City of Strangers (Luis Chavez Book 2) (9 page)

She glanced at Nan. His eyes were fixed on the highway. He seemed to have the exact opposite problem. If he acknowledged the coffin, it would mean Father Chang was really dead.

He’s so young,
she thought.

The funeral director shot a glance at the grave diggers to make them move away. The three of them wandered to the other side of the van, but Susan could still hear them chatting amiably, as if being within earshot of a recently and brutally murdered man was an everyday occurrence. She wondered if it was.

“The priest just went to his car,” Broderick said, nodding to the vehicle-lined road that passed along the east side of the cemetery. “He’ll be right back.”

“Priest?” Susan asked. She hadn’t expected this. “From Father Chang’s parish?”

Broderick shrugged and shook his head. “No idea. Thought you’d invited him.”

Susan scowled and turned to Nan, figuring he’d share in her anger. She was surprised instead to see him wiping a steady stream of tears from his cheeks. She moved to his side and put her arms around him. He kept his at his side but leaned into her.

“I’m so sorry, Nan,” she whispered.

They stayed like that for a long moment. Susan heard footsteps. Broderick raised his arms as if in relief that he could turn the situation over to someone more qualified.

“Father Luis Chavez,” the funeral director said, indicating a nearing priest. “This is Dr. Susan Auyong.”

Susan broke away from Nan and eyed the young Latino priest. Though she was hardly a regular at St. Jerome’s, she’d been around enough to recognize the other parish priests. She didn’t know this one.

“I’m deeply sorry for your loss,” the priest said quietly.

“Bullshit you are,” snapped Nan, head turning so fast he flung tears. “I know what you’re saying out there about Father Chang. You believe he was some kind of criminal.”

Susan expected the priest to be put off by Nan’s attack, but Father Chavez didn’t move. Instead, he nodded and raised his hands in supplication.

“I’ve heard the same rumors that you have,” Father Chavez said. “But the archbishop was an old friend of Father Chang’s and doesn’t believe them in the slightest. He asked me to look into it while he’s away. Though I have only begun, I have found nothing to substantiate the stories whatsoever. I fully expect the diocese to repudiate the charges in the strongest possible language when the inquiry is completed.”

Susan had expected a diplomatic response. This sounded like an honest one.

“Then why aren’t any members of his parish here?” she asked. “No congregants, no priests, not even his pastor. This is a joke.”

“No, this is fear,” Chavez said simply. “But right now let’s concern ourselves with not what has brought us together but who. Recriminations can wait.”

Even Nan seemed pacified by this. Broderick signaled the grave diggers, who came over to lift the coffin from the bier to the casket-lowering device positioned over the open grave. Father Chavez shook his head and looked to Susan and Nan.

“Maybe we take him the rest of the way ourselves?” the priest asked.

Nan broke away from Susan and moved to the side of the coffin without a word. Susan followed, wondering if the three of them could lift it. Chavez drew up behind her as they all gripped a handle.

“On the count of three?”

The coffin was heavy but manageable. They carried it the short distance before placing it gently atop the casket-lowering device, the green nylon webbing bending gently under the weight.

With this done, Susan placed the photo she’d decided to bring, the one of all three of them, even if tradition called for a photo of the deceased alone, on the casket. Nan added the lilies.

“May I lead us in prayer?” Father Chavez asked as he moved to the head of the coffin.

Susan expected something Catholic and reverential. Instead, the priest prayed for God to give her and Nan strength in the coming days but also to help get justice for Father Chang. He implied that Chang had met his fate head-on and didn’t run, showing courage in the face of his own mortality. He even suggested that in time Father Chang might be seen as a martyr for his beliefs.

“Amen,” Father Chavez concluded before turning to Susan and Nan. “Would either of you like to say anything?”

Susan considered it. But she’d already said everything she’d meant for Father Chang’s ears in her mind over the past twenty-four hours and didn’t feel the need to repeat it for Nan’s or Father Chavez’s benefit. Nan, however, stepped forward.

“Father Chang hated the church but loved God and loved people,” he began. “He thought he could change the church and make it into what God and the people needed it to be. That’s what got him up in the morning. He wanted to lead by example. He wanted to change things. He wanted people to know that Jesus was about love, and that was it. That every single last one of Jesus’s teachings came back to that simple fact. Love one another as God loves. That’s it.”

