The Straight Man - Roger L Simon (22 page)

"All right, fuckheads, who're you working for?"

Both Chu's stared at me dazedly, blood dripping from
the nose and mouth of one and from the eyes of the other.

"C'mon, guys, you don't want to suck lead from
this baby." I held the .38 closer for their edification. The
Chu's still did not react. I kicked the nearest one, the silent
partner, in the face again, catching him right across the cheek-bone.
His head snapped back and I heard a crack.

"Reverend Wu," he said. "We're workin'
for Reverend Wu."

"That's more like it. What did he want you to
do?"

More silence.

"What is this'? The last rerun of I've Got a
Secret?" I started to raise my foot again.

"
We don't know. We don't know," the silent
partner gasped. The verbal Chu had been reduced to nothing but
unintelligible moans, rolling on his back and clutching his eyes in
pain like a punk Oedipus. "We never met him."

"You never met the guy you're working for?"

"We take orders from his helpers."

"What orders?"

"Anything they want. They give us a clothing
allowance. You know, for Melrose."

"Clothes," I said. "Jesus." I
stared down at them. Two Korean punks beaten to a pulp. For the first
time, I was seeing the Chu's in clear light without their dark
glasses, even if it was only the green fluorescents of the laundry
room. At the most, they were fifteen, maybe sixteen years
old—depressing, vicious little creeps, like bit players in a
Twisted Sister video.

"Don't turn us in, mister, please," said
the silent brother.

"My uncle'll kill us .... Right, Douglas?"

He looked over at his brother, but Douglas was too
sick to respond. He spat a tooth out on the floor.

I shoved the gun under my jacket and left. It wasn't
until I was riding up the elevator again that I noticed the sleeve
was spattered with blood. My best jacket, I thought. Christ. And then
I smiled as I rubbed the blood in so it blended with the multicolored
weave of the Italian wool. I was just like the rest of them: another
clothes horse.

I adjusted my tie and stepped out at the penthouse,
emerging in the foyer of VIP Leasing. It was the kind of all-purpose
office reception area that could have been anywhere in America and,
by now, anywhere in the world—avocado green shag carpet, ersatz
walnut paneling, and mock Renaissance brass table lamps. The
receptionist was hunched over a high-tech telephone installation,
pushing buttons and trying to look busy.

"Hello, I'm Phil Bettelheim. I'd like to see Dr.
Wu if you don't mind." I took out one of my handy-dandy little
business cards and handed it to her.

"Does he know you?"

"I don't believe he does. I'm with the INS—the
Immigration and Naturalization Service." I said it slowly so she
got it. "One of your employees, a—I pretended to glance at
ascrawled address—"Douglas Chu of Laveta Terrace, has recently
become a winner in the new California Lottery."

"He has"?" Her eyes widened.

"Fortunately or unfortunately; You see, a couple
of weeks ago, when a certain Jorge Esperanza won the grand prize, the
Roswell Baking Company of Torrance was considerably inconvenienced
when it was determined that Esperanza was an illegal alien, resulting
in an investigation of their company that sent roughly eighty percent
of their employees back to Mexico and Guatemala. Now, I'm sure-"

I would've continued, but by now the receptionist was
on the phone, jabbering away urgently in rapid-fire Korean. In
somewhere around thirty seconds, Dr. Wu's personal secretary, a
carefully coiffed woman in a silky Hong Kong—style slit skirt and
long vermilion fingernails, arrived in the foyer to escort me to his
office. Not that I could've gotten lost. The heavy bronze doors with
the marble handles at the end of the corridor were a dead giveaway.

Wu himself was about five feet tall and sat behind a
desk about twice as wide. He reminded me of pictures I had seen of
Deng Xiaoping at state receptions, his feet dangling about six inches
above the floor. He wasn't as smart as Deng, but he wasn't bad, and
the minute he saw me, he signaled for his secretary to get out, as
well as one of his "helpers," a snakelike individual
wearing a white turtleneck and an ankh who had been leaning against
the bookshelf trying not to pick his teeth.

