The Chinese Beverly Hills (15 page)

A chill went up Jack Liffey’s spine.

“But, no, I grant you your tomorrow. Maybe I see this Chinese girl, maybe not. You want to pry into my business, you can jump off a tree into snakes. This Liffey guy is a hell of a guy, Hardi.”

The big man turned his head slowly and his glance smoked Jack Liffey’s cheek with a fierce blow-by. All the bravado seemed to melt away.

“There’s an empty place growing where my dreams was, Jack Liffey. Come out to my place near Campo someday and we’ll talk and shoot some coyotes. Hardi, tell this guy directly that you like him fine.”

“That’s great,” Jack Liffey said. “I get it—no comment.” The invitation was about as tempting as a vacation in North Korea.

Jack Liffey went down the elevator and waited again in a corner of the lobby. In a half hour, he saw an angry-looking man in a business suit enter the hotel and the elevator dinged him all the way up to Boaz’s floor

He still didn’t know what to make of Hardi Boaz. Could the man or one of his vigilantes have run into Sabine? He wondered if the girl’s map led anywhere near Campo.

Gloria awoke against her will with Jack Liffey shaking her shoulder gently.

“Let’s not rush the day.”

“Breakfast is served.”

She rolled onto her back, pulled the covers up to her chin, and shook her head at the coffee and toast he’d brought on the sick-in-bed tray. Instantly she changed her mind and plucked the coffee mug off the tray.

“Thanks. Did I tell you Maeve and I had a talk yesterday?”

He picked up a slice of toast rather than let it go to waste. Eat it to save it, his mother had always said—a Depression baby to the core—but Gloria scoffed at that.
Throw it away to save it, for Chrissake. I eat what I want.

“I didn’t know Maeve came.”

“We had another truth time, but your clever daughter got more out of me than she revealed about herself.”

He’d have to talk to Maeve and find out what she’d learned.

“Maeve says she’s still caught between cocks and cunts. And I told her she better make up her mind.” She sighed. “I think her painting craze is sabotaging her college work.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“You can’t save everything on earth, Jackie.”

“My daughter is first in line.” He was resting his hand on Gloria’s knee on top of the covers, as innocent a touch as he could manage.

She gently moved his hand away. “Sorry. I can’t handle being touched yet.”

“Anything else you want for breakfast?”

“A Walt fucking Disney true-life, all-happy world.” He couldn’t help thinking of the Mike Fink keelboat at Disneyland. In 1997 it had capsized and dumped fifty terrified tourists into brackish water, leading to the whole ride being torn out. Disney true-life worlds had their problems, too.

*

Captain Walt Roski rang the doorbell with dread. He carried a briefcase containing an eight-by-ten photograph of the charred remains of a rosary, plus a similar photo off Google of what the amber rosary probably looked like before the firestorm. This was the part of the job everybody loathed.

A Chinese woman opened the door a few inches and peered at him.

“Mrs. Roh? I’m the man who called. Walter Roski, from the county fire department. Can I speak to you or your husband for a few moments?”

There were six girls from the San Gabriel Valley who’d gone missing at about the right time, and Sabine Roh was the fourth on his list. Reported missing three days after the Sheepshead Fire broke out.

The woman let him into the house with a worried expression. “You come about Sabine?”

“I need to ask you some questions,” he said carefully. No show-and-tell until you pump them dry. It was the rule of thumb, hard as it sometimes was.

She led him apprehensively to a sofa in the living room. A middle-aged man sat across the room, his side turned stubbornly to the guest. He seemed angry.

“Mr. Roh can’t talk now. Working in head. He not being impolite. Can I get you some tea?”

“No, please. Could you confirm for me the day you came to feel your daughter was missing?”

“Feel?”

“Please. Tell me how sure you were when you reported it. She never stayed over at other homes without telling you?”

The woman took a deep breath and confirmed the date—Sheepshead plus three—and no, Sabine was a very considerate daughter. She never stayed late, even an hour, without calling home. He ran down his notebook, asking all his prepared questions. There were no obvious hits until he asked one of the standards that almost never got a response—if anybody had contacted them on their daughter’s behalf.

