Burning Moon

by Richard Barre

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” she said. “Not if it means another go-round.”

  “Look at me and say that.” Balancing the box on his head.

  “I’m serious, Wil.”

  “Just pizza,” he said, taking it down. “I promise.”

  She stepped back to let him in, shut it after him. This time the stereo played familiar country—Ronnie Pruett singing “Oil and Water,” one of the songs from the Bowl.

  “So I bought the CD,” she said defensively. “He’s good.”

  “What’d I tell you?”

  She turned it down. “Wil, I watched the news. Do have any idea what you’re doing?”

  “Half veggie, half combo,” he said. “No ulterior motives, no surprises.”

  “I meant are you all right?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “Why not happens to be all over the tube,” she said.

  More or less prepped for it, he said, “Hype is their business, Leese. You know that.”

  “I know what I saw, Wil.”

  “So you know what you saw. So do I.”

  “But you’re okay…”

  He understood, then. “No booze, if that’s where you’re headed.”

  She set the brush across a paint can beside a half-white baseboard, newspapers taped to the floor. She took the pizza into the kitchen, set it on the day table and got out paper plates and napkins, told him there was Vernor’s left.

  Wil got two out, set hers next to the glasses she’d gotten out, cracked his and downed some, the bubbles stinging his nose. “Not interrupting anything, am I?”

  “You mean the wilted Fresh Choice behind the Rudy’s take-out?”

  He smiled, offered her a slice, took one himself.

  “Damnit, the Tiens,” she said in midbite. “I never got a chance to call.”

  “It’s okay. They’re doing okay.”

  “With him in jail?”

  “Sort of okay.” Going on to tell her the basics—Vinh Tien’s VC connection, the media, the effects it might have, was about to have.

  “God, it’s like being back in it,” she said, shaking her head.

  In the living room, Ronnie Pruett hit a shitkicker downbeat.

  Wil said, “Leese, if you feel that way, I’ll go.”

  “No. It’s all right.”

  “Then what about you?”

  “Not much to report,” she said. “Less nausea.”

  “That’s good news.”

  She broke a smile, shook her head again.

  “Something funny?” he asked through a bite.

  “It struck me that way, us here like this,” she said. “I don’t know why.”

  “Laughs R Us.”

  For a while they ate pizza and drank ginger ale, paint fumes and Ronnie wafting in from the living room. Finally she said, “Ran you out of Dodge, did they?”

  “The press?” he said. “Not really. It’s just good to have someplace to go.”

  Her eyes settled on him. “Even in your mind?”

  “Especially there,” Wil said.

  ***

  He was dozing on the couch, Ronnie Pruett low and into a ballad, Lisa on her knees at the baseboards, when his cell phone sounded.

  “Hardesty,” he answered, feeling more like tossing it in the fireplace.

  “It’s Inez Lorenz. You asleep or something? I kept getting your machine.”

  “Sorry. It’s been crazy at my place.”

  “So it looked on the tube. Look, can you come by here?”

  “Tonight?” Holding up his watch and squinting to make out nine-thirty.

  “No, next Christmas,” Lorenz said. “I’m at the Skyway Motel, near the airport. You know it?”

  “More or less.” Glancing over at Lisa, who looked up at him, her brush angled so as not to drip, then quickly away.

  “Room 20,” Lorenz added. “Doesn’t matter how late. Just come.”

  “All right,” he said. “Give me half an hour.”

  Dial tone led him back to Lisa, but this time she didn’t look up.

  48

  The Skyway Motel was a skip past the airport, a quarter mile from the beach flanking UCSB. Sixties vintage, popular with the charter pilots who ran helicopter shuttles to the oil rigs and with trainees attending the flight schools, it sat across from one of California’s premier sewage treatment facilities. Room 20 was set at the end of the line of units facing the road.

  Wil pulled in next to Lorenz’s blue-gray Buick and knocked.

