Murder on Bamboo Lane (14 page)

SIXTH STREET

Mac should have realized that I was in no mood to deal with his crap today. First of all, when I don’t get enough sleep, I have this weird Asian eye thing in which one eye looks bigger than the other. My shorts are stained from where Shippo threw up on them after accidentally eating some of the chocolate cake, and I didn’t realize it until I was halfway to work. And, of course, there is the permanent sneer on my lips.

“You’re almost late for our morning briefing,” he says at the sign-in window. It’s as if he is checking up on me.

I sign in, then turn to him. “If there’s something you want to say to me, then just say it, please.”

Uniformed officers turn in response and stare.

“I know that you don’t care for me for some reason,” I continue. “That’s fine. Let’s just have it out, then.” I hold my helmet at my hip. Waiting.

Mac tries to make a joke, then looks around at the other officers. Nobody laughs. “I don’t have any problems with you,” he finally says.

“Fine,” I say, stomping into our morning meeting with our captain.

I must be sending out rays of bad juju, because the two seats next to me remain empty during our meeting. When Johnny finds out that he’s assigned with me, he almost visibly shudders. What is wrong with all the men in our station today?

Our captain spends a lot of time discussing a serious accident yesterday in the Financial District that left another bike messenger critically injured. Traffic was tied up in four directions for an hour. Captain Randle keeps going on and on about the gridlock as if that’s more important than the cyclist in the hospital.

Two special guests then arrive. Councilman Beachum, his frizzy, fried hair resembling tufts of plant growth at the seashore. He’s accompanied by the immaculate Teena Dang, the thirtysomething woman I met at Aunt Cheryl’s club, who I learn is his top aide.

“I’d like to thank all of you in the Central Division for keeping our streets safe,” Beachum says to us. “Over the past eleven years, my goal has been to reduce crime in the district, and we’ve been successful so far.”
Except for homicides like Jenny’s
, I think. “We can’t let accidents get the best of us, either. Let’s work together to keep the streets open for everyone, motorists and bicyclists alike.”

At the end of the meeting, Captain Randle assigns me and Johnny to patrol Flower Street. I’m thinking that the liaisons should be there instead for political reasons, but Johnny and I are probably the strongest cyclists. I’m not bragging; we’re the younger ones, and Johnny comes from a family of X Games stunt riders.

I won’t sugarcoat it: riding a bicycle in an area like Flower Street is not recommended. Cars still definitely rule here. I’m not happy to be negotiating the narrow space between the cars and the curb. And neither is Johnny, ahead of me.

We’re stopped at a signal, and I look behind me. About ten feet away is an Asian person on an old-school bike, a basket barely hanging from its back. It’s Quang Hai Phuong, the little nutcase.

“Mr. Phuong!” I call, and then he takes off to the other side of the street, almost causing an accident. What is he up to? Was he following me?

I tighten my grip on my handlebars and pump the pedals of my bike. “Stop, LAPD!” I call out to him. But the chase makes him go even faster.

I’ve left Johnny at the intersection. He quickly follows me.

“Eh-eh-eh-llie,” I hear him stammer behind me.

All I can think about is the guy who spit in my eye. If Phuong thinks that he can have fun on my account, he chose the wrong day to be cute. I’m on the west side of the street; he’s on the east.

He almost runs down a few people attempting to cross the street, causing one woman to spill her Starbucks on her expensive suit. She screams out an obscenity. In these parts, causing someone to waste their coffee or ruin their clothing are both unpardonable offenses.

He makes a hard left on Fourth Street and when the light changes, I’m with the cars going east, too. I can see the back of his bicycle basket as he turns at the next walkway. I know that I probably have him trapped right now. Hope Street doesn’t connect from Fourth to Fifth. I think that I hear Johnny’s voice on my radio, but I don’t slow down to listen.

As I turn, I can’t believe my eyes. Phuong has chosen to go down the Bunker Hill Steps, our sad version of the Spanish Steps in Rome. Ours has 103 steps instead of 138, but they are enough to wreak significant damage. With each devastating bump of his decrepit bicycle, something flies off—first the basket on the back, then his front tire, and finally Phuong himself goes over his handles and does a somersault in the air before landing flat on his back on the pavement.

