A Perfect Cover

by Maureen Tan

  It was the middle of the day, but the funeral of Charles Beauprix was not a solitary affair. The taxi dropped me just outside the Bienville Street gate, where more than a hundred people were already gathering for the procession. The driver went to park the cab around the corner on north Claiborne Street. Or, perhaps, to pick up another fare while I attended the funeral. I only hoped that the unpaid half of our bargain was enough temptation to bring him back.

  I stood at the fringes of the crowd, among those who were there not out of grief, but out of respect.

  Anthony, his brother, and his sister stood near the hearse, shaking hands and hugging those whose tears marked them as close family and dear friends. Occasionally, Anthony would turn to greet another well-wisher or to speak with the Catholic priest who stood close by or to move his hand from his sister’s hand to his brother’s arm. Then I would get a good look at his face.

  My lost parents had been mourned slowly, their absence a chronic sadness that eroded away, year after year, until nothing was left of it but an empty place where love and memory were supposed to be. But here in the cemetery and, days earlier, when I’d held Beauprix as he’d wept, I could see that his grief had an immediacy, a razor-edged sharpness. Time would pass, I thought, but Charles Beauprix would always be loved. And I envied his son his memories.

  The procession formed, slowly unwinding like a snake and flowing into one of the wide aisleways. This was no unrestrained New Orleans jazz funeral replete with musicians and dancers celebrating a soul’s return to God. It was a solemn, quiet affair where the faithful struggled not to resent their loss.

  The cemetery’s clamshell roads had long ago been covered over by smooth, pale concrete. It reflected the sun, bringing heat to an otherwise cool autumn day, as the line of mourners—led by the priest and the small, lonely knot of Charles Beauprix’s remaining family—fell into place behind the slow-moving black hearse.

  I was one of the last to leave the tall, wrought-iron gates of the Bienville Street entrance. So I was one of the few who saw a limousine pull up and a chauffeur jump out to open the car door. I paused, recognizing the chauffeur, waiting for the limousine’s passenger.

  Uncle Tinh.

  He smiled when he saw me, waved, and his characteristically energetic step carried him quickly to my side. He had clothed his slim body in a well-tailored dark suit, white shirt and dark tie. His clean-shaven head was bare, but dress shoes had replaced his usual sandals.

  I was glad to see him. His home was to have been my first stop after the funeral. There were now too many lives at stake to leave important questions unasked.

  He gave me a brief hug, and we lingered for a moment, speaking quietly.

  “Ah, Lacie. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “I wasn’t going to come, but…”

  I shrugged, unable to explain to Uncle Tinh what I couldn’t fully explain to myself. But he seemed to understand.

  “As for myself, I thought the same,” he said. “But in the end, it was an easy enough thing to do for a friend.”

  Together we hurried to catch up with the end of the procession. Then my adopted uncle threaded his arm through mine and we walked together in silence.

  The broad cement aisleway along which we were led was lined on both sides with ornate tombs, most of them little more than the height of a tall metalwork doorway and a gently peaked roof. The older crypts were whitewashed bricks or granite, the newer made from white marble. The crosses, urns and angels that topped the crypts stood starkly against the slate-colored New Orleans sky. Flowers and candles decorated the doorways and the single steps up to the tombs, and occasionally I spied the glint of an immortelle—a wreath created from tiny beads of black glass.

  The procession crossed Priest’s Aisle, then began to slow. And stopped. The mourners pressed in closer, once again a crowd rather than a procession. But this time there was no murmur of conversation. Everyone’s attention was on the priest and the eldest son. One spoke of earthly life and immortality; the other, more briefly, of love and family. Uncle Tinh put his arm around my shoulders, his touch somehow comforting a sadness I hadn’t, until then, realized I felt.