As Nan stepped away from the coffin, Susan’s eyes met Father Chavez’s. He seemed as impressed by Nan’s diatribe as she was.

“Then let that be Father Chang’s legacy,” Luis said. “Go forth in love.”

The funeral director, who’d reappeared next to the van, surprised Susan with a hearty “Amen.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Nan said as the grave diggers climbed into the grave to strip off the ropes.

Susan nodded and turned to head back to the car. The priest was beside them almost immediately.

“Thank you for those words,” he told Nan. “Father Chang meant a lot to you?”

Nan side-eyed him but said nothing.

“When you say you’ve found nothing to substantiate the stories, what did you mean?” Susan asked, changing the subject.

“No witnesses who ever saw Father Chang and the alleged victim together for one thing,” Father Chavez said. “The parish pastor had a story that Father Chang kept an apartment outside the rectory but didn’t know where it was.”

I wonder if he meant my apartment,
Susan thought.
He stayed there a few times when we’d stayed up late drinking wine, listening to music, or whatever else we’d get up to.

“Yeah, but the cops have a confession, right?” Nan said. “And don’t cops go with the line of least resistance?”

“Normally so,” the priest agreed. “But the archdiocese has been in contact with the district attorney’s office, and there’s a full investigation underway. I don’t think they’ll just take the word of the shooter without evidence. In fact, I think it will come out sooner than later that he was contracted by someone else.”

Susan stared at Father Chavez for a moment with new eyes. If this man had already found all that out in such a short amount of time even as the police seemed to know nothing, maybe he was someone worth speaking to.

“Do you have any idea who hired the killer?” Susan asked.

“I may be getting close to the who,” the priest said. “But not the why.”

“Will you let us know?” Susan asked. “Father Chang did mean a lot to us. Being a priest was part of who he was, probably the most important part, but there was more to him. This week I’m starting to think we might’ve been two of the only people who were privy to that. Feels like a blessing and a curse right now. Do you understand?”

“I do,” Father Chavez agreed.

“Do you?” she pressed.

“I’ll keep you updated with everything I learn,” Chavez replied.

Susan nodded and took Nan’s arm. That’s when she realized that Nan hadn’t taken his eyes off the priest once as he spoke. She led him away.

Luis waited alongside the grave, watching as the pair made their way back to their car. They were three or four yards away when the boy glanced back. From the look on his face, the torment he was feeling over Father Chang’s death wouldn’t be disappearing any time soon.

Luis wanted to counsel the boy against harboring vengeful feelings, particularly given who might have been responsible for Chang’s death. But it was a day to grieve. Looking for the way forward could wait until tomorrow.

IX

The question-and-answer session between Michael and Shu Kuen Yamazoe lasted less than thirty minutes. If the Los Angeles triad was behind the killing of Father Chang, it had done a good job of insulating Yamazoe from the truth.

“Who approached you?”

“I never knew their name.”

“Where was the approach made?”

“They were waiting at my apartment when I came home from the track one day.”

“What’d they say?”

“‘You know who we are and why we’re here. Don’t try anything.’ They then dragged me to my bedroom and put a noose around my neck. They hung me from a hook they’d drilled into the ceiling. They even had a note listing my debts that they placed on my bed next to my driver’s license and passport.”

“And you started to die?”

“I was suffocating. I blacked out after less than a minute. When I woke up, I was on the bed. They told me I had to kill Father Chang, or they’d kill me for real. I said I wouldn’t. They hanged me again. When I came to, they showed me the weed killer I’d drink, which would take two days to eat through my stomach and organs. Then they showed me a photo of the girl who’d be my ‘daughter’ for the next three months if I’d shoot Father Chang.”

“What was her name?”

“I was never told. She was from a small rural area and only spoke Xibe or Manchu. I can barely remember my Mandarin most days.”

“She was a prostitute?”

“They meant her to be, but it never became that. She moved in with me. She cooked and cleaned. I made her stop. We were supposed to be seen here and there to establish that she was my daughter, particularly at church. We spent every moment of three months together. They wouldn’t let us leave the city, so I took her to every corner—the beaches, the hills, the parks. She learned a little English. I think her father did something to the local triad back home. She knew she was under some kind of sentence. We made the best of it. They gave us money, so we ate at nice restaurants. We went to the movies. I bought her clothes.”

