City of Strangers (Luis Chavez Book 2)

by Mark Wheaton

  “Yamazoe was a big gambler. Lost a fortune to, I think, the local triad. The girl worked for them in order to establish some kind of cover story. So it was either the triad who wanted Father Chang dead or someone who hired them. That’s all I got.”

  He hung up, turned on the ignition, caught sight of his monstrous reflection in the rearview mirror, and grimaced as he thought about how he’d explain this away in front of the congregation on Sunday.

  VIII

  When Michael listened to the message from Luis, he couldn’t call Detective Whitehead fast enough.

  The triad? No one could touch the LA triad. It was understood they existed, sure, but they kept themselves so far from the spotlight and politically insulated that they were practically untouchable. Even the tiniest foothold into their operations was worth taking a run at.

  He arranged a sit-down with Yamazoe first thing the next morning and headed over to the Hollenbeck station.

  “What do you have?” Whitehead asked when Michael entered the building.

  “Nothing remotely actionable or concrete,” Michael said. “Which is why I need to work him alone.”

  “You can’t talk to him without his attorney,” Whitehead said.

  “Wrong. I can’t talk to him about the shooting of Father Chang without his attorney,” Michael said. “But I can ask him about an unrelated crime.”

  Whitehead eyed him curiously. “This your guy working?”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  That didn’t sound good enough for the detective, but Michael knew he’d have to accept it anyway. Whitehead arranged to use one of the interrogation rooms and had Yamazoe brought in from the cells. As the prisoner hadn’t eaten breakfast yet, he was grumpy about being interrogated so early. When he saw Michael and Detective Whitehead waiting for him instead of deGuzman, he got downright irritable.

  “Where’s my lawyer?” Yamazoe demanded.

  As if having been waiting for such a prompt, Whitehead rose and moved to the door. “I’ll go see if he’s here yet.”

  After Whitehead exited, Yamazoe turned his dull-eyed attention to Michael, who sat down opposite him.

  “Who’re you?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On you, asshole.”

  Yamazoe scoffed. “You think that’s how you get me to talk?”

  “Not at all.”

  Yamazoe sighed and glanced around the room. It was claustrophobically small. Michael knew it had been constructed that way on purpose.

  “All right,” Michael said. “Let me ask you something.”

  “You can’t ask me anything without my lawyer present,” Yamazoe said.

  “There are two things wrong with that statement,” Michael said, leaning back in his chair. “First, I sure can ask you questions without your attorney present; it’s just inadmissible in court. Second, why don’t you listen to the questions first before deciding you don’t want to answer?”

  Yamazoe smirked but said nothing.

  “Oh, come on.”

  Yamazoe crossed his arms and eyed Michael as if challenging him to stop wasting his time.

  “Okay, but let’s just pretend for argument’s sake that you’re a big gambler and that you are actually into people for a lot of money.”

  Yamazoe didn’t so much as twitch. Michael almost laughed. When someone was working that hard to betray nothing on their face, well . . .

  “And let’s just say that you’re also a big loser. And I mean across the boards a big loser. Sporting events, horse tracks, cards, you name it. In fact, the one thing you’re actually successful at is getting idiots to float you as you rob Peter to pay Paul to the tune of the low- to mid-six figures.”

  While it was true Luis had only mentioned the one casino, Michael was able to use this information to extrapolate the next few steps. A contract killing from a nonprofessional was a huge chunk of change. To get somebody to do that implied a debt that had gone so far outside of Yamazoe’s control that his desperation took over. It had become mortal.

  Do this or die.

  To Michael this meant a lot more money than a casino, particularly a Los Angeles card room, would ever allow a player to get into the hole to them for. Yamazoe probably owed the Golden Dragon guys somewhere in the low five figures. But knowing inveterate gamblers, he imagined the casino was only one of the places Yamazoe had found to lose money.

