known. It was his responsibility.”

  “I’ve told him not to worry,” Dave said. “And you tell him that if his lawyers don’t think they can clear him, I have one I’m pretty sure can.” He took out his wallet, slid a card from it, put the card into her hand. “He can call me any time.” Pushing the wallet away, he glanced at the house. “Where’s Thao, today?”

  Quynh blinked surprise at him. “Why, she has left. Only this morning. She had her own car, you know. A rental car.” She glanced at a small watch on a small wrist. “Just an hour ago. For the airport, to fly home. To Paris. Her visa expires today.” Quynh frowned. “Is something wrong?”

  “You tell me,” Dave said. “Why had she come here?” Quynh’s face became a mask. Dave waved a hand. “No, please don’t recite that nonsense about a courtesy visit as ambassador from her father to yours. She had a mission.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Quynh said.

  “I’m talking about the subject of a fierce argument at the dinner table in there”—he gestured at the silent sunlit walls of the house—“the night Le Van Minh was murdered. An argument about your marriage.”

  She paled. “How could you know about that?”

  “Matt told a friend, and that friend told me,” Dave said. “Your father demanded that you go to Nevada and divorce Matt—isn’t that so?”

  She looked every way but at him. “You must not ask these things. This was a family matter.”

  Dave looked at his own watch. “Let’s not waste time. Someone murdered your father, and it wasn’t Andy Flanagan, and it wasn’t Don Pham, and it wasn’t Rafe Carpenter—”

  “So you think it was Matt Fergusson,” she said. “It’s him you’re after, now, isn’t it? Well, I told you. He was at Madame Le’s Pearl of Saigon that night. I know. I was there with him.”

  “The restaurant was closed and locked. No one was there. You lied about that, and got Thao to back your lie.”

  “Well, he didn’t kill my father,” she said. “He couldn’t do such a thing. He isn’t that kind of man.”

  “But the day I asked you, you were afraid he might have done it, weren’t you? That was why you lied. You knew he was very angry with your father.”

  She shook her head desperately. “They were the best of friends. He worshipped my father.”

  “Until your father ordered you two to separate so Matt could marry Thao and make her an American citizen.”

  “What?” She laughed in derision. But the l
augh was hollow. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Not to Thao’s father. He couldn’t come to the United States. The government wouldn’t allow it. And he wanted to do business here. Not public business, private business, so there was just one person he could trust as his agent in the U.S. He’d have sent a son, but his sons were dead in the war. So he had to send Thao. It would take years for her to become an American citizen, but only six weeks in Reno for you to divorce Matt. Mr. Nguyen knew Mr. Le would do as he asked. Under the cold codes of correct behavior, he had no choice. Nguyen believed Thao would obey him, he believed you would obey Mr. Le.”

  “Business?” She mocked the word. But shrilly. “What sort of business could Thao manage? She’s only a child.”

  “He was an old friend of the Le family. You tell me what sort of business.”

  “He was a politician,” she said, “not a businessman.”

  “But a politician in exile is out of a job,” Dave said. “He was a wealthy man, I understand. Able to fund your father, who was left penniless when he had to flee Vietnam. Maybe the money Mr. Nguyen is supposed to have embezzled from the U.S. in Saigon is running out. Maybe he has to get into business to maintain his life style.”

  “I know nothing of Mr. Nguyen’s affairs,” she said.

  “Neither do I, but I know that Rafe Carpenter’s father flew off to Paris the day after your father’s funeral. And we both know the business Carpenter was in.”

  Quynh gaped. “You mean drug smuggling?”

  “Drugs bring big money,” Dave said, “and the area of the world where Mr. Nguyen used to wield power supplies a lot of drugs.” He read his watch again. “Now tell me I’m right—your father was demanding you divorce, wasn’t he, and Thao’s time was running out, and Mr. Le wasn’t having any more. He wanted obedience, and he wanted it then and there. And Matt cursed him and stormed out, didn’t he?”

  She hung her head. “Yes,” she murmured.

  “And I gather that when Andy Flanagan rang the telephone here shortly after ten that night, the whole house was still in turmoil. Your mother-in-law says you were here, and I know where Matt was—”

  “Where?” she said.

  “With Sam Dupree,” Dave said. “Hai was here. He argued with your father, didn’t want him to go to the Old Fleet. Not alone. But your father was stubborn. He got six thousand dollars in cash he kept in the house—”

  “In a safe in his bedroom,” she said.

  “And he drove off into the night. Did Hai follow him?”

  “He tried. He stood in front of the gate to keep Father from opening it, and Father pushed him aside. He was still shouting at Hai as he went to get into the car. Hai tried to prevent him, but Father ordered him back, and Hai had no choice. He would never go against what our father wished.”

  “And where were you at that time, and your children, and where were Madame Le, Hai’s wife, his children?”

  “In the courtyard. Madame Le was present. Hai’s wife and children had come out to see what the uproar was about, but she had sent them back to their rooms. My children are small, as you know, and they were asleep in their beds.”

  “And Thao? Asleep in her bed, too, right?”

  “Didn’t I tell you she was a child?” Quynh said.

  “You did, but you were wrong.” Dave headed for the red house door. “I need to use your telephone, please.”

  18

  “WELL, THAT FINISHES THAT.” Raoul Flores ran a hand down over his sweaty terra cotta face. His shirt collar was loosened, the knot of his tie dragged down. He looked rumpled. It was the end of a long day. He walked wearily back to his desk, and dropped into the chair there. Desk and chair were in an office not much different from that of Tracy Davis, in the same building as Tracy Davis’s. Tracy was present too. She stood in a corner where a file cabinet had a jar of flowers perched on top of it, keeping as far from Dave as she could get without leaving. She watched him through her green-rimmed spectacles, showing hurt feelings. When he’d arrived at the county building ten minutes ago, he’d stopped in to bring her with him from her office. But without words. He was angry at her about Cotton.

