A Hard Light

by Wendy Hornsby

  I looked around. The converted garage was clean. The only furniture was a Formica table with four chrome chairs, a cradle, and an old sofa covered with a chenille spread. Tatami grass mats covered the concrete floor. Against the wall there were rolled-up beds: futons. Unpainted sheets of drywall petitioned off the far end of the room.

  The woman set teacups and a pot on the table, then took a Sara Lee cake out of the freezer section of an ancient Frigidaire.

  “Please.” Mr. Yuen gestured for Guido and me to sit on the sofa. He squatted on his heels, cradling the baby. Beside him was a plastic baby bottle shaped like Fred Flintstone.

  “How old is your baby?” I asked.

  “Six months. He is my grandson, Eric. This is Trinh, my daughter-in-law.”

  We exchanged hellos and bows with her.

  “I am baby-sitter when Trinh goes to college.” He put his finger in the baby’s tiny fist and smiled into his sleeping face. “Eric has a little fever from his vaccination. But he will be fine. However, if his mother does not leave soon, she will be late for her class. And that will not be so fine.”

  Smiling at the dig, Trinh bowed. “Thank you, Father. I am leaving.”

  “What school do you attend?” I asked her as she picked up her book bag.

  “University of California,” she said. “At Irvine.”

  “It’s a good place,” I said.

  “My son is finishing his doctorate,” Yuen said with a quiet yet obvious pride. I looked around at that shared garage home with new appreciation. College, even in the tuition-free state system, is expensive.

  After the door closed behind Trinh, Yuen laid Eric in his cradle. He came back to us with tea and cake, and served us.

  “I have a small idea of what you want to talk about,” he said. “Will you wait here for one moment?”

  He went into the area behind the drywall partition. We could hear him moving things around.

  Guido leaned in to me. “Any guesses what he’s got back there?”

  At the sound of Guido’s voice, Eric began to wail.

  “Now you’ve done it.” I went over and took the baby out of the cradle and held him against me. He quieted right down. His head was warm in the crook of my neck, his hair softer than down. I hadn’t held a baby for a long, long time. For no good reason, I was having trouble breathing.

  Then Eric looked up at me, didn’t know me, opened his mouth, and howled, showing three sharp little teeth. I nudged his bottom lip with the nipple of his bottle. Still snuffling, still eyeing me with suspicion, he closed his mouth so he could drink his juice.

  Yuen padded back into the room carrying a plastic folder. He smiled when he saw me with Eric.

  “This is what you have questions about,” he said, pulling out a weathered and torn booklet that had faded to sepia. There were three titles on the cover. One in phonetic Vietnamese, one in French, “La Musée de Tourane—Les Beaux-Arts du Pays Ancien.” And, “The Museum of Da Nang—The Art of Ancient Champa.”

  A little trill of adrenaline passed through me when I saw the catalogue. I reached for it just to make sure it was genuine, and, with my free hand, awkwardly turned the pages. The caption under each photograph was printed in three languages, the schizoid legacy of Vietnam’s last century.

  I rocked Eric in my arms as Yuen showed me the contents of the catalogue and explained some of the more important pieces that had been in the museum collection. There were more ancient jade and stone figures than anything else, most of them dancing girls. But there were also rare porcelains from China, some gold jewelry, glass beads, bracelets with pearls, bits of centuries-old ceremonial garb—some buckles and two-headed earrings—hammered bronze plates and pots, a jewel-hilted saber. It was interesting. Exotic and unusual. The intrinsic value of the stuff was beyond measure. But the market value?

  I caught Yuen watching me, met his eye. “Did you know Bao Ngo before you boarded the Manatee?”

  “Oh, yes. I was on the staff of Mai An. It was I who called and told Bao to evacuate the museum in Da Nang.”

  “Mai An?” Guido said. “Who is Mai An?”

  “The wife of the president. Madame Thieu. Before we called Da Nang, she had already sent the collection from the Saigon Museum to Canada under the care of General Quang.” Yuen handed the catalogue to Guido.

