I started the climb, keeping the .45 in front of me. I was unconcerned about the rattlesnakes since the evening was cool and they’d likely be sleeping in the crevices of the stone outcroppings off to the right, attempting to glean the last bit of the day’s warmth that was still held by the rocks.
I paused at the cemetery and laid a hand on the steel railing, looked up at the dark windows, and then peered up at the path. In the darkness it would be difficult to see if anyone had passed. The steps appeared the same but, as I tipped my hat back for a better view, I could see the door to the union hall was open. I knew that I had closed it.
The sweat at the middle of my back had adhered my uniform shirt to my spine, and I shivered in the cooling breeze.
It was a steep climb, and I took a few deep inhales to steady my breathing. I stood at the doorway and looked down the shotgun hall, past what used to be offices and into the gloom of the back rooms. I could see the size 13 swirls my rubber-soled ropers had left in the heavy dust from my previous visit, and there was an obvious trail where I’d gone farther into the building and then doubled back to go up the stairs to the dance hall.
Barely visible inside my boot prints were a set of well-defined, high-arched, tiny footprints exactly tracing my tracks.
I stepped into the entryway and led with the .45. She had continued up, carefully placing her bare feet inside mine. I shifted my weight, clicked off my radio, and stared up the stairs, then climbed as quietly as I could. It was useless—I sounded like a collection of squeals and creaks, ascending.
I paused at the landing and looked at the dance hall floor. The wavering moonlight cast across the flat surface and illuminated our joined tracks like pools of liquid mercury. I eased myself further up the steps and took hold of the railing at the top. The old upright piano sat on the stage, alone.
Standing room only and nobody there.
The moon suddenly decided to take an interest, and the full force of its shine spread through the bay windows at the front of the hall, through the half-glass doorway that led to the balcony beyond, and across the dance floor in a blue light of growing rectangular proportions.
I stepped up onto the floor, my eyes following the tiny footprints that had continued in mine as they crossed the room, up the three steps to the right, and across the stage.
I trained the Colt from corner to corner and then approached the proscenium arch. She had stopped at the piano. I placed my empty hand on the lip of the elevated area and hoisted a boot onto the edge, effectively, if not gracefully, taking the stage.
There were no more footprints. It was as if she’d walked there and then not so simply had disappeared.
The cover was open, and I could see the dust on the hammers of the keys that I hadn’t played and a new accumulation on the ones that I had. She hadn’t touched the keys.
The bench was still under the piano. There were no fingerprints on it, no sign that she had sat there. I nudged it out a little bit, put the .45 next to me, and sat, half facing the dance floor. I extended a forefinger and touched an F, the offkey sound almost reverent in the empty hall. I thought “Moonglow” would be appropriate, but changed my mind, thinking that I should play “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” for Mai Kim’s great-granddaughter.
I played an octave lower than it was written in an attempt to stay within the narrow confines of the soundboard. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but after playing a few stanzas, I heard a noise to my left. I picked up the Colt and turned with it extended to see that a small trapdoor had risen about four inches at center stage.
I stopped playing, and my breathing was the only sound in the room. The door in the floor slowly and silently shut.
I noticed that the footprints leading past the trapdoor were slightly smudged; she must have retraced them and retreated exactly upon them. I lowered my sidearm to my knee, turned back toward the piano, and placed my free hand back over the keyboard, plinking the F again as a starting point. I played the melody this time with one hand, and after a few seconds, the trapdoor rose again, allowing me a view of the small fingers that had pushed it.
I continued to play one-handed, then turned back, set the .45 on the bench, and allowed my left to join my right. I thought about Vietnam, and about how I’d filled the empty evenings at the Boy-Howdy Beau-Coups Good Times Lounge with Fats Waller.
Like a snake charmer, I played the song that Mai Kim must have told her daughter about and about which she must have told her daughter in turn. I played a smooth and steady version that left off with a trilling finish. I sat there, unmoving, until I couldn’t stand it any longer and turned.
