City of Strangers (Luis Chavez Book 2)

by Mark Wheaton

  “Carreño just about died in our reception area,” Clover said impassively. “His daughter brought him in saying he was in great distress, but he toppled over before we even got him into an exam room. We called an ambulance, and they rushed him to Kaiser.”

  What? Susan was flabbergasted.

  “He was perfectly fine yesterday!” Susan declared. “The nurse did the usual—blood pressure, temperature, et cetera. He didn’t complain of anything. Eyes and ears were fine.”

  “From the looks of it he had pneumonia. If he’d died here, that would’ve meant real trouble. There would’ve been an investigation. We would’ve been shut down. As it was, I had to get Esmeralda to let us move him into the parking lot for when the paramedics arrived.”

  You are an awful, awful human being, Susan thought but didn’t say. The worst.

  “Not that she’d sue us, given her immigration status, but that could’ve been really bad news,” Clover said in a chastising tone. “Now, I know you received a real shock yesterday, but I need you to put the patients first, or I can’t have you working here. Is that understood?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. Now, see that you get here soon, and make sure you call the daughter just to check in. Could go a long way toward smoothing this over.”

  Susan was about to reply when Clover hung up.

  It was then that Susan remembered something Father Chang had told her once: “All of us are dying.” He’d tossed it off as a breezy literalism, referring, she thought, to the title of a book or even a poem. But it came back to her now with surprising force.

  All of us are dying.

  VII

  Tuesday evening’s Mass was a sparsely attended affair, but that just made it more appealing to Luis. Though Whillans officiated over the Mass, Luis greeted the congregants at the door, passed out bulletins, and prepared the sacraments.

  On Sundays St. Augustine’s could appear cavernous, the sea of faces stretching from the altar to the back doors until they became a single mass. During the week it was more intimate, more like the Masses Luis had celebrated in New York when he’d been a seminarian. With a group this small it was easier to unify everyone in a way that allowed the Holy Spirit to be much more apparent in the room.

  A larger group could often make the priest feel as if he was preaching at rather than preaching to. And when that happened there was a disconnect—people began to fidget, and those who came were there out of a sense of duty or habit rather than a deeply felt desire to commune with God in the Lord’s house, attended by his servants on earth, the priesthood.

  Eh, you’re just scared of giving the sermon on Sunday, Luis chided himself as he moved to the confessional.

  After an hour he allowed himself to be replaced by Father Pargeter and informed Pastor Whillans as to where his travels would take him that night. Whillans raised an eyebrow, but Luis assured him again why this was necessary in the eyes of God. With that he went to his room and switched out his collar and clerical outfit for the nicest clothes he could find in the donation bin.

  He needn’t have bothered.

  Having only seen Las Vegas casinos on television and in the movies, he figured the Golden Dragon Casino would be about the same. Dimly lit gaming tables, noisy slot machines, roulette wheels, and masses of people in motion, from players to dealers to cocktail waitresses.

  Instead, as he stepped from the Dragon’s impressive foyer to the gaming floor, Luis found himself in a place that more resembled a large bingo parlor. Rather than a few tables tastefully arranged around the room, the ones here were lined up in tight rows, as if to scrunch as many into the space as was physically possible. The overhead lights were bright fluorescents, the walls the calming beige of an asylum. The stained carpet looked as if it had been purchased from a rest home’s fire sale, and the tables resembled lawn furniture.

  Despite all of this and the fact that it was a Tuesday night, Luis could see that every stool around every table was filled. The customers, almost uniformly men, were dressed casually, some in ball caps and shorts. A number of them looked as if they’d been playing hand after hand of poker for hours, even days. Food and drinks were placed beside them on flimsy trays by an efficient waitstaff as dealers kept the cards coming.

  “Help you find a table, sir?”

  Luis turned as a young Asian woman sidled up next to him. He shook his head and immediately changed his posture to affect the street swagger of his youth. When he caught a glimpse of himself in a nearby mirror, however, he was immediately embarrassed.

