Authors: Jaden Terrell
At the top of the porch steps, I fumbled with my keys. The locks were new, like the new buzzer system the tenants had pitched in for. Now clients who wanted in had to push the buzzer with my name on it and identify themselves via intercom so I could buzz them in. Or not. It might have made a lesser man giddy with power.
Finally, my key turned and the door swung open. Inside, an Asian woman sat on the steps, a small leather purse slung across her shoulder, a misshapen duffel made of olive green canvas at her feet. She looked up as I came in.
One of the Strip-o-Gram girls, I thought at first. Then I saw the scars. Angry, puckered scars that flowed down her right cheek and disappeared into the neckline of her blouse. It looked like one side of her face had been melted.
The scars ran out the right sleeve of her shirt and past the elbow, where they converged in a patch of shiny, puckered flesh at the end of a stump.
She was too old for a Strip-o-Gram girl too. Late thirties, early forties, maybe older. The scars made it hard to tell. The fingers of her left hand toyed with the necklace at her throat—a jade monkey on a silver chain. The buzzer system, it seemed, wasn’t foolproof.
When she saw me, she came to her feet, smoothed her slacks with her good hand, her only hand, and peered closely at me. “You know Jay Pee Mac Kean?” she said. “You look like. A little.”
Her accent was thick. Vietnamese, I guessed, considering the circumstances.
I said, “J.P. was my father.”
“My father too.”
“Bullshit.”
“Not believe not make not true.”
While I untangled that, she said, “You see my daughter? Tuyet?” Her voice was calm, but the tension in her jaw betrayed her.
I said, “Why would your daughter have come to see me?”
“We need talk. Go you office?”
She was about five-four and slim. No sign of a weapon, nothing feral in the way she moved.
“Upstairs,” I said. “Third floor, on the right.”
She hoisted the duffel and ducked her head under the strap. I gestured for her to go up ahead of me.
At the top floor, I unlocked my office door and stepped aside so she could go in. She’d seemed confident downstairs, but now she looked around like a lost child—at the wildlife prints Maria had given me while we were married, at the horse magazines on the coffee table, at the second-hand sofa and the massive oak desk. My Wyatt Earp desk with its bullet scars and the scorch marks on one side.
“You need new desk,” she said.
“I love this desk,” I said. “It survived the Civil War and the Wild West, and now it gets to have a nice life here where I only occasionally bleed on it. What can I do for you, Ms. . . .?”
“My name Khanh,” she said. “Jay Pee Mac Kean my father.”
“You said that already. I don’t believe it any more than I did downstairs.”
“I show.” She reached into her purse, and even though she probably wasn’t reaching for a weapon, I slid my hand beneath the desk, where a Glock .40-caliber was tucked into a holster fastened to the wood. Good gun. Reliable. You could drop it into a rock quarry from a helicopter, and it would still fire. I had another in a shoulder rig under my jacket and another one, custom-made with an external safety, at home in my living room.
She pulled out a photo, and I let my hand fall away from the Glock.
“This picture. My mother, Phen, my father Jay Pee. This picture, I two year old, my sister Trinh just baby.”
She handed over the photo. It must have been taken around the same time as the one Frank had shown me the day before, but in this one, my father and the Asian woman were sitting side by side, laughing, heads close together, each holding one of the girls. Behind them, a troop of monkeys groomed each other in the shadow of the hut.
“My grandmother take this picture,” Khanh said. “Right after Mother and Jay Pee marry.”
“He was already married.”
She wagged her head no. “Traditional Vietnamese wedding. My grandparent not so happy.”
I stared at the photo. Tried out the orphanage theory again. It didn’t hold water. He looked too happy. No. He looked too in love. They both did.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember the photos I’d seen of him with my mother. They’d seemed happy together too. If he’d seemed wistful or a little melancholy even, that was the specter of the war and the treatment he and the other soldiers had gotten when they’d returned.
He’d done multiple tours in Nam. That had always seemed heroic to me. Now it seemed like maybe something else.
She said, “Mother say he try get us out, but too hard, nobody get out then. Jay Pee send money. Many letter. Come back soon, he say. But never come.” She lowered her eyes an instant too late to hide the flash of hurt and anger. “Then soldier come, take us education camp. Too much move then, too many camp, too many village. Mother say he never find us.”
