Burning Moon

by Richard Barre

  “Hell,” he let out as Wil and Lorenz strode through the kids and families onto a broad stretch of cool hardpack. White feet drawing even with theirs after shedding the loafers and rolling up his cuffs.

  “About the other day, your boy,” Maccafee said when the beachgoers had thinned. Lorenz looking away as a director might after calling “action,” not wanting to spook an actor’s soliloquy.

  “Devin,” Wil said. “His name was Devin.”

  “What I’m trying to say is, it must have been rough.”

  Nothing to add, so he didn’t as Lorenz flashed Maccafee a finish it look and kept walking.

  “Look, I’m trying to do right here,” Maccafee struggled. “How about some slack?”

  “It’s the job,” Wil said. “Makes you crazy sometimes.”

  “The job, right. We’re square, then?”

  Wishing it were longer, Wil let a beat pass. “Can’t dance,” he said. “Why not?”

  Lorenz cleared her throat. “Some fire going over the hill.”

  From the beach the extent of the pall was dramatic, a towering cloud flattening east-west at the top, mountains and sky as if viewed through shooting glasses. As one air tanker cleared the ridge toward re-watering, another droned toward it.

  “Has to be over a hundred on that side,” Wil said as they cleared an area with teenagers romping; excited screams and shouts as the waves rolled in or one got splashed. “I don’t envy the guys fighting it, and I know some.”

  “Speaking of a fight,” Lorenz segued, “Are you ready to join one?”

  “I suppose that depends on the terms.”

  “You know damn well—”

  “Tom…please.”

  “I just want to know which part didn’t he understand, Inez.”

  Wil watched a plane disappear in the haze, took a breath and plunged. “What was Jimmy doing for you that got him killed?”

  “As in when did you stop beating your wife,” she said. “That’s the deal here?”

  He said, “I help you, you help me. Sound familiar?”

  “It’s hard to see you holding the cards,” Lorenz said.

  “Ever consider that might cut both ways?”

  Maccafee laughed derisively. “Based on what?”

  Wil said, “A friend on the Sheriff’s is close to the investigation. Seems they have no knowledge Wen and her mother were illegal or that you threatened them with deportation. Which says to me that you excluded the county from briefings you must have had or you wouldn’t be operating here.” He paused for effect. “Not what you might call a model of inter-agency cooperation, would you say?”

  No reaction from either.

  “Don’t hesitate to correct me if I’m wrong here.”

  They’d left almost everyone behind now. Maccafee hurled a piece of driftwood into a wave, looked at Lorenz. “We won’t,” he said. “While you clarify for us what your client’s daughter does out at Luc’s in the wee hours.”

  And so much for his theory that the ATF had gone home.

  So much for Mia being under their radar.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  “What?” Maccafee said. “No smart-ass comeback?”

  Fallback: the thought they needed him as badly as he hoped, the reason they were here at all. Wil said, “Mia Tien stays out of this or I’m nowhere near it.”

  “You dictating to us,” Maccafee said, “I love it. Your call, Inez, but I think you know what I’d tell him.”

  Lorenz stopped walking, dug her toes in the sand. They were almost to the point where the rocks began: pair of seals poking up to look shoreward before diving again, water resembling brown glass as the sky continued to darken from the smoke. She stooped to pick up a flat stone, which she skimmed toward the oil rigs, the islands beyond. Without looking at either of them, she said, “That truce didn’t last long, did it? Anybody else thinking Mexican standoff?”

  32

  “It amounts to nothing,” Wil said, “money Luc’s paying her to help with expenses.” This after they’d tentatively agreed to a compromise: past and future relevancies for their looking the other way on the girl, provided she was clean.

  “That’s what she told you, huh?” Maccafee said. “Doubtless approved by her old man.”

  “Check it out with him,” Wil said with more chutzpah than he felt hearing his own words to her thrown back at him. “Vinh could ask how you knew. Then there’s the matter of her associates, their reaction to one of their own being under surveillance by a federal agency.”

