by Neil Russell
“Gradually, I came to the realization she was always there. Every day. Every meal. Every rehab session. Later, I found out that most nights, she slept on a sofa in the lounge. I got angry. I didn’t deserve that kind of care. There were men who would get well and lead productive lives. I asked her why, but she’d just smile and encourage me to cut my roast beef or work harder at walking on those goddamn wooden legs.
“After about a year, they were getting ready to move me to an apartment to ease me back into the world, and I was happy as shit because the first thing I was going to do was buy myself a gun and eat it. Then one day, Linda sat down next to me and put her hand on my forehead. ‘It was because of the light,’ she said.
“What are you talking about? Light? What light?
“ ‘You wanted to know why I stayed with you. It was because of the light in your eyes. There’s so much goodness inside that I couldn’t allow it to die. And so I didn’t.’ “
Fabian Cañada lifted his sunglasses and showed me his eyes. “You see any goddamn light? Far as I’m concerned, they’re as dead as the rest of me. And you’ll notice there’s not even a picture of her in here. That’s the kind of asshole I am. She cared for me unconditionally, touched me when no one else would, but I’m still not able to get past what she looked like. Sort of like the bearded lady not wanting to be seen with the three-legged man.”
There are times you don’t want to get inside somebody’s life because the demons are too familiar. I didn’t like what Fabian Cañada was saying because I’d acted the same way and hurt good people. My father didn’t care if you were a king or a beggar, handsome or on the other side of the universe from it. His smile was always genuine and his embrace warm. The older I get, the more I understand that said more about him than all the money he made and the empires he built. But it’s a legacy I have to work very hard to live up to. It never feels natural.
You named your daughter after Miss Lane. That’s a stronger statement than any picture.”
“Might have been if she’d still been alive when it happened.”
I turned to Astaire. “Would you mind if I asked how you ended up here?”
She seemed to welcome the opportunity. I understood. I never lost a child I had raised, but after my parents’ deaths, I talked more about them than I ever had when they were alive. And, of course, I thought of all the things I should have said and the questions I’d never have answers to.
“At first, I went to an orphanage,” said Astaire. “Several, actually. They kept bouncing me around because nobody was interested in a burned Chinese kid. And every time I was transferred, they gave me a new name. I didn’t remember Astaire, of course, so sometimes I was Jane or Barbara, sometimes Ling or Xue. I was really jealous of the kids who had the same one year after year. I don’t know why, but I thought Kathy was the most beautiful name in the world, so I picked it as my secret name, and that’s what I called myself. I’m still Astaire Kathy.
“Linda Lane found me. She’d stayed in touch with Fabian’s family, and when she found out he was looking for me, she began using her vacations to search up and down the East Coast. She’d just about run out of places to look when somebody told her the Catholics sent a lot of kids with disabilities to Chicago. She figured that might mean burns too, so she went to work. You’re not supposed to be able access records, but they’d never come across anybody like Linda. She’d wear you out.”
“An understatement,” said Fabian.
“I was in the Polish Children’s Home. Think a scarred Chinese kid stuck out? But they were wonderful to me, and I’ll still drive miles for golumpki. In those days, a single woman had no chance of adopting—not even the irrepressible Linda. But Fabian’s family could. So good-bye cold winters and five girls to a double bed, hello mansion in Pasadena. Not long afterward, Fabian came home, and we were a family.”
I didn’t want to ask the question. Astaire saved me. “Pretty creepy, huh? Guy marries his sister. Or his kid, depending on who’s doing the counting. Then there’s that pesky age thing. Well, don’t blame my husband, blame me.
“Growing up, I had four dates, and three of them were because somebody put out a rumor I was an easy lay. Which was pretty funny because I was so self-conscious about my scars, I took baths in the dark.”
“You’re a beautiful woman,” I said. “And I’m not being patronizing.”
“Thank you. I think so too—now.” She smiled. “But I was thirty before I heard it the first time.” She stood and crossed the room to her husband. “And this is the man who said it.” She bent and kissed his head. “Linda Lane was right. There is a light in his eyes—and in his heart. A magnificent light. He won’t say it, but he’s the one who made it possible to save so many children. Big Jim had the bluster and the bullshit, but Fabian had the tenacity and wrote the checks. You see what’s happened, don’t you?”
I did. Fabian Cañada had become Linda Lane. I didn’t think he needed to hear me say it, though.
“When Fabian’s parents died, we stayed on in the house, but after a while, it got to be too much of an expense.”
“If you’re going to tell it, tell it right,” said Fabian. “The good people of Pasadena drove us out.”
Astaire looked at the floor. “They painted horrible things on the walls along the street. ‘Sister Fucker’ and ‘Gookenstein’ were some of the nicer ones. On Halloween we’d leave town because they threw so many rocks at our windows. One year, on the Fourth of July, somebody fired a rocket onto the garage and burned three generations of photographs. It got worse after Lucille was born. People sent cards to the hospital that said, ‘I hope your baby dies,’ and set dolls on fire and tossed them over our gate. The worst part, it wasn’t all kids. I’d see some of them at the supermarket.”
