Murder on Bamboo Lane (10 page)

NORTH HILL STREET

“I’ve only got forty-five minutes—tops,” I tell Cortez. I’m locking my bike to a post downstairs from a dim sum restaurant in Chinatown.

It’s a little past noon, and a crowd presses into the second-floor entrance. Occasionally, a Chinese woman wearing a blood-red shirt, black skirt and comfortable shoes steps out into the waiting area calling out numbers. This doesn’t look good for a quick meal.

Cortez notices my irritation. “Don’t worry. I just met the owner last month at a community meeting. He’ll put us at the front of the line.”

We squeeze through the waiting office workers and families, and Cortez flags down a man, his hair combed out with grease, who nods and leads us through an obstacle of food carts on wheels and round tables. We are seated by a wall of windows. I have a great view of a homeless man taking a whiz on the base of a palm tree.

I quickly survey the carts in motion. I locate the oblong metal tins holding my favorite, chow fun, fat rice noodles wrapped around shrimp (the best) and also beef. Farther away are the round tins, most likely pork shumai and maybe shrimp har gow, another favorite. Anything with shrimp is going to appear on my top five list.

I don’t wait to see what Cortez wants. I’m hungry, and I don’t have much time.

“Don’t tell me,” he says, watching me make my orders. “You’ve been here before.”

“After Empress Pavilion closed, this is now my parents’ favorite.” I personally prefer the dim sum eatery on Broadway near where I first met Cortez. I tell him that we’ll have to meet there next time. The mention of “next time” puts a smile on Cortez’s face.

“How’s today been so far?” I ask him.

“Good, real good. I’ve been here all morning, in fact. We’ve been getting a lot of information from people in the neighborhood. From the Alpine Recreation Center, too.”

I stop chewing when I hear
Alpine
, which hosts pickup basketball games in its gym. Jenny didn’t have anything to do with Alpine, as far as I know, but Tuan Le does.

Thinking of Tuan Le reminds me that, as I was walking my bike through the shopping center on my way here, I noticed a simple flyer advertising a talk, “Free Speech or Historic Amnesia?” at Goldfinger Gallery in conjunction with Tuan Le’s art exhibition. I mention it to Cortez.

“Yeah, we already went to the exhibition opening. Pretty standard stuff. Rich people from Pasadena, San Marino and the Westside. Nothing really that could help the case.”

“The talk tonight may attract some of Tuan’s critics,” I tell Cortez. “You know that his work is controversial in the Vietnamese community? Some people consider it communist propaganda.”

“Well, politics sells paintings and whatever you call it—installations. Anyway, I have a date tonight.”

I lift my head up from my har gow.

“A date with my son. We Skype once a week.”

“Oh,” I say.

“Are you okay? You seem distracted.”

My first reaction is denial, but Cortez is right. I just haven’t realized it until now. I’m feeling guilty, while trying to convince myself that I’m not doing anything wrong, just asking a few questions about Jenny during my time off. Because we all want the same thing, right? To catch her killer.

“There’s a lot going on right now,” I say.

Cortez touches my hand briefly. “Seeing your first murder victim. It changes you. It really does.”

I feel tears come to my eyes, and I blink them back. Is it really that? Has seeing Jenny in that alley changed me?

“I remember my first,” Cortez says. “I’d actually been working for the department for a couple of years. It was in the middle of the night in the Crenshaw area. A teenager gunned down with an AK-47 at Taco Bell. I’ll never forget it. His body was mangled; his face almost nonexistent. Sometimes that body appears in my dreams.”

I flinch.

“Most cops would say to compartmentalize your feelings. It’s work. They’re vics,” Cortez tells me. “But I can’t be that way. Maybe you’re like me, too.”

When Cortez says this to me, I study his face. His smooth complexion. His beautiful thick lips. I want to kiss him right there in the middle of that large banquet hall clanging with noise and voices. Instead, I wipe the corner of my mouth. I am starting to have feelings for Cortez, feelings that I once thought were reserved only for Benjamin.

“I need to go,” I remind Cortez, and he flags the owner for our check. He leaves way too much tip, which, as a good friend to many waitresses, makes me happy.

