by Teri White
“So who has them?”
“Names I don’t know yet. But let’s just say for the moment that the men in charge are mostly ex-officials from Saigon.”
“That’s a charming bunch to start messing with.”
“Oh, it gets better.” Lars picked up the other sandwich and looked at it. Thick slices of ham and a pale brown mustard on sourdough bread.
“I’ll just bet it gets better.” Toby shook his head. “Well, give it all to me. What’s supposed to happen to the diamonds once they get here?”
“Now that’s where things start to turn just a little sticky,” Lars mumbled around a large bite.
“I can imagine.”
He swallowed. “You remember those government guys from the old days. Always some kind of deal coming down. I don’t have all the details yet, but rumor has it that the diamonds are to be exchanged for certain territorial concessions.”
Toby made a gesture of irritation. “What the hell does that mean? Talk English, why don’t you?”
“Specifically, the diamonds are being used to secure the right to distribute products of a pharmaceutical nature within a certain territory.”
Toby tossed a bread crust to an impatiently waiting gull. “Drugs and two-bit hoods. Wonderful. Didn’t I just see this in a movie? You know, Lars, that kind of individual will kill you before breakfast and not even think about it.”
“There are risks, I admit.”
“Oh, you admit it. That makes me feel much better.” Toby looked at him, then shook his head slowly. “Maybe you’ve just spent too long in the damned jungle. Your perspective on real life is truly warped.”
Lars gave him a chilly glance. “Hey, babe, this is just an invitation, not an order. I’m not your frigging commanding officer anymore. You can tell me to take off and I’ll be gone.”
“How much of this did you lay on Conway?”
“None, really. I like to operate on the old need-to-know basis.”
“And he still agreed to sign on?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Of course.” Toby stood. He walked to the bow and stared off into the distance.
Lars, knowing that a good salesman never pushes the smart customer too hard, kept quiet, finishing the beer and sandwich.
Finally Toby turned around. “Okay,” he said quietly. “I’m in.”
“Good.”
Toby seemed to be waiting for Lars to say something more, but when he didn’t, Reanion just turned back and leaned on the railing again.
Lars smiled to himself, turning the empty beer bottle in his fingers absently.
13
Somebody was ringing the doorbell, pressing a persistent finger on the button, and whoever it was seemed quite willing to keep it up until there was a response from inside.
Stubborn bastard.
Blue was only about half awake, his mind still fuzzed with liquor and the lingering fragments of a bad dream. He swore under his breath as he rolled off the couch. Nobody ever just dropped by his place. Except, occasionally, Spaceman Kowalski. The thought of trying to deal with his partner in this condition was intimidating.
But when he finally managed to reach the foyer, unlock, and open the door, it wasn’t Spaceman he found there. Still, there was something familiar about the slouched figure in the baseball cap and windbreaker.
For one befuddled and almost terrifying moment, Blue thought that the phantom voice on his telephone had taken shape on the front porch. Then he relaxed, feeling foolish, as the face beneath the cap came into clear focus. It was a face that he had seen only in photographs, but he recognized the boy.
“You’re Robbie Kowalski,” he said.
“Yeah. I’m looking for Detective Blue Maguire.”
“Well, you just found him.”
The kid looked skeptical. He studied Blue, his eerily familiar gaze skimming over the Mexican wedding shirt and wrinkled white pants above bare feet. Blue reached up to try and straighten his hair, realizing belatedly that an empty brandy snifter still dangled from his hand. “You’re my dad’s partner?” Robbie finally said.
“I am, yes.”
“Shit.”
Blue wanted to explain that these were not his working clothes. That he didn’t usually run around without shoes. That.… Instead, he just stepped to one side. “Come on in.” It was his house, after all, and he could damned well run around it any way he wanted to. Unexpected visitors would just have to take him as he was. And this visitor was certainly unexpected. An unpleasant thought struck him suddenly. “He’s okay? I mean, nothing’s happened to Spaceman?”