"Sit down," he said, not taking his eyes
off me. I sank into a soft leather armchair that lowered me down to
near his level. "You're not the INS. You don't look like them,
you don't dress like them, and your eyes are too intelligent. What do
you want?"

"I want to know why you killed Mike Ptak."
 
He didn't flinch a centimeter. "You're
the second person to ask me that this week. I don't kill people. I'm
far too rich for that."

"That sounds good, Doctor. But it doesn't jibe
with my experience and I'm sure it doesn't jibe with yours. When it's
not a member of their own family, people usually kill to advance or
protect a position. My assumption is you killed Ptak—or more likely
had him killed—to protect a position."

"What was that?"

I took a flyer. "About twenty-five million in
aid funds."

"That's a lot of money."

"
Yes, it is."

"And then you had to get rid of a Romanian
bellhop named Vasile Nastase, who, because of his religious devotion,
you were able to manipulate to your own ends."

"Because of his devotion?" He shook his
head. "What is your name? You are a private investigator, no
doubt." I told him. "Well, Mr. Wine, let me explain some of
the simple facts of life to you. When you are doing God's work, you
have nothing to fear from a Mr. Ptak or from anybody else. The New
Evangelical Church of the Eastern Gate is an entirely nonprofit
religious organization headquartered in Seoul, Korea. According to
the laws of that country and of this one—the separation of church
and state admired by every schoolchild—no one is entitled to
examine our books or to inspect our accounts unless they can show
evidence of a felony, like mail fraud. That can take years. Indeed,
it usually does." He half smiled.

"And VIP Leasing?"

"
A small real estate holding company. A church
is entitled to hold real estate, is it not? Compared to the Vatican,
we are but a dot in the universe."

"I find it interesting that the real estate
you're holding was the Malibu residence of a Dr. Carl Bannister,
whose recent murder was connected to the other two deaths."

"Interesting, yes. But hardly conclusive. And I
understand there has been an arrest in that regard. Now, Mr. Wine,
you must excuse me. If you think I had something directly to do with
these deaths, you must prove it for yourself. But I assure you, you
are wasting your time." He stood up and bowed to me. "And
if you do insist on carrying on these investigations, it will be at
your peril. Not because of these alleged crimes, but because every
organization has things to hide. It is the nature of human society.
Your culture is filled with corruption. So is mine. So is the Russian
and so, no doubt, are the Chinese, the Italian, and the Greek. You
may think it is good to root it out, but many lives depend upon these
structures, whole systems. The person who tries to purify the world
must bear the consequences of his idealism."

"
I appreciate your analysis of history, but, uh,
one thing is troubling me, Doctor: the IRS. Don't they figure into
this somehow? I seem to recall the Reverend Moon had some problems
with them."

"That fool." Wu frowned. "My daughter
married at that absurd mass wedding of his."

I grinned. "You mean that publicity stunt when
he married a thousand Moonies simultaneously?" I glanced at the
framed portrait of a young Korean girl on the bookshelf behind him.
It was about a ten-year-old picture and the girl seemed around
fourteen, but she was oddly familiar.

"
Exhibitionists like that deserve whatever fate
they get," Wu continued. "But as for the IRS, they are no
problem. You simply list your expenses and your program services on
their Form Nine-ninety."

"Program services?"

"Education, promotion, and aid."

"All mixed in one?"

"
Peculiar, isn't it? But in any case, Mr. Wine,
it's irrelevant. For the greedy there are many better ways to hide
money."

"
You mean like cash in the mail? I hear you get
tons of that, particularly after a natural disaster like the Mexican
earthquake. And I imagine those small checks aren't hard to convert,
either. I mean it'd be hell to cross-check, wouldn't it? Lying on our
income tax about charitable donations is practically a national
sport."