  “Right on time,” she said, cracking the door, then letting him in to old smoke and Lysol. Stove and small fridge at one end, make-up alcove and bathroom at the other. Plain bedspread and bureau, chairs and table with an in-use laptop next to a half-empty fifth of Beam.

  Window facing the lights of UCSB if the drapes had been open.

  She wore a working blouse pulled out over pants, flat silver chain, moccasins without socks, a bracelet of twisted silver wire. Color rode her cheeks, or maybe it was the light. The Beretta nine was down at her side.

  “Problem with aggressive salespeople?” he said, glancing at it.

  “Some are less polite than others,” Lorenz came back.

  “Tell me about it.”

  She set the gun on the bureau, clicked the laptop shut, sat down. On the table were a lidded ice bucket and a plastic glass with melting ice. “Drink?” she said. “I’m having one.”

  “No, thanks.” Wondering how many the one amounted to. “It’s back to a day at a time for me.”

  She poured herself two fingers and nipped one off, leaned back. “My old man drank—like that, I mean—and for pete’s sake, sit down. You rather I stow it?”

  “Either way’s fine,” he said, the waft of it like gasoline.

  “Meaning yes.” She drained the glass, put the bottle under the table, leaned forward to squint at his eyes. “How long had it been?”

  “Six years,” he answered, turning from her breath.

  “Sorry.” Leaning back again. “Hours and days?”

  “Nothing so boring as a drunk keeping score.”

  “But now you’ve reset the meter.”

  “With both hands,” he said. “What about your dad?”

  She half-smiled, dropped it. “My dad lost two families that way, then himself, then me when I tossed him over the side. Not exactly our finest hour.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.” Whiff of lavender soap as the bourbon smell waned.

  “Right,” she said. “And what else is new?”

  “For some reason I had the feeling you were going to tell me.”

  Her hand went to the glass that wasn’t there, then quickly with the other across her chest. “Some mess out there at Sunnybrook Farm.”

  “That’s what this is about?”

  “In part. You have any thoughts on who did it?”

  He searched her expression for clues, saw none. “Other than to dispute the prevailing wisdom, no. You?”

  Lorenz tightened her lips. “No indication what Luc wanted to talk to you about that might have involved us…”

  “None that I found evidence of.”

  She thought some more. “What about his computers?”

  “Mia said they were programmed to dump twenty seconds after anyone without the password tried to enter. She was on a break.”

  “Backup systems?”

  “Nowhere I thought to look,” Wil answered. “Evidently Luc did the boots and shut-downs himself.”

  A prop plane taxied in on the runway, revved, let its engines die. Lorenz rattled the ice in her glass, chewed on some. She said, “The kid was in the house when it happened, wasn’t she?”

  He was about to say no, thought better of it, and said nothing.

  “She get a look at who killed him?”

  Wil said, “You think her father would be in jail if she had?”

  “Which, of course, begs the question

  Wil rubbed his eyes. “This why you got me out here?”

  Lore
nz went to the window, slanted a look through the drapes. Releasing them, she said, “From what I’ve been able to gather, you made no mention of us to the sheriff’s people. Why not?”

  “I’ve wondered that myself.” Letting out a breath.

  “Try reaching deep.”

  “Okay. Because I think you know what happened to Jimmy,” he said. “And I think you know it’s the key to all this.”

  “Which means you’re still in it, that would mean.”

  “For reasons I’m not sure would make sense even to me.”

  She tapped her nails beside the empty glass, forced her eyes from it. She said, “I’m curious about something. Did you really know your client was VC when you took him on?”

  “Thanks for thinking of me,” Wil said, rising.

  “Sit down, I’m not through. You still could have turned us. Taken your chances and shifted heat off yourself. Why didn’t you?”

  “Who knows? Maybe I figured it was up to you. That you had something going on that might pay off bigger.”

  “Professional courtesy,” she mimicked. “The broader picture.”

  He let it stand, said nothing.