“And then what happened?”

“I came home from the grocery store on what she managed to tell me was her birthday after she was able to decipher the calendar here. I had a cake. She was gone. In her place was the gun.”

“Do you think she’s dead?”

“Yes,” Yamazoe said, tearing up a little. “I could tell in the way they were with her. They felt guilty about it in advance. She was going to die for her father’s sins.”

“They could’ve just put her on a plane.”

“If somebody got her to talk, it could jeopardize the cover story. That’s why I figure I’m a dead man, too.”

When Michael exited the interrogation room a few minutes later, he found Detective Whitehead standing in the hallway opposite.

“I don’t know the how and I don’t know the who, but Yamazoe’s lawyer just showed up in the lobby demanding to speak to you.”

“To me? Not his client?”

“It’s not deGuzman. It’s Jing Saifai.”

Michael stopped cold. This was not only unusual, it was downright unheard of. It was a murder case. A salacious one due to the victim, but the press was done with it in a day. For one of the most powerful corporate attorneys in the city to roll up saying that she was now representing Yamazoe was madness.

Michael had no idea how someone like Saifai would’ve come to represent a man like Yamazoe any more than he knew how she’d known he was there interrogating him. She was a partner at a big white-shoe law firm, not a criminal defense attorney, much less someone who chased high-profile cases.

But who told her I was here?
Michael wanted to find out more than anything.

He considered slipping out a side door but was more concerned with how that would look to Detective Whitehead and the other cops than Saifai. In the end he composed himself and headed out to greet her, hoping he could bull his way through any confrontation.

“How are you, Mr. Story?” Jing said from across the lobby the moment he walked through the bullpen door. She extended her hand and walked out, her heels clicking smartly on the tile, all clipped political aggression. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“Indeed. What can I do for you?”

“Not a thing!” she said. “My firm is taking over the defense of Mr. Yamazoe, and I’m here to see him.”

Oh, I’m sure you are.

“You were just speaking to him, were you not?” she continued.

“I was,” Michael said, deciding she must’ve been tipped off by someone in the department.

“Did he or did he not invoke his right to have an attorney present?”

“This was about another crime. LAPD hasn’t even brought the case to the DA’s yet, and I doubt I’d be assigned anyway.”

It was a good lie. Jing saw through it like it was cellophane.

“What was the crime?”

“I can’t say quite yet—”

“Oh, I think you can!” She smiled in a way that reminded Michael of why star athletes make such great motivational speakers. For a moment he was actually moved to want to make this person happy, if only to have that smile shine on him a little longer.

“Suffice it to say that Yamazoe has been on our radar for a long time. There are a number of open investigations that I believed he might be able to shed some light on for us.”

“Okay then. I will still require a full transcript of the session to make sure that was the case.”

“I’m afraid you’ll need a court order for that,” he replied lamely.

“Not a problem,” she said, the smile now that of a shark seconds from consuming its prey.

Luis returned from Father Chang’s funeral with more questions than he’d had before. But at least he now felt his view of the late priest was more well-rounded. Those closest to him not only believed in his innocence, they also cared deeply for him and mourned his loss as if he’d been a family member. It was only a prattling parish pastor who didn’t seem to like Father Chang in the first place who’d had a bad word for him. Luis’s instincts told him to put more stock in the estimation of the archbishop and the pair at the funeral.

When Luis finished teaching his classes for the day, he walked back to St. Augustine’s and poked his head into the main office.

“Do you mind if I use your laptop?” he asked Erna.

“Go ahead,” she replied. “I’m off to run some errands.”

Luis took a seat and began searching the Internet for stories relating to Father Chang’s crusades. There were plenty of articles, plenty of quotes, but if he was expecting the rhetoric of a fire-and-brimstone activist priest, he came up short. Sure, there were endless photographs of Chang appearing at this event or that alongside community leaders and organizers, but he was never at the microphone himself. And whenever a reporter quoted him, he never mentioned himself, only that he was there to listen to the views of others.

That’s when Luis figured out what Chang had been doing. He was a presence, not an instigator. He legitimized the various events, marches, and rallies with his mere attendance while never suggesting even offhandedly that he was there representing the church or its interests. But time and time again there was his name next to the quotes—“Father Benedict Chang of St. Jerome’s Chinese-American Catholic Church.”

