Burning Moon

by Richard Barre

  They tried the market side, where a man and two women in aprons were dressing fish and arranging it on ice. Collectively, a fresher version of the aroma he’d picked up on Vinh Tien.

  He came forward now in hopsack jeans and a beige polo, nodding and wiping his hands on a towel so they could shake.

  “Some operation,” Wil said, spotting Li Tien at one of the sinks as he and Vinh took a table.

  “Some work,” Vinh Tien allowed, Matt alongside taking great interest in the hand extended him. “There is coffee, should you wish.”

  “Thanks, we had some.” He watched Vinh’s eyes roam: trademark, Wil knew from experience, of someone in the food business, that nonstop radar. “I went to see your brother.”

  He described it: Luc’s manner, his equally confidant denials. Then, “A question, though: Had you told him about me?”

  Vinh Tien’s eyes came back. “My brother and I speak only when necessary and only through someone. I do not recall the last time. The investigation, I suppose.”

  Metallic sounds from the kitchen, wet mop on clay floor tile.

  Wil said, “Well, he knew I was coming.”

  “Not from me, he didn’t.”

  Immediate and nothing to indicate it wasn’t true.

  “Beyond the Coast Guard, were there other government agencies involved?”

  “Locally, the Sheriff and the Harbor Patrol. I recall no others.”

  Wil reviewed his contacts at each: Sheriff’s, a couple; Harbormaster, none. Vinh Tien picked at a scrape on the back of his wrist.

  “So,” he asked. “What will you do next?”

  Wil thought about it. “Wen’s mother, I imagine.”

  A look resembling indigestion crossed Vinh’s face. “Then I wish you luck,” he said, nodding at a man extending a portable phone to him from behind a counter. “And no small measure of fortitude.”

  ***

  Isla Vista clung remoralike to UCSBs western flank. A creatively coded amalgam of apartment buildings, frat houses, and multi-plexes, its commerce was a toss of food co-ops, pizza parlors, sound stores, and coffee hangouts. The county-patrolled turf nonetheless had become a haven for a burgeoning number of Vietnamese immigrants—sober individuals who kept largely to themselves while attempting to decipher the culture: the parties that flared like wildfires; the bottle-jammed Dumpsters; the BMWs, Integras, and Celicas driven by students who seemed intent on down-dressing the most impoverished of them.

  Cruising it, Wil was struck again by how little it had changed since the early seventies when he was there. Apart from the names above the hangouts, I.V. was as constant as a myth: bastion of the counter-culture, keeper of the flame, banners tattered but aloft if you believed what was tacked onto the phone poles, kiosks, and message boards.

  Flutters du jour.

  It did, however, list his favorite name for a street.

  Sabado Tarde—Saturday afternoon—that sweet sadness marking the divide between Friday and Monday, the feeling that always accompanied his college reflections. Life as Saturday afternoon: Frisbee and beach volleyball, surfing runs upcoast to then-undiscovered Jalama, backcountry overnights with Lisa when they were getting started and the sap was running high.

  Things you never fully appreciated until they’d flown.

  Wil just missed a cyclist in a peace T-shirt and got a one-fingered salute in return. Checking Wen’s mother’s address again, he pulled over next to a small house behind a double overhead of myoporum. Cyclone-fenced dirt yard with kids playing, sandpile in the corner, toys scattered throughout. He rapped the screen door, and was met by a young Vietnamese woman with a baby in one arm.

  “Mrs. Diem?” The baby staring at him with huge dark eyes.

  “Which one.”

  “Nguyen Diem?” Obviously not her.

  The woman disappeared; in a moment, one in her mid-to-late forties approached the door dressed in a shift that might once have been spotless and on which she was wiping her hands. Wide nose set in a face that looked as if dashed hopes and hard work had been friends since childhood.

  “Heh?…” Looking suspiciously at him.

  Wil handed her his card at which she glanced briefly before giving it to the younger woman, the baby now with a finger in its mouth. For all he could tell, the child hadn’t blinked since he’d arrived.

  “You detective?” the young woman asked.

