Obedience (11 page)

“Just go on with your work.” Dave sat down. It was a secretarial chair, with springs and swivels. It had been sat in by one person for too long. It wasn’t ready for a new backside. It nearly threw him. He grabbed the desk edge and righted himself. “I won’t be here long.”

Red neckerchief tossed a line up to the dock. The security guard wrapped it around a cleat.

The real estate woman whispered, “Is it a murder case?”

“That’s right,” Dave said.

“How exciting.” Her voice trembled and squeaked.

A thick-set man wearing sunglasses climbed a ladder to the wharf from the launch. He spoke to the security guard, and then the two of them walked to the doors of the Le warehouse. The old man in suntans, with his gun back in its holster on his skinny hip, turned keys in locks in the small door, and the two of them disappeared inside. The door closed. Was the thick-set man Don Pham?

Dave turned cautiously in the risky chair. “You don’t have a pair of binoculars here anywhere, do you?”

The blonde woman looked around again. She was pale. Her painty rosebud mouth trembled. “I—I don’t think so. No.” She wrung her hands, showed little white teeth, and tried for a joke. “We don’t do bird-watching, as a rule.”

“I was thinking”—Dave smiled—“of sailor-watching.”

“What? Oh.” She tittered, not meaning it.

“You’ve got a great desk for it,” Dave said.

“I’m married,” she said primly.

Dave gave his head a rueful shake. “I should have known.” He turned back to the window with a sigh. “The attractive ones always are.”

“And I have my career,” she said. “I haven’t time for love affairs. Even if I wanted them. Sailors? Please!”

The door of the warehouse opened. The security guard came out first, took a step away from the door, and looked carefully up and down the wharf. He turned his head and spoke. And the thick-set man came out again. He carried attaché cases, one in each hand. He still wore the dark glasses. Dave still couldn’t tell if he was Don Pham. He moved off toward the waiting cruiser gleaming in the sun.

A third man came out of the warehouse. He wore a jogging outfit. A baseball cap was pushed back on his hair. His hair was gold: The thick-set man dropped the attaché cases to Red Neckerchief, climbed down the ladder, stepped onto the deck. The jogger bent and unlashed the painter from its cleat for Red Neckerchief to gather up and coil. The thick-set man carried the cases aft. The cruiser’s engine started. The jogger waved an arm, and the cruiser curved away, churning up a big wake in the still gray water. The man in the jogging suit spoke to the security guard, got into the wine-red car, began to turn it around on the dock.

Dave stood up. “Where can I get out of sight?”

She waved at the back of the shop. He went that way.

An inner office had a computer on its desk. He passed a water cooler, a washroom door. He turned the lock on a back door, stepped into an alley, and headed for the Jaguar.

It was twilight. The room was in shadow. He tripped over lumber on the floor. He didn’t fall. He only stubbed a toe. He stood wincing for a minute, to let his eyes get accustomed to the dimness, then he picked his way among boards, scraps of board, sawhorses, circular saw, planer, sander, and their snaking electric cords, to a lamp on a table at the end of the couch. He had got the uprights for the bookshelves spiked into place, ten feet tall, right up to the rafters, and three feet apart. He’d spaced one-by-two cleats up them, to hold the shelves that would come later. An envelope was nailed to one of the uprights. -Dave jerked it down, tore it open, unfolded the page inside.

Next time, maybe you’ll listen to me. But don’t worry. Any demand for ransom Don Pham sends, under seventy-eight cents, which is all I have in my pockets, I will pay. Be patient, though. Counting all that money will be slow going because, while I did not bash my thumb today, I did pick up splinters. If you are not a prisoner, or up to your ankles in cement at the bottom of the Old Fleet Marina, maybe you can meet me for dinner at Max’s. I have bribed Dan Rather to fill in for me between 8.00 and 9:00 at work, so I’ll hope to see you.

—C.H. (Pure Cane Sugar)

Grinning, Dave headed for the shower.

T
HE SUN BLAZED DOWN
on a black and red freighter that lay alongside the dock. The crew of the freighter, underfed, shock-headed Asians in skivvy shirts and stained white jeans, winched crates up out of open hatches. Chains rattled, gears clashed, engines strained and snarled. Jabbering, the men unhooked the lines from the winches, and waited, squinting upwards at the unforgiving sky, hands shielding their eyes—waited for the long steel cables of the high crane on the dock to lower hammocks of rope mesh to cradle the crates, hoist them, swing them dockside, where the broad front of the Le warehouse glared white, the shadows of gulls flickering across it.