  “So fucking what?”

  “Campus protests with your scrambled eggs hold any meaning for you?”

  “All right,” Lorenz broke in. “That’s enough.”

  They were at a campground picnic table near where they’d stopped walking. Shouts drifting over from a badminton game, now and then a disc with a kid in pursuit…warm in the yellow sun.

  “Speaking of who knew what,” Lorenz said, “how did you know Mia Tien was working for her uncle?”

  “A little bird.”

  “Just the kind of thing she’d volunteer,” Maccafee said.

  “Move on,” Lorenz said. “What exactly does she do for him?”

  “Exactly what, I don’t know,” Wil answered. No problem there.

  Her lips became a tight line; she rubbed her neck as if it hurt. “I’m not sure we’re getting off to a real good start here.”

  “Sorry, it’s the truth.”

  “Right,” Maccafee threw at him. “Inez, you want to tell him what we need, or should I?”

  Lorenz brushed sand off her ankles. “Mr. Hardesty, pursuant to our deal, I’m going to ask you for a description of Luc Tien’s house. Which means everything you remember: names of staff, visitors who stood out, best guess on the rest. Anything you know about his computer system—”

  “Which is nothing,” he interrupted.

  “Give it a rest. Firsthand or through the girl,” she went on. “Write it down and we’ll pick it up tomorrow. If you’re going out, leave it on your deck under a pad. I also expect written reports on further contact or conversations with those involved, even marginally.”

  “Gee, that’s all?”

  “For now,” she said.

  “My turn, then,” Wil started. “What do you know about Jimmy’s boat going down?”

  She and Maccafee exchanged looks, Lorenz shrugging. “Double bum for the home team. And if you dug up the reports, which I assume you have by now, you know what we know. Mac?”

  “About it,” he said. “Nothing to indicate foul play. Just shit for luck.”

  Maybe to questionable. “Anything you have on it I might check out?”

  “Whatever we come across is yours,” Lorenz said.

  Wil read dry well and tried a different tack. “If Luc Tien is the head of this budding national crime organization, how does he recruit?”

  Maccafee swiped at perspiration. He said, “By convincing the strongest street gangs to join him, helping them exterminate rivals and consolidate their assets. In other words, to run efficiently, perks to those who buy in. But if somehow the poolside treatment fails, he always has his mulcher.”

  Wil looked at him to see if he was serious. “His what?”

  “Paint yourself a picture,” Maccafee said, “the unconvinced going in feet first. Feeding time at Miracle-Gro ranch.”

  Wil tried—all those plants—and balked. “You’re saying you know that for a fact.”

  The Maccafee smile. “A snitch we know witnessed one before he permanently ceased operations. Answer your question?”

  Lorenz said, “These people live for that example crap. But the bottom line is, dumb is not Luc’s style. People who underestimate him don’t a second time.”

  “Is that what Jimmy was trying to uncover for you?”

  Maccafee fielded it. “We had Jimmy going on a lot of things, actually.”

  “Things Wen might know about?”

  “Could be, Sherlock.”

  “In other words
,” Wil said, “anything that would hang his uncle.”

  Maccafee shrugged.

  Wil said, “And how did Jimmy feel about that?”

  “How the fuck would I—”

  Lorenz cleared her throat. “What Agent Maccafee means is there was something at stake for the young man or he wouldn’t have agreed. Right, Mac?”

  “Whatever you say. But you notice who’s revealing what here, Inez? How I told you it would play out?”

  “I’ll take a flier on it,” Wil said. “Love and witness protection, happily ever after. Provided Jimmy went along.”

  A beat passed, glances between her and Maccafee, then she said, “Close enough for government work.”

  “And was he living up to your expectations?”

  “Put it this way,” she came back. Brushing at a gnat interested in her eyelashes. “The kid was about to when we lost him.”

  “Inez, this is bullshit.”

  Wil eyed Maccafee, said to Lorenz, “One more before I go beat on the Tien girl for you. This tong thing that was all over the tube, the shoopter they arrested in San Francisco. You see Luc’s hand in that?”

