The Ninja Daughter

by Tori Eldridge

  I laughed.

  Baba had proudly supported me without ever realizing the accuracy of his words.

  No one did.

  Performing a Chinese martial art with graceful moves and beautiful silks was not the same as training in the dirt with a strange Japanese man. I hadn’t understood the intricacies of the difference, but I had known that much. So I practiced Wushu in the training hall in full view of my family and friends, and learned Ninjutsu in the park when everyone thought I was at the library.

  Until the night Rose died.

  After that, I had no room in my heart for silks and trophies. From that moment forward, I fought for keeps.

  I sipped my tea and focused my thoughts on Mia’s Freddy. I found him on page five beneath more articles about Enter the Dragon, reviews for the Freddy Krueger slasher movies, two obituaries, and a legal notice for a pedophile podiatrist.

  Fredrick A. Weintraub worked as a planning supervisor for the LA County Metropolitan Transit Authority, known more simply as Metro.

  “I’ll be damned.”

  I glanced at the map pinned to my office wall and wondered if I could finagle a lifetime bus and rail pass out of Mia’s secret lover.

  Feeling more optimistic about my day, I went back to reading about Freddy. He graduated from UC Irvine and listed only one previous employment position, also at Metro. Aside from that, his profile was dismally bare. To his credit, he had included a photo. But since he had cropped it from a group of tall people, it made him look like a hobbit in the company of elves. The comparison was further exasperated by his plump face, round spectacles, squinty eyes, tiny teeth, and a muffler of dark hair that wrapped around a shiny dome.

  The Siren Club waitress had said he was older and shorter than Mia with average buttoned-down looks. This had to be the guy.

  Metro’s website—with which I was exceedingly familiar—provided a wealth of information. Freddy served on the Planning and Programming Committee, which proposed new projects, and the Technical Advisory Committee, which evaluated those projects and made recommendations to the Metro Board of Directors. From what I could tell, the board concurred with just about everything TAC recommended, which wasn’t surprising since the committee was composed predominantly by city mayors and council members.

  Mia’s secret lover ran with some political bigwigs. However, that didn’t make Freddy powerful or sinister enough to know someone like Tran. I checked social media to gain insights on his personal life. Freddy wasn’t on any of the platforms; however, I did find a person on Facebook who habitually mentioned his name and shared articles about L.A. mass transit—his wife.

  Unlike her husband, Shannon Weintraub had a strong social media presence. She liked to share recipes, articles about parenting, photos of their children, cat videos—lots of cat videos—and news articles about Freddy. Shannon also posted anything to do with running. She had a gaunt face, softened by curly brown hair, and a possibly anorexic figure she covered in gypsy dresses and sweaters. Her photo gallery documented the growth of their nine-year-old daughter, Esther, whose name and age had been iced on a birthday cake, and their infant son, who, according to the caption, had been a “long-awaited blessing from God.”

  Obsessive tendencies, possible anorexia, and fertility issues—people shared the most astounding secrets through online photos.

  How about the name of their synagogue, etched above the entrance? Or their home’s proximity to The Grove—evidenced by stroller trips to nearby Pan Pacific Park? Or worst of all, their address? Yes, Shannon had actually posted a high resolution shot of her and Freddy standing in front of their house with the numbers 115 pinned to the wall.

  I wished I could say it was unbelievable, but I corrected this type of security blunder all the time.

  I had one client who had actually posed on the hood of her car with both her license plate and the name of her apartment building in the shot. And in case a potential stalker had missed the invitation, she had used the picture as her profile photo on every one of her social media accounts. It never occurred to her how a predator might use what he saw against her.

  Hannibal Lecter was right: we covet what we see.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I had seventy minutes to find Freddy’s house, spy on him before he left for his Metro meeting, and get the car back to our restaurant in time for lunch deliveries. Since I had numbers but no street name, finding his house required a systematic approach.