On the dock, sturdy Anglos, blacks, Latinos in battered hardhats stripped the rope mesh off the crates. Yellow forklifts bucked forward to pick up the crates. The crane swept the empty nets skyward. The warehouse doors stood open today. The forklifts jerkily backed and filled, and whined between those doors, carrying the crates into vast darkness. Flanking the doorway, men in suits watched the forklifts pass and made checkmarks on clipboards. One of these men was Le Tran Hai, the older Le son. Dave didn’t know the other man, middle-aged, gray-faced, thick glasses. An accountant?

Stepping around crates, glancing upward to keep out of range of the crane and its swinging cables, Dave moved toward the Vietnamese. The noise level was high—shouts, laughter, the crane’s engine, the whine of the forklifts, the thud of the heavy crates on the planks of the wharf, the whoops of tugs in the harbor. Dave figured he’d better get Hai’s attention before he tried speaking to him. He tapped his shoulder. Hai shrugged annoyance, made a face, scowled at the manifest on his clipboard. He ran a ballpoint pen along the computer-printed cargo list, down the list, up again, finally found the item he wanted, slashed a check beside it, turned sharply to Dave.

“What is it?” he snapped. “Who are you?”

Dave showed him his license. “Can we talk inside?”

Another forklift, bumped past. Hai studied the list on the clipboard again, marked off another item. “You’re kidding. I’m busy. Can’t you see that?”

“I’ll wait,” Dave said.

“What’s it about?” Hai said.

“Your father’s murder,” Dave said, and stepped away.

Hai caught his arm. “You can’t wait out here. It’s dangerous. Go inside. The office. Upstairs at the back. I’ll come as soon as I can.”

It was dangerous inside, too. He was nearly flattened by a forklift. They moved fast. Dave heard or felt the thing at his back not quite in time to jump aside. A corner of a moving crate slammed into him, sent him reeling against crates already stacked. The driver yelped surprise, stopped the forklift, jumped off it, came to him, whitefaced under his red hardhat. An identity badge hung off a chain around his neck.
Herman Steinkrohn.
He was big, young, blond, scared. “Jesus. I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

Dave rubbed his shoulder. His heart thudded. His knees felt weak. He tried to smile. “It’s nothing.”

“I didn’t see you.” Steinkrohn bent and picked up the thick manila envelope Dave had dropped. He handed it back to him. “Sure you’re not hurt? You want a doctor?”

“Thanks. I don’t want to get you into trouble. It was entirely my fault.” Dave said. “I was where I didn’t belong. Mr. Le told me to wait in the office.”

The kid pointed upwards. The curved roof of the warehouse high above was supported by a cross stitching of lacy steel beams and struts. A narrow slat-floored metal walkway ran along the side maybe eighteen feet above this floor. “Why don’t you climb the stairs over there”—he pointed with a work-gloved finger—“and go along the catwalk. You won’t get bumped into there.” Steinkrohn climbed onto the seat of the forklift, shifted gears. “Office is way at the back. Listen, thanks. If I can ever do anything for you, let me know.” He drove on up the long narrow aisle.

Dave climbed steel stairs, hiked along the clacking frets of the steel catwalk to boxy steel and glass offices at the rear. Hard fluorescent light shone down on desks, file cabinets, computers. Printers whined and beeped and poured out long tongues of lined paper. Telephones rang. Typewriters rattled. Desktop calculators clicked and buzzed. Six or eight young Vietnamese manned the office. All very neat in their dress, all strictly tending to business. A young woman gathering up computer printouts from the pale vinyl tile floor, saw him, smiled, called out:

“May I help you?”

She sat him down in a quiet office and brought him a paper cup of coffee. The office was simply outfitted. The desk and chairs were metal with fake leather cushions. It was a place to work in, not to get comfortable in. Only one touch contrasted it to the busy offices surrounding it. A vase of deftly arranged flowers on the desk. He hadn’t finished the coffee when Hai came in, carrying a can of soda, went and sat back of his desk, looked at Dave and said:

“I can only give you a few minutes. You picked a very busy day. Do I understand that you are looking into the death of my father in defense of the man who killed him?”

“Of the man the police think killed him,” Dave said.