I thought of my father, sending letters out into the vast unknown, hoping for an answer that would never arrive. I wondered if my mother had known.
“That was a long time ago,” I said. “Why are you here? Why now?”
She clasped her hands in her lap and said, “Mother very sick. Medicine very expensive. We have no money, but if no medicine, Mother die. Tuyet say she come here, come America, find my father. Her grandfather. Make him pay. She very young. Very stupid.”
“He couldn’t have helped her if he’d wanted to,” I said. “He died thirty-two years ago.”
She bit her lip and then said softly, “What happen him?”
“He went out to buy cigarettes. It was just down the street, and he didn’t take his service gun. He should have. You’re supposed to have it with you all the time. But that time, he didn’t. And there was a robbery at the convenience store.”
She cocked her head, eyes questioning. “Not know con-venyunce store.”
“It’s a little box store where you can get snacks and soft drinks. Aspirin. Beer. That sort of thing. There was an old guy behind the counter, and this young punk was robbing the store. Kid pulled a gun on the clerk and my dad stepped in. The kid shot him.”
“And old man?”
“Dad was bleeding out, but he managed to get hold of the kid’s gun. He shot the bad guy, and the clerk went home to his family.”
She bowed her head.
I said, “But none of that explains why you’re here.”
“No money for medicine. No money for Tuyet and me come America. You ever hear of
câi gió
?”
I shook my head.
“Mean wind tree. Deep in jungle, very dangerous go there.” She opened her hand, showed me the cracked, raw skin of her palm. “Very difficult. But very precious. Much money. Blood of wind tree . . .” She stopped. “What is word for blood of tree?”
“Sap?”
She nodded. “Sap. Use make incense for religious ceremony. Also make medicine. I know someone, he take me there. But take long time.” She closed her hand. Looked down at her lap. “Too long.”
I pictured it as she pieced it together, the cramped, sweltering bus ride, the long trek into the steaming jungle carrying a knapsack almost as heavy as she was. Skin glistening with sweat as she slashed a narrow corridor through dense foliage, machete in one hand, the stump of the other raised to protect her face from the brush.
“You left your daughter behind. To keep her safe.”
“My daughter, she almost twenty. Old enough, I think, stay with my mother. Take care her. Take care each other. But I gone too long.” Her voice broke, and she pressed her hand to her mouth, eyes squeezed tight, holding in tears.
When it looked like she had a handle on it, I said, “And while you were gone . . . what happened?”
“Tuyet tell all friend, everyone she know, she want come America. Finally, someone know someone who know a man. He say he buy ticket, she pay when she get money from my father. Everyone warn her, this not wise action, but Tuyet . . .” She made a helpless gesture. “She like my sister. Never listen nobody. She call Mother one time from airport in Nashville. Then . . . no more call. First, Mother think, so far away, maybe bad phone, but is too long time. Something happen her. I come home, have money from
câi gió
. But Tuyet gone.”
Her eyes welled, and she covered them with her hand, like she was shielding them from the sun.
I said, “So you came here to find her. How long has she been gone?”
“Almost four week.”
Four weeks. Anything could happen in four weeks. In law enforcement, as Frank had said, the magic window was forty-eight hours. If you didn’t find a missing person by then, chances were you never would. I kept my expression neutral, but she saw it anyway.
“Too long. I know. But not easy come America. Find someone take care mother, pay bribe for visa. Take time. But I come here, look for our father in you big yellow book. No Jay Pee Mac Kean, only you name. I think maybe . . .” She stopped.
“Jared. J.P. You thought maybe I was him.”
“I see you, I know. You too young, but same eye, same hair. Same, same.”
Until a few days ago, I would have been proud of that. Now I wasn’t sure.
She said, “You not Jay Pee. But you find people. You help find my daughter?”
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” I said.
She searched my face, saw something in it that made her sink down onto the leather visitor’s chair across from my desk. “Something happen Tuyet?”
“There was an Asian woman . . . She was holding a picture a lot like this one.” I gestured with the photo. “It had my phone number on the back. What did—what does she look like?”