  There were several neighborhoods within jogging stroller distance of Pan Pacific Park. I concentrated on the thirty-two blocks to the east. Why? Because the street that bisected this neighborhood separated the northern addresses from the southern. This meant that each of the sixteen avenues running parallel to the park had two houses with the same address—doubling my chances for success.

  Even so, it took me thirty precious minutes to find Freddy’s house on the south side of Martel, just as it looked in Shannon’s Facebook photo—brick path, white stucco, orange tile roof, the distinctive potted camellia by the door, and, of course, the numbers 115 pinned diagonally to the wall.

  I parked a few houses down and hurried across the street toward the sound of a woman yelling. If morning arguments were a regular occurrence at the Weintraub household, I pitied their neighbors.

  I jogged up their driveway to the back of the house where I could see into their bedroom window—yet another security blunder—and saw Shannon Weintraub in all her entitled glory.

  “You couldn’t be bothered to take Esther to school. So now I’m going to be late for my jogging date in the park, which will make me late for Jacob’s play date at Susan’s house, which will make me late to put him down for his nap, which means I’ll be up all night. Again. So find your own shirt.” She grabbed her running shoes and left the room, raising her voice as she went out of sight. “It’s either in the hamper or hanging in your closet. My money is on the closet.”

  While Shannon had on layers of loose-fitting yoga clothes similar to those I had seen in her park photos, Freddy was still in the process of dressing for work. Not a pretty sight. His belt dangled from un-zipped trousers, displaying a muffin top layer of bulging white flab.

  “Did you hear me?” Shannon called from the other room.

  He’d heard her, all right—his shoulders had tensed to his ears—he just didn’t want to answer.

  Shannon appeared in the doorway, knuckles braced on hips, glaring as he rifled through the dresser. “Why would I put your shirt in a drawer? I told you to look in the closet.”

  Freddy ignored her and retrieved a folded shirt, still wrapped in plastic.

  “You can’t wear that, Fred. It’s going to have creases all over it.”

  He wrestled with the package, flab quivering in the effort.

  “Oh, for goodness sake.” Shannon stormed to the closet and slid open the door, displaying a tidy row of shirts. “There. Now, if you can manage, I have to get Jacob ready for the park.”

  Freddy waited until she walked out of the room, then, with unexpected vehemence, ripped open the plastic. The shirt fell to the floor. “Shit.”

  He picked up the shirt and stuffed it back in the drawer. “Play dates and naps,” he muttered. “I’m making a difference, dammit.”

  Shannon appeared in the doorway with their wiggling son in her arms. “Of course you are. Which is why you need a pressed shirt.”

  Freddy shoved in the drawer and trudged to the closet like a petulant child. “The Copper Line’s going to cross social and economic borders from Chinatown all the way to Cerritos. It’s a big deal.”

  I leaned in. The Copper Line? I knew about that. I had its proposed path marked on the Metro map hanging on my wall.

  “I thought it was going to Huntington Park,” Shannon said, more from rote than any real interest.

  Freddy yanked a shirt from the closet. “That’s just the first stage. Don’t you realize how important this is? How important I am?” />
  “Of course I do. I brag about you all the time.” Her tone sounded was lighter now that Jacob was strapped in his jogging stroller and ready to go.

  Freddy looked unconvinced. “To your friends, maybe.”

  “Well, who else am I going to brag to, silly? Strangers?” She blew him a kiss. “Gotta go. See you tonight.”

  Freddy slumped on the bed. I turned away. If I saw his muffin top jiggle again, I’d be off my feed for a month. Besides, what else was there to learn? Freddy brought home the bacon. Shannon ran the house. Freddy was frustrated. Shannon treated him like a child. So what? Freddy might be a tad passive-aggressive, but enough to hire someone like J Tran?

  Unlikely.

  Although, he had made a nice life for himself—pretty wife, pretty home, pretty kids. What if Mia had threatened to ruin it? Would hiring an enforcer feel less confrontational than having it out with his wife or mistress? Maybe.

  I headed for the street in time to see Shannon jogging around the corner toward Pan Pacific Park. If I didn’t dawdle, I’d make it across town and back to our restaurant with ten minutes to spare. Instead, I ducked behind a bush.