I take my bike down the escalator, excusing myself as I hold it aloft and squeeze past various business suits. Once I reach Phuong, he is muttering dark and twisted words in Vietnamese. I notice that his lower leg is folded underneath him, and when I touch his ankle he shrieks in pain.

Johnny bounces his bike down all 103 steps with ease and swerves right next to me. I tell him to call for an ambulance. “I think that he might have broken his ankle.”

The ambulance takes a while to make it through the traffic, and I suppress the urge to stroke Phuong’s forehead. As a high school athlete who has had her share of injuries, I know this sucks. I offer my water bottle to him and he shakes his head, but then he rethinks it and takes a sip.

When the paramedics finally arrive on the scene, I tell Johnny I’ll go with Phuong to the hospital. Johnny looks relieved to be separated from me and says he’ll inform Cherniss what has happened.

In the ambulance, Phuong remains silent, but I can tell he’s in pain, because every time the ambulance rattles over a pothole, he grimaces.

As we travel to LA County General in Lincoln Heights, I think about how dedicated Phuong has been in following Tuan Le. Does he realize that his target has been detained by the police, and is soon to be released? Does he somehow think that I’m conspiring with Tuan? Then something occurs to me. If Phuong was indeed stalking Tuan, there’s a chance that he was watching him the night Jenny was shot.

Once we arrive at the emergency room, Phuong is placed in a wheelchair. I’m surprised that, instead of being immediately seen by a physician, we are directed to the full waiting room. A form attached to a clipboard is placed in my hands. “I’m going to need an interpreter. Vietnamese speaking,” I say.

An Asian woman with a round face and even rounder eyes comes to our aid. She wears a white lab coat. Her nametag reads
VIVIAN
.

She is unruffled by the sight of my uniform, so I know that the presence of a police officer is nothing new to her. She quickly shoots questions to Phuong, and he answers, first reluctantly and then more openly. He likes her.

After filling out the form, she rises.

“Wait,” I tell her. “I need your help.”

“I only do interpretation on medical matters.”

“Thing is, I think that he may have been a witness to a murder of a young female college student. A Vietnamese American girl who was gunned down in the streets of Chinatown. Someone may be arrested for this soon. Any moment now. But I’m not sure if he’s the right person. I want to get the right person.”

The interpreter hesitates and then sits back in the chair. She balls up her hand and rests her elbow on the chair’s arm. “Okay,” she agrees.

“Can you ask Phuong if he was at the Goldfinger Gallery on this Thursday evening?” I take out my phone and point it to the exact day on my digital calendar.

Vivian speaks to Phuong in Vietnamese. No response. Phuong’s eyes look faraway, detached.

“Repeat it,” I request.

Vivian does. Same (lack of) response.

“I don’t think that he’s going to help you,” she tells me. “He told me earlier that he was one of those sent to a reeducation camp.” I have no idea what she’s talking about, which she can tell by the look on my face. “He was basically imprisoned for working for South Vietnam before the war. The new government was trying to indoctrinate him. Make him disavow his beliefs.”

I finally get it. Phuong distrusts the government. I represent the government. OK, I don’t blame him. This time, however, instead of speaking to Vivian, I face Phuong directly. “Listen, I know that bad things happened to you and your family back in Vietnam. Bad things happened to my family, too. Right here in America.”

I wait for Vivian to translate and then continue.

“My grandparents did nothing wrong but had to go into camps during World War Two. They were barely teenagers.”

Vivian addresses me. “Japanese?”

“On my mother’s side.”

She nods her head and explains my grandparents’ story to Phuong.

“So now I work for the government. For the police department. I’m trying to make things better. I want to find the truth,” I say.

Vivian interprets. Phuong listens. He studies my face carefully, most likely trying to identify my Asianness through the shape of my eyes or nose.

I try again and touch my screen. “Were you at the Goldfinger Gallery that day?”

Phuong finally nods and says yes in Vietnamese.

“How long were you there?” I ask.