  Lorenz snorted. “On the other hand, maybe you’re just not the forthcoming type.”

  “I’ve been told that often enough to think there’s some truth to it.”

  “By women?”

  “Cops mainly,” he said. “And are you ready to tell me what’s no-shit behind Luc Tien? What you’re really doing here?”

  Her gaze dropped to the glass. “A bad man now off the board. Point is, I just wanted you to know I appreciate what you did. Keeping us out of it.”

  “And your partner?”

  Flicker of something before she answered, a door pulled back before it was yanked shut. “Mac, of course.”

  “Who happens to be out doing whatever it is he does so well.”

  Lorenz fixed on him, tried to see in. “Look, we keep up this sparring, you and me, all we’re going to have left is raw meat. Which would be a waste and a damn shame, and there, I said it.” Flushing darker and shaking her head. “See, I’m not too good at the finer things. Probably because I never had much practice, the places I’ve lived, military bases and hotspots.” She blew a breath, looked away as though weary of exposition. “That doesn’t mean my heart wasn’t in it.”

  Wil sat very still. “Are you saying what I think you are?”

  “You tell me, hotshot.” Still not meeting his eyes.

  “Inez, I think you did fine—better than fine. I’m also flattered.”

  Back to them. “But no dice, huh?”

  “It’s not just me,” he said. “Any man would be.”

  “Sure. Something going on with your ex—is that it?”

  “Not what you think,” he said. “May I take it from that you’re the one who’s been following me.”

  She gave him a curious look. “Mac was for a while. Not since the world’s safest beach, though.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Sure as I can be after ordering him off you.”

  Trying to come up with the tangibles, Wil conjured only ghosts. “There anybody else on the team?” he asked. “A shadow specialist, someone like that?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Then it’s probably my imagination, all that’s come up. Look, I’ll be in touch. You, too, okay?” He was almost to the door when he heard a metallic rasp, turned to see Lorenz holding out a set of handcuffs. Off-kilter smile on her face, as if the alcohol were propping it up.

  She said, “Would these be of help in overpowering that conscience of yours?”

  He regarded them, then her.

  “Something that’s worked before, Inez?”

  Shrug. “Once a long time ago. On me, it turned out.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too. Another time?”

  He let it hang there without answering.

  “No, I didn’t think so,” she said. “The postcard from Wisconsin.”

  Kari’s first, the non-rejection one. In the face of her admission about being in his house, Wil decided not to explain, to let his silence say it instead.

  “My specialty,” she threw in as he was leaving. “Backing the wrong horse.”

  49

  SUSPECT IN BROTHER’S SLAYING WAS VIET CONG

  INS mum on possible deportation.

  P.I. who found bodies denies client’s guilt.

  Santa Barbara. In yet another bizarre development in the slaying of Vietnamese businessman Luc Van Tien, authorities revealed his accused murderer and brother, Vinh Tran Tien, fought American forces as a member of the Viet Cong. While INS officials have been silent on the issue, the man formerly employed by Tien to look into his son’s death, private investigator Sean Wilson Hardesty, has not. In a tersely worded statement, the La Conchita resident, himself a Vietnam veteran, denied his client’s guilt. However, when asked if he still was working for Tien, presumably to see him freed, Hardesty did not respond. As to the details of Hardesty’s admitted knowledge of Vinh Tien’s activities in that country, site of America’s worst military setback….

  Wil set the pages aside, checked his watch, showered. He put on chinos, navy tee, and the suede sports jacket Lisa gave him one birthday, left the house to sunshine and, for the first time in days, blueing skies. Nodding to the holdover reporters, cameras raised and rolling, he then caught what they were waiting for.

  We remember our dead

  And who put them there.

  Brothers in Arms

  His reaction to the note on the Bonneville’s flattened left front tire. Neat black letters taped to it.

  Wil looked at the cameramen, panning from the note to his expression, the waiting reporters. “Anybody see this done?” he said.