She stood beside the trapdoor that was in the stage floor. She was tiny, and she wore a cheap slip dress that perversely made her look even more like a child. Her black hair was long and tangled, and it covered part of her face so that I could only see one of her dark eyes. She held a laptop close to her chest. Her thin arms crossed its lid, and she looked like a computer with a head and legs.
She didn’t move, and I found a word sliding up my throat and filling my mouth. "Hello...”
She still didn’t move, but her head inclined just a little. “Hi.”
I smiled and steadied the .45 on my knee. She stepped back, and I raised the other hand in reassurance. “Wait, I’m not going to hurt you.” She stood there, silent again. “I’ve been looking for you, and I think you’ve been looking for me.”
Her weight shifted, but that was all. She looked like Mai Kim. “What’s your name?”
“Her name is Ngo Loi Kim.”
I snatched up the Colt and leveled it at Tuyen’s half-hidden face as he stood there on the last step of the stairs with his own arm extended. In his hand was Saizarbitoria’s Glock, and it was pointed directly at the girl. I’d neither seen nor heard him.
Ngo Loi Kim dove for the trapdoor and scratched for the inset handle, but when it wouldn’t open she scrambled to the back wall and crouched against the floorboards. She held the computer like a shield in front of her and whimpered, terrified. I was off the piano bench and had taken a step toward the edge of the stage. “You’re under arrest.”
He took the last step from the darkness and, with the moonlight raising shadows across his legs, his voice seemed disembodied. “I’m willing to make you a deal.”
“I don’t deal. Drop the weapon.”
“Try to shoot me, and I shoot her.” He didn’t move. “The girl for the laptop.”
I stared down at him and could see his muscles straining the sleeve of his leather jacket. I figured the only thing to do was shoot. His weapon was pointed at her chest and chances were he’d hit her, but it was possible that my first shot would be on target and would do more damage than his responding fire.
I could feel the weight of the big Colt in my hand. What if I missed? What if he didn’t? I was willing to take those types of chances with my own life, but not hers. I thought about who she was, and what she’d gone through—all to find me.
Talk. It was the only way.
“Ho Thi wasn’t your granddaughter.”
“No.”
I swallowed and prepared myself for any opening that might present itself. “Did you kill her, or did Maynard?”
He looked at me. “He did.”
I didn’t believe him for a moment. Phillip Maynard hadn’t been the type, but Tran Van Tuyen was. “Okay, let’s say that’s the truth. Then why kill him?”
His gun hand stayed steady, and he was focused on the whimpering girl at the wall. He’d had the better part of a week to get to know me, and he’d done his homework well—he knew that I wouldn’t endanger her. “He committed suicide, as you said.”
“You’re lying.”
He glanced at me. “One of the ranchers, Mr. Dunnigan...”
“You’re still lying.”
“I am to assume from this that the bent bottle caps didn’t succeed in misdirecting you?”
“No.”
“It was a habit Phillip Maynard informed me of.” He actually smiled and finally took a breath. “Phillip was actually blackmailing me. He was supposed to retrieve the girls, and more importantly, the computer. He made a mess of it and killed Ho Thi. I suppose he thought that if he planted the girl near the culvert and threw the purse in with the Indian, there wouldn’t be any questions. I assume he was counting on a preconceived prejudice.”
“So you drugged him, just like Rene Paquet, and hung him?”
He didn’t say anything. The unspoken truth lay there between us like a bad smell, and I started formulating a new plan in hopes that he’d become so agitated with me that he might change his aim. “Paquet wanted to save Ho Thi and get her out of whatever human-trafficking scheme you’ve got going, which is why she got picked up by the undercover detachment in L.A.”
He studied me. “You know, I really am unfortunate to have arrived in your county, Sheriff.”
“So you killed him and, consequently, the forty-two people in Compton.” He took another breath but didn’t move or say anything. “So, under the auspices of Children of the Dust, you retrieved Ho Thi and returned her to the brothel, but once there, she met the sole survivor of the Compton truck massacre. ” I nodded my head very slightly toward the young woman at the wall. “Ngo Loi Kim. She and Ho Thi were desperate, and I’m assuming Paquet was the one who had given them this laptop as an insurance policy in case something happened to him.” His resolve didn’t appear to be weakening, so I kept talking. “The wild card was the photograph of Ngo’s great grandmother, sitting in the Boy-Howdy Beau-Coups Good Times Lounge with an unidentified Marine investigator who played Fats Waller, and once told her about a favorite fishing hole in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming, USA.”