Hai’s brows rose. “And you do not think so?” He had almost no Vietnamese accent. The foreignness of his speech showed up in the stilted way he put his sentences together. “I saw you at my father’s funeral, did I not? Standing at the back of the church?”

“That’s right.”

“Why? Do you think it was some member of the household who killed him? Me? My sister? My mother? We were all at home. I have watched my share of detective shows on television. Surely you do not think as they think”—he gave a thin, disbelieving smile—“or act as they act. That is make-believe. The murder of my father was reality.”

“I try not to confuse the two,” Dave said. “I’ve been in the business of investigating unexplained sudden deaths all my life. One thing comes first. Talk to everybody you can find who knew the man or woman who was killed. And that, of course”—he used a tight little smile of his own—“includes his family.”

After eyeing Dave for a moment, Hai gave a quick nod.

Dave said, “Actually, I’m more interested in a man called Don Pham, right now. Do you know him?”

Hai’s look was guarded. He said, “No,” carefully.

“He operates gambling establishments, prostitution rings,” Dave said, “and he deals in illegal drugs.”

“I wouldn’t know such a person,” Hai said.

“He seems to know a lot about you and the rest of the Le family. How come?”

“I can’t say.” Hai read his watch, drank some soda. “My father’s business success made him prominent in the community. This sometimes meant we were written about in the newspapers and spoken about on television. So the Le family and its doings were scarcely as private as he would have liked them to be.”

“Your father never mentioned Don Pham?” Dave said.

Hai’s laugh was scornful. “Why would he? My father always demanded of us that we live up to the highest standards, and he himself would never set a poor example to his children. Associating with a criminal?” He pushed back his chair, got to his feet. “It is out of the question.”

Dave stood up too. “What about Rafe Carpenter?”

Hai had started to come around the desk. He stopped in mid-stride and squinted at Dave. “What do you mean?”

“Would you call him a friend—or only an employee?”

“Rafe has worked here a very long time,” Hai said. “Almost from the start. My father placed a great deal of trust in him. He is a hard worker. He helped to build this business.” Hai blinked. “Have you discovered something to his discredit?”

“Do you pay him bonuses?” Dave said. “In cash?”

Puzzled, Hai said, “At Christmas? Yes. We give all our employees Christmas bonuses.” He frowned. “In cash? That would be wrong, Mr. Brandstetter. As guests in your country, my father taught us to be scrupulous in observing all laws. And seeing to it that our employees do the same. Cash payments might go unreported”—again he used that token smile of his—“to the IRS. No, the bonuses are paid by check, with all deductions taken out, according to the rules.”

“Somebody’s been paying him cash bonuses,” Dave said. “Big cash bonuses. And not just at Christmas.” He laid the brown envelope on Hai’s desk, pried up the fasteners, opened the flap, pulled out computer printouts. “Look at these, please.” He spread them on the desk. Frowning, Hai sat in his chair again, and bent over the green-meshed documents. Mel Fleischer, after yelps and moans of protest, had got these for Dave this morning. Dave had picked them up at his office. Now, Hai traced the figures on the sheets with a ballpoint pen, as he’d done with the shipping manifests out on the dock. He looked up at Dave. “What do these mean?”

“They mean that for the past thirteen or fourteen months, Rafe Carpenter has been receiving hefty payments from somebody for something. He’s bought a three-hundred-thousand-dollar house with an ocean view.”

Hai nodded. “He invited me to dinner there.”

“And it didn’t seem odd to you that a warehouseman earning union scale could afford to live like, that?”

Hai flushed. “A guest does not question such things.”

“That’s an eighteen-thousand-dollar car he’s driving these days,” Dave said. “His wife has a brand-new station wagon. He’s sending his kid to a fancy private school. Where’s the money coming from, Mr. Le?”

“Not from here.” Hai pushed the papers away from him.

“Did he ever mention Don Pham to you?”

“Never.” He started for the door. Hand on the knob, he turned back. “Do you mean you believe Rafe was working for this gangster? Have you proof?”

“He wasn’t at your father’s funeral. Didn’t you think that was a little odd?”

“The child was ill,” Hai said.

“Not so ill Carpenter couldn’t come down here.”

“Here?” Hai stared. “But the warehouse was closed.”

“I saw him. He met a man off a power launch, and gave him two attaché cases. Do you know what was in those cases?”