  I asked, “Did you stay behind in Saigon to wait for the trucks from Da Nang?”

  “Not specifically. Mai An had her own collections of jade and diamonds that needed transport out. She had also ordered sixteen tons of gold to be sent to her from the Bank of Saigon.”

  “Hooh!” Guido blurted, startling Eric. “She took sixteen tons of gold out of the country?”

  Yuen shook his head. “We could find no one to carry it. Swissair said at first that they would help her with personal items, but when they came to the palace and saw the pallets stacked on her bedroom floor, they changed their mind. Something about not wanting to breach their neutral status by removing a nation’s gold reserves.” Yuen shrugged.

  “Ly, who was Mai An’s brother-in-law, bought space allotments from a few Canadian embassy personnel who were being evacuated. That’s how he managed to get a number of crates aboard the Manatee. He bought passage for myself and for Bao Ngo as well. Whatever Ly could carry, he took with him to France.”

  “The gold stayed behind?” I asked.

  “Most,” Yuen said. “Not all. President Thieu had at least a suitcase full of gold.”

  “The stuff that got out,” Guido said, “where is it?”

  Yuen laughed. He took Eric from me when the baby began to fuss. “If I knew where there was any part of sixteen tons of gold, do you think my family would be living in a garage? Trust me when I say, I do not know.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But tell us what happened when the Manatee reached California.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Were you there when Bao Ngo went through Customs?”

  Yuen furrowed his brow as he thought. “Yes. All cargo going on to Canada, and all possessions of passengers traveling under diplomatic passports, were sealed and left aboard. Cargo entering the United States was picked up by bonded courier and carried by truck to the Customs warehouse for inspection.”

  “Did you know that the collection from Da Nang was fakes?”

  “Most of it was.” He nodded. “But not everything. There were, for instance, some especially fine jade pieces, temple dancers.”

  “Was Bao very upset?”

  “Upset? Not one bit.” Yuen walked over to the cradle and laid Eric down. He reached for a bottle of children’s Tylenol and gave the baby a dropperful. As he talked to us, he rocked the cradle. “You see, Bao needed the paperwork, not the artifacts. Provenance, you understand? He had the originals stashed away somewhere in the world. But the only way Bao could sell those pieces on the open market was to have Customs stamp his paperwork.

  “Ironic, isn’t it?” Yuen said. “Bao had to smuggle fakes so that he could sell the genuine articles.”

  “It’s not ironic,” Guido said. “It’s corrupt.”

  “Perhaps.” Yuen bowed. “I cannot make that judgment, not knowing Bao’s intentions. Museums have qualms about displaying items that have no pedigree, even when those items are donated. Private collectors are not always so careful.”

  “You think Bao was going to hand all this stuff over to some museum?” I asked.

  “That is what he told me.” Puckishly, Yuen grinned. “If you want confirmation, you will have to ask Bao Ngo himself.”

  “I’d love to ask him,” I said. “But where the hell is he?”

  “The last time I saw him, he was driving a U-Haul truck north on the Long Beach Freeway.”

  We had been there long enough. Eric needed attention and I needed to think over what we had just learned. I had one last question:

  “Mr. Yuen, according to the records, you traveled on a diplomatic passport.”

  He nodded.

  “Were you
exempt from a Customs search?”

  The answer he gave me was a bow and a mysterious smile. And nothing more.

  CHAPTER

  14

  We were on the freeway headed north toward downtown Los Angeles when I saw the white car again, two lanes over, three cars back. I said, “Guido, would you please change lanes?”

  He looked at me as if I had lost it, but he complied. In the sideview mirror, I watched the white car move over one lane, too.

  “Do it again, please,” I said. When the white car changed again, I said, “We have a tail.”

  “Cool.” Guido started watching the rearview mirror more than it was probably safe to do. “Which one is it?”

  “The car that almost hit us in Westminster.”

  He thought about it. “Think they want to get even for me making them stop short? Gang-bangers needing to get their mojo back?”

