Obedience (18 page)

Dave granted. “Maybe you’re right. Chien keeps interesting company.” He told Cecil about his visit to Hoang Pho.

“They could have been talking boats,” Cecil said.

“And I could be Mike Tyson,” Dave said. “Warren Priest checks the shipments that come into the Le warehouse. Rafe Carpenter worked at the warehouse. Carpenter met Chien Cao Nhu at the warehouse when it was closed the day of old man Le’s funeral. And gave him two attaché cases. Hai tells me no drugs or other contraband have ever been found by Customs in any Le shipment. What do you conclude?”

“They weren’t talking boats?” Cecil said.

Dave laughed. “They weren’t talking boats.” He sobered. “Our friend Don Pham may have been right about the Le family. It’s a beautiful house. But all that goes on there is not beautiful.” Leaning back on the couch, he told Cecil about his morning there. “I understand the old woman perfectly, but I don’t understand Thao, I don’t understand Quynh, and for that matter, I don’t understand Fergusson. They’ve got some kind of secret between the three of them, and I’m damned if I can figure out what it is.”

“Ba’s room—that must have been sad,” Cecil said.

Dave nodded, drank some more of his whisky. “But the saddest place I saw today was Carpenter’s.”

Cecil looked startled. “You went there?”

“The American dream. Brand-new. Four bedrooms on a large lot of sloping green lawn overlooking the ocean. Pool, Jacuzzi, steam room—the works. Drug money is big money, no mistake. But what’s going to happen now? The little kid wanders in and out. He understands his dad is dead. But he keeps looking for him. You can see that. His mother doesn’t know where she is. Carpenter had her fooled completely. It took me an hour to get out of her that, yes, sometimes Rafe did go off on mysterious errands at night. More importantly, that he was home playing poker with three witnesses the night Le Van Minh was killed. I checked them all out. It’s true.”

“That wasn’t what you went there to learn,” Cecil said. “That sends you back to square one. Why did you go?”

“Looking for a skinny old man,” Dave said. “The security guard who ran me off the docks that day.”

“But why at Carpenter’s house, of all places?”

“Because at Drycott Security Services, they didn’t know him. Carpenter had rung and told them not to send a guard that day. Where would you look for him?”

“And was he there?”

“Not in person. Seems he’s in Paris. Flew out the day after old man Le’s funeral. But there was a framed photo of him on the piano. Holland Carpenter. Rafe’s father.” The telephone jangled. “Jesus.” Dave sat up. “Now what?”

“I’ll get it.” Cecil set the snifter on the bricks and jogged to the desk. “Brandstetter’s house,” he told the receiver. “Who? What? Cotton? But he—all right. All right. Just be cool. We’ll be there.”

Frowning, Dave pushed up off the couch.

Cecil set down the receiver. “That was Lindy Willard. It’s about Cotton.”

“What about him?” Dave picked up his cigarettes and lighter. “He’s supposed to be in New York.”

“He’s here, and she says he’s been kidnapped.”

“It doesn’t make sense.” Dave pushed the cigarettes and lighter into a jacket, shrugged into the jacket, and strode quickly through the shadows toward the door.

Cecil followed him. “Did you expect anything about Cotton Simes to make sense?”

“I sure as hell didn’t expect him to come back.” Dave felt in the jacket for keys. They were there. He pulled the door open. “He was scared to death when he got on that jet.” He stepped out, waited for Cecil, closed the door, and they crossed the courtyard, headed for the Jaguar.

“Lucky we never take off our clothes,” Cecil said.

“Do you really think so?” Dave said.

He had begun to dislike the harbor at night, the strong sea smell, the cold wind, coldest at this time, with sunrise an hour or so away. Nearing the Old Fleet, he had begun to look out for followers. Don Pham may have vanished, but Dave doubted he had given up. Cecil was doing the driving. At Dave’s suggestion, he swung up extra streets, down alleys, doubled back. Twice they glimpsed a dark limousine—some undertaker looking for an address?—but they saw no black-clad little figures flitting into doorways.

They left the car on the street, by the crusty iron guard rails of the sea wall, and went down rickety steps to the unstable wooden walkways of the Old Fleet, where the shabby boats rocked asleep on black water. The scaly steel lampposts along the walkways were few and their bulbs gave only grudging light that reflected in yellow ripples below. Cecil pointed. Down the way, fairy lights twinkled in the rigging of the
Starlady.
Lindy Willard stood on top of the cabin, where she’d eaten croissants and drunk Bloody Marys with Dave the other morning. Clutching a mink coat tight around her, she peered anxiously in their direction.