Her face softened, and for the first time, I saw the hint of a smile. “Very beautiful. Black hair like me, but long.” She gestured to the small of her back.
“That doesn’t tell us much. Hair can be cut.”
“She proud her hair. Never cut.”
There were people who would cut it just to break her. I didn’t tell Khanh that. I suspected she knew.
“You know something.” She closed her eyes. Took a deep breath, bracing herself. “She . . . die?”
“Someone died. I know it’s hard, but maybe you could come down to the—come down and see if you can identify her.”
“I have picture,” she said, reaching for her purse.
I thought of the swollen face. “That might not help.”
Her face was expressionless, but her fist clenched against her stomach. “Yes. I come.”
5
F
rank picked up on the fourth ring.
“There’s an Asian woman in my office,” I said.
There was a silence on the other end. Then, “Alive or dead?”
“Alive. She might be related to the—” I glanced toward Khanh, who sat stiffly on the sofa, left fist clenched against her knee, stump pressed tight against her stomach. “The victim from the other day.”
“And she showed up at your office, why?”
I hesitated a moment before I told him. “She’s one of the girls in the photo you showed me.” I left out the part about the traditional Vietnamese wedding.
“So she’s your sister.”
“Half sister.”
“And our vic is the other one?”
“I don’t think so. Maybe a daughter. I thought we might come by or meet you at the . . . facility . . . unless you already have an ID.”
“We got nothin’,” he said. “Her prints aren’t in AFIS, INS hasn’t got her in the system. That leaves us with nada. Thing is, I’m not at the office.”
“You’re always at the office.”
“Which is why I need a day off.”
“Frank, what’s going on?”
He blew past that as if I hadn’t said it. “Malone has copies of the crime scene photos. They’re pretty thorough, so you won’t have to put your girl through a trip to the morgue.”
“She’s not my girl,” I said. “Are you—”
“I gotta go.” He cleared his throat. “We’ll touch base later. Call Malone.”
I didn’t want to talk to Malone twice, so I called the front desk instead. She was in, but I left a message with the desk sergeant anyway, imagining the little furrow between Malone’s eyebrows, the quirk of her mouth when he told her I was on my way over. The image wasn’t entirely without its charms.
Since Khanh had come by taxi, I shepherded her downstairs to the Silverado and opened the door for her. She shoved her duffel into the front seat and eyed the distance between the pavement and the floorboards. She was a small woman, and it was a big truck. After a moment, she gave her head a little shake, and I boosted her into the cab.
We didn’t make small talk. Khanh opened her mouth when we passed the full scale Parthenon replica in Centennial Park, then closed it again without speaking. I thought about telling her how it was built for the Centennial celebration back in 1897 and how, except for the gilded statue of Athena, the friezes and sculptures had been molded from the originals. It would have filled the time.
But she wasn’t a tourist, and I wasn’t a tour guide, so I let the moment pass. A few minutes later, I turned into the West Precinct parking lot. Malone was standing just outside the automatic doors, sucking on a cigarette and tapping her feet. The damp air had frizzed her hair. “You.”
I forced a grin. “I admire your ability to sublimate your natural enthusiasm for my presence.”
“Smart ass. You here to add something to your statement?”
“This is Khanh. She might be able to ID the woman in my dumpster.”
“I wouldn’t be so quick to claim that dumpster,” Malone said. “Seeing as how there was a body in it.” She brushed a stray tendril of red hair out of her eyes and looked past me at Khanh. “So she knows the victim. What are you here for?”
“Moral support.”
“Ha,” she said. “Don’t make me laugh.”
The animosity was more habit than real. A few months earlier, she’d just as soon have shot me as look at me, but she’d mellowed since then. Or maybe my charm and boyish good looks had finally won her over.
She said to Khanh, “I’m sorry. He has that effect on me.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “I have an effect on you?”
Khanh stopped us with a glance. “My daughter?”
Malone blew out a spume of smoke, tamped out the cigarette on the bottom of her shoe, and flicked it into the white sand in the ash receptacle. “In here.”
I checked my Glock at the security desk, along with the Beretta in my ankle holster, and Malone swiped her security card. When the lock clicked, she twisted the handle and pulled open the heavy metal doors that led us into a warren of offices and cubicles.