  Freddy had a visitor.

  Mia Mikkelsen marched up the brick path with her breasts high, waist cinched, and lace swishing against her long, tanned legs. She had come ready for battle, and after ringing the doorbell, took great care to position both her weapons for maximum effect. Unfortunately for her, when Freddy opened the door, those weapons shot blanks.

  “What are you doing here?” he said, rushing past her to check the street. He had finished dressing and looked buttoned down, zipped up, and belted for action. “Do you have any idea the trouble you could cause? What if someone sees you?” Questions tumbled out of his mouth while his eyes darted everywhere but at Mia. “You have to go.” He tried to turn her around.

  Mia was half a foot taller and probably weighed as much as he did. She wasn’t going anywhere. “You didn’t show up. I stood on that corner for an hour and you never showed up.” Then she burst into tears.

  Freddy sagged, head hanging, belly pushing against the buttons of his pressed pool-blue shirt. “I’m sorry. I meant to. But Shannon needed groceries and—wait a minute. How do you know where I live?”

  Mia shrugged and looked suitably guilty.

  “You followed me? You can’t do this. We’ve talked about it. I come to you. Why do you think I help with your rent? This isn’t right. It isn’t safe. You have to go. Now.”

  He was so focused on Mia that he didn’t see Shannon come back around the corner. But Shannon sure saw him.

  As Freddy continued to plead with Mia to go, I kept my eyes on his wife. I wanted to see how long it would take her to notice her husband arguing with a shapely blond and what she would do about it when she did. I didn’t have to wait long.

  Shannon stopped, took in the scene taking place in her driveway, then rolled the stroller into the street behind a parked car. Meanwhile, Mia’s voice escalated with her tears.

  “Promise me you’ll come by this afternoon.”

  “I can’t. I can’t do this anymore.”

  “But I’m scared.”

  “Then move. Or find a man who can protect you. I have a family.”

  Without waiting to hear Mia’s response, Freddy marched back into the house and slammed the door. Mia froze. Her affair had ended. The gravy train had left the station. The young blonde bombshell had gotten dumped by the middle-aged, balding civil servant.

  Ouch.

  While I felt bad for Mia, I hadn’t signed on to mend her broken heart. I needed to know if this breakup made her safer or more vulnerable to physical attack. For that, I needed to know who, why, and even if someone had hired J Tran.

  As I considered the possibilities, Shannon pushed the stroller out from behind the parked car. Even from this distance, I saw her smile.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  By the time I entered our restaurant kitchen, Baba’s temper was as hot as his wok.

  “Finally,” he said, dumping the seared scallops onto a platter.

  I checked the time: eight minutes late. But a glance at DeAndre packing the take-out box with fortune cookies, napkins, and chopsticks, told me my tardiness hadn’t stalled any deliveries. Why was my ever-patient father damn near tapping his foot?

  “The keys, Lily? We have a delivery for Sony.”

  Sony Pictures wasn’t the big deal—we sent multiple orders to them every day. The big deal was that he had called me Lily instead of Dumpling. Baba had a typically Taurean disposition—even tempered and slow to burn—so if he was snapping at me now, it probably meant he had been worrying about something for a while.

  “Sorry, Baba.”

  As soon as I dropped the keys in his outstretched hand, he tossed them to DeAndre, who looked far too pleased with himself. The eighteen-year-old lived with his mom in West Adams, a mostly Latino and African-American community adjacent to Culver City. DeAndre was a mixture of both. His dream was to one day own his own restaurant. Baba provided as many hours busing tables and delivering orders as the kid could handle and answered every one of his endless stream of questions.

  “If Lily hadn’t made it back in time, could I have borrowed her bike?” DeAndre asked.

  I smacked his arm. “Not if you like living.”

  Baba ignored me and added a few extra fortune cookies to the box. “You would have borrowed my car, DeAndre. But you wouldn’t have needed it. Lily’s only late for family occasions.”