“Until Tuan left the gallery,” he says through the interpreter.

“Did something unusual happen that night?”

Phuong narrows his eyes, as if he is replaying that evening in his head. “A couple of loud noises. A car backfiring, perhaps.” He explains that, after the first bang, he went to check down Hill Street. “A dog had gotten run over. There was a small crowd around the dog. An older couple was putting the injured dog in their car. A big car. A Cadillac.”

“What about Tuan Le?”

“He was in his gallery the whole time. He got in his car about midnight.” Phuong then followed Tuan’s vehicle until he parked inside of his loft. He was apparently there the rest of the night.

I can hardly contain my excitement.

Tuan Le’s stalker has become his alibi.

• • •

I know that Cortez doesn’t want to hear from me, so I write him an e-mail, proofread it and correct it at least two times. I don’t want to sound too casual, of course, but I don’t want to be too formal, either. Professional, that’s what I’m going for. I type in Phuong’s full name, cell phone, and even the phone number of his landlord. “You’ll need to secure a Vietnamese-speaking interpreter,” I write, then on second glance, I change it to: “A Vietnamese-speaking interpreter may be necessary.” I don’t want to assume that Cortez will need anything.

I don’t copy the e-mail message to my aunt. After that scene in her office, I’m through with being her informant. If she wants to know what’s going on with the case, she can ask Cortez directly.

I stop by a grocery store in Little Tokyo on my way home and buy two triangular rice balls—the kind where a plastic sleeve separates the nori—seaweed—from the rice to keep it crispy until eaten. On the train, I open the plastic wrap and secure the nori around the rice ball, then take a large bite.

As I walk home, chewing, I think about the animal hospital on Figueroa, the main drag here. It’s one of the few twenty-four-hour emergency facilities for pets in the area. I took Shippo there once at two o’clock in the morning when I discovered that he’d eaten a small bar of hotel soap. The hospital’s not far from my house, so I decide to stop in before I go home.

The same receptionist, whom I remember from before, is there at the counter this evening. She’s one of these people who remember pets’ names better than owners’ names.

“How’s Shippo?” she asks when she sees me.

“Good, good.” I wipe any stray bits of black seaweed from my lips.

She registers my uniform. “I didn’t know you were a police officer.”

“Yeah, it’s a recent thing.” I put a finger around one of my belt loops. “So, hey, I was wondering if you remember a dog being brought in late on a Thursday night at the beginning of the month. Hit by a car in Chinatown.”

“Oh yeah, a couple of days before the parade. A pit bull, poor thing. Luckily, it looks like Romeo will recover.”

I feel as though I’ve been punched in the stomach.
Ramon
? “Excuse me. Romeo, did you say?” The receptionist gives me a funny look. “Was the owner a Latino teenager, about this tall?” I raise my hand about two inches from the top of my head.

“There was a Hispanic boy and an older couple, I don’t know who was the owner.”

“I’ll need to get their names.”

“Oh, I can’t give that to you. I can’t break client-patient privilege.”

But the patient is a dog
, I’m thinking.

“Listen, this is very important. These people might have information about a murder.”

My plea fails to have much effect on the receptionist. “I think that you’ll need a warrant or something like that.” She’s obviously seen one too many cop shows on television.

Still, something on my face must have communicated the gravity of the situation. “I can tell you this,” she says. “Romeo is due back next month on the twentieth at three o’clock. If you happen to be here . . .”

I’ll run into Romeo, I think. And most likely his owner. The twentieth, however, is weeks away. By then, the killer may be long gone.

SIXTH STREET

When I go to work the next day, I expect Sergeant Cherniss to pull me aside and read me the riot act. I’m resigned to getting written up for encouraging reckless endangerment. I don’t know what Johnny reported to my superiors, but aggressively pursuing a bicyclist (a sixtysomething-year-old, no less) who didn’t appear to be a threat, and who ended up with a torn ankle ligament, does not bode well for the department or for me.

When I come in, though, Cherniss is actually waiting for me outside of our meeting room, and directs me to go into Captain Randle’s office. Oh crap. How bad is this going to be?

