City of Strangers (Luis Chavez Book 2)

by Mark Wheaton

  “I’m worried that he’s caught up in the lifestyle,” Billy’s uncle, Lichun, told Tony at one point. “He’s always buying fancy clothes and going to parties. You see he’s driving a Maserati now.”

  “He’s not driving a Maserati,” Tony had gently corrected. “He has one leased that he keeps in a garage. During the week he’s either in his Sentra or in the delivery truck. The clothes are like the Maserati—part of the uniform that gets him into places of exclusivity. I have never seen him drunk. Not once.”

  Tony reflected on this as his godson’s turn came and he kneeled to recite the thirty-six oaths. What Billy then said took everyone in the room by surprise. Well, not what he said, but how he recited it: in an older, more classical pronunciation of Cantonese.

  “I shall not cause discord among my sworn brothers by spreading rumors, or I will die by five thunderbolts,” Billy announced. “After entering the Hung brethren, I will forget all grudges I may have previously held against my brethren, or I will be killed by five thunderbolts.”

  As Billy went through the oaths, there were a few murmurs around Tony. He imagined some were critical of Billy for wishing to stand out, but others would understand it as a sign of deep respect for triad tradition.

  When Billy finished, the Vanguard moved down the line with a needle, pricking the fingers of each initiate. A wineglass was produced and the drops of blood were collected from each. Tony heard the clucking of the live rooster, albeit a heavily sedated one, as it was brought into the room in a basket by two other men in traditional dress. Tony stepped forward and handed over a knife, his tiny walk-on role in the pageant. The rooster was cut under its chin, and the blood added to the glass.

  “On this date these Blue Lanterns have died and passed over,” said the Vanguard, reading from a scroll he’d kept in a leather pouch at his side for the duration of the ceremony. “They are now reborn through binding righteousness into the Society of Heaven and Earth.”

  This scroll was added to a cauldron in front of the statue of Guan Yu, and the embers soon rose to the rafters. When the last bit was burned to ash, the initiates were allowed to stand and be recognized by the others with applause.

  “Congratulations, Billy,” Tony enthused, taking his godson’s hands in both of his.

  “Thank you, zūnjià,” Billy replied, bowing deeply. “I am glad you could be here to take part.”

  “Your father will be so proud,” Tony said, his tone turning more serious. “You honor him today.”

  Billy nodded. His father had begun serving a twenty-year sentence in Lompoc prison for heroin trafficking three years earlier. His sentence had been extended, however, due to bloody altercations with the Mexican mafia and various other prison gangs, from the Aryan Brotherhood to the myriad incarnations of Crips and Bloods. Though the senior Daai had been a fairly low-level member of the triad when outside the prison walls, he’d quickly become a unifying and stabilizing presence within the organization on the inside.

  As his reputation as a prison leader increased, respect for his son did as well.

  “I heard about the Indiana businessman,” Billy said. “At the hotel.”

  “What are they saying?” Tony asked.

  “A couple said they would’ve kicked the guy’s ass right there in the lobby. Everyone else said you achieved the same result without lifting a finger.”

  