Obedience

by Joseph Hansen

  The flashlight came toward him. A lamp lit up at the end of the couch. One of the doll-boys stood there in a tight black turtleneck and jeans, pointing an Uzi at him. Another reached around him and scooped up the automatic from the couch. Another unlocked the door to the courtyard, and squat, pock-marked Don Pham came in, looking grim. He had Cotton Simes by the arm. Cotton had bought clothes in New York with Dave’s money. Safari jacket, slouch hat. A doll-boy followed him, gun stuck into Cotton’s back. The one who had been noisy coming in through the skylight now came down the pine plank stairs from the sleeping loft. He said something in Vietnamese—probably that he hadn’t found the gun. Don Pham snarled at him, and he shut up. He sat on the stairs, Uzi across his knees, and watched.

  “It was these two,” Cotton told Dave. He nodded at the doll-boy by the lamp, the doll-boy at his back. “They were the ones that killed the men at the Hoang Pho.”

  Don Pham stared at him and grew red in the face.

  “You have now killed not only your foolish self,” he said in his grating voice, “but your friend here. Do you realize that?”

  “He’s not that easy to kill.” Cotton’s eyes were wide and frightened, but he gave Dave a grin. “You don’t get old like him without you got the brains to protect yourself at all times. A nothing little pimp like you—you think he’s gonna let himself die in your kind of company?”

  Pham struck him across the face. The blow turned Cotton’s head to the side. He stood that way, eyes closed, as if in a pose for his mime act. Don Pham said, “Sit down and keep your mouth shut. I am sick of your empty-headed chatter.” He shoved Cotton at the couch. Cotton fell onto it awkwardly. “You sit down too, please, Mr. Brandstetter.”

  Dave sat down. Cotton was staring at him as if his heart would break. Dave told him, “Don’t feel bad. He never meant to let either of us live anyway.”

  “Why did you send for me? You said—”

  “I didn’t send for you. It was Lieutenant Flores’s doing. He and Mr. Pham here have a working relationship.”

  Pham’s eyes opened wide. “We do?”

  “Don’t you? I’ll believe you before I believe him.”

  Pham nodded, sat down on the raised hearth. “No, we don’t. But he is a fool. I always know what he is doing. I have people in his office.”

  “But not in mine,” Dave said. “That’s why you’re here.”

  “I should have killed you along with Carpenter on the docks,” Pham said. “It will take me months, years, to find another Warren Priest.”

  “I do hope so,” Dave said. “But you’d lost him, anyway, you know. When I spotted him, eating lunch at Hoang Pho, he was discussing a deal with Chien Cao Nhu.”

  Pham squinted. “Chien Cao Nhu? The boat dealer?”

  “You know him?” Dave said.

  Pham shook his head. “I have only seen his name, on the sign at his place of business.”

  “It’s a front. It was a front in New York State not long ago, but some rival there made things hot for him. Then a grand jury got into the act. So he came to California.”

  Pham grated out what must have been a Vietnamese curse. “Where is he? Why wasn’t he arrested along with Priest?”

  “For the same reason you weren’t. The police can’t find him. I expect he’s out at sea,” Dave said. “And won’t be back for a while. Carpenter was working with him too—did you know that?”

  Pham made a face. “I knew he was double-crossing me. When I saw those bank statements you got, I knew that. But I didn’t know it was Chien. I didn’t know who it was.”

  Dave raised his eyebrows. “You saw those bank statements? Ah. Your source in the police department found them on Tracy Davis’s desk, and used a copying machine, right?”

  Pham gave him a tight little smile that didn’t last. “He was taking in twice what I was paying him.”

  Dave said, “Maybe you should have paid him better for his loyalty, when he killed Le Doan Ba for you.”

  “Carpenter was careless, and young Ba saw what he never should have seen. It was up to Carpenter to remedy his mistake.” Pham snorted. “It was no proof of loyalty. It was to save his own neck.”

  “And yours,” Dave said.

  “Who was this girl who killed Mr. Le?” Pham said.

  “It’s a long story.” Dave rose. “I’ll need a drink.”