“So you moved to Victorville.”
“It was like being reborn. Wonderful people, wonderful friends. Lucille grew up strong and smart and loved by everyone. I’ll never leave the desert.”
I gave them a moment, then looked at Fabian. “I realize your family was wealthy, but what you’re talking about with the kids is too much money over too long a period of time for an individual. Besides, you knew you couldn’t live forever.”
Astaire looked at her husband. “You want to tell him, or should I?”
“Voodoo tax,” Fabian said.
The bulb finally went on. “That’s why there were so many cops involved.” It also explained what Yale Maywood meant about Chuck’s “handling something sensitive.”
Dr. Dan wasn’t on board. “Could somebody enlighten me.”
I turned to him. “A voodoo tax is the price a senior cop extorts from a crooked underling to look the other way. It’s the title of one of Chuck’s pictures.”
“I like it. Dirty money doing some good.”
“I figured why fuck around,” said Fabian. “All those cops in Victorville who knew the score and kids dying in China. Rackmann knew, but he didn’t, if you follow.”
“Nobody knows a dirty cop better than another cop, but you need cooperation upstairs. Somebody who can pull IA off a case ... or put them on.”
“Over the years, we had a whole line of them in several departments. Maywood was the fourth at LAPD. I never wanted Lucille near any of it, but...”
“It was the family business,” I said. “Then she married a cop.”
He nodded. “Got herself a good one too. As soon as he got some seniority, he began doing the collecting. Fuckers paid fast too. Especially after that picture.”
He sounded proud, and I understood.
“Eventually, Chuck and Lucille took over,” said Astaire. “More Lucille than Chuck. She was totally committed, and he loved her so much if she had wanted to raise ragweed, he would have started plowing. Lucille got lots of young people involved. And some of the kids we’d rescued years before had grown up and wanted to adopt others. Fabian and I were burned out. The doctors said we had to find a less stressful life. That’s when we moved out here.”
“But Chuck and Lucille couldn’t escape Kingdom.”
She wrung her hands. “At first, the tigers were just a rumor. Then an open secret. Lucille tried everything to find other ways to get children out, but each time she set up a new network, it would be shut down and the participants executed.”
“No mystery there. Your nephew enjoyed living high and wielding influence. And that was the Hu way, wasn’t it?”
“So now she had those people’s blood on her hands too. Finally, she told Kingdom they were pulling the plug. Know what he said? Fine, the kids are a pain in the ass anyway.”
Of course, I thought. Walking away wasn’t going to stop the tiger trade. “Then Kingdom began demanding women— and more money.”
“We didn’t know about that until the day Lucille told us a man might come, and we were to do whatever he said. I wanted to ask her what she meant, but she wouldn’t have told me. I was just happy to see her smiling again. And Chuck had stopped being gone for days at a time.
“I have to believe that wherever they are now, the children they saved outweigh anything else.” She bent her head, and I saw her whisper a quiet prayer.
I’d always liked Chuck, now I liked him more. It was also clear why Maywood had drawn my name out of the hat. It wasn’t my propensity for helping friends or my civic mindedness. It was that I was cynical enough not to get wide-eyed, and I wouldn’t rat anybody out. But the biggest reason was that he knew I’d clean up any messes the cops had left behind. Make sure two friends didn’t get their reputations sullied.
The chief was out of the operational loop, but he knew. It was also why the department put the lid on Chuck and Lucille’s murders. There wouldn’t have been enough seats in the grand jury room for the suspects. Somewhere, lots of cops were doing lots of sanitizing, and others were doing lots of sweating. And if the first group did its job right, the second group would be holding a banquet.
After a little bit, Fabian wheeled himself into the house. He was gone a few minutes, then came rolling back with a Nordstom’s garment bag on his lap. He stopped in front of me and pushed it my direction.
I unzipped it. Inside was a WWII naval officer’s shirt, or what was left of it. The years hadn’t been kind, and the burned sleeves and shoulders didn’t need any explaining. Neither did the outline of an ensign’s bar on the one remaining collar point.
“Open the pocket,” Fabian said. “The left one.”
I started to undo the flap, and the button crumbled in my fingers. Gently, I slid out a handkerchief with an FC monogrammed in script. The combination of seawater and age had turned the linen as brown as the shirt, but it was as neatly folded as if it had been ironed yesterday. I glanced at Fabian, who was watching my hands with such intensity that I felt like an intruder.
As I carefully unfolded the square, the cloth became white again. In its center, I found what looked like an eight-inch piece of tapered gray-white string. I touched it and felt its stiffness and glossy finish.