  Finally the body of Charles Beauprix was placed on a flat stone shelf inside the crypt. Local law required that he be interred for at least a year and a day—time enough for the heat within the crypt to turn his corpse to ashes. Then, according to local custom, his remains would be pushed past the back edge of the shelf, into the ash pit below the crypt. There, death united the mortal remains of families and generations.

  The procession moved back to the gate.

  Once again, I hung back at the edge of the crowd. This time, with Uncle Tinh by my side. The Beauprix family began loading into the car that had carried them to the cemetery. Anthony had his arms around his sister, who was pressed in close to him, crying. As he helped her into the car he turned his head and, by chance, saw me watching him. He managed a smile, took a step away from the car in my direction. Then his sister leaned out, caught his hand in hers, and I saw her speak urgently to him. He nodded at her, took a moment to smile again in my direction, then ducked to follow her into the car.

  I watched the car pull away. When I looked away from it, I noticed that Uncle Tinh’s dark eyes were on my face.

  “This Beauprix fellow is a good man,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Yes, Uncle Tinh. Anthony is a very good man.”

  I paid the waiting cabbie and sent him off without his passenger.

  Then I walked back to the limo.

  A young, muscular man with dark Asian features sat in the front passenger seat. A bodyguard, I thought. Though I’d never before known my uncle to use one.

  “Trouble?” I asked, lifting my chin in the direction of the bodyguard as Uncle Tinh’s driver held open the door to the back seat.

  I slipped inside first.

  Uncle Tinh spared the man in the front seat a quick glance before shrugging.

  “A ward against trouble,” he said. And he didn’t offer to explain what that trouble was.

  A thick plate of opaque glass between the front seat and passenger compartment kept conversations private from the men in the front seat, and the dark tint on the limousine’s windows shielded us from curious eyes as we drove through the streets of New Orleans to Uncle Tinh’s business and home on Ursuline Street.

  “Have dinner with me,” he suggested as we got under way.

  I doubted he would want my company by the time our conversation was done. But I didn’t want to offend him unnecessarily.

  “Thank you, but not tonight,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m tired, it’s getting late, and I still have to change my clothes and return to Little Vietnam.”

  “Change?” Uncle Tinh asked.

  “Change. An outfit to match my hair.”

  I pulled off the wrap that had covered my head.

  Uncle Tinh laughed merrily, lines crinkling the smooth skin by his eyes.

  “I had heard about your disguise from Beauprix. But mon Dieu! The reality! The boy in my kitchen, Tommy Nguyen. I think he would be in love.”

  I was not in the mood for laughter. But I was glad that Uncle Tinh had brought up the boy’s name.

  “Despite his looks,” I said, “Tommy seems like a very mature young man. As if there’s been some hardship in his life.”

  Uncle Tinh lifted his hands, palm up.

  “Adversity builds character. Look at you.”

  I was tired of half truths.

  “You know that Tommy’s brother is Nguyen Tri,” I said, making it a statement.

  “Of course. Your Anthony and I spoke of just this before I phoned Senator Reed and asked for your help.”

  Either Beauprix was lying or my uncle was. Beauprix had no reason to lie.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought I had.”

  Uncle Tinh tried to look confused. But he was not a man familiar enough with that condition to form an expression
that rang true.

  “An oversight only,” he continued. “Certainly, your young policeman said something to you about it.”

  “No.”

  “Maybe he thought it didn’t matter.”

  But my uncle, who understood the Vietnamese, would have known that the family connection mattered very much.

  “It turns out that Tommy’s the nephew of my employer, Mr. Yang.”

  “Yes, I know of Mr. Yang. And the Red Lotus. Good food. Excellent location. When Anthony told me you’d gotten a job there, I was pleased.”

  Briefly, I thought about the Red Lotus’s smashed front window. Lacie was attacked by men wearing bird masks on Bourbon Street. Feathered crimson and black masks were thrown into Squirt’s workplace. There were only two people who knew that Lacie and Squirt were the same person. Uncle Tinh and Anthony Beauprix. Not only did my feelings cry out against the possibility that either man would harm me, but I could think of no reason for the terror campaign. There had to be another explanation. So I dismissed my fears about the carrion birds as irrelevant to the business at hand.