“Now just a minute, there,” a sharp voice said.

They stopped and peered into the darkness. A sturdy little figure stood on the deck of the tubby boat. Bundled in a checked flannel bathrobe, a white sailor cap on her gray hair, the brim turned down. She cradled the orange and white cat on her left arm. Her right hand pointed a gun. A little copper-finish twenty-two pistol.

“Norma Potter,” Dave said. “Where did you get that gun?”

“Ah, it’s you, Mr. Brandstetter.” She came towards them. “And who’s that with you?” She gave a little shriek, and took a step backward. “Cotton?”

“Not Cotton,” Cecil said, and gave his name. “I’m a friend of Mr. Brandstetter.”

“You work for television news,” she said. “That’s right. You were down here before.” She looked along the moorings. “Well, there’s bad news tonight. Four of those little Asian boys in black were here. Two hours ago. They took Cotton away.” She peered up at Dave. The cat slipped down, landed soundlessly on the deck, and scurried off. “I didn’t even know he was still living here.”

“Where did you get that gun?” Dave said.,

“I didn’t mean for you to see it,” she said. “I found it on the deck here, the morning after Mr. Le was killed. I didn’t know it was a twenty-two that killed him. Not then, not till you told me. Didn’t look to me much better than a toy, but it might come in useful. Turned out I was right. After Andy was jailed, everybody around here just kind of gave up hope. So it’s me for myself, isn’t it? And I won’t be sent packing, Mr. Brandstetter. I can’t be. I’ve got no place to go. They have to let me stay here.”

Dave reached for it. “Hand it over, please.”

She clasped it to her breast with both plump hands. “I guess you don’t know what ‘desperate’ means, do you?”

“There’s no way you can shoot all the developers and bureaucrats and lawyers that want you people out. And if you could, you’d still have to move. To jail.”

“I can always blow my brains out,” she said.

“Don’t do that,” Dave said. “Who’d feed your cat?”

“You,” she said promptly. “You’re a fool for cats.”

“Why didn’t you shoot the doll-boys?” Dave said.

She passed the gun over to him, shamefaced. “Lost my nerve. I heard Cotton yell. I heard scuffling. And I got the gun from where I’d hid it and came up here swearing I’d shoot, but I couldn’t make myself do it.” She looked up at him again, her wrinkled face a pale small sad moon in the half darkness. “It takes a special kind of person to be able to kill somebody in cold blood, doesn’t it?”

“A kind we’d be better off without,” Dave said.

“Why didn’t you call the police?” Cecil said.

“The phone’s out there. In the dark.” She waved an arm. “Old woman alone—I was afraid. Anyway, it was over, they had Cotton, they were gone. What could the police do?”

“They ought to know,” Dave said. “I’ll tell them.”

Lindy Willard came down the metal ladder from atop the cabin faster than looked safe for a woman her age. In very high spike heels. Dave and Cecil had climbed on board. She came towards them with that regal sway of hers. She still wore the wig she’d performed in. Sequins glittered in it. But she had on jeans and a man’s shirt under the fur coat. Gusts of Chanel Number Five came off the coat. Gusts of gin when she breathed at them. She glanced angrily back along the row of boats. “What did old Norma want with you?”

“She saw the little boys in black take Cotton away”

“He was all right,” she said in that glorious big voice that went echoing out across the water, “when I left at eight. He’d got here about six, buses, taxis.”

“From the airport,” Cecil said.

She nodded, turned. “Come inside.” She led them into a teak-paneled cabin where purple velvet cushions were thrown around, framed gold and platinum records had been knocked off the walls, a table tipped over. “He must have fought back.” She watched, Cecil bend and right the table. “I never knew he had that kind of courage.”

“What brought him back?” Dave said.

She stared, open mouthed. “You did,” she said. “It’s why I called you when I got home here after my last show, and he was gone. I figured, you were the one to tell. What are you going to do about it?”

“Everything I can,” Dave said. “But Cotton lied to you. I didn’t send for him.”

“Oh, my God.” she began to shake. She moved to the far end of the cabin where bottles stood on shelves. She fumbled a glass, dropped it, got another, poured it half full of gin, the neck of the bottle rattling on the glass. She took a gulp from the glass and turned back to face Dave. “He said you instructed that public defender woman—what’s her name?”

Dave felt cold in his belly. “Tracy Davis.”