  “Gang-bangers would have shot you by now, Guido,” I said. “I’m seeing short hair, short-sleeved shirts, and ties. White guys. My guess is FBI or a close cousin.”

  “Like?”

  “Customs. DEA. ATF.”

  “What do they want with us?” he asked, all scandalized innocence.

  “It isn’t us. It’s what we’ve wandered into.”

  “Want me to dust them?”

  “Not yet.” I reached into the back for the camera bag. “Let’s get a better look at them.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  I snapped a telephoto lens onto my 35mm and checked to see how many shots were left on the roll: eighteen. Guido found the slot for his maneuver, changed two lanes, and slowed, putting us within a car length of our pursuers. I was on the floor, on my knees facing backward, braced against the seat, with the lens just at the level of the open window. I didn’t let the end extend out: Someone might think it was a weapon and panic. Worse, the men in the car would see it before I finished my business and would disappear.

  The van bounced too much for me to see clearly through the long lens, but I set the auto focus, aimed at the white car’s windshield, and snapped off eight frames.

  “Can you get beside them?” I asked. “I want to shoot into their side window.”

  Guido put a truck between us and the white car, hoping the car’s driver would use the truck as cover to drop back so he could get behind us again. We were in good position. Guido slowed, let the truck move ahead, leaving nothing but ten feet of open space between my lens and the driver of the white car.

  I snapped three frames and said, “Go.”

  Guido hit the brakes, slipped behind the other car long enough for me to get the license plate, and then sped off the freeway at the next exit ramp.

  “They didn’t see me.” I got back up on the seat and finished the roll taking extreme close-ups of Guido. “They were too busy trying to figure out what you were doing.”

  “But you got them?”

  “Oh, yeah.” End of the roll, the auto rewind began its whir. “Unless I’m very wrong, we’ve seen them before. The two bozos hanging around the marina Tuesday watching us talk to Minh Tam? Ring a bell?”

  “No.” He drove a zigzag down side streets to make sure we’d lost the tail. “Who are they?”

  “They made a fuss about where they were seated. I thought all they wanted was a table with an ocean view. Now I wonder if they just wanted to be closer to us.”

  He shrugged. He didn’t remember them.

  “Look at Minh Tam’s interview again. If you did any crowd shots, you probably got them.” I took the film out of the camera. “I’ll see what Arlo can turn up from the license plate.”

  Guido checked his rearview mirror and then relaxed against the van’s plush seat. He reached over and patted my knee. “That was kind of fun, kid. Be more fun if these characters were any good at their work. They’ve made themselves awfully damned visible.”

  “Maybe they want us to see them,” I said.

  “Assholes,” was his final evaluation.

  Guido parked at the curb in front of City Hall among three news vans and put a press card in the windshield. Then we walked across the street to the underground mall and left the film at a one-hour processor.

  Guido stood in line for coffee while I called Mike.

  “I’m across the street,” I said. “How’s it going?”

  “The VA won’t take Dad, not after what he did the last time. There’s a place out in Trona that Social Services says has a good program for hard-core cases.”

  “Where’s Trona?”

  “Out in the desert. As long as Pop doesn’t wander off, there isn’t much mischief he can get into out there.” Mike cleared his throat. “Problem is, it’s damned expensive. Medicare won’t cover half the cost. I don’t know where I can come up with that kind of money.”

  “We’ll think of something,” I said, hearing a click in my brain: Sell the damn house. “There’s always a way.”

  “We’ll keep it as a fallback. I also heard about a halfway house in Reseda. I’m going to check it out tonight.”

  “I called the bar owner and he’s being reasonable,” I said. “He says he knows you from when you used to work Hollenbeck street patrol.”

  “That was a long time ago,” Mike said.

  “The guy says you helped him out a couple of times and he figures he owes you. He says his insurance will cover the pool table Oscar ruined and whatever he did to the plumbing, but the owner would appreciate it if you covered the deductible.”

  “How much?”

  “Five hundred.”

