The Chinese Beverly Hills (4 page)

“You still have John Bull?” he asked—an affectionate English bulldog he’d liked.

“He die. He get old, blind, can’t hear much. I take him out one last time, down street, to get his end in girl terrier. So he die happy.”

“My dog got bone cancer and it cost a small fortune to keep him going. I don’t know why I did it. I guess I’m sentimental.”

“You ain’t told me if you got good woman.”

“Yes, Tien. I have a wonderful woman, an American Indian who works for the L.A. police. She’s very clever and—” He tried to think what quality Tien might respect. “—indomitable. I live with her in East L.A. now.”

She made a face. “With all the Mexicans and gangs.”

“You people in Orange County are so scared of the part of L.A. away from the ocean. It’s all fine.” He needed to separate himself from Tien as much as he could.

“I scare of nothing, Jack. You know that.”

“Good. I’m scared of all sorts of things. Why don’t you tell me about this missing girl.”

A hefty woman came in carrying a tray with all the tea accoutrements.

“
Gracias
, Lupita.
Allí. Lo verteré
.”

Tien leaned forward and poured out two cups of tea. He hated Chinese tea but he sipped anyway.

“The girl name Sabine Roh. She my niece—many time remove, you say. Complicated. In Vietnam her name would be Ng Suong, but her parents good sport, they good immigrant, you know—try hard to fit in. They turn name backward, like America, and make it more simple. Sabine conceive in refugee camp but born here, her mother three week off the boat. They go to Monterey Park right away, where all the rich hicks from Taiwan go.”

“Hicks?”

She gave an unreadable shrug. “The Rohs from Vietnam like me, but Chinese inside. I tell you Sabine super-duper good girl as she grow up. Brownie stuff, Catholic Church two time a week, class president. She work for me in summer, learn business fast. Good and pretty, too. I love this girl so much.”

“She have enemies?”

“Hah! In that town? That place still got white bums on motorcycles, bums in city council, bums in Chamber of Commerce. Lotta rich Chinese from Hong Kong and Taiwan move to the San Gabe Valley, but they funny. Not good guest. They never really put thank-you-USA flag up pole and salute Mickey Mouse. Put up big Chinese sign on every store.
Merde
! So stupid. That make round-eyes protest all the time: ‘Gooks go home.’ Ghost people there go nuts and demand English only. And something call
slow growth
—really mean no more Chink malls. And it all so unnecessary.” She was talking so fast that her command of English seemed to degenerate before his eyes.

“Welcome to America, Tien. Hold off on the editorials and tell me about the girl.”

Tien sipped her tea and took a deep breath. “You know my rule. You got to come out even-steven in life. Exact even is best—not on top, not on bottom. I loan money when people need it bad, don’t ask for interest. When I want something, I get it. Big screen T V, first in line for iPhone. Friend at courthouse.

“This family, the Rohs, they save my old uncle after VCs take over. He was like father to me, donkey’s age. They get him out of Vietnam to refugee camp in Thailand and then to USA. Plenty risk. Crazy commie kids with guns everywhere those days, you know.”

Tien made a sour face. Practicality so thoroughly dominated her thinking that Jack Liffey had never told her he’d once had a political streak of his own. She’d never had much of an interest in dreams, only what you could grab right now

“Boo for all that. I owe this guy Lan and his wife Qui. Owe big time.”

She sat down and he waited, but she was lost in her head for the moment.

“How long has the girl been missing?” he asked finally.

“Sorry, Jackie. First you got to know. Sabby got flea in ear for years. She always want to be nun. They too Catholic, but Mom and Pop Roh say
no way José
, put foot down. So Sabby study to be lawyer. I bet she think one day when Mom and Dad gone to Heaven she get herself off to nun school. She one damn pretty girl, too. Could get guys like flies, just like me.” She grinned. “Not so bad legs for old woman, huh?”

He had to glance. Yes, they went all the way up. “How long has the girl been missing?”

“Mr. Down-to-Business. At least until the tits come out. No, no—calm on you. You safe from me, Jackie. Maybe.”

Something about his presence had pulled her hormone trigger. He couldn’t believe she’d changed so little in ten years, and he wondered if inside he’d changed. But he could keep his pants zipped this time. It was harder, of course, with Gloria in full physical retreat.

“Want cookie, Mr. Business?”