Captain Randle turns when I enter, as does the other person in his office. Cortez.

Again?
I think.

“I was just informed that you have been given a special assignment.” By the way the captain is smiling, I know that he has no idea about what is really going on. “You’ll be working together with Detective Williams on the Jenny Nguyen case for a couple of days.”

Cortez avoids making eye contact with me. “Yes, headquarters thinks that you may have easier access to some of our sources in the area.”

“She’s a fine young officer,” Randle exclaims.
Please, Captain, please stop
, I’m thinking. “I have very high hopes for her.”

Cortez and I walk outside to his police-issue vehicle in our garage. I wish I’d been informed of this “special assignment” before I stepped foot out of my house this morning. I feel weirdly exposed in my usual police-issue shorts and T-shirt with
POLICE
written across the back, and I wish I was instead dressed in the uniform that I had worn at my graduation from the police academy. At least my legs would be covered.

We sit silently in the car before Cortez speaks. “Let’s get this straight from the beginning. I’m the supervising detective, and you are assisting me, okay? Anything you know, I should know.”

I smell his cologne in the car, and I nod my head. “Yes, agreed.”

He then looks at his notebook. “We got a statement from this Pho— Pho—” He’s having problems pronouncing the name.

“Phuong.”

“Yes. He says that Tuan Le was in the gallery for the whole night before retiring in his loft.”

I saying nothing. I know that he’s conceding that my hunch was right, but I don’t need to rub it in his face.

Cortez starts the engine and pulls out of the garage. A few more minutes pass, and I notice that we are passing Staples Center.

“Where are we going?”

“The Adams Corridor Project.”

I glance at my watch. Chances are that Benjamin will be there working when we arrive. Great. If Miss Boots is there, too, it’ll be just icing on the cake.
Focus, Ellie, focus
, I tell myself. Also at the projects is Ramon. If I run into them, I may find out if he was near Bamboo Lane when Jenny was shot.

“By the way,” Cortez interjects, “I followed up with Susana Perez. Since she was last questioned, she and her boyfriend have moved out of her apartment.”

Not a surprise. If I’d been held at gunpoint in my house, I would probably move, too.

Cortez brakes for a red light. “She also no longer uses that cell phone number. You didn’t get the boyfriend’s name, did you?”

“No, I didn’t.” Then I remember the uniform he was wearing. “I think that he works for some towing company. It had a weird name. Alfie, I think it was. Alfie’s Towing.”

Cortez gives me a long look.
Don’t do that to me
, I think.
You don’t know what your look does to me.
“I’ll check it out,” he says. “You don’t know whether Susana is still enrolled at PPW, do you?”

“Can’t you just go to the school and find out?”

Cortez shakes his head. “There’s a federal privacy act that protects school records. I can’t access that information without a court order. And since Susana isn’t being charged with any wrongdoing, there’s not much the department can do. But maybe you know someone.”

Wow. I’m floored. My mother could hack in and look at my grades, but not the police in a murder case? “Sure,” I tell him.

Once we arrive at the projects, Cortez glances at his notes.

“The manager’s name is Marta Jimenez.”

“There’s a tenant organizer, too. Leticia Kind. I’ve met her before. At one of the neighborhood watch meetings I’ve been assigned to.”

We decide splitting up is the best use of our time. I decide to take on Mrs. Kind. At least I know who she is. I get her apartment number, 204B, from the rental office and go up the stairs of a unit on the far south side. My
POLICE
T-shirt is attracting unwanted attention from men and women sitting on their porches. One young man, lying on a moldy, torn-up couch, gazes up at me, and I mistakenly think that he’s smiling before I realize that his face is marred by a large puffy scar cut into his right cheek. It’s obvious that he hasn’t been given much of a break in life—and based on his angry eyes, he’s not about to offer one to anyone else, either.

The door to Unit 204B is open, and I knock my knuckle against the door frame. “Hello, Mrs. Kind? It’s Officer Ellie Rush, we’ve met before? I’m Benjamin Choi’s friend.”