“My cousin in Orange County very rich woman, sir. She worry and she send a man to help look for Sabine.” The woman rose and retrieved a business card from a sideboard.

Jack Liffey

I Find Missing Children

And then a fax and a regular telephone number. Lord, who used faxes? So twentieth-century. No e-mail address. Roski guessed he was a useless old duffer, one of those window-peepers who had trained up on divorce work. He probably still took photos with a film camera.

He copied down the information and ran through the rest of his questions with no more alerts. The man across the room hadn’t stirred but was obviously listening to the conversation.

“I want to show you two photographs, Mrs. Roh. They don’t show a person or anything like that. But I want to know if either of these photos means anything to you.”

He laid out the before-and-after photos, and the tense woman immediately threw back her head like a wounded animal and let out a wail of pain.

I’ll take that as a yes, Roski thought sadly

She crumpled into her chair, hiding her face with her hands, and the inert husband finally levered himself erect with a cane. He hobbled toward the photos. Roski slid them around on the coffee table for him.

Mr. Roh froze in place, glaring at the photographs, and then he seemed to wilt. “This country is very punishing, sir,” he said bitterly, in lovely American English, with a bit of a French accent. “In Vietnam, my wife and I were Roman Catholics. We were also ethnic Chinese. By those facts, we were enemies of the communist state twice over. We managed to leave in 1984, and our daughter was conceived in a refugee camp in Malaysia. Sabine idolized the women who taught her here, the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word.

“Our daughter was determined to become a nun, with a political mind. I have no idea what romantic novel she got that idea from. Perhaps Graham Greene or Robert Stone. She never wavered from her mission.” The man paused for reflection. “I think Sabine didn’t understand that fate always has other plans.”

*

Mint tea was a new departure, Jack Liffey thought. With Tien Joubert, it was usually either strong French coffee or Chinese green tea. Maybe she had a Moroccan boyfriend. They sat out on the dock in Huntington Harbour beside her ostentatious yacht. It looked like an ordinary yacht on steroids.

“Report Number Two, please. This gotta be about Sabine.”

“The boss requires. The hireling complies.”

“No snark, please.”

His eyes were drawn to the next dock west, where somebody was mooring a long slim cigarette boat, one of those oceangoing rockets with several muscle-car engines that could churn out a thousand horsepower or more. He knew Southern California marine yards built several hundred of them every year and about twenty of them were used for legitimate offshore racing. The rest were busy running drugs up the coast at a hundred miles an hour on moonless nights.

“So, where she at?” Tien asked.

She was wearing a loose robe that, with every breeze, rustled open a little near the upper danger zone, and he was doing his best not to torment himself with his memories. He already knew exactly and intimately what was being offered, and it was a hell of a ride. It wasn’t like he was getting his ashes hauled at home, as his pal Art Castro would have said.

“Patience was never your long suit, Tien. I talked to the girl’s parents, her priest, her friends and political allies. Did you know she was in a radical group?”

Tien went absolutely still. “More, please.”

“Maybe not as we knew radical groups. They were a mix of Chinese and Latino kids. Their focus was getting high school kids to fight racism. Their main enemy in town was a bunch of biker assholes who called themselves the Commandos. Both groups are pretty much extinct, but there’s still bad blood.”

“You say this word ‘Latinos,’ Jackie. You mean Mexicans?”

“There’re a lot of countries to the south, Tien, and a hell of a lot of Spanish-speakers were born right here. Can you tell the difference between Taiwanese and Hong Kongese and mainlanders?”

“In one-half second. And
tong yan
, too. That mean overseas Han, like me. Singapore or Vietnam or Indonesia. Absolute, we all hear it.”

Somehow the robe had crept up toward her southern danger zone. “I believe you. Let’s say Mexican Americans. But there’s another problem I found out about.” He told her about the fact that the girl might have tried to bring drugs across the border to earn some money for her family.

For some reason it didn’t seem to worry her. “You go find out about all that. You real good at that. What car you drive now, Jackie?”

It came flying in from left field, the way she liked, but the implication he knew well. Everything was A-list brand names. A car without a rich pedigree was just rust in waiting. “Why, for heaven’s sake?”