Robbie shrugged. “Not as far as I know. He went out to Azusa or someplace. To get laid, I think.”
Sweet kid.
“So what can I do for you?”
“To start with, you could gimme a beer.”
“You’re underage.”
Robbie shot him a look.
Blue sighed. “Okay,” he said. “One.”
They walked into the kitchen. While Robbie took a bottle from the fridge, Blue dropped a level teaspoon of instant coffee into a heavy mug. After a moment’s deliberation, he added another spoonful. Time to sober up. He then filled the mug with water from the automatic boiling tap and stirred. Put in some sugar for energy, but skipped the cream.
They went back into the living room, with Robbie already working on the beer. “What time is it, anyway?” Blue asked.
“’Bout twelve.”
“Damn.” Another evening had somehow slipped away. “Shouldn’t you be home in bed?”
“As far as anybody else knows, I am.”
“I see.” Blue waited, hoping for a sudden jolt of energy from the strong coffee. When it didn’t come, he sighed again and took a closer look at the intruder. “I doubt that you came all the way up here from your mother’s place just to cadge a beer. And speaking of which, how did you get here from Santa Monica?
“Hitched, of course.”
Of course. “Not smart. There are a lot of crazies out there.” He felt, suddenly, pretty sober. Maybe it was the coffee, or maybe it was the memory of one crazy in particular, Tom Hitchcock, who killed boys not so different from Robbie and who also came very close to killing a cop named Blue Maguire.
“Life is full of risks,” Robbie said, seemingly unconcerned. He had already drained the beer. “One more, hey? It’s frigging Christmas almost.”
“All right. But that’s it.”
When Robbie was sitting again, they drank in silence for a few minutes. Blue half listened to a robbery-in-progress call on the scanner.
“You and my old man,” Robbie said finally. “You’re pretty tight, huh?”
“I guess.” Blue thought about it. “Yeah, we’re friends.”
“Why?”
He sipped at the dregs of the cooling coffee. “Why?”
“He’s impossible.”
Blue almost smiled. “Sometimes, yes.”
“But you like him anyway.”
“Yes.” He finished the coffee and set the cup aside. “He saved my life, you know.”
“For real?”
“For very real.” Blue poked at the top of his mouth with his tongue; the damned coffee had burned him and now it would be sore for days. He was also stalling, because he didn’t want to talk about the whole thing with Hitchcock and his brother, or about the dead boys. Or especially about his own kidnapping. But he started and went through the whole sordid, sad mess. It sounded like a made-for-TV movie. A Spelling/Goldberg production.
When he finally was finished, one part of him wanted to reach out for the damned bottle and pour himself a healthy shot, but he didn’t.
Robbie shrugged. “Well, I guess you’d almost have to like somebody who saved your ass like that.”
Irritated that the boy seemed to have missed the point, Blue shook his head. “That’s not it. I mean, what happened, happened. We’re partners, so he was only doing what was right.” God, how pompous he sounded. “That doesn’t explain or de
fine our relationship.” Blue was aware that he was falling into an old and dangerous trap—talking like a textbook on human psychology instead of a real person.
“So, my old man’s a big-deal cop. Heavily into running around with his macho gun and saving people.”
“Don’t make some kind of mockery out of it,” Blue said sharply. “You have no right to do that.”
“I have no right,” Robbie repeated slowly. “Bullshit.” He drank deeply, then lowered the can and glared at Blue. “I do have the fucking right, Mr. Cop. And I also have a question.”
“Ask.”
“If the great and wonderful Spaceman Kowalski is so into saving people, why the hell didn’t he save me?”
Blue didn’t know what question he had been expecting, but this certainly wasn’t it. “What?”
Robbie seemed totally unaware of the tears that were suddenly standing in his eyes. “I was out there all alone and I was scared, Maguire. That’s why I kept setting those fires in the hills. If I could’ve burned down the whole fucking county I would have, because I wanted him to find me and stop me. To save me. He saved you and all those other people, so why couldn’t he save me? I’m his son.” The last words were said in a hoarse whisper.
“He tried, Robbie.”
“Oh, sure, he tried.” Disgust dripped from the voice.
“I was there, boy. I saw him going through hell because you were missing. But the point is, he had those other boys to think about, too. And then me. He just kept pushing himself to do it all.”
“But the real point is, partner, the goddamned point is, he didn’t save me. He just didn’t.” Robbie shrugged. “How’d you get him to like you?”
Again, Blue was puzzled. “What?”
“I want my father to like me.”
“Robbie, he loves you.” Blue almost said more; he wanted to grab the boy and shake the knowledge into him of how lucky he was to have a father who did care so much.
An expression that tried to be a sneer crossed Robbie’s face. It failed, however, and resolved itself into anguish. “I know he loves me. That’s his job. But I want him to like me, too. I want him to be my friend, like he’s your friend.”
Blue felt absolutely helpless. “Maybe,” he said carefully, “it can’t be that way. A father is one thing and a friend is something else.” He poked at the burned spot again, hoping pain might be inspirational. “I had an old man who really didn’t care about me,” he said after a moment. “That’s much worse. Maybe getting Spaceman Kowalski for a friend now is my reward for that.” He smiled faintly. “Or my punishment. Sometimes I’m not sure.”
Robbie snorted. “Okay. Well, I’m sorry I bothered you.” He stood, crushing the beer can in one hand. “I’ll just take off.”
“Hold on, kiddo. I’m not sending you off into the night to hitch your way back to Santa Monica. Let me put some shoes on and I’ll drive you.”
“Don’t bother.”
“Hey, all I need to do is let something happen to you. I don’t need Spaceman Kowalski on my case, thank you very much.”
“But you two are such good buddies, right?” All the earlier vulnerability was gone from Robbie’s voice now. He was just being a smartass kid.
“No sense pressing my luck,” Blue replied. He smiled.
After a moment, Robbie smiled back at him.
14
Spaceman lost the daily toss of the coin and so he was driving again. Usually he didn’t mind that chore and even enjoyed the feel of the expensive car in his hands. But not on a day that included still more rain and the holiday crowds. The festive decorations in the city were starting to look distinctly soggy.
He stretched as best he could behind the wheel. “I feel like my joints are starting to rust,” he bitched.
“Uh-huh.” Blue was watching the clogged traffic listlessly.
Spaceman was beginning to feel like he’d had more company back in the days when he worked alone than he did now. “You okay?”
“What?” Blue glanced at him, seeming to consider something. “I’ve been getting these phone calls,” he said finally.
“What kind of calls?”
He shrugged. “Anonymous ones.”
“Dirty?”
“Not so’s I could notice.” They smiled. “No, this is different. Somebody I know. Should know. I think probably somebody I was in Nam with.”
“So what’s going on? Threats?”
Blue shook his head, then waved a disparaging hand. “Hell, it’s probably nothing. Forget I even said anything.”
“Okay,” Spaceman said agreeably. “It’s absolutely forgotten.”
They both knew that it wasn’t, of course.
The address they were looking for on Crenshaw turned out to belong to a ramshackle wooden house that was the headquarters of something called the Los Angeles Vietnamese Center. Since the trail on Marybeth Wexler was leading them nowhere very fast, they were trying to track down what they could on Hua.
A small group of teenage boys was gathered on the porch, out of the rain, smoking and listening to rock music on a massive ghetto blaster. Spaceman and Blue got out of the car and dodged raindrops all the way to the porch. Once under cover of the eaves, they stopped, looking at the boys.
The boys looked back. “Cops,” a voice said.
“Hey, Mr. Policeman, we haven’t broken any laws.”
“Glad to hear it,” Spaceman said. “Even if I don’t believe it. Unfortunately, we don’t have time to waste on small-fry like you guys today. We’re looking for whoever’s in charge here.”
“Sorry,” the first boy said. “We don’t speak any English.” The words were said almost completely without accent.
Blue opened the door, held it for Spaceman, then followed him through.
“Asshole kids,” Spaceman muttered. “Not even over here long enough to get the rice out of their ears and already they’ve turned into creeps just like the natives.”
Blue resisted the urge to smile.
The living room of the old house had been turned into a reception area. Posters and flyers covered most of the peeling wallpaper. The room was dominated by a large desk, which was in turn occupied by a beautiful young woman. At the moment, she was bent over an ancient Underwood, typing swiftly.
Spaceman stayed by the door, letting Blue move in to do the talking. It was strictly a judgment call, this daily division of labor, and from the first, they had generally called it right.
She let him stand there for a full minute, before deigning to look up. “Yes?”
He held up his ID perfunctorily. “I’m Detective Maguire, L.A.P.D.”
She studied the badge and picture too long. At last, she raised her eyes to him.
Blue, well aware of the game she was playing, flipped the wallet closed and put it away. “Do you know a man named Don Hua?”
She glanced at Spaceman, who was reading the posters on the wall, then back at Blue. “That question should be phrased in the past tense, shouldn’t it?”
“Yes, I suppose so. That means you did know him?”
“I knew of him. We are not so large a community and my position here brings me into contact with most of our people living in this area.”
“So did it ever bring you into contact with Hua?”
She lifted a slender hand. “I cannot say yes or no for certain.”
“We’re trying to find out who murdered him.”
“And, of course, I wish you luck in that endeavor.”
“Do you have any ideas at all to offer, Miss—?”
“Tran. Angel Tran. Ideas?”
“About who might have wanted Hua dead?”
She pretended to think. “No. But there are a great many Americans who do not like us. Who hate us, in fact. Perhaps because we are a reminder of an unhappy time.”
“Are you saying that you think Hua was killed by an American?”
She smiled. “Without being ethnocentric, I feel that, statistically, the chances are excellent.”
“Perhaps one of your former soldiers.”
Blue put both hands into his pants pockets and rocked back and forth for a moment. “I’m a former soldier, as it happens.”
“Then you are surely not ignorant of the hostility so many of your fellows feel for us.”
Spaceman spoke for the first time. “Maybe they feel that there’s something to be bitter about.” He was still staring at the wall.
Blue glanced over at him, then shook his head. “Miss Tran, perhaps the emotions are misplaced, but I’m sure you can understand them.”
She said nothing.
“What about Hua?”
“There’s nothing I can tell you.”
Spaceman turned around. “Did you know a woman named Marybeth Wexler?”
“No.”
“Maybe Hua knew her.”
“I cannot say, of course.”
“Of course.” Blue put one of his cards on the edge of her desk. “If you hear of anything that might concern this case, you’ll call, Miss Tran?”
“Of course. Isn’t that what any law-abiding person would do?”
He nodded.
As they left, she started typing again.
The boys were still on the porch. They looked very settled in, as if it were a frequent resting place. “Some car, cop,” one said. “Graft must be up this year.”
Blue just smiled.
When they were back in the Porsche again, he stared out the window thoughtfully at the boys. “I saw your kid last night,” he said abruptly.
“Robbie?”
“You have another one you’ve been hiding? Yes, Robbie,”
“Where’d you see him?”
“He came by my place.”
“Why the hell?”
“Mostly just to meet me, I think.”
Spaceman started the car, gunning the engine. “Well, I’m sure that must have been a real thrill for all concerned.”
Blue recognized the tone in his partner’s voice and he was smart enough to shut up.
15
Devlin Conway took two steps backward and surveyed the wall of photographs critically. He had been at this for over three hours now, arranging and rearranging the display. Addison had given up in disgust finally and taken the bimbo to dinner, leaving one very nervous photographer alone. Which suited him just fine.