  “Please.” Pham motioned him down. He called to the doll-boy on the stairs, gave him instructions in Vietnamese, pointed to the bar in the shadows under the loft. The small figure went where he was told. Bottles and glasses and ice clinked back there. Pham said, “Nguyen is her family name. But it is as common as Smith in this country. It told me nothing. She had been here some weeks before Rafe happened to mention her to me. And all he knew was that she was a cause of family friction. Why did she kill Mr. Le?”

  “Her father was a cabinet member in Saigon in the last days before the U.S. withdrew from Vietnam. He escaped with a lot of money the U.S. claims he had no right to.”

  Pham tilted his head. “Escaped?”

  “To Paris. He can’t come to the U.S. or they’ll prosecute him for embezzlement. But he evidently wanted to do business here, and since his sons were killed in the war, he sent his daughter. Thao.”

  “Why to the Le’s?” Pham said.

  Dave began explaining. The boy in black brought a tray with drinks. Pham’s was tall—vodka, gin? The others were whisky on ice in short glasses. One for Cotton, one for Dave. Dave drank from it. It wasn’t his best whisky. He lit a cigarette, went on with the story, down to the point of Le Van Minh’s murder. Then he said:

  “But you wanted to protect Mr. Le that night. You failed, but your young friends here followed him down to the Old Fleet with that idea—right?”

  “I had been keeping a watch on him for a long time. He was friendly with Mr. Tang and the other who were plotting to fund shipments of heroin here from the East. This is my territory. I could not allow this.”

  “Mr. Le would have been killed at the Hoang Pho too, if he’d been there. Why wasn’t he?”

  “I told you before. He was a man of rectitude. When he heard what was being proposed, he wanted nothing to do with it. He was shocked that these pillars of the local Vietnamese community would consider such a thing.”

  “So why did you continue to watch him?”

  “Nothing puts a man so much in danger as his unwillingness to tolerate the frailties of his friends.”

  Cotton asked, “Is that what Confucius say?” He had poured his whole drink down his throat in one gulp. It was bringing back his lost impudence.

  Pham glared at him. Cotton popped his eyes.

  Dave snubbed out his cigarette. “Phat and Tang and the other two in the plan were dead. Why go on guarding Mr. Le?”

  “Who knew if the plan was dead? Perhaps others still lived who could go on with it.”

  “And they might try to kill Mr. Le to keep him from telling what he knew?”

  Pham nodded. “And Mr. Le could be of use to me, if the plan was put in action.”

  “Of use how?”

  “With a little prompting from me, he could expose the plan to the authorities and put an end to it. So … I watched over him. My agent heard Mr. Le shout where he was going when he left his house. But my agent’s car wouldn’t start. He went on foot to find a pay telephone to alert me. I sent two others”—he glanced at the boys in black—“to see that Mr. Le came to no harm. But the warning call had been too slow. He was dead when they got there.”

  “And they didn’t even see the girl,” Dave said.

  “They left at once. They did not want to be accused.”

  He smiled wryly. “How ironic that Mr. Le’s death had nothing to do with my interests. I had no need of you.”

  “Don’t be too sure,” Dave said. “You don’t know yet who it was those wealthy men your troops here slaughtered at the Hoang Pho planned to finance.”

  Pham narrowed his eyes. He hitched forward on the bricks of the raised
hearth. “And you do?”

  “And you also don’t know who would be brokering the opium at the Asian end of the operation.”

  “You’re boasting,” Pham snorted. “It’s impossible.”

  “Check it out,” Dave said. “You’re Vietnamese. Don’t you have friends or acquaintances or associates in France? Get in touch with them, and have them keep watch on Nguyen Dinh Thuc in Paris.”

  Pham was all attention. “The girl’s father?”

  Dave nodded. “If they watch his house, I think they’ll see that he’s got an American visitor. A harmless-looking, skinny old man from California.”

  “Nguyen sent the girl to become a U.S. citizen to front an importing business for him?”

  “She’d look pretty selling bric-a-brac,” Dave said. “While the skinny old man handled what was tucked away inside the figurines.”

  “Who is this skinny old man?” Pham said.

  “Holland Carpenter.” Dave snubbed out his cigarette. “Rafe Carpenter’s father.” Dave finished off his whisky. “He took a flight out from LAX to Paris the day after Le Van Minh’s funeral. That was an interesting day. Did I ever tell you about it? I went down to the docks that day, to the Le warehouse, and I was surprised at what I saw. Rafe Carpenter, handing over a pair of attaché cases to Chien Cao Nhu, who had arrived in one of his glossy boats. The old man was there, helping Rafe out, dressed as a security guard.”