  Flores said, “Thao bought the gun.” He picked up the permit issued to Nguyen Hoa Thao, and mailed to the hardware store where she’d paid for it and where they’d held it for her until the license came. He waved it at Dave, and dropped it in disgust back onto the desk top. “It was the gun that shot old man Le, all right. No mistake about that. She only bought it for one reason—and that was it. Her old man shipped her off to the States with orders to marry Matt Fergusson—and she was in love with some French kid, some student at the Sorbonne or something, and she did not care how many fathers ordered her to do different, she was not about to give in to them.”

  Tracy looked at Dave. “How did you find the gun?”

  Dave told her.

  Flores said, “My bet is Norma Potter thought Andy Flanagan killed Le. And hiding his gun would make it hard for us to prove it. She didn’t want him convicted. Not that she liked him, nobody likes him”—he threw a sour glance Tracy Davis’s way—“well, almost nobody—but it would put the Old Fleet protestors in a bad light.”

  “You can ask her.” Dave nursed a paper cup of cold coffee and tilted back his chair. “But I doubt she’ll tell you. Anyway, you’re processing Flanagan out, are you?”

  Flores shrugged. “No way to tie him to the weapon. Kenny, Le Tran Hai’s teen-aged son, knew Thao had the gun.” Flores smiled faintly. “Had a crush on her, used to go to her room when she wasn’t around and paw through the drawers of her dresser, touching her things. She wore quite a perfume, did little Miss Thao.”

  Tracy wrinkled her nose. “It’s still in this room.”

  “And he found the gun there?” Dave said.

  “It got to be routine with him, taking it out and handling it,” Flores said. “Sometimes he thought he’d kill himself with it. There in her room, on her bed.” Flores chuckled ruefully and shook his head. “Fifteen-years-old. She wouldn’t even look at him, and he was dying of love for her.” Flores blew out air and nodded.

  “Yeah. It was always there in the same drawer. Until the day after Le Van Minh was killed. Then Kenny couldn’t find it anywhere.”

  “The others didn’t know?” Dave asked. “Quynh and Matt?”

  Flores shook his head. “It wasn’t a conspiracy. Hell, she bought it when she was only two days off the plane from Paris. She knew all along old Le wouldn’t give in.”

  “She had doubts,” Dave said. “Or she’d have killed him sooner. When I talked to her, she was aching to get home to that French boy. She hung back until the last moment, hoping Le would relent. There surely would have been easier opportunities to kill him, living right there in the house with him, night and day.” Dave lit a cigarette and blinked at Flores through the smoke. “How did she manage it? How was it Don Pham’s boys didn’t see her?”

  Flores shrugged. “It is not exactly Disneyland’s Parade of Lights out there. It was dark, there was no one around, but even if there had been, she was so angry she says she would not have noticed. She parked her rental car up the street, pulled off her shoes, and ran after him out the dock, and when she was right behind him put the gun to the base of his skull and pulled the trigger. The noise shook her up—not a man falling dead at her feet, no, but the noise—and then she heard someone coming, and ran. She threw the gun away. She meant for it to go into the water, but now we know where it went. And she ducked into the shower rooms there, and shut herself into a toilet booth, and then when nothing happened, she peeked out, and the only human in sight was old Le lying dead, and she took a chance and ran back to her car.

  He looked at Tracy. “Yes, counselor. She was read her rights. She waived the right to have an attorney present and gave the statement voluntarily.” He smiled thinly. “No way could anyone have stopped her.” He nudged a cassette recorder on the desk. “Listen to it, if you wish. You will see. All facts freely given, and much remorse, mu
ch weeping.”

  “She was full of remorse at Le’s funeral,” Dave said. “But I expect it’s remorse for herself. It usually is.” He got to his feet. “I have work to do.”

  Flores squinted. “What else is there?”

  “There’s Cotton Simes,” Dave said.

  “My people are working on that,” Flores said.

  “Gall them off.” Dave went to the door. “By now Don Pham knows what happened to Warren Priest. And if that doesn’t bring him to me, the news about Thao will. And if Cotton’s still alive, I have a hunch he’ll bring him too.”

  “I want to be there,” Flores said.

  Dave pulled the door open. “Sorry, but my house is way out of your jurisdiction.” He walked out.

  Cecil was playing backgammon with Amanda and others at Madge Dunstan’s house at the beach, which meant he’d stay the night, and Dave sat in the dark, alone. It was the last time. Once this night was over, he was through with the investigation game. Sig-Sauer dark and heavy beside him on the long couch of the rear building under the rafters, the high roof, he sat on the couch, smoking cigarettes, sipping whisky, and not looking at the face of his watch when his lighter flamed, not wanting to know how long he’d waited since that would change nothing.

  Outside, the canyon had grown quiet. No more crickets shrilling love songs in the brittle, brown September brush. The muted roar of traffic that drifted up from Laurel Canyon Boulevard had thinned out. Now and then a car labored up Horseshoe Canyon Trail. At such moments, he sat up straight and listened. But all the cars passed. Or so he thought. Did he drop to sleep? Maybe.

  Something woke him. Quick light footsteps on the pine stairs from the sleeping loft. Up on the loft itself, his ears told him someone dropped in through the open skylight and landed with a thud on the bed. Someone slid out a drawer of the pine chest where he commonly kept the Sig-Sauer. He snatched the gun up, jumped to his feet, jacked a cartridge into the chamber, drew breath to shout at the intruder. And from only a few feet away, the strong beam of a flashlight dazzled him, and a voice right behind him said, “Drop it, Mr. Brandstetter, please.” Dave dropped it.