The Reverend half smiled again. Maybe this is what
they meant about the Mysterious East. It wasn't all that mysterious.

"So what do you do with all that cash? It's kind
of tricky, walking into a bank with a suitcase of, say, ten million
and offering it all at once to the lady in new accounts."

The smile disappeared from his face.

"
I suppose you'd have to do what any
self-respecting drug dealer does," I went on. "Open a
business and slowly filter the money in. But you couldn't do that all
at once. You'd need someplace to keep the cash while you were waiting
to put it there."

"
I imagine you would, Mr. Wine."

"I wonder where that would be."

"Why don't you have a look?" He opened the
door for me. "I don't think the Chu's Brothers will disturb you.
Good to have met you, Mr. Wine. God bless."

I exited the building and got into my car, driving
off a few blocks and then slowly back along Ninth. I parked in a
7-Eleven and walked back toward the Hankyu Investment Center through
a long driveway that ran behind the shops that fronted Crenshaw. I
had noticed on the way out that the entire building was wired with
closed-circuit television and, Chu's or no Chu's, I wasn't sure I
wanted to go back in. So I stopped in the rear parking area and
looked into the detective's friend, the garbage dumpster. It wasn't
my favorite kind of work. But I had long since given up whatever
squeamishness I had at this method of investigation, because nobody,
not even Bob Dylan or the CIA, shredded all their papers. Something
always slipped through, even if it was just a phone number scribbled
on a check from the local Mexican take-out.

Fortunately, this particular dumpster wasn't loaded
with yesterday's guacamole, or even kim chee. It was stacked to the
gills with printouts, readouts, and all the rest of the detritus of
our microprint age. Within about five minutes I could quote the Dow
Jones averages for the last week, cite the Standard & Poor's
ratings on at least five up-and-coming corporations, and knew the
prices of gold, silver, platinum, and Krugerrands. Koontz was right:
the whole world was going berserk on integrated business software.

I was about to give up and go to real estate school,
when I pulled out yet another printout from under a pile of insurance
brochures. It was titled: CURRENT AFFILIATES—NEW EVANGELICAL CHURCH
OF THE EASTERN GATE.

I skimmed down the alphabetical list but stopped
right off on the second entry: BIBLES FOR BUCHAREST—CONTACT: W. T.
WEBSTER, 46 AVONDALE, GLENDALE. I glanced up at the penthouse. The
sun was beginning to set, turning the office window of Reverend Wu a
smoky orange. I stuffed the list in my pocket and headed back for my
car.

Thirty minutes later I was cruising slowly up
Avondale. It was one of those ramshackle neighborhoods in the flats
of Glendale that probably hadn't changed much since the first Okies
and Arkies came out to California during the days of the Dust Bowl.
This was Bible country, the kind of place they still pronounced
"roof" as "ruff" and Sting was something you got
from a bee.

Number 46 was the second to last house on the block,
a decrepit affair in the bungalow style with eaves that were painted
a nasty yellow and faded green asbestos siding. Some golden bamboo
had run wild near the front porch and I could see it protruding
through the concrete steps as I climbed up to the front door. There
wasn't a bell, so I pulled back the torn screen and knocked firmly on
the inner jamb. I could hear the Five Blind Boys of Alabama singing
"Carry Me Up" on a scratchy record somewhere inside and I
half expected the faces to be black, but it was a young white man in
his early twenties who opened the door, keeping it on a chain that
was long enough to see about a third of his face, which was blotched
with psoriasis. He wore a set of braceson upper teeth that looked
heavily corroded by sugar.

"You ain't sellin' and I ain't buyin'," he
said before I could open my mouth.

"I'm not a salesman."

"
So?"

"Tell 'im to go away," came the voice of an
old woman from within.

"He ain't comin' in, Granma." He brought
his eye closer to the door and peered at me. "Whaddaya want?"
I recognized his voice from someplace, but I wasn't sure where. Then
I remembered. The phone call.

"I'm a Christian," I said.