  “Private investigator,” he said, one eye on the baby, who had begun to squirm. “I’m hoping to ask her some questions about her daughter.” Noting that even as the younger woman was translating, Nguyen Diem was shaking her head emphatically.

  “No more questions,” the younger woman said. “Daughter gone. All finished.”

  Wil nodded, started to explain, addressed the younger woman instead. “Please tell her that I feel her loss. That I am trying to find out what happened to her daughter.” Pausing while the younger woman went through it and Nguyen Diem said something too mumbled to follow.

  “She want to know why you do this,” the younger woman said.

  “Please tell her my only wish is to help.”

  Diem rapid-fired back, swung her eyes accusingly to Wil as it was translated.

  “She say you work for uncle.”

  “No that’s—”

  Another staccato burst, the younger woman shifting the baby to the other arm as it began to fuss.

  “Government, then. No good, either one. She say you go now.”

  “Vinh Tien hired me,” Wil tried again. “Jimmy’s father, her baby’s grandfather.”

  But it had gone too far.

  “No, no, no. No more talk. You go ‘way.” Retreating past a mantle on which a line of stuffed animals sat propped, beyond where Wil could make her out through the screen.

  “Animals for her unborn grandchild,” the young woman told him, wiping drool from the baby’s chin. “Mrs. Diem very sad since Wen is gone. Most lonesome. She and Wen come here from Shanghai.”

  “Mrs. Diem is Chinese?”

  “Chinese born in Vietnam. Viet-Ching—no good life. China no good, either.”

  “Can you help me, Ms…?”

  The younger woman’s eyes widened. “Me? I know nothing. Mrs. Diem—”

  “All right, okay. They lived nearby, didn’t they—Wen and Jimmy?”

  “That way.” Indicating the general direction. “Rented right after—six, seven months now. Many students, not many places.” The baby growing increasingly fussy.

  “Did Wen—”

  “No more. You go now.”

  The baby’s fussings had turned into little cries that matched the ones coming from the house and from a kid behind him in the sandpile. In a minute they’d all be doing it.

  “Look, I just want to—”

  As the door behind the screen banged shut, Wil turned to face the rising howls in the yard.

  14

  The place Jimmy and Wen had occupied was a triplex up one street and over two. As Wil pulled in beside a white Jetta and a red Amigo on the lawn or what passed for one, he could see sunning themselves on the balcony two girls and a boy in sunglasses that de-personalized an already vacant face.

  “That’s David’s spot you’re parked in,” the kid said as Wil called up to him, one of the girls blinking open before closing her eyes again.

  “Couple of questions,” he said. “That is, if you’re 217B.”

  “David’s not gonna like that.”

  “How about it?”

  The kid looked down. “That a dog in the car?”

  “My driver,” Wil smiled until he saw it didn’t register. “Would you remember the previous tenants, a Vietnamese couple?”

  “You must be kidding, man. I.V.’s crawling with ‘em.”

  “Kenny, be nice,” one of the girls said sleepily.

  “Oh, yeah, I forgot.”

  Wil felt like bouncing him off his Amigo, but instead said, “Kenny, the sooner you help me, the sooner I’m gone.”

  Kenny took a hit from the
Coors can beside him, settled back onto his lounge.

  “Jimmy and Wen,” Wil said, gritting his teeth. “Young couple, nice looking, mid twenties?”

  “That’s young?” the other girl said without glancing up.

  The one who’d looked his way rose and stepped to the railing. Bikini top and shorts, blonde hair, even tan, navel stud. Sea-blue eyes looking down at him.

  “You a cop or something?”

  “Nope. Interested party.”

  She shrugged. “It’s no big hush-up. We rented this after they were gone. The landlord gave us the place cheap because he didn’t want to rent to any more…um—”

  Deciding not to go there after all.

  “They leave anything behind?” Wil asked. “Things the landlord or the authorities might have missed?”

  “Why? They criminals or something?”

  “Ask him if there’s a reward,” Kenny said.