“You have an overactive imagination, Sheriff.”
“It doesn’t take any imagination at all, and you’re still under arrest.”
There was a long silence, where we both reviewed our options. “My offer still holds—the girl for the laptop.” I was thinking about how I could prolong the conversation, but I was running fresh out of options and he confused my silence with my considering his offer. “You don’t know what is in the computer, nor should you care. It is nothing in comparison with the life of this girl—the great granddaughter of a wartime friend—and you can save her.” He took another step. “You didn’t know I existed last week, and I can assure you that you’ll never know I existed tomorrow.”
“You can’t possibly think you’re going to escape.”
“It is something at which I’m very good.” He smiled again.
He wasn’t going for any of it, and now was the time I would have to choose—fire or give him the computer for Ngo Loi. I took a deep breath, and the darkness shifted. It was as if the entire stairwell was growing behind Tuyen, and a face appeared almost a foot and a half above his.
Something was there.
Somebody.
Virgil.
Apparently, Tuyen was not the only one who had used my piano playing as a cover to ascend the steps, our conversation notwithstanding. My expression must have changed, because the lithe man’s face suddenly stiffened and he spun.
I held my fire in fear of hitting the big Indian but jumped off the stage in an attempt to get to the two of them as I heard the muffled report of the 9 mm. They slammed into me, and I slid backwards on the dusty wooden floor.
The Glock fired again, but the bullet ricocheted into the wall, and I watched as Virgil lifted Tuyen, swung him through the air like an oil-pump jack, and dashed him against the floor. He had to be incredibly tough, because he held on to Virgil’s arm and made the big Indian stagger. I scrambled to get at them just as the smaller man planted two powerful kicks in the giant’s midriff.
Virgil grunted and then closed a hand on Tuyen. The 9 mm fired for the third time, and I heard the round go through the ceiling before the semiautomatic clattered on the hardwood surface. I threw myself forward just as Virgil swung Tuyen again, his legs striking me across the face.
It was silent for less than a second, and I was trying to push off the uneven surface of the broken plaster when Virgil let Tuyen go. It was like some modern dance crack-the-whip, and I saw Tuyen’s body crash through the glass door at the far end of the room and through the railing on the second floor balcony. He froze like that and was a tableau of desperation. His hands grabbed at the broken and rotten wood, and it looked for a moment as if he might just make it, his fingers snapping and curling at the collapsed pieces of railing.
But he didn’t and fell from view without a sound.
I scrambled forward and glanced back at the girl. She hadn’t moved, and I gestured to her with my open hand. “Stay there! ”
It was quiet except for Virgil, who was breathing raggedly in the center of the room like some towering Windigo. I ran past him across the wide planks of the dance floor and stopped just short of the gaping doorway and collapsed balcony. I stared down at the moonlit hillside.
He had hit the rocks twice, first the ledge above and then the bigger one below. Somehow, he was still alive. At first, I thought he was trying to get up or roll over and escape, but that wasn’t it.
I’d been right about where the rattlesnakes had been sleeping. Tuyen slapped at the flat level of the shelf around him to try to keep the snakes off, but there was nowhere for him or the snakes to go. He stopped screaming, he stopped moving, and the night was silent.
EPILOGUE
Lucian studied his part of the file and then looked up from the faxed sheets. “You think this Dick Van Dyke character was the ringleader?”
Jesus.
Vic, Lucian, and I sat by Saizarbitoria’s bed at Durant Memorial. The Basquo was missing a kidney but looked pretty good, considering, as he flipped through the entirety of what we now called the Tuyen File, passing it on sheet-by-sheet to all of us. Ned Tanen had forwarded most of the information from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and, from the look on Santiago’s face, he was having the same sickening response as I had had.