“She was the only one you said he could talk to here. Not me, not his sister, not you, nobody but Tracy Davis. And then only in an emergency, right? But there was no emergency. He didn’t call her. She called him. She said he was to come back, you needed him, but he was more scared of phoning you, after you told him not to, scared it would get you killed.”

Dave groaned. “Flores got to her, that son of a bitch. He wants Don Pham for the murders at the Hoang Pho, and Cotton’s the only witness. I shouldn’t have mentioned it to him last night. I’m getting senile.”

“Somebody in the County building bugged their conversation, or taped into Tracy’s phone call,” Cecil said. “You said there’s a leak there—that Don Pham always knows what the police are planning.”

Dave watched Lindy work on the gin. “Then why didn’t the doll-boys meet him at the airport?” He frowned. “For that matter, why didn’t Flores meet him at the airport?”

“Because.” She knelt and picked up a cigarette from among twenty that had fallen from a spilled silver box. She was wobbly, getting up. She sat on the coffee table and let Dave light the cigarette for her. “He took a plane two hours earlier than the one she said for him to take. Different airline too. He didn’t trust her. Not really. Street smarts”—she smiled crookedly up at Dave through a haze of smoke—“are dumb smarts, but sometimes they pay off.”

“For how long? Going direct to the first place they’d look for you is dumb,” Cecil said. “If you’ll forgive me.”

“Nothing to forgive, child,” she said wanly. “You are right.” She waved a hand. “The evidence is before us.” The gin was making her weepy. She wiped away a tear.

Dave frowned. “Why didn’t Flores get here first?”

“Because Don Pham is always a jump ahead of him,” Cecil said. “If he wasn’t, he’d be in jail, wouldn’t he?”

Dave grunted. “I’m beginning to wonder.”

“Flores is probably lying awake in bed right now, trying to figure out why Cotton didn’t get off the flight Tracy Davis told him to take, and walk into his waiting arms.”

Lindy Willard said, “He would have jumped overboard and swum to China if he saw the police coming on board here for him. He came home because this Tracy Davis said it was you who wanted him. He wasn’t going to her. No way. He was going to you. Tonight.” Her head in the showbiz wig drooped and she began to cry in earnest. “He’s dead, by now, poor, beautiful, sweet, funny boy. Lover. Lover.”

“He’s not dead.” Dave patted her shoulder. “If they’d wanted him dead, they wouldn’t have bothered to take him away. They’d have killed him right here.”

She looked up quickly, hope in her eyes, mouth trembling in a try at a smile. “You think so? They won’t kill him? Can you find him? Can you get Cotton back?”

“I can’t find Don Pham,” Dave said. “But he can find me. He’s proved that before.”

Cecil, picking up plaques, said, “No doubt about that.”

Lindy’s glass was empty. She tottered to her feet, and stumbled among cushions back to the bar. “Why would he?”

“Five o’clock in the morning,” Dave said, “is not my brightest hour. When my mind starts working again, I’ll think of something to bring him.”

“Don’t let it go too long,” she said. “You know Cotton—that mouth of his. They could shoot him just to stop him jiving them.” She laughed a woebegone little laugh. “More than a few times I could have done that myself.”

“All right, all right,” Raoul Flores said. “Back off, will you? I blew it. I’m sorry. You never make mistakes?” He was in bathrobe and pajamas in a clean, bright kitchen that smelled of chili peppers. Under wan electric light, he stood, beard stubbly, red-eyed, by a glistening stove, hoping water would boil in a red tea kettle so he could have coffee. He looked at his wrist where a watch should have been. He’d been rousted out of bed by Dave’s pounding on his door in the first gray light of dawn, and had forgotten the watch. “Soon as the day shift comes on, I’ll put out an APB.”

“Put out search parties,” Dave said, “with dogs. The meanest dogs you can find.”

“I’ve got seventeen of those little poker-faced punks in cells waiting for a lineup so he can identify which two used Uzis on those men at the Hoang Pho that night, okay? I mean, I do my job, man—I do my job.”

“Halfway,” Dave said. “You should have rounded up Cotton first. What good is a lineup to a dead witness?”

“They wouldn’t kill him,” Flores grumbled.”

“What else would they do?” Dave said. “But speaking of killing”—he took the twenty-two from his pocket and laid it on the kitchen table—“here’s the gun that killed Le Van Minh.”

Flores gaped. “Where the hell did you get that?”

“You didn’t look very hard for it,” Dave said, “or you’d have found it. Even little old ladies are too much for you.”