  The triad aspect threw Michael a little. He hadn’t dealt much with Chinese organized crime in the prosecutor’s office. He knew it existed, sure, but the main number he always heard was that they made their bones controlling 70 percent of North America’s heroin trade and then on moving illegals into the US—the birth hotels bust of a few months back had been just that, a bust, as zero charges came out of it.

  But Luis knew the city’s criminal element better than Michael did, particularly the ones that didn’t get caught. If he said the casino was triad-run, he believed him.

  “Let me be frank,” Michael continued. “The people who put you up to this probably targeted you early on. They like nothing more than to cultivate marks with an impossible level of debt. In fact, they like to go around to the people you owe money in order to consolidate that debt, like a reverse loan shark. Yeah, I’ll bet some of your debtors would’ve been just as happy to break your legs, but when the triad comes along—”

  This time there was a flinch.

  “—and they’re offering to pay the full amount to assume the debt, well, then you’re really screwed.”

  Yamazoe seemed to fold on himself, like prey trying to make itself a smaller target. Michael knew he’d rattled him.

  “Now, maybe you’ll answer a few questions.”

  “Not without my attorney present,” Yamazoe said weakly.

  “The one the triad set up for you? The one that, when he hears the kinds of questions I’m asking, will report back just how much we know to the local Dragon Head? I’m not entirely sure that’s how you want this to go.”

  Yamazoe’s knee bounced up and down. As soon as he realized he was doing it, however, he made it stop.

  “But then there’s the version where your attorney knows that no one in law enforcement or the prosecutor’s office would be stupid enough to jeopardize a murder trial by talking to you without your lawyer present. Which means if I’m able to act in any small way on anything you say, no one will believe it came from you, right?”

  Yamazoe said nothing, but his eyes found Michael’s. He opened his mouth and exhaled so hard Michael thought he’d deflate.

  “If they find out I said anything, I’m dead,” Yamazoe said quietly. “Not ‘my time in prison will be hard.’ Not ‘they’ll find the judge that’ll make sure I never see the light of day again.’ They’ll just kill me, and no one’ll care. Not you, not Detective Whitehead, nobody.”

  Michael was too giddy to realize he should’ve countered this, but Yamazoe plowed on.

  “And I get it. I was dead to them already when they gave me this shot to keep breathing. I knew it was a sucker’s bet, but I didn’t have a choice. They said you’d never be able to link it.”

  “That’s because they’re not as smart as they think they are,” Michael said. “But if you tell me what I want to know, I can’t promise you leniency, as there’s no doubt you pulled the trigger on Father Chang. What I can do is take your case to the Justice Department and get you into protective custody. You’ll be so gone, I won’t even know where you are. Understand?”

  Yamazoe considered this. Michael doubted the gambler trusted him, but he knew his options were dwindling. There was also the possibility that if Michael could tie him to the triad in a matter of days, someone else could, too.

  “All right,” Yamazoe said. “What do you want to know?”

  Susan checked her phone for the hundredth time in the past half hour. It was fifteen minutes before she had to leave.

  “I can see one more patient,” she told the receptionist as she turned over the
billing information for her last appointment. “Then I have to go. Try to make it someone who won’t ask a lot of questions.”

  The receptionist nodded and sent back a fiftysomething Hispanic man who didn’t want to be there in the first place. Only, he’d let some kind of ear infection go so long that it was now affecting his balance and speech. Susan felt around his swollen nodes and recognized an out-of-control infection, but one that could be handled with antibiotics. She retrieved the boxes of pills from the supply closet, explained how to take them, and then sent him on his way. He seemed relieved to be done so quickly.

  “I’ll be back in a few hours,” she announced on her way out the door.

  Not wanting to answer questions, Susan changed into her black dress in the backseat of her car rather than in the office. She’d already tempted fate by printing a couple of photos of Father Chang on the office printer, which she knew Clover would find a reason to complain about. This was a bad enough day already.