  “Shut up,” she said to him without force. Then to Wil, “The usual: bags and stuff, things you might toss in soup. Dust, and like, a lot of it.”

  “Not too neat,” the other girl added.

  “Anybody else around know them?” Wil feeling his neck getting stiff from looking up. “Neighbors?”

  “Nobody in the plex, and we’ve been here longest.” She tried a thought on for size, looked unsure of the fit. “You might try the people next door. Nobody’s real permanent around here.”

  “Thanks, I’ll do that.” Rubbing his neck. “What’s your name?”

  “None of his business,” Kenny mumbled.

  “Amber. What’s yours?”

  “Asshole,” Kenny coughed into his fist.

  “Don’t mind Kenny,” Amber said. “He’s just mad his check’s late, and David’s gone for the weekend. You want to come up, have a beer or something?”

  “Another life, maybe.” Wil said, as the other girl levered up to watch him go.

  “What?…”

  “It’s bright, I said. Take care of those eyes.”

  ***

  The only resident who could even place Jimmy and Wen was an Hispanic woman across the street with cats in the living room. Seven or eight of them. She recalled the couple as polite, always greeting her by name—Mrs. Flores—when they’d pass her house, and seeming tense just before they didn’t come back.

  “Los pobres,” she said, crossing herself as a tortoiseshell curled its tail around her leg and looked up at him. “They were nice, well behaved. Not like those party-brats he’s got in there now. God forbid they should pick up a book.”

  “You know the landlord?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Hindu dentist or something, drives up from L.A. in his Caddy. Always comes and asks me what his tenants are doing. Like I’m his spy or something.”

  “Did he mention finding anything after the authorities finished up?”

  “Not to me he didn’t. Never even cleaned the place before those kids moved in. Let alone after.”

  Wil bent to a gray shorthair, who sniffed his hand. “You said they seemed tense?”

  She thought about that. “I’d never heard them say a cross word till then. But they snapped at each another. Cantinflas has been known to bite, by the way. Not me, but visitors.”

  “Any idea what it might have been about?” Pulling in his hand.

  She lowered her glasses at him. “Does the sheriff know you’re asking these questions?” Not challenging so much as Our little secret.

  “Not these specific ones, no,” he answered.

  “But they do know of you?”

  “My license, remember?”

  She looked at his card again, then up and down the street. Wil thought he spotted a flash of blue-gray metal, but by the time he’d raised his hand to the glare, it was gone.

  “Well,” Mrs. Flores was saying. “It has been a number of months. Who knows what it might have been about?”

  The tortoiseshell landed in his lap; she lifted it to her, cradled it.

  “Feeding this crew must be something else,” he said.

  “Are you kidding? You have any idea what I pay for Little Friskies? You don’t want to know.”

  “I can only imagine.” Pulling a twenty from his wallet, folding it lengthwise so it stayed flat, extending it.

  She eyed the bill. “Wait a minute. I’m not violating any rules here, am I? Privacy or anything?”

  “No ma’am. Just helping out.”

  She took it, tucked it under her. Wil shifted positions while a clock embedded in a scene showing kittens in a fur hat marked the seconds.

  “I think it had to do with whoever was after them,” she said.

  “After them…”

  “Well, maybe not after them, I don’t really know that. More like some threat.” Frowning at the recollection. “Seemed like they were turning on each other because they didn’t know what to do, or each had a different idea about it. Body language, a backward glance—they’ll tell you things if you let ‘em.”

  “They were scared,” Wil said.

  Mrs. Flores touched noses with the purring tortoiseshell. “There it is. Something had ‘em going.”

  15

  Recrossing the street, Wil saw no red Amigo in front of the triplex and no sign of Kenny. The only one left on the balcony was the blonde who’d spoken to him.

  Amber.

  “They went to get some food,” she said as he approached. “And the offer still stands.”

  “How about my card in your jamb instead.”

  At the sound of Wil’s voice, Matt stuck his nose out the half-cracked window and yipped a welcome that sounded more like talking than barking.

  “Yeah?” she said. “What for?”

  “So that if you think or hear of anything or if something turns up, you’ll be able to call me.”