  “Damn Rafe Carpenter,” Pham snarled. He made a few comments in Vietnamese, and stood up. “Time to go.” He glanced around the room. “We don’t want to spatter blood all over here. The next tenants should not be faced with such a cleanup job.” He caught Dave by surprise, yanked him to his feet. He was strong. Cotton jumped off the couch, bowled over the doll-boy assigned to him, and ran for the door. “Be cool,” Dave called after him. He was worried the Uzis would start chattering. They didn’t. Instead, another doll-boy stepped through the open door and pushed the thin black nose of his gun into Cotton’s midriff, who stopped with a yelp. “No need to kill me,” he said. “I won’t say anything. Did I say anything before? I didn’t tell the police. Not one word. I am a mime. My art is silence.”

  “You told Mr. Brandstetter,” Pham said. He and his helper were hustling Dave along toward the door. The boys hiked Cotton out into the dark. Dave was next. He was in shirtsleeves, and the night air was chilly, but he didn’t think it was any use to ask for his jacket. Pham slammed the heavy door behind them and pushed Dave ahead of him. “It’s a shame after you have been of such help to me to have to kill you.” Dave wasn’t moving. Pham grabbed his arm and dragged him. He grunted the words out. “You would add luster to my enterprises. But I couldn’t trust you.”

  Now they were passing the shingled end of the dark front building. They were in the narrow front area where the Jaguar stood, overhung by ragged tree branches. Then they were up on the crackled, potholed tarmac of shadowy Horseshoe Canyon Trail. And helmeted L.A. police with rifles stepped at them from every side. One of the doll-boys yelped and fired his Uzi wildly. For about half a second. Then he was on the pavement and lying still. The other doll-boys dropped their guns, and fell to their knees. Don Pham let go of Dave and raised his hands high.

  “Don’t shoot,” he bleated. “I surrender.”

  Daylight was gray at the windows. Dave got up and switched off the lights in the cookshack. He opened the door to change the tobacco-smoky air. In some treetop, a mockingbird sang. Dave brought the coffeepot from the big stove and filled the mugs again. At the deal table, Ken Barker yawned, a wide and noisy yawn. He stretched. “Other men get cautious with age. You get more and more reckless. What if Tracy Davis had said the hell with you?”

  Dave shrugged, tilted more brandy into his coffee mug, lit another cigarette. He was woozy from lack of sleep and the brandy made him woozier. “Then she wouldn’t have rung up your department, and the cavalry wouldn’t have ridden to my rescue, and I could stop wondering what I’m going to do with myself for the rest of my life.”

  Both men were beard-stubbly and bleary-eyed. Barker had plainly got a kick out of leading the swat team up here in the dark dead of night. He’d long grown weary of sitting at a desk while younger men saw all the action. When these same younger men had bundled Don Pham and his imps of hell off to Parker Center downtown to be booked, photographed, printed, and at least temporarily locked up, when Dave’s and Cotton’s depositions had been taken, and Cotton had hitched a ride in a patrol car to the loving arms of Lindy Willard on the Starlady at the Old Fleet marina, when Horseshoe Canyon Trail was its quiet self again, asleep and at peace—Barker had been keyed up and wanted to talk. And the two old men had sat here drinking coffee and yarning for hours. Maybe they hadn’t covered every case they’d locked horns on in the long past they’d often grudgingly shared, but they’d covered a good many.

  “It’ll take some getting used to, retirement will,” Barker said. “Hell, they’ve even got counseling services for it now, therapy groups, support groups, like for drunks and people who can’t stop eating.”

  “God forbid,” Dave said.

  “If you keep letting the Tracy Davises of this world talk you into just one more job, you’ll never give it a chance.” He slurped some of the hot coffee, and pushed back his chair. “I’ve got to go back to work.”

  “Lucky bastard,” Dave said.