  The photos had actually been an issue, though. There were practically none of just Father Chang. All were either Benny and Nan, her and Benny, or, in a single instance, the three of them together. She tried to remember the occasion, then realized it was taken at some art opening and later e-mailed over by their host.

  What made the photo all the more interesting was how it illustrated just how unlikely a trio they were. On one side there was her, short and stocky, in her midthirties with her thrift-store fashion. On the other, Nan, tall and thin with a perpetual slump, barely into his twenties, wearing his perpetual dark corduroy pants and gray-green sweater. Then in the middle, with his arms around them both, was Benny, in his midfifties and well preserved, if not a little rotund, his equally perpetual Roman collar the focal point of the image.

  The smile on Benny’s face reminded Susan of why she enjoyed his company. Sure, he could be something of a depressive who medicated himself with alcohol and sleeping pills, making him manic, paranoid, and horrible to be around. But when he was clean, his sense of wonder and curiosity made him a boon companion. He was always reading the new book, listening to the latest music, or taking in the most modern art out of a sense that someone had to, or the world might as well hand itself over to the barbarians.

  And he felt the exact same way about people who couldn’t fight for themselves. In fact, there was nothing quite so unstoppable as Father Chang when he decided an injustice was being done. She remembered that he’d even been teaching himself Thai at the time of his death, his sixth tongue, in order to better communicate with a group of locals in the garment district he thought could benefit from his activist support.

  Though she assumed Benny knew how much she respected him, she was never really sure where she stood with him. He used her—to pick up scuttlebutt from the various communities that utilized the clinic, as a sounding board for his latest schemes, but most of all for Nan.

  They’d go to a movie or attend the opening of an art exhibit and be mistaken for God knew what. As a Catholic priest, the obvious—that Father Chang was literally their father—was likely ruled out. Besides, Nan and Susan could not have looked more different, so siblings was out. The process of elimination then had it that Nan and Susan, despite their age difference, were somehow a couple, and Father Chang their benevolent friend and chaperone.

  What no one ever suspected was the truth.

  “You said ten o’clock,” Nan scolded as he climbed into her car seconds after she pulled up to the steps of the biochemical engineering building. “I’ve been waiting half an hour carrying these.”

  He indicated a bouquet of white lilies. She couldn’t understand why her lateness was such a crime but didn’t blame Nan for being so touchy, given the week he’d had.

  “Check your texts,” Susan said, turning back onto the road. “I said ten thirty. I said it twenty times.”

  Nan didn’t check but simply folded in on himself. She touched his arm.

  “It doesn’t matter anyway,” he huffed.

  No, it doesn’t.

  The cemetery was on a flat stretch of ground just off the 110 freeway. Cars whizzed by, and the suffocating stench of diesel fumes choked the area. Susan thought Nan might criticize her for allowing the priest to be buried here, but he said nothing. He probably knew there hadn’t been much choice.

  “Over there,” she said, pointing to a van alongside an open grave.

  They hiked up to the spot and saw three men in work clothes alongside a fourth in a suit.

  “Dr. Auyong?” the suited man asked. “I’m Walt Broderick. We spoke on the phone.”

  “Yes,” Susan managed, unable to take her eyes off the simple cherry-wood coffin sitting nearby.

  Her friend. Her lively, rambunctious, fatally stupid friend.

  She glanced at Nan. His eyes were fixed on the highway. He seemed to have the exact opposite problem. If he acknowledged the coffin, it would mean Father Chang was really dead.

  He’s so young, she thought.

  The funeral director shot a glance at the grave diggers to make them move away. The three of them wandered to the other side of the van, but Susan could still hear them chatting amiably, as if being within earshot of a recently and brutally murdered man was an everyday occurrence. She wondered if it was.

  “The priest just went to his car,” Broderick said, nodding to the vehicle-lined road that passed along the east side of the cemetery. “He’ll be right back.”

  “Priest?” Susan asked. She hadn’t expected this. “From Father Chang’s parish?”