  “Uncle Tinh?” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “Would you ever lie to me?”

  At the mention of Nguyen Tri, any trace of humor had disappeared from his round face. My latest question deepened that look into a frown and wrinkled his usually smooth forehead. As the limousine pulled into the alley behind Tinh’s City Vu and the driver killed the engine, Uncle Tinh examined me with dark, serious eyes.

  His driver and bodyguard left the car and stood outside our door, waiting. But Uncle Tinh made no move to leave the privacy of the back seat.

  “I would lie only if the truth betrayed the confidence of another. Is there something you fear I would lie to you about?”

  I chose my words carefully.

  “I know that you have a reputation for being discrete. Perhaps, because of your…connections…you are privy to information denied to others. Maybe you hear or know things of a…sensitive…nature.”

  I paused, giving him an opening, deciding in that moment not to reveal Uncle Duran’s accusations. If Uncle Tinh was to become an adversary, such information could give me an advantage.

  “What do you want to know, Lacie?” he prompted.

  I pitched my voice to make my theories sound like certainty.

  “A shipment from overseas arrived in New Orleans ten days ago. A shipment of illegal immigrants. It was stolen by the Benevolent Society and is now hidden, awaiting documentation, before moving north.”

  Uncle Tinh lifted his eyebrow, pursed his lips, nodded.

  “Important information,” he said finally. “From this, it would seem that you are the one with connections.”

  I ignored the gibe, noticed that he hadn’t questioned or contradicted anything I’d said.

  “Do you know where that shipment is?” I asked.

  He didn’t lie to me.

  “I cannot say.”

  “Can’t say because you don’t know or because you’d be breaking a confidence?”

  He shook his head.

  “I can assure you that the shipment, every piece, is safe. Please, Lacie. Don’t be distracted from the real problem by hunting for it. Have you found the head of the viper? Do you know who directs the gang that terrorizes Little Vietnam? Have you identified the sociopath who murdered three of our people?”

  I blurted out what I was beginning to suspect.

  “When I find this monster, this viper of yours, will I also be destroying my uncle’s business rival? Who is providing the documentation for the shipment? The Young Businessmen’s Association? Or you?”

  I wanted Uncle Tinh to be outraged, to hotly deny my accusation, to demand that I apologize. I wanted him to tell me that I was wrong, that he was a good man. That he would never betray my trust.

  But he didn’t react at all. Except to turn away from me and tap sharply on the window.

  At his signal, the driver opened the door.

  Then Tinh Vu hesitated. He turned and the expression on his face was one of utter sadness. As if someone beloved had died.

  “Only for the most honorable of causes would I place you in jeopardy.”

  Then he stepped from the limousine.

  “Take my niece wherever she chooses to go,” he said.

  Then, with his bodyguard at his heels, he walked through the door marked Private.

  Chapter 19

  Tuesday and Wednesday passed like a nightmare. I learned nothing of value throughout the day and saw nothing worth noting that night. And I could think only of a group of desperate refugees, trapped and helpless. Their fate in the hands of strangers.

  On Thursday afternoon Vincent came into the Red Lotus with a newspaper tucked under his arm. He opened it to the business section and pointed at a blurb that was just a couple of column inches long. It was an announcement about the grand opening of a new discount store. Instead of braving the traffic into New Orleans, many residents of New Orleans East shopped across the bridge in nearby Slidell. Which was where the store was located.

  “What’s important here,” Vincent said, “is that the manager is going to hire through me. I mean, through the Refugee Center. There’ll be at least ten jobs for people living right here in Little Vietnam.”

  “Nice,” I said, trying to sound like I cared. “Congratulations.”

  “Are you interested in a job there? It’d pay better than this one. I could recommend you….”