  “If I don’t keep an eye on everything, they could make a mess out of it.” Barker heaved his bulk up off the stiff chair with a grunt. “It’s a big case, it’s all over the fucking place. San Pedro County, Orange County, L.A. County. France, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, who knows. A cast of thousands. The language barrier.” He buttoned his shirt collar at his thick throat and pushed up the knot of his tie. “And these organized crime types like Don Pham are slippery.” He took his suit jacket off the back of the chair and put it on. His massive shoulders strained the cloth. “And their lawyers know every technicality in the books. Flores says nobody’s ever been able to convict Don Pham of so much as spitting on the sidewalk.”

  “Warren Priest will turn state’s evidence. With that, I doubt Cotton and I will even be needed. But, listen, about Flores”—Dave got dizzily to his feet—“he’ll try to grab all the credit. Keep it, if you can, will you?” He walked with Barker to the door. “He’s not a crooked cop, but he’s incompetent, and he’s already too far up the promotion ladder for the safety of the rest of us. All right?” Dave worked the latch, and pushed the aluminum screen door for Barker to go out. “And thanks for saving my life.”

  Barker stood on the uneven, leaf-strewn bricks, looking up at the big, old spreading oak, the sky growing light beyond it, and breathing in the fresh morning air. He didn’t turn to Dave to say it, but he said, “I wish I didn’t think you were deliberately trying to throw it away.”

  “Am I?” Dave frowned to himself. “Jesus, maybe I am.

  “Think about it.” Barker started to lumber off. He stopped. “Friends coming.” Dave stepped out of the cook shack door to see. Cecil came on, tall, gangly, looking solemn and reproachful. Amanda walked beside him, not as tall as his shoulder, neatly made, pretty and clever, Dave’s father’s widow, young enough to be Dave’s daughter. She looked worried. They’d heard reports of last night’s doings here on the radio news, didn’t they? No television news this early. Seeing them, Dave thought he didn’t want to throw his life away. Barker nodded to them, and trudged on toward the trail where his driver waited in a city car, probably asleep. “Goodbye,” Barker called.

  “Goodbye,” Dave said.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Dave Brandstetter Mysteries

  1

  FOG MADE SHAPESHIFTERS OF the trees. It lay milky in the hollows and crept in tattered strands along the ridges. Brush crackled. Crouching figures in helmets and belted coveralls flitted through the fog, guns gave muffled pops, the figures dropped or dodged behind tree trunks. Voices clamored, far off. Someone yelped, “I’m hit.”

  “I didn
’t see any fog on the way here,” Dave said.

  “It ain’t real,” Roy Saddler said. “I bought the machinery off a movie studio that closed down.” He hitched up his army fatigue pants. His heavy belly pushed them down again. He said proudly, “Only the Combat Zone gives you ground fog for your action pursuit games.”

  “Paintball,” Enid Saddler said. She had a flat, prairie face, crinkled around the eyes, a flat, prairie voice. She wore a plaid cotton shirt and blue jeans. Her hips were skinny. She crossed her arms over flat breasts. “Paintball games,” she told Dave. “That’s what we’ll be calling them from here on.”

  “Maybe you,” Roy grunted. “Not me. Fancy-ass word. Shaves all the hair off it. Men don’t play ‘paintball.’” He sneered. “Men play action pursuit. Search and destroy. That’s what men play.” He coughed, hard, racked by the cough, bloated face turning red. He dropped his cigarette, stepped on it. “‘Paintball games.’” He wheezed. “Shit.”

  “It’s not gonna get popular if folks think nobody comes but gun-crazy survivalists and soldiers of fortune and them,” Enid said. “You heard that advertising man from the magazine—there’s a real future for us if we can get people past the idea this is for roughnecks. It’s healthy, wholesome outdoor recreation. Upscale, Roy—we got to go upscale.”

  “Sissified.” Roy looked back toward the tall gateway framed of castoff telephone poles. Near this, among parked RVs, pickup trucks, and motorcycles, gangly, black-skinned Cecil Harris, beside a gleaming new Channel Three News van, held a microphone toward a bearded man with a beer can in his hand. Curly Ravitch, a balding youth in a droopy red sweat suit, trained a shoulder-mounted TV camera on the bearded man. Onlookers stood around, hip deep in fog. Roy said, “That killing done us more good than a million dollars worth of advertising in that asshole’s magazine. After tonight’s TV news and the morning papers, the Combat Zone will be the most famous outdoor recreation place in Southern California.”