  Broderick shrugged and shook his head. “No idea. Thought you’d invited him.”

  Susan scowled and turned to Nan, figuring he’d share in her anger. She was surprised instead to see him wiping a steady stream of tears from his cheeks. She moved to his side and put her arms around him. He kept his at his side but leaned into her.

  “I’m so sorry, Nan,” she whispered.

  They stayed like that for a long moment. Susan heard footsteps. Broderick raised his arms as if in relief that he could turn the situation over to someone more qualified.

  “Father Luis Chavez,” the funeral director said, indicating a nearing priest. “This is Dr. Susan Auyong.”

  Susan broke away from Nan and eyed the young Latino priest. Though she was hardly a regular at St. Jerome’s, she’d been around enough to recognize the other parish priests. She didn’t know this one.

  “I’m deeply sorry for your loss,” the priest said quietly.

  “Bullshit you are,” snapped Nan, head turning so fast he flung tears. “I know what you’re saying out there about Father Chang. You believe he was some kind of criminal.”

  Susan expected the priest to be put off by Nan’s attack, but Father Chavez didn’t move. Instead, he nodded and raised his hands in supplication.

  “I’ve heard the same rumors that you have,” Father Chavez said. “But the archbishop was an old friend of Father Chang’s and doesn’t believe them in the slightest. He asked me to look into it while he’s away. Though I have only begun, I have found nothing to substantiate the stories whatsoever. I fully expect the diocese to repudiate the charges in the strongest possible language when the inquiry is completed.”

  Susan had expected a diplomatic response. This sounded like an honest one.

  “Then why aren’t any members of his parish here?” she asked. “No congregants, no priests, not even his pastor. This is a joke.”

  “No, this is fear,” Chavez said simply. “But right now let’s concern ourselves with not what has brought us together but who. Recriminations can wait.”

  Even Nan seemed pacified by this. Broderick signaled the grave diggers, who came over to lift the coffin from the bier to the casket-lowering device positioned over the open grave. Father Chavez shook his head and looked to Susan and Nan.

  “Maybe we take him the rest of the way ourselves?” the priest asked.

  Nan broke away from Susan and moved to the side of the coffin without a word. Susan followed, wondering if
the three of them could lift it. Chavez drew up behind her as they all gripped a handle.

  “On the count of three?”

  The coffin was heavy but manageable. They carried it the short distance before placing it gently atop the casket-lowering device, the green nylon webbing bending gently under the weight.

  With this done, Susan placed the photo she’d decided to bring, the one of all three of them, even if tradition called for a photo of the deceased alone, on the casket. Nan added the lilies.

  “May I lead us in prayer?” Father Chavez asked as he moved to the head of the coffin.

  Susan expected something Catholic and reverential. Instead, the priest prayed for God to give her and Nan strength in the coming days but also to help get justice for Father Chang. He implied that Chang had met his fate head-on and didn’t run, showing courage in the face of his own mortality. He even suggested that in time Father Chang might be seen as a martyr for his beliefs.

  “Amen,” Father Chavez concluded before turning to Susan and Nan. “Would either of you like to say anything?”

  Susan considered it. But she’d already said everything she’d meant for Father Chang’s ears in her mind over the past twenty-four hours and didn’t feel the need to repeat it for Nan’s or Father Chavez’s benefit. Nan, however, stepped forward.

  “Father Chang hated the church but loved God and loved people,” he began. “He thought he could change the church and make it into what God and the people needed it to be. That’s what got him up in the morning. He wanted to lead by example. He wanted to change things. He wanted people to know that Jesus was about love, and that was it. That every single last one of Jesus’s teachings came back to that simple fact. Love one another as God loves. That’s it.”

  As Nan stepped away from the coffin, Susan’s eyes met Father Chavez’s. He seemed as impressed by Nan’s diatribe as she was.

  “Then let that be Father Chang’s legacy,” Luis said. “Go forth in love.”