“I forget how much I really like you, Jackie. I can take care of you good, get you nice Porsche Targa, Tullio shoe, Armani Black Label suit. I learn a fancy new trick in bed, too.”

“Jesus, I don’t think I’d live through that.” He didn’t want to tell her he drove a third-hand Toyota pickup that was twenty years old and full of dents.

“Peekie-boo,” she said with a coy smile, opening her gown to show him one small upright breast, little more aged than ten years earlier, with its tiny brown nipple. He remembered the feel of it under his fingers.

He put up a hand to block the sight. “I’m living with someone I love, Tien.”

“Pish.” She shrugged but closed the gown. “I got good family, all got education, you know it. I dating big handsome triathlon man, thirty years old, all muscles. I like his American smell, too, like you, though Mummy always say it’s like spoil butter. But he no good really. I know he want money. You always hate money. I never understand, but it make me feel safe. Make me trust you.”

“I’ve seen too many people hurt by money. Not the lack of it, though that happens, too—but mostly from having a whole lot and wanting more. What I liked about you was that you were never crazy about grabbing money for its own sake. You liked the business of making deals, bargaining and doing favors, and money just seemed to flow to you.”

“Deal is best thing, sure. All real business is complicated deal. I give you nice car, you give me name of important man to know. You give commission on one thousand bale of cotton and I give American green card. We’re all cat in clover.”

“Are you really happy in America, Tien?”

That knocked her back a little, as he’d hoped. It took her some thought. “I love everything America, Jackie. If I start over again, I go to a very good doctor right away and get round eyes, big falling tits, the whole American cookie. To me small means defeat and weakness, like 1975. I want to be big and powerful like you.”

“Don’t you know how powerful your money makes you? I’ve checked. You could buy one of the medium-sized states. You could eat anyone you want for lunch.” An unfortunate phrase, he realized.

“I want to eat your big membership, Jackie. That the begin of my new trick. You gonna love it.”

*

Zook was still fuming. He’d been bitch-slapped by Seth—the fucking lawyer—and told he’d made the grown-ups change plans for their own dinner. The kiddies should stay home and eat their peas. And, by the way, think about clearing out of the storefront clubhouse.

“What possessed you to hand that guy a grenade launcher?”

“He asked.” Now that Zook thought about it, it didn’t make a lot of sense, but it had seemed like a great idea at the time. Have a lark, impress some prospective members, and scare the Chinks in the bargain. Harmless flash-bangs. Glorified firecrackers. Where was the hurt?

But this pole-up-the-ass cocksucker had just warned him that the police were looking for him. Somebody had ratted him out, probably Seth himself.

“Get yourself lost for a while, loser.”

Zook couldn’t carry what he needed on his Harley, so he backed the half-restored 1953 Studebaker Commander out of the garage where his dad had left it decades ago. Zook had lost interest in further work on the car, it was so damned uncomfortable lying underneath and getting grease in his face. The 230-cubic-inch V-8 still ran okay—a pathetic hundred and twenty horsepower—but it
was
from sixty years ago. The brakes were for shit, but he could always stop with the handbrake or the transmission.

Get yourself lost for a while, loser.

The acid words still made bile rise. They always thought they were better than working people. Tea Party Seth was no better than those white-wine liberals in their Rockports.

He packed a week’s worth of clothing, some beer, some finger food, and a handful of books into the Studebaker and headed north for the foothills. Way back in the day, his father had acquired an old cabin cheap from a college fraternity that had been caught hazing pledges and given the choice of leaving campus or giving up its party cabin. In his teens, he and his dad stayed at the place from time to time, but mostly it had rotted away until, in their heyday, the Commandos fixed it up and brought it back as a party house.

Zook stopped at the end of the asphalt and unlocked the yellow gate to the Serrano Fire Road.
Only three cars at a time,
the fire marshal had warned him, or they’d have their gatekey confiscated. Still, at party time you could get an awful lot of people into, and onto, three cars—clinging to the hood and roof, howling and yelling the last mile up the dirt road to the cabin.