“Sure.” He disliked those, too, but anything was better than this tsunami of temptation thundering toward him.

Tien Joubert—the French surname came from an early and discarded husband—glided effortlessly around the glass coffee table, a remarkably small and delicate woman, and set two almond cookies on his plate, making sure to press a little against his leg.

“Sabine Roh gone for one week now, Jackie, ever since telling mom she go to meeting at St. Tom Aquine Church. She good girl, as I tell you. Never never lie to mom.”

“People can be unpredictable, Tien.”

“What you mean?”

She sat in her easy chair and he relaxed.

“They meet someone and emotion overwhelms all logic.” This wasn’t a very good subject to bring up, he realized. “You have no idea how many ‘really good kids’ I’ve looked for who’d gone off the rails. It happens.”

“Not this little girl, believe me. Years and years she marinate herself in wholesome.” Tien Joubert handed him all the necessary names and addresses and phone numbers on a sheet of her business letterhead.
Lucky International Commercial LLC
, it said, with a very classy logo.

“I’ll find her.”

“I just hope she not dead, like last one.”

He’d met Tien on commission to find a similar girl who eventually turned out to have been murdered by a serial killer. He felt no guilt about it—she’d been dead before he showed up. But he hoped Sabine wasn’t consigned to the same fate. She sounded like one of the kids the future needed.

Ever since the end of the long Eisenhower daydream in the 1950s, it had become a spooky hard rain out there for kids.

*

Maeve parked across Greenwood so the new scrape on the right side of the car wasn’t visible from the house. She’d done it at a Hollywood disco one night with some friends, after two beers. It was only an old Toyota Echo, but it was still reliable and she hated to think of herself as unreliable.

Her dad’s pickup was gone, but Gloria’s little blue SUV was still tucked up the drive. According to her dad, Gloria could barely walk, but was elsewise okay. Maeve didn’t really trust his upbeat tone. She’d lived with Gloria off and on since she was fourteen, and the woman had become her trusted auntie and backup mom.

She knocked softly, then finally let herself in with her own key. “Glor, it’s only me!” she called. Maeve looked around briefly and then made her way to the staircase. “Gloria, you up there?”

“Where the fuck else would I be?” Then the anger caved in. “I’m so sorry, Maeve. Come on up and sue me for abuse.”

Maeve pretended the outburst was all a joke and forced a laugh as she stepped into the bedroom. She was shocked by Gloria’s looks. She’d lost a lot of weight and she was pretty disheveled. Gloria clung hard to a black cane as she sat up on the edge of the bed.

“Can I get you something? Can I brush your hair?”

“Be a princess and get me a beer. Two beers.”

Maeve fetched her one bottled Indio from the fridge, and brought up one of her dad’s ginger ales for herself. “Only one beer was cold,” she lied.

Gloria smiled at the lie. Her cop radar still worked. “Don’t worry, darling. I’m not really a lush. Jack just takes everything the doctors say too literally. What do they know?”

In the bathroom Maeve found the hairbrush. “Turn sideways.” The woman usually kept her hair cop short, but the lustrous jet-black American Indian hair was growing out and tangling, flecked handsomely with gray. Maeve wished her own mouse-colored hair had some of this body.

“Ow.” A snarl.

“Sorry. I’ll be more careful.”

“What brings you over to the poor side of town?”

“You probably want the truth, don’t you?”

Gloria winced as Maeve caught another tangle. “You may as well not bullshit me. That forces me to change mode.”

“I surrender. I came because I’m worried about my
Tía
Gloria, and I’m worried about the big picture with you and Dad. That’s the truth.”

Gloria thought for a few moments, then gulped a lot of her beer. “Do you always need things all figured out?”

“You know me. I’m full of concern and slow Zen.”

“What the hell’s that mean?”

Maeve realized there was going to be no lightness of mood just now. “I don’t know, sorry. I care about you as much as my mom, Gloria. I care about my dad. I want everything in my whole world to be okay.”

“I love you, too, hon. If you keep up this heavenly brushing for a while, I’ll answer any question you ask as long as you agree to answer a few of mine.”

Maeve reached to sip at the soft drink can, then went back to brushing. “A real women’s truth time.” She took a deep breath. “What happened to you up in Bakersfield?”

Gloria made a twisted face. “Sure, throw it all down on double zero on the first spin. Woman to woman, do you mind if I summarize a little? I’m hazy on details.”