  “Ouch.” Mike pulled in some air and blew it out. “Still. That’s more than fair. I have a feeling, though, that the cop who’s calling in a debt is Paula. I don’t remember the bar, and I don’t remember patrolling that particular neighborhood. Of all the boys in midnight blue who must have passed through his dive over the years, how do you suppose he would remember me?”

  “So, I’ll tell him okay?”

  “Yes. If you don’t mind calling him back, tell him I’ll drop by tonight with a check.”

  I said I would. “Can you meet me and Guido for coffee right now?”

  “Can’t. I’m bringing in Shannon. Seems he got wet and cold enough that a dry jail cell started sounding pretty good.”

  “You’re going to let me sit in on the interview, right?”

  “Sure. Give me a couple of hours to get him processed through upstairs. I’ll page you when we’re ready to talk.”

  I called the bar owner and gave him Mike’s message, and listened to his story about his own dear old dad who died of cirrhosis at the age of thirty-eight. Quite a fraternity Oscar and Mike belong to.

  Guido and I drank our coffee and then killed time until our pictures were ready by reading funny cards to each other in the stationery store next door to the photo shop. As soon as I had the shot of the license plate in my hand, I called Arlo. He had an answer for me in less than two minutes.

  “Number goes back to Hertz,” he said. “Take me a little more time to get the name on the rental agreement. I’ll page you when I have it.”

  Next I called Minh Tam to make sure he was in. “I have some pictures I want you to see.”

  We went back to the van and drove across town to Tam’s hotel, parked in the covered lot, and went up to the room the studio was paying for.

  Minh Tam was growing sleek on the studio’s nickel. He had a fresh haircut and a manicure, and pressed slacks under his terry robe.

  Guido looked around the room appreciatively. “Not bad. I could camp out in a place like this and be fairly happy.”

  “I haven’t left the room even once,” Tam said, grinning. “I am afraid that I am getting used to this treatment.”

  “Khanh Nguyen asked me to tell you that you are welcome to stay at her house,” I said. “Have you ever been there? It’s quite a castle.”

  “We spoke,” he said. Revealing nothing.

  I showed him the Polaroid of Ralph Yuen holding Eric that I had taken when we said our good-b
yes. I asked Tam, “Do you recognize this man?”

  Tam studied the face, his brows knit with the effort to remember. All he said was, “Nice baby.”

  “The man’s name is Ralph Yuen and that’s his grandson,” I said. “He worked for Madame Thieu and he knew Bao.”

  “Sorry.” He handed back the snapshot. “Maybe he has changed very much. It has been a long time.”

  “How about these two?” I gave him a snap I took from the van, aiming into the driver’s side window. The driver was in profile, his passenger’s face three-quarters full on.

  Tam nodded. “I saw them several times. First, they observed when you videotaped me two days ago. Then, I saw them yesterday. These are the men I told you I thought were following me.”

  He took the next picture from my hand, a windshield shot with the two faces seen fairly clearly behind the reflections on the glass. “I was not being paranoid, after all, was I?”

  “They’re following somebody, that’s for sure. I think we’ll have an idea who they are very soon.”

  “Was there anything more?” Tam asked.

  I gave him a quick recap of our talk with Yuen, and asked Tam for his opinion.

  He said, “I think this Mr. Yuen may be very correct. Why else would Bao carry such a cargo? There was much danger getting out of the country with only the shirt on one’s back. But to risk taking crates of cargo, there must have been high stakes indeed.”

  “How difficult would it have been for Tam to sell the original artifacts?” I asked.

  “Not difficult. Asian art is highly prized right now,” he said, donning the mien of the art historian he was trained to be. “Many private collectors want only to accumulate. They do not care what road an item followed before it reached their hands. Museums, however, are somewhat more careful. There have been successful lawsuits, you see, from individuals and countries who claim that items were removed illegally. Lawsuits are very expensive and the result can be very embarrassing when some treasure is taken off exhibit by the authorities and sent abroad. Donors don’t like to underwrite such misadventures.”