By the time we make it to the front, the line has reduced considerably. After going down to the first floor, I head for my bicycle, but Cortez pulls me behind some outdoor vendors selling fake jade bracelets for two dollars and bonsai adorned with plastic mini-Asians doing kung-fu.

He draws me close to him and gives me a quick kiss. His lips taste salty. I’m sure mine do, too. “Sorry,” he says. “I’ve just been thinking of doing that all throughout lunch.”

Cortez gets no resistance from me, since I’ve been having similar thoughts. We are taking a risk—even though Cortez is not my supervisor, the department frowns upon in-house “personal relationships.”

It’s all pretty great, actually. And then: disaster.

“Ellie, is that you?” I hear. A voice I’ve heard since I was born.

Oh no
, I think. I turn from Cortez and see my mother in a fuchsia running jacket and my father in his trademark baby blue Windbreaker. Great. Both of them. Even better.

“What are you guys doing here?” I say.

“Going to our favorite dim sum restaurant. How about you?” Dad says. He works just across the street, so it’s not unusual for Mom to sometimes meet him for lunch.

“Aren’t you going to introduce us to your friend?” My mother says
friend
as icily as possible. This isn’t going to be pretty.

“Ah, Detective Cortez Williams, these are my parents, Gary and Caroline Rush.”

“Good to meet you.” Cortez shakes hands with both of them. Cortez is a good, firm hand-shaker, but that’s not going to be enough to appease these two.

“Uh, and how do you know Ellie?” Dad asks.

“We work together, kind of,” Cortez begins and then glances at his phone. “I’m sorry. I have to take this call.” After excusing himself, he walks to a less crowded place within the mini-mall, the phone at his ear.

I brace myself for the parental inquisition.

“What is going on? How old is that man?” my mother asks.

“He’s not that much older,” I answer. What’s seven years?

“What about Benjamin?”

“The thing is, we broke up a while ago.”

My father actually looks halfway relieved that at least he doesn’t have a cheater for a daughter. Mom, on the other hand, as expected, seems crushed.

“When? When did this happen?”

“Around Thanksgiving.”

“So that was why he didn’t come over for Christmas. I still have his Christmas present, you know.”

“I know, Mom.”

“So that was an excuse, that he was visiting his family in São Paulo?”

“No, that was actually the truth.”

“What happened?” my father finally interjects. He is a fan of Benjamin, too, but I don’t think that he ever pictured us walking down the aisle together.

“Benjamin just had a hard time with me joining the force.”

“See, see, I told you that this would ruin your life. You’ll be like your aunt and never have enough time for relationships,” Mom said.

“Ah, Caroline, it seems like our daughter is not having any problems in that department.”

“Well, any relationships with good men.”

I keep my eye on Cortez. He’s still on the phone. “What are you trying to say about Cortez? You just met him.”

“That’s not what I am saying—”

At this point, Cortez rejoins us. “I’m so sorry, but I need to go. Such a pleasure meeting you,” he says, pumping their hands again.

“Yes,” my mother replies. She smiles widely, her fake Joker grin. Whenever I see that face, I know Mom is either super pissed, super uncomfortable or super annoyed. Right now she must be at least two of those emotions. “Can’t wait to meet you again.”

“I’ll call you,” he says to me.

I nod. After he leaves, I tell my parents that I’m late for my next assignment—which is both true and the best excuse to escape their prying questions. School and work always take precedence. That’s why Noah can be a dope-dealer-in-training as long as he hides under his cloak of straight A’s. And even though Mom doesn’t approve of my chosen profession and Dad doesn’t quite understand it, they are certainly not going to be obstacles to my success. If there isn’t such a thing as Overachievers Anonymous, there should be. And we all should be charter members.

I say an awkward good-bye to my parents and head over to a section of Downtown LA called the Artist’s Loft, where I meet up with Johnny. Johnny is like Armine—low maintenance. He has a bit of a stammering problem that comes out under stress, but I can tell he’s comfortable around me, because whenever we work together, his words come out perfectly fine.