  I stole a cookie for myself and pondered this last statement.

  If Baba was upset about last night, I wasn’t about to ask.

  I waved the cookie wrapper in DeAndre’s direction. “If that’s for Sidney’s crew, you better get going. They get testy when they’re kept waiting.”

  DeAndre nodded in Baba’s direction. “They’re not the only ones.”

  I glanced over at Baba in time to see him squirt a long stream of oil into the wok. It sizzled like a swarm of angry bees. Garlic-scented steam wafted up to the fan. My selfish stomach ignored the need for caution and growled.

  “There’s chow fun on the counter if you’re hungry,” said Baba as he dumped a metal tin full of chopped mushrooms into the hot pan, added a few more ingredients, and shoved them around the slopes of the wok with a wooden paddle. Black beans, scallions, and fish. My stomach responded even more loudly this time.

  “You made it for me?”

  He gave me a look that could have meant anything or nothing. Then he poured a generous amount of rice wine in the wok, followed by a touch of cornstarch, chili paste, and fish stock. The erupting steam hid his expression. He used the wooden paddle to point in the general direction of the prep counter.

  “Table three thought they were ordering—what did they call it, Lee?”

  Baba’s sous-chef looked up from the roasted duck sprawled across his chopping block. “Skinny noodles,” he said, then cleaved it in half with a kitchen axe. A server, timing his moment carefully, snatched the order of pork lo mein off the counter and whisked out to the dining room.

  I motioned toward the bowl of my favorite fat noodles, dry-fried with strips of beef, bean sprouts, and soy. “I take it that was for them?”

  Lee nodded and muttered in Mandarin, not Shanghainese, so I’d be sure to understand, “Yúchǔn de báirén.”

  I snorted. “Stupid white men, huh?”

  He waved one of his hands. “Chow fun better. I know. I fix.” He threw a pair of long cooking chopsticks straight at my face. I snatched them out of the air. Lee grinned and returned to chopping duck.

  The sinewy chef had a suspicious habit of throwing things at me. After a particularly close call with a swinging pot, I asked him if he knew Sensei. He had grinned and cackled something about senility and carelessness, which I found amusing since Lee was neither old nor clumsy.

  I couldn’t imagine how a Chinese cook would know a Japanese ninja, but I wouldn’t h
ave put it passed my teacher to recruit someone at the restaurant just to spite me. As Sensei was fond of saying, every moment presented an opportunity to train.

  Lee jabbed his kitchen axe toward the bowl of chow fun. “You eat. No waste.”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  Lee Chang wasn’t really my uncle, but he’d been with my father from the start, and since it was the Chinese way to call friends who became family—or any older person to whom you wanted to show respect—“Auntie” or “Uncle”, that’s what I had always called him. In the early days, people had assumed Uncle was the Wong of Wong’s Hong Kong Inn because he looked exactly the way the owner-chef of a Chinese restaurant should look—face weathered from heat and steam, burn scars on his arms, crotchety demeanor, and, above all, Chinese.

  No one dreamed the restaurant belonged to Baba—let alone that a Caucasian could be responsible for authentic Hong Kong recipes. Even the Chinese community up in Arcadia had been fooled by Baba’s cooking. How excited they had been to eat their precious Phoenix Talons Hong Kong style—deep fried, steamed, and then simmered with black fermented beans, star anise, and ginger. I thought their heads would explode when they’d found out a North Dakota Norwegian had prepared it. But they still sucked and chewed every last chicken foot until only the hardest bits of cartilage remained to spit back on the plate.

  Baba eyed me suspiciously as he plated the black bean sole he had just sautéed. “Did you train yesterday?”

  “Yeah. Why do you ask?”

  He glanced at my wrists and shrugged. The bruises on my wrists had ripened. If I had crossed them together, the marks would have formed a purple rope around my wrists. “Never mind,” he said. “Eat the noodles before they get cold. And take a mooncake while you’re at it. You’ll need your strength for the day ahead.”

  What did that mean?