  Eyes met again and disengaged. “Three guesses, no proof,” she answered for them. “As yet.”

  “Why stop there, Inez?” The big agent fanning his jacket to let in air. “Tell him the rest.”

  She thought, finally nodded. “All right. Dao Hong, the one they arrested then released, is a Dragon underboss, a dai low. Just before we heard from you, we got word he was found dead in a limo with two of his crew. Small caliber head shots. Presumably by a man posing as his lawyer’s driver.”

  Pro hits, Wil thought fighting a vague sense of unease. He said, “They get a description of the driver?”

  “Caucasian, medium build. The cop who checked his credentials outside the Hall of Justice said he reminded her of Steve McQueen, that short hair of his. Beyond that, nothing.”

  “You hit us, we hit you,” Wil qualified.

  “Something like that.”

  Maccafee’s eyes shifted to the oil rigs. “If you want my opinion, we ought to just let’ em go at it, save us all the time and money and to hell with the politicians. Lock and load, I say.”

  “Except it’s never them in the crossfire, is it?” she snapped at him. As though the issue were an old one between them.

  Maccafee said, “What my partner’s referring to, Hardesty, is an L.A. jewelry heist. Two little Korean girls who nearly bought it when—”

  “I can explain myself, Agent Maccafee,” she said.

  “Never said you couldn’t, partner. I just know you, is all.”

  “I must have missed it,” Wil said, wondering whether he should duck now or later.

  Lorenz took a breath. “A little over a week ago these four fucks, Dragons, are set to waste not only the store owner but his wife and daughters. It’s that close to happening when a guy appears from nowhere to drop three of them and drag the fourth out with him.”

  Wil tried picturing it, winding up with the same question. “How’d he come to be there?”

  She said, “The jeweler isn’t saying, but we think he has Po Sang ties and hit a button. The same four had done other stores in the area.”

  “Po Sang gets tired of it and brings a guy in,” Wil said. “Which might fit for Hong and his cronies.”

  Lorenz said nothing, brushed ash from her shoulders after a look at Maccafee, who glanced away.

  Wil said, “And the fourth Dragon?”

  “Haven’t found him—and SFPD never heard of an anglo doing hit work for the Tongs,” she answered. “Theirs, anyway.”

  “So now it’s Luc’s turn at bat.”

  Maccafee shifted his holster, fanned his jacket. “Considering how our man hates Chinese, it’s always his turn,”

  Again from left field. “Did I come in late again?”

  Maccafee’s smile seemed broader. “You get close to ol’ Luc, be sure and ask him about it. Stems from his getting buggered while apprenticing in Saigon, this fag gangster he worked for and his pals, Chinese. Likely from their high regard for the Vietnamese.”

  Eyeing Lorenz for reaction, Wil caught patient: changeup, fastball, curve. He said, “I’ll be sure and bring that up. What about the guy from nowhere?”

  “We wouldn’t mind talking to him,” she said.

  “You’re thinking he might have done Jimmy?”

  Shrug. “We’re not ruling it out. That is, unless you have something to add.”

  Wil thought about it, rejected what was running through his mind as her fingers drummed the table. “Nope,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “Then I suggest you fish on your own time, Mr. Hardesty.”

  My fish, your catch, he was about to say, but held off as she went on. “Now, to keep things linear, we want the Dragon, you want to know what happened to Jimmy. Is that accurate?”

  Nod. “As a metaphor for both and with his sister out of it, yes.”

  “Good,” she said. “Then we understand each other.”

  “So,” Maccafee said to him with a now-you-see-what-it’s-like smirk as they stood to go. “How’s that place we saw with the tall palms? The steak any good?”

  Wil stayed seated. “That would be up to you since you get to grill it. And tell me, where do ATF agents hang out these days if not in their Buicks?”

  “No need to concern yourself about that, Mr. Hardesty,” Lorenz said, moving now to cut across the park. “Stay close and we’ll be in touch.”