“Whatever,
Tiaíta
.”

Gloria smiled at being called a slangy ‘auntie’, but then she frowned and retreated back inside herself. In fragments and phrases she told Maeve a little of the tale of two very rotten and very stupid cops who had cuffed her and spent an endless evening working out their drunken rage on her, the woman cop from “the big L.A.” who had shown them up as incompetents. She’d been beaten a lot and then—she used the police term—sexually assaulted many times. There was a long break here. She had no memory of it, but she knew she’d managed to grab an ankle gun from one of them and shoot them both before they could kill her as they’d been promising all night.

“It was the powerlessness,” Gloria said. “Those
pendejos
!” She shuddered. “I still feel it inside me, every day, every hour. It sends me to bad places.”

Maeve kept brushing her hair mechanically, though her eyes burned. She let the brush sag for a while. “Awful. Awful,” Maeve choked.

“Dig it,” Gloria said harshly. “So let’s get your mind off
Tía
. Truth time, remember?”

Maeve took a long drink of the ginger ale and nodded once.

“Where you at in your head now, girl? Cocks or cunts?”

Maeve wanted to protest that there was no reason to put it so vulgarly, but she didn’t. “Both. Why do I have to choose a body part? I’d rather choose a whole person I’m fond of, whichever sex.”

“That’s no answer,” Gloria said. “Trust me, you can’t keep switching your feelings around.”

“Have you ever loved a woman?” Maeve asked, and she started brushing Gloria’s glossy hair again.

“I’ve never noticed feelings in that direction. But damn men, either. Your dad is one of three men I’ve let touch me. Total, three.”

“You know, that wasn’t really where my question was going. How are things with you and Dad?”

“You might make a cop someday. You get one turn and you pretend you get two.” She tilted her head back into the brush. “Right now, I’m as dead as a stone inside, hon. I got no feelings at all. I got no what do you say…’libido.’ Your dad is the kindest man I’ve ever met and I really rely on him. It’s spooky—I’m such a pain in the ass to him and he’s so good to me. But that’s the way it is right now.”

“I figured there was another guy,” Maeve said lightly. “Didn’t you hint it to me?”

“Now you got me against the wall. Jack’s your daddy.” She seemed to consider, and then Maeve felt a tremor. “You want it all, you can’t have it. We all want a white knight to ride out of the fog and fix up our whole life. Somebody cheerful that we got no history with, so we can think there’s no problems between us and never will be. I may be a mess, but I had those dreams, too. The rest you just got to guess.”

An old muscle car was revving on the street outside, but Maeve tuned it out. She was so tense she thought she might just freeze solid and keel over. “I want both you guys as perfect as a fifties sitcom.”

“It’s my turn—but first I get another beer. I’m sure it’s cold by now.”

“You sure?”

“Don’t start. Just don’t.”

Maeve trudged downstairs. This visit wasn’t working out as tidy as she had imagined. She trudged back up and handed Gloria the second and third of the bottles and had the fourth herself.

“Okay, stepdaughter. Neither of us is going to be self-righteous today, I hope. You know what your dad is worrying about the most? You. He worries you’re goofing up at college.”

Maeve let out a breath. “Can I appeal to your sense of mercy?” she evaded. “I’ll do this again when I know more about what I’m doing. And next time I want to ask what it was like growing up a Native American, a real outsider. I was such a white, middle-class, clueless girl.”

Gloria cocked her head, thinking. Maeve knew Gloria’s childhood was
really
off limits.

“Yeah, some other time.”

*

“That’s a great one to take down.”

They’d taped over the license plates and then taped the dome-light buttons in the door well of Marly’s Oldsmobile Rocket 88 so the light wouldn’t come on when they jumped out with their paint guns. Zook loved radical shit like tonight. The true thinking man loved action, despite what they said.

“You know why I love Chinks so much?” Marly Tom announced.

“Go for it.”

“Because you can blindfold them with dental floss.”

They spluttered and laughed.

“Let’s hit it,” Beef said. “I always hated that sign.”

The car screeched to a stop just off Garvey, the main drag at two a.m. They jumped out and ran toward the stack of business signs promoting eight shops in the mini-mall. The bottom segment was just two huge Chinese letters. The next one up translated its Chinese to BBQ Queen.