As bicycle patrol officers, we’re supposed to be issuing jaywalking tickets. Some officers are more aggressive than others, but I’m on the side of less citations. If you’re going to do it right in front of me, then, c’mon, you’re fair game. But run across Hill or Los Angeles streets a block away, and I’ll usually just give you a dirty look. Pedestrians have been killed, which is no joke. But no one seems to care that the jaywalking laws are there for their own safety. The people being cited just think that I’m trying to fill some quota or something. I could approach my career as reaching benchmarks, but I’ve learned from Aunt Cheryl that it’s not so prescriptive. A lot of times it’s being at the right place at the right time. And knowing when to close your mouth, as well as when to open it.

Patrolling the Artist’s Loft area during the day is fairly easy, unless a movie shoot has come in to transform the streets and brick buildings into gritty New York City neighborhoods. We ride throughout its whole perimeter, from a Japanese Catholic church, where my dad’s a member, to industrial terminals to warehouses divided into lofts. The only really populated area outdoors is on Second Street, where government workers, businesspeople and artists get their midday cappuccinos or sandwiches with organic sprouts.

I see flyers everywhere advertising the talk tonight at the Goldfinger Gallery. If Cortez can’t or won’t go, then I will, I decide.

After my shift, I go home first to take a quick shower, walk Shippo and eat a frozen meal, compliments of Trader Joe’s. I decide to go back via train, so I’m late to the talk. I jog from the Chinatown Gold Line station; it’s only a couple of blocks west. I recognize Boyd and Azusa, a couple of uniformed officers, outside, and I nod to them. I can’t help but notice that they raise their eyebrows when I walk into the gallery.

It’s a free country
, I think. I can do anything I want in my time off.

Despite all the flyers, I’m still surprised that the panel is standing room only. This is a more diverse crowd than the opening Cortez described. There’s a healthy contingent of the Artist’s Loft people, recognizable by their eclectic hairstyles and clothing. Also some Asian Americans, perhaps academics, dressed in khaki pants, coats and sensible shoes. And a smattering of Asian immigrants, probably Vietnamese, who seem quite unhappy with both the exhibition and the conversation.

One older man is addressing the panel now, speaking in clipped English. “Ho Chi Minh is our Hitler,” he says. “The Jews would not allow an exhibition with an image of Hitler in this country. Why should we?”

I survey the paintings and displays against the walls. I know enough about art to identify the pieces as mixed media: painted canvases combined with photographic images in various sizes, even with objects like shoes and passports. A lot them feature faces of Asian men and women. Most of them look like everyday people, but I do a double take at the image of a man with a graying goatee. The clue that he’s different? The name of the communist leader Ho Chi Minh is stamped on his balding head.

“Again, my purpose is not political per se.” Tuan is now speaking from the front of the room. Next to him, seated at a table, are a white man and an Asian one. “I think that our community is ready for diverse perspectives. It’s been forty years since the fall of Saigon. It’s time that we reevaluate what has happened to our people, especially for my generation, the generation born well after the war.”

Tuan then spots me in the crowd, and his eyes rest on me so long that a few people turn around to see who I am. “You have to remember that you are in America now. And one of this country’s guiding principles is free speech.”

Another man then stands and starts yelling at Tuan in what sounds like Vietnamese. He looks like he may be in his late sixties. Spittle shoots out of his mouth as he continues his tirade. His reedlike body shakes.

It doesn’t matter that I’m not in uniform. I go over and try to convince the man to calm down.

Someone has called Officers Boyd and Azusa into the gallery, and they quickly move in to remove the distressed man. He pulls his arms away from them but walks out with them voluntarily.

I follow and watch as they tell him to sit down on the curb. He complies. His head hangs down; I can’t tell if he’s ashamed or stewing in anger.

They ask for his ID, and he knows enough English to pull out a razor-thin wallet. As Azusa looks through its contents, Boyd acknowledges me. “Didn’t know that you were an art fan, Rush.”

“I go to my share of galleries and museums,” I say. That “share” is the equivalent of maybe two galleries a year, but still probably more than the average Angeleno and definitely more than the average cop.

“Speak any Chinese?” Azusa asks me, handing the wallet to Boyd. Apparently, the man doesn’t have a driver’s license but has a Social Security card, which lists his name as Quang Hai Phuong.

“I think he speaks primarily Vietnamese,” I say. “Not that I can speak either one.”

Nevertheless, I kneel down and try to make a connection with Phuong. His eyes are wild. The whites of his eyes look a bit yellowish, and something has congealed in the left one.