  “Sorry, I’m meeting someone in the Old Taipa bar,” he said, straightening. “Can you tell me where it is?”

  “Of course,” she said. “All the way in back. It’ll be pretty full right now, though. There’s a game on.”

  “Thank you.”

  As soon as he began walking toward the bar, he realized he had no plan. He didn’t have a photograph of Yamazoe to use to “ask around” like in an old crime movie. He also didn’t have the faintest clue whether Yamazoe himself came here or had merely gotten the pint glasses from someone else. Heck, maybe he bought them at a garage sale.

  He felt foolish for a moment, then angry at himself for being so prideful that he thought he could pull this off on his own. It wouldn’t be that easy. Still, he’d come this far, so he might as well check it out.

  As the young hostess had indicated, the bar was packed. Everyone was watching baseball and seemed passionately behind one team or the other. Luis realized, given the time of year, it must almost be the play-offs.

  He stood around for a moment, considered ordering a drink, then stayed back. Others pushed past him, flagging down the bartender, then paying or opening a tab. As several did so, they handed over a thin white card with the casino’s GD logo on it that the bartender slid through the reader of the touch-screen cash register before ringing up the bill. Each time he did, the customer’s photo and information came up on the screen, connoting they were part of a “loyalty program.”

  When one customer claimed he didn’t have his, the bartender asked for his phone number, and they looked it up.

  Piece of cake.

  Well, piece of cake if the phone number Shu Kuen Yamazoe used with the church is the same he did with the bar.

  Luis took out his phone, found the information he’d used to locate Yamazoe’s address, and hastily memorized the phone number so he could at least reel it off without seeming as if it was a number he’d learned one minute before.

  “Hey, I just wanted a round of drinks for my table,” Luis said, squirming through the cheering customers as someone on the television hit into a double play. “But I forgot my loyalty card. Can I give you my phone number?”

  The bartender, a woman this time, turned to the machine and nodded. “Go ahead.”

  Luis rattled off Yamazoe’s number, and as soon as she typed it in, there was Yamazoe. Almost as soon as the profile appeared, Luis had the wherewithal to realize if he could barely memorize a phone number, he’d have a bear of a time with everything on the screen. So he lifted his cell phone, took a fast photograph of the screen, and just as quickly put it away. The bartender turned back to him, shaking her head.

  “I think I typed it in wrong,” she said, indicating the photo.

  “Oh, it might be under my old phone number,” Luis said, the lies coming easy now. “Hang on a sec.”

  He moved away from the bar and disappeared into the throng. He made his way to the nearest men’s room, moved into a stall, and checked the photo. Though some of it was blurry from the haste with which it was taken, the salient information was right there. Not only was Yamazoe a longtime customer of the casino dating back several years, he’d also had all of his privileges suspended. There was even a note that if he entered the casino, he was to be immediately escorted out.

  “Huh,” Luis said aloud before pocketing the phone.

  Luis may never have been to a casino, but he did understand those who profited from gamblers. There w
as seldom one incident that blackballed a longtime customer. Someone with that level of addiction was useful, as they would beg, borrow, and steal to move money from their pocket to yours. Though they eventually exhausted the goodwill any friends or relatives felt toward them, up until that point they were the last customer you blackballed.

  As Luis exited the men’s room, he almost ran into a tall Asian man in a suit.

  “Excuse me,” Luis said quickly, and moved to go around him.

  Only when he did he found himself facing another Asian man, this one younger, also in a suit.

  “Can we help you find something?” the first man asked, stepping into Luis’s path.

  “I’m just leaving,” Luis said.

  A third man took Luis by the wrist.

  “We need to have a quick word off the floor,” the first man explained. “Please come with us. If you don’t, it will be a matter for the authorities. But I think we can clear this up ourselves, don’t you?”