  “Before we got here,” one answered. “Any comment?”

  “Yeah. Who’s got a tire iron?”

  The one he had in the trunk worked fine, but he was still forty minutes late to the Tien’s. He was headed up the path, wondering about the white Altima parked at their curb, when a slight Vietnamese man in wirerims and a tan summerweight suit left the house. In crisp English, he introduced himself as Raymond Ky of the L.A.-based Southeast Asian Legal Defense Fund, whose services had been accepted by the Tien family.

  “At some point we’ll need to talk about your statement,” he told Wil. “Assuming you’re still sympathetic.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said.

  Ky nodded.

  Wil tilted his head toward the door. “How’s it going inside?”

  “The mother is in denial and the daughter’s not the most patient person. What exactly is your relationship with them?”

  “We’re still figuring that out,” Wil answered.

  Ky eyed him as he might a potential adversary, then softened. Handing over a card as he accepted one of Wil’s, he said, “I’ll be at the Lemon Tree Motel, then my L.A. office once I get some details resolved. You’re the one who told the press he was innocent?”

  “Didn’t kill his brother, I believe I said.”

  Ky broke a slight smile. “You ever given thought to law as a second career?”

  Watching him leave, Wil knocked and got Matt going crazy through the cracked door. Mia sliding off the chain and holding it open for him, the house smelling of incense.

  “There’s a shrine in my mother’s room,” she said, noting him scanning for the incense source. “Big help, huh? Where have you been?” Black shorts and midriff top, black sandals and nails.

  “Changing a tire, thanks.” Tending to Matt, bouncing all over him. “How’s your mom holding up?”

  “Take a sniff. You meet our lawyer?”

  Wil nodded, rose. “Where’d you find him?”

  “We didn’t have to,” she said. “He found us.”

  Wil made a mental note to check out Raymond Ky, then took a spot on the couch, Matt against his knee. Casually, he said, “You interested in a fashion tip?”

  “W
hat’s that?” Wary.

  He said, “Like it or not, clothes say things, to the press especially. You might think in those terms.”

  “Game playing, you mean.”

  “You’re in it, why not be in it to win?”

  “Which explains the sports jacket, I suppose.”

  “What? This old thing?” Throwing in a smile that came back as a question:

  “There anything else you want from me?”

  He was about to ask her what they told Raymond Ky, but she was already moving down the hall, passing Li Tien, who entered in a gray dress. Joining him and Matt to sit watching the bamboo moving in the light beyond the flagstones.

  “We thank you for your words,” Li Tien said. “On the television.”

  They sat a moment, then he said, “I did not know they were going to arrest him, Li, or it would have been different. Please know that.”

  Breeze ruffled the green. “Mia says you were good to her. In that terrible house.”

  “She put herself there. You have every reason to be proud of her.”

  “Then you know why she went there?”

  He nodded, stroked Matt. “For you, because you couldn’t. For her father, even if she doesn’t know it. Even if she never knows it.”

  Li Tien contemplated the herons spilling water into the fish pond, the sound of bees working the water blossoms. In a few minutes Mia came down the hall in a blue shirt, black pants and loafers, enamel academic pendant on a gold chain.

  “Better?” she asked him.

  “Four aces and a wild card,” Wil answered, this time pleased at the smile it drew.

  50

  The County Correctional facility was no stranger to Wil but it was to Li and Mia Tien. Despite the routine nature of the paperwork and the wait during which he checked the Mustang into a locker and got a receipt for it, each sharp new sound sent starts through both women. Finally, their names were called and they followed a correctional officer, a heavyset deputy Wil knew slightly through Frank Lin, to the interview room where Vinh Tien waited in county orange.

  When he saw Wil, Vinh’s expression revealed nothing, then thawed as his wife and daughter talked softly in Vietnamese, no emotion, no tears from either. Those formed as they rose and turned away, Mia gesturing that they’d wait outside.