  I had just finished gathering the small, half-empty soy sauce bottles from along the counter and was using a butter knife to pry off their plastic shaker tops as an excuse to work nearby. I concentrated on lifting a particularly stubborn top as I remembered the drawing I had done of him. Bird mask and all. My subconscious had insisted that Vincent Ngo was not what he pretended to be. But I had no idea what he was. The proper response to his offer might help me find out.

  I looked around, saw that Mr. Yang was deeply engaged in conversation with the butcher, but still pitched my voice low when I replied. “The Yangs are nice. But waitressing? It’s hard. And not much money. I’d like another job. Except…”

  I left the word hanging as I finally popped off the lid and waited for Vincent to take the bait.

  “Except what?”

  I ignored the narrow-eyed look he shot me, flipped off another bottle top and added it to the growing pile on the counter.

  “When I left home, I had to take off fast. Because my stepfather wasn’t going to take no for an answer anymore. I didn’t take my birth certificate. And I don’t know what my social security number is. My mom probably called the cops. I figure if I try to get copies, they’ll find out where I am. And I’ll get sent back home.”

  I let a little anger creep into my voice as I pulled a heavy gallon can of soy sauce out from under the counter and began refilling the row of bottles.

  “So I’m stuck in crummy places like this until I’m eighteen.”

  “No you’re not. I know a man in the Quarter who will sell me a birth certificate. You will have to go by a different name but, with it, you can get a new social security number. And a driver’s license, if you want one.”

  I tried not to react to anything but his offer. The French Quarter was home to hundreds of unsavory businesses. No reason to assume that this was proof.

  “How much?” I asked. “I pay with money, not my body. For that, I might as well be back home.”

  “This man has other women. He’s Vietnamese, like us. And he owns a restaurant. So maybe he’ll give you a discount. Shall I ask him?”

  I let tears creep into my eyes. Genuine tears. To Vincent, they must have appeared to be tears of gratitude. But I knew they were tears of mourning. For everything Uncle Tinh had been to me.

  “I’ll find a way to save up,” I said.

  I was still snapping tops back on the small bottles when he left.

  On Friday morning, there was no meeting of the Benevolent Society.

  On Friday afterno
on, the protection money was paid to the Young Businessmen. And the man who counted the money passed Mr. Yang a note.

  Near the end of my workday, Mrs. Yang fought with Mr. Yang, their argument ending abruptly when Mrs. Yang stormed from the restaurant.

  Mrs. Yang’s cousin had been out back smoking a cigarette, so he missed the drama. But when he returned and discovered that Mrs. Yang had left, he assured me that this sort of thing happened often and that Mrs. Yang would probably be back by dinnertime.

  Somehow, I doubted it. I had been standing, unnoticed, in the utility room and had overheard their whispered battle.

  “The documents are ready,” Mr. Yang said in Vietnamese. “The meeting is arranged for Sunday. After Mass.”

  “Good, then they will be gone. And this will finally be over.”

  There was silence. In it, Mrs. Yang must have read something in her husband’s expression.

  “What has gone wrong now?”

  “The price has doubled. That is what the note said. We can pay the same amount again and receive the documents. Or we can turn over the women to their anh hai. He will sell the tea himself.”

  My God, I thought. Tea. It was trafficker gang-slang, language I’d learned working for Uncle Duran. Tea referred to a shipment of Asian women, usually illegals, headed for the sex trade.

  “We can let them go.”

  “Whether the shipment arrives at its destination or not, we will still owe the anh hai for the documents.”

  “Then we have no choice,” I heard Mrs. Yang say. “There is no more money. Give him the shipment.”

  “I will borrow the money.”

  “Against what? From whom? The anh hai? Our future is already given away to his thieves.”

  “I will go to Tinh Vu, beg his forgiveness and ask him for his help. He will not refuse me, I think. That shipment is ours. We liberated it.”