  Luis froze. He’d seen the pit bosses and managers. They all had name badges and pins with the casino’s logo. These men had nothing that identified them as employees.

  “We’re private security,” the first man said, following Luis’s eyes. “There are the ones for show”—he indicated the uniformed guards at the doors and the cages—“and then there’s the real thing.”

  Luis looked from man to man, then fell into step behind the leader when he walked away.

  “All right, just one more push,” the doctor, Martin Soong, was saying in a soothing voice. “I have the baby. It’s coming right now.”

  As Tony watched, the sweat-covered young mother on the hospital-grade medical bed gave one final push and the doctor pulled the baby free.

  “Perfect!” he exclaimed. “Nurse?”

  A nurse hurried over to take the child as the doctor moved to help the mother. “See? Piece of cake.”

  The mother laughed a little as the nurse cleaned the baby before holding him up. “Can I hold him?” she asked.

  “In just a moment,” the doctor said. “We need to cut the cord, weigh him, then put him on the baby warmer a moment to get his temperature up. When he’s all wrapped up, we’ll give him right to you.”

  The doctor turned to Tony. “You want to do the honors?”

  Tony stared at the cord in amazement, then bowed to the mother. “Is that all right?”

  “Of course, Tony,” she said kindly.

  As the doctor clamped off the section of cord for Tony to cut, Tony retrieved the scissors. He was always present at the births in case something needed to be done or an emergency arose, but was seldom in the actual room. This particular woman had come to the States on her own, a surrogate for a politically connected family in Anhui, and had asked for Tony to be in the room for the delivery as a source of moral support. As the family in Anhui wanted to be certain the baby wasn’t switched at birth or the victim of some other funny business, he was required to be there anyway, but was glad it would seem as if it was her choice.

  When he cut the cord, he stared into the baby’s eyes and realized that though much of this business was dollars and cents, occasionally it could be about something greater.

  Your first breaths are in this country, so they will forever welcome you as one of their own, even make you president, he thought, eyeing the baby boy. What a strange old belief it is that your allegiance would be to the land you emerged in rather than the one in which you were raised. Americans and their birth mythology.

  He remembered the name of the boy was to be Qingquan. He smiled up at the mother, who looked more relieved than overjoyed. He knew she was being very well paid but heard a rumor, likely from Shen Mang, that part of this payout was due to the two abortions she’d been made to have earlier when it was discovered that she was carrying girls. He hoped this wasn’t true.

  “So, I went by the hotel today and dropped off prenatal vitamins and folic acid for Miss Tan,” said Dr. Soong a few moments later after mother and baby were resting.

  “How is she?” Tony asked.

  “Good. Everything’s progressing well. She takes good care of herself.”

  Tony bristled at this remark. He didn’t think it was proper that a doctor should take notice of such a thing, then realized it was meant without lascivious intent.

  “She asked about you, by the way,” Dr. Soong said.

  “Did she?” Tony asked, genuinely surprised.

  “She admires you,” the doctor said simply. “Apparently you told her something of your past.”

  “In passing. She’s talkative.”

  “She is. But I think a part of her wishes she’d had the guts to do what you did. Come over when you’re young. Make a life for yourself here. Become a success.”

  “She said all that?”

  “In not so many words, but yes. You have a fan, Tony Qi.”

  The doctor grinned and finished packing up his things. As Tony showed him to the door, he glanced back at the large Silverlake house, the last one Tony had bought before bringing Oscar into the picture.

  “And how much of a profit do you think you’ll see on this one?” the doctor asked.

  “We’ll know after the renovations are complete,” Tony said dismissively. “Thank you again, Martin.”

  As the doctor left, Tony stared out into the starry sky.

  You have a fan, Tony Qi.

  Luis was brought into a small office that looked like an unfinished movie set. There was a desk and chairs, but nothing had been decorated or lit yet. Nobody could possibly use it. But as the special security men indicated for him to sit in the chair in front of the desk, Luis realized it was the opposite. It was probably used all the time.