  “I have no doubt of it,” he called after her. Wondering about the fragility of this shotgun arrangement as they disappeared around an outbuilding and left him with only drifting ash.

  33

  Five-thirty—late lunch, massage, and a stroll to get his game plan together—the man was ready to make his call.

  “Guess who?” he said as the voice answered

  “You’re clear, I take it,” the voice came back.

  “You may.” Still thinking of where this score could put him: his own island, scoped out during a recent spell in Bali; paradise on the half-shell, that close. “And yourself?” he asked. Ebullient despite his number one rule: No presence.

  “In place,” the voice said. “But it’s thoughtful that you ask.”

  “I’m a thoughtful guy.”

  “And a different one, in my experience.”

  That got his attention. “Different how?”

  There was a pause. Then, “Your independence, your execution. The limousine, for example, that whole scenario. And your grasp of things. Certainly of what they cost.”

  “Of their worth, you mean,” the man responded. Hard not to enjoy this banter on top of the day he’d had.

  There was a sound like a chuckle. “However you say.”

  Recalling the voice’s off-beat comment—Is that what I am?—the man tried visualizing its owner, the kind of mental exercise that had kept him sane in the camps. The voice was as napless as glass, but with an edge of cruelty. It reminded him of a guard who’d tormented them and whom he’d killed during the escape. Far too quickly, but Rule Two: You took what you could in life.

  The man said, “You’re pleased, then?”

  “How could we not be pleased with the Dragon gone to dishonor his ancestors?”

  “A Dragon, I believe you mean.”

  The voice paused again. “Explain, please.”

  “But of course. May I assume you’re directing these events from a fair distance?”

  “Global intelligence and technology have made the world a state of mind,” the voice said. “You of all people should concur.”

  “True,” he said. “If we were talking about me.”

  “And just what is it that we are talking about?” Frost creeping in now, an edge of impatience.

  The man smiled: two could play this game. He said, “Specifically, that a dragon’s claws grow back.”

  “A point made early on, I believe.”

  “So it was, relative to its brain being your targe
t. Or am I mistaken about that?”

  The man heard a breath expelled; then, as he’d surmised about the voice’s cognitive abilities, “I was assured my information regarding Hong was beyond reproach.”

  “It was,” the man admitted. “As far as it went.”

  Silence. “I see. And your recommendation?”

  The man rubbed an old burn scar that air-conditioning often made sensitive. “My recommendation is that it’s time to widen your outlook, my genderless friend. Not to mention your wallet.”

  34

  After windsprints with Matt to clear his head, Wil worked on his recollections of the Luc Tien visit until nearly six—nine pages of notes and he was ready to chuck the whole thing. Mia, Luc, Lorenz, Maccafee—all of it: Good-bye and good luck.

  Nice closure, he thought. Real future in it.

  Another night in the hills seemed a waste, seeing as how his new associates were on the job and better equipped: probably in some neighbor’s rental wing or guest cottage with long-lens visual access. Standard alphabet-agency MO. Which reminded him to pay closer attention the next time he was out there, trust not yet a big part of how he felt about Lorenz and Maccafee. To the contrary, he still wondered what he’d gotten himself into; something beyond warmed-over file info, he hoped. Finally getting around to the paper for the first time in several days, he caught a concert listing and on impulse picked up the phone.

  “Wil? What—”

  “Spur of the moment, Leese, Ronnie Pruett at the Bowl. Dutch treat, we meet there. What do you say?”

  “Who?” Tired-sounding.

  “This kid I know from Bakersfield who writes and performs his own Country-Western. He’s touring his first album.”

  Long breath. “Wil, I just got home.”

  “Guaranteed to perk you up and support a kid who could use it.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said after a beat. “But thanks.”

  “Might be something to take your mind off…”

  “My mind off what?”

  “Fill in the blanks, one or all” he said, Frank’s comments about her looking frayed still kicking around; plus his own observations.

  Silence, then: “Is everyone else you know busy or something?”