I hear a shuffling and then see a heavyset black woman in a sweatshirt appear in the hallway. Her hair is hidden behind a dark blue bandana.

“Who’s that? Oh, yes. The little bicycle police officer. What was your name again?”

“Ellie. Ellie Rush.”

Mrs. Kind offers me a seat at her kitchen table. She has something simmering in a pot on her stove.

“How can I help you?”

“I’m here about someone who used to work over here some months ago. A census worker. An Asian woman about my age. Jenny Nguyen.”

“Jenny Nguyen. No, no, I don’t recall.”

“She probably was going door to door. Doing these special annual surveys. I bet she most likely checked in with you.”

“Well, I remember all those census workers from a few years ago.”

“No, this was a little different. I think she asked different kinds of questions.”

“Well, she didn’t come knocking at my door.”

“When she was working here, she noticed some irregularities.”

Mrs. Kind frowns, a heavy line dividing her forehead in two.

“According to her records, way more people are living around here than there are supposed to be.”

Mrs. Kind waves her hand as if she were shooing away a fly. “Oh, that. Of course, we all know that.”

“And you didn’t say anything?”

“Listen, first of all, the tenants need to speak up for themselves. If they don’t have a problem with it, then I don’t.”

“But according to Jenny’s numbers, there might be as many as fifty people living in one unit.”

“Where else they gonna live? At least this way they have a roof over their heads, a bathroom that works at least half the time, and some water to drink. That’s what I tole that girl from the Census.”

My ears perk up. “So, you do remember her?”

The line returns to Mrs. Kind’s forehead. She starts to backtrack and then gets mad at herself.

“Okay, okay, so I do remember her. Nosy little thing.”

I remove the notebook from my pocket as quietly as possible and keep it in my lap as I take a few notes.

“She said that she had to get a particular unit to answer some questions,” Mrs. Kind says. “Well, the person on the rental agreement wasn’t having any of that. There was fifty people living in that place. And, I’m telling you, I think that little Asian girl got so frustrated that she was threatening to tell the authorities. Oh, what a commotion.”

“Who’s the name on that rental agreement?”

“Stella Ramos. She rents a couple of places. The other one she actually lives in with her family. And their dog, although I haven’t seen that animal around recently.”

The mention of a dog reminds me. “This Stella Ramos—does she have a nephew named Ramon?”

“I don’t know her people’s names.”

Cortez appears at the doorway. Mrs. Kind immediately gets up. “He with you?” she asks me.

“This is Detective Cortez Williams.” I make the introduction. “Leticia Kind.”

“Detective Williams.” She shakes a dishcloth at him, telling him to take a seat. She ogles his behind as he walks by. “My, my, aren’t you a healthy boy?”

I almost start laughing but bite my lip to keep it inside.

“I’ve never seen you here before,” she says to Cortez.

“I’m a homicide detective.”

“Homicide? What do you mean? That Jenny girl was killed?”

“Yes, Mrs. Kind,” I say.

“Oh my, oh my. How did it happen?”

“She was found shot in Chinatown.”

“Well, it’s probably one of those Chinese gang shootings.”

“No, it doesn’t seem to be that,” I say.

“Were people bothered by Ms. Nguyen?” Cortez asks.

“You mean bothered enough to kill her?” Mrs. Kind goes to check on her pot on the stove. She stirs the contents with a wooden spoon and turns back to Cortez.

“No, no, I would say not.”

“But she knew about the illegal sublet. What if she reported it to the authorities?”

“Well, that would cause trouble with the manager and Stella, that’s for sure. But I don’t think that little girl was really going to do that.”

“What makes you say that?” I am curious why Mrs. Kind would come to that conclusion.

“She seemed like a kind of person who just wanted to get her business done. You know, clock in and clock out. Collect her paycheck. She didn’t seem like one of those do-gooders who want to save the world. Not like those youngsters at the tutoring center, like your friend there.”

I am fascinated by Mrs. Kind’s assessment of Jenny’s character. Judging from Cortez’s face, he is, too.