I knew what it was, but this was Fabian’s ghost, so I waited.
“It’s from a white Siberian,” he said. “It was supposed to be buried with me, but I want you to take it.” His voice drifted away.
I accepted it without speaking.
* * * *
37
A Brave Lady and a Connection
It was close to three o’clock in the morning when the doc and I left the Cañadas. We’d been invited to spend the night, but I’d begged off—stupidly, as it turned out. As they saw us to the door, I asked if they were aware their daughter had leased a ship.
“I doubt it,” said Fabian. “Chuck didn’t even like to put on hip waders to fish.”
“It’s a container vessel. Parked in Tonga. She named it the Resurrection Bay II.”
Astaire looked at her husband, but with his sunglasses on, I couldn’t read his eyes.
“Maybe that was the announcement,” he said with a catch in his throat.
Neither of us believed that, but I let it drop.
We were halfway to Vegas, and Dr. Dan was snoring, which wasn’t surprising considering he’d matched Fabian beer for beer. Off to my left, I could see the eastern sky just barely beginning to lighten.
For the past hour, I’d regretted not grabbing some shut-eye in Suicide. I was almost as sleepy as I had been coming out of Chuck and Lucille’s back in what seemed like another lifetime. I found a truck stop and pulled into a slot between a couple of dark big rigs. I was out before my head hit the back of the seat.
I awakened to my cell going off. I noticed Dr. Dan was gone. Probably inside grabbing some breakfast. That he had gotten out without my hearing him said all that was necessary about how tired I’d been.
Julius Watson was on the line. “Wake you?”
“I’m good.”
“Meant to call last night, but I went down to the station house to watch the Cowboys and Dolphins play Super Bowl VI and ended up shooting the shit. How’d we live without the NFL Network?”
“Good game,” I said, making an effort to connect with him on any level.
“Fuck Dallas,” he answered.
Well, maybe another time. “Have any luck with the girl?”
“She’s staying in the South Bay.”
“That narrows it down to about a million and a half possibilities.”
“All you’re going to get. She’s one scared lady.”
“How’s the baby?”
The question caught him off guard. Apparently, he hadn’t asked, and she hadn’t volunteered. “You can cover that when you talk. She’ll call you sometime today.”
“Not good enough, Julius.”
“It’ll have to be. Like I said, she’s scared.”
Something didn’t sound right in his voice. I didn’t want to think he was making up his own game, but he’d lost a daughter, and that changes a man. Maybe he was trying to protect someone else’s. “Look, Julius, whatever you think of me, fine. Fucking up somebody else’s life in the process isn’t.”
He let me sit long enough to consider hanging up before finally saying, “Gladstone’s. I’ll bring her. When can you be there?”
“Gladstone’s isn’t anywhere near the South Bay, Julius, and nobody as scared as you say she is would get on the road for a minimum of forty minutes. So cut the bullshit. And no, you won’t bring her. You’ve got an axe to grind, and this isn’t the time.” I looked at my watch. “I’ll see her there at eight thirty this evening. Should be a thin enough crowd that we can sit for a while. Tell her if she gets there ahead of me to take a table inside. All the way in the back.”
I heard him snort, but he didn’t argue. “She was going to ask this when you talked, so I’ll give you the heads-up. She wants to meet somebody.”
“Who?”
“An FBI agent named Huston. Francesca Huston. You know her?”
“Tonight. Eight thirty.”
I dialed Benny Joe. The phone rang a long time. I was about to hang up when he answered, out of breath. “Jogging?”
“Fuck you, Rail. This broad you sent me is like fuckin’ cancer. Just when you figure you got it all, it breaks out someplace else.”
“So she didn’t come alone.”
“Like the fuckin’ president. The whole hill’s full of unmarkeds. No choppers, though. Checked with a friend at the federal hangar at LAX who said she threw a fuckin’ hissy fit tryin’ to requisition one, but couldn’t make a case.”
“Where is she now?”
“Out in the yard with the dogs.”
“I thought she didn’t like dogs.”
“Who gives a fuck what she likes? Lulabelle’s trained to sense anything emitting a signal, so once she passes inspection, I’ll bring her in. She’s probably gonna need a shower though.”
Lulabelle? That was the first time I’d ever heard a name for one of those nasty mutts. Of course, I hadn’t asked either. I got a mental picture of Lady Huston rolling around in front of a pack of snarling Dobermans. I hoped Lulabelle’d
take her time.
“Where you want her?”
“Gladstone’s. Nine thirty, no earlier. Later is even better.”
“Gladstone’s? Jesus Christ, that’s all the fuckin’ way across town?”
“Benny Joe, you live in LA. Everything’s across town. Don’t tell her where you’re going, and if you see anything out of the ordinary, keep driving. Otherwise, drop her at the valet stand and make sure she walks straight in. How do you intend to handle the distractions on the hill?”