He was like some kind of guardian angel letting those in opposition know that they would be held to account. His quotes more often than not cited scripture. They weren’t controversial passages, mostly a lot of “Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deeds,” or “The exercise of justice is joy for the righteous.” But the insinuation was clear. Those he stood with were doing the Lord’s work.

Luis took out a pad of paper and began to sort through the presumed villains in each case. There were corporations, the city, planning commissions, government officials, big-box retailers, and so on and so on and so on. Any number of people who didn’t like being told no if there was a profit to be made. Only, it wasn’t clear that if Father Chang was removed from the situation it would do anything at all.

He turned his attention to a handful of international stories that mentioned Chang. The articles detailed his visits to churches and Catholic communities overseas, places where Christians were often in the minority if not outright discriminated against, particularly in Asia. These were even less controversial than the ones in the local paper. In photo after photo Chang smiled as he stood near other priests and congregants in traditional clothing in large cities and small villages alike, always identified as a Chinese-American priest of the Los Angeles archdiocese.

It was all so innocuous. Father Chang’s schedule for the past few years had been packed, but with things that were fairly above reproach. Was it some kind of cover? What if all those overseas trips had been somebody using him as a courier? That would explain the money, the possibility of an extra apartment, the need to kill him once he’d outlived his usefulness. What it didn’t explain were the boy’s words at the funeral or why he’d continued to keep up appearances back home, like attending that festival the night of his murder.

Who knew he was going to be there?

Now there was a question.

How had Yamazoe known Father Chang was going to return from something alone that Sunday night? He couldn’t have been following him, could he have? He had been lying in wait. He
knew
where Father Chang was, just as he knew that it was late enough at the rectory that he wouldn’t be chased off. It was the perfect window in which to murder a man. But if Chang had been as guarded as Pastor Siu-Tung seemed to imply, who would he have told, except perhaps Dr. Auyong and the young man?

Then he realized there was a way.

Luis opened a browser and went to his seldom-used e-mail account. He logged in, opened a new letter, and typed the briefest query he possibly could. He knew it would likely go ignored, as every other query he’d sent Miguel in recent months had, but he still had hope. He reread it quickly, considered deleting it altogether, then simply hit “Send.”

Michael knew something was up by the time he reached the car. His phone was buzzing with multiple e-mails, texts, and voice mails. As this was hardly typical, he assumed it must be tied to his interview with Yamazoe. When he saw that several were from DA Rebenold’s office, he called her back first.

“Let me explain,” he said.

“You don’t have to,” the city’s district attorney said. “This is too reckless even for you.”

“I don’t know what she told you, but—”

“She didn’t have to tell me anything,” Rebenold said, cutting him off. “I got a call from the office of the director of the FBI. I was informed that due to questions of citizenship in regards to Mr. Yamazoe and his daughter, the Chinese government has taken a strong interest in this case. Jing Saifai is their acting liaison.”

Oh crap.
Crap . . . crap . . . crap . . .

“They then went on to say that Yamazoe was being questioned at this very hour by a member of my staff. Do you have any idea how embarrassing it was to have to admit I had no idea what they were talking about?”

“I’m sorry, Deborah. I received time-sensitive information this morning regarding the case. To my knowledge the only other person who knew was Detective Whitehead. Someone from inside LAPD must’ve leaked the information to Saifai.”

“What is it with you and international incidents, Michael?” DA Rebenold continued with a sigh. “Part of me wants to chalk it up to restlessness. You got a huge upswell of support from the Marshak case, but now that’s calming down and you’re looking for your next big victory. Well, this isn’t it. The Chinese ambassador has requested—wait, no,
demanded
; that was the word he used—that you have no further contact with Mr. Yamazoe or those investigating the case. Do you understand?”

“What if I told you that the killing was a triad-ordered hit he took on to pay off gambling debts?” Michael stated evenly. “That there never was a daughter? That they’re using the sexual abuse angle, as they know everyone’ll buy it and won’t look too deep? What if I told you that I got Yamazoe to admit to all of that, and the appearance of Jing Saifai at the division office only seems to confirm what has long been suspected about her—that she’s a legal counsel to the Los Angeles triad and uses her political muscle to keep them from ever being prosecuted?”