“She was definitely singular minded. I just remember her saying to Stella, ‘You do what you have to do to survive and I do, too. I don’t care what rules you break. Just help me do my job and we won’t have any problems.’ I thought that was mighty bold of that little girl. She was determined.” Then Mrs. Kind adds another attribute. “Deep down inside, that girl was angry. I know anger, and I saw it in her.”

I exchange glances with Cortez. What was Jenny so angry about?

“Maybe we’ll stop by Stella Ramos’s apartments,” I say.

“They won’t open the door to you,” Mrs. Kind informs us. “They’ve been told not to.”

We go to the Ramoses’ units anyway; one is upstairs from the other. Mrs. Kind is right. No one opens either door. The downstairs unit has wood covering the barred windows. I figure that’s the one being rented out to fifty people.

“How can they live like that?” I wonder out loud.

“The alternatives must be way worse.”

We cross a patch of dirt that probably was designed as a lawn. Weeds don’t even seem able to grow there. All I see are cigarette butts and blunt wrappers, as well as some syringes mixed in with old, scattered receipts.

Before we make it halfway, a woman wearing a red sweater stops us. She has dark circles underneath her deep-set brown eyes. “Why are you still here? I don’t want you harassing my tenants,” she says to Cortez. I’m barely an afterthought.

I quickly figure out that this must be the manager, Marta Jiminez. Unlike Mrs. Kind, Cortez cannot work his charm on this woman. She, in fact, seems utterly
un
charmed by him.

“We’re not harassing anyone.” Cortez raises his voice about an octave. “But I do have a follow-up question for you. We just heard that there was a recent incident between Jenny Nguyen and Stella Ramos. Do you recall what happened?”

“It wasn’t an ‘incident’ or whatever you call it. That census girl was badgering my tenant. Mrs. Ramos didn’t want to answer her questions, and I told her that she didn’t have to.”

“We’ll need Mrs. Ramos’s phone number.”

At that, the manager smiles, revealing a chipped front tooth. “I’m afraid she can’t be reached right now. She is out of the country.”

• • •

“Is it always this frustrating?” I ask Cortez as we step out the gates of the projects.

“Sometimes it’s easy, like all the pieces of puzzles are right in front of you,” he says. “Just a matter of getting people to talk. But in these neighborhoods, it can be tough. They don’t trust us.”

Benjamin and his sister would contend that they have good reason not to.

Speaking of Benjamin, I see that the door of his tutoring center, located directly outside the gates of the projects, is open.

Cortez is checking his phone, and I tell him that I want to touch base with some college friends who work at the center. He says sure, he has some calls to return anyway, and tells me he’ll be waiting in the car.

Once I reach the doorway, I look for Benjamin’s lanky frame, but I’m instead greeted by the statuesque figure of Kari Colbert. Instead of those long boots, today she’s wearing short ones that accentuate her shapely calves. I look down at mine. No contest. Miss Boots, winner!

“Hi. Kari, right?” I say.

“Oh yeah. Ellie. Is something going on here?” Miss Boots looks down the street, perhaps expecting to see some kind of criminal disturbance.

“No. We’re following up on a homicide.” I love how that sounds. I’m even impressing myself.

“A homicide? Here?”

“No, it involves a PPW student named Jenny Nguyen. She came here regularly last year to do some survey work.”

Kari shakes her head. “Don’t know her. I just started interning here in January.”

Benjamin appears and stands next to Kari. They look like the perfect PPW couple. Put a crown and tiara on them and call it a day.

“Hey,” he says to me, a little more tentatively than usual.

“Hey.”

He shoves a hand in his pocket. “What’s up?”

“Police business.” I’ve always wanted to say that. “We’re looking into Jenny. Can I speak to you alone?”

Miss Boots’ forehead creases. When she frowns, her face becomes a bit pinched, making her look like a bird. I can’t tell you how happy that makes me feel.

“There’s really nowhere private,” Benjamin says. He doesn’t want to be alone with me.

“Then maybe outside.”

“I’ll be right back,” he grudgingly tells Kari before walking out with me. Cortez is still on the phone but takes notice of us.

“Tuan Le didn’t kill Jenny Nguyen,” I say to Benjamin.