  I wonder if Shu Yamazoe sat in this chair.

  “Truthful answers will make this fast,” said a young man from behind Luis. He came around to the desk and sat on the corner.

  “Okay,” Luis agreed.

  “The license plates of your car say it’s registered to a church. What’re you, a thief? A volunteer?”

  “A priest,” Luis said.

  The man raised an eyebrow. Luis didn’t think he could be much older than twenty, but the other men in the room clearly respected him. He, too, was Asian and had a shock of spiky black hair jutting up from his scalp like porcupine quills. His suit was not only expensive, it was immaculately tailored. Still, he hadn’t seen him out on the floor.

  “Why are you using a crooked man’s phone number?” he asked. “A mistake and you could’ve gotten by. But you took a picture of it? That got our attention.”

  “Yamazoe may be a bad guy,” Luis said evenly, “but he was a parishioner, and there’s a concern in the parish for his child.”

  The man eyed Luis long and hard, then shook his head.

  “I don’t like priests,” he said. “We’re in the same business—taking the money of fools hoping for a better life—but somehow I think we’re more honest about it.”

  Luis actually found this analogy intriguing but had to save it for later. “Do you know where Yamazoe’s daughter is?”

  The man rose, moved close to Luis, then slapped him so hard that Luis tumbled from the chair. The slap stung Luis’s skin but didn’t do any real damage that he could feel. He righted himself but stayed on the floor.

  “Not his daughter,” the man said simply. “Got another question?”

  “Is she safe?”

  The man slapped Luis again, but this time on the other cheek. Luis wasn’t ready, and his head snapped back, his neck crashing into the chair leg. This sent a jolt down his spine. As his head throbbed, his fingers and toes burned, as if he’d touched a live wire.

  “Of course she is. She’s back with her family. She did great, don’t you think? Any more?”

  “How much was Yamazoe into you for?”

  The young man balled up his fist and fired a right into Luis’s face, sending his head into the carpet. Blood trickled from Luis’s nose and mouth. By now the pain was coming in from so many dire
ctions that his body twisted and reeled as if to escape it.

  The man considered the question, then shook his head. “Not answering that one. What else?”

  “If the girl wasn’t Yamazoe’s daughter, why did he kill Father Chang?”

  The young man straightened to his full height and indicated for the special security men to lift Luis and put him back on the chair.

  “Hold him there,” he commanded.

  He punched Luis twice, a quick one-two to the face again, more blood smearing across his hands. “Another question? Go ahead. Ask anything.”

  “If the girl wasn’t Yamazoe’s daughter, why did he kill—?”

  Before Luis could finish his sentence, the young man boxed him in the ears. The twin blows affected Luis’s equilibrium to the point he almost threw up. He still righted himself, however, and stared up at his tormentor as if asking for more. He was obliged with three swift blows to the head.

  One of these knocked the delirious Luis unconscious. When Luis came to, he was being dragged to the parish car. Even the slightest movement sent darts of pain through his system, so he hung as limp as possible. One of the security men unlocked the driver’s-side door, and the other shoved Luis behind the wheel. His keys were tossed in his lap and a pistol placed to his temple.

  “If you come back here, priest or not, we’ll kill you. Understand?”

  Luis managed to nod, the motion practically bringing tears to his eyes. The security men moved away. Luis felt around in his pockets, then leaned out of the car.

  “My cell phone. You still have my phone.”

  The security men looked back at him incredulously. The taller of the two plucked Luis’s phone from his pocket, turned it on to delete the photo of Yamazoe’s loyalty customer screen, then threw it as far away into the parking lot as he could, a star quarterback’s amazing field-long Hail Mary of a pass.

  Then the two security men walked away.

  It took ten agonizing minutes of staggering through the parking lot to find his phone. When he discovered it behind the rear wheel of a Datsun, the screen was cracked, but he could still dial. He immediately rang Michael Story, only to get voice mail.