  He left the card, started again for the Bonneville.

  “Be that way,” she said, rolling over on her lounge and releasing her straps.

  Sabado Tarde.

  Wil let Matt lick his ear, then backed out with an upward glance. He was heading west toward the spot where the road and the houses ended and an undeveloped section led to a beach where he could run Matt a little, when he made the tail for real.

  Blue-gray Buick, late model, block and a half back of them.

  Sun glinting off the windshield as it waited at the stop.

  Wil waited until the Buick had crossed the intersection, then he made a leisurely turn into an alley he knew came out the street just up. Out of sight, he gunned it, spun the wheel, circled in time to see the Buick hesitate before nosing into where he’d turned.

  He gave them a second, headed in.

  And there they were, halfway through, heads in clipped conversation: woman driving, auburn hair cropped at the neckline, beefy-looking bald man riding shotgun, Wil at least half right from the other day at Rattlesnake. He saw the woman’s eyes brush the rearview, saw her alert her partner, the partner start to swivel before checking his door mirror instead. Then her brakes flashed at the alley’s narrow mouth, and she hit it.

  Through her dust, Wil did the same. Riding the brake with his left foot, the gas with his right, he kicked the Bonneville’s big engine, felt the lean, the car’s heavy suspension fighting it. He threw a glance at Matt now braced against the door and backed off slightly while trying to keep the Buick in sight.

  Blink and lose them.

  Braking where the driver had, he whipped a right and accelerated, saw her appearing momentarily confused as to which street was out. The Buick swerved wide, left sparks at the street’s crown and almost clipped a parked 4Runner that Wil left-footed for, scattering the same quartet of cyclists the Buick had swerved to avoid. That’s when he lost it, spinning out, stalling, taking Matt, despite his four-legged brace, sideways into the dash.

  ***

  By the time he saw to the four girls while a bike-sympathetic crowd also lit into him, one writing down his licence, it was nearly four, the Buick long gone. The good news was Matt was fine—s
upervising the scene from his window seat and drawing the interest of the cyclists and even some from the crowd.

  Mr. Oil-on-troubled-waters.

  Curled on the front seat now as Wil took the slow lane home.

  The Buick said agency of some sort, yet at the same time rental. Which could mean nearly anyone. So who were they? More to the point, why him? He stopped in Carpinteria for a double espresso, Milk-Bones for Matt. Then he slipped down 101 past Bates Road and the Rincon, the advance-guard already lining up for the chubasco…the one the radio was reporting, threat to sucker-punch the Mexican coast and already landing curdly clouds up here. Air you could feel in your chest.

  He switched to the oldies station out of Ventura, caught Wiiiild horses…couldn’t drag me away. Waiting out a pulse of oncoming traffic, he swung in past La Conchita’s lone gas station/burger joint and the streets dead-ending in the taped-off homes, the ‘95 slide, the bluffs. Onto his street and to a dead stop, nearly sliding Matt off the seat again.

  Wiiiild, wiiiild horses—

  Wil lost the Stones, stared at the blue-gray car parked in his drive, at the two heads turning to look at him as he eased in and cut the engine. Waiting as the two stepped out and came together at the Buick’s trunk.

  He let Matt out his side, told him to stay, started toward them.

  Five-sevenish yet dwarfed by the bald man’s six-three bulk, the woman was café con leche to his sun-reddened white, dark-eyed to his pale gray. She wore gabardine slacks nipped in on a crunch-fed waist. Light-blue oxford shirt with the tip of a pen showing, light makeup on a face doing its best to look stern.

  Not that her utilitarian haircut hurt the effort.

  Or the trident logo embossed into the grip of her Beretta nine.

  The man had the look and size of ex-cop or military, hard tending toward girth, webs around the eyes and nose. Up close, his head had a fringe of almost-shaved gray, a sheen that made it look waxed. Khakis and a short-sleeved white shirt that displayed thick forearms, the mark of a near-successful tattoo removal peeking out from under one sleeve.

  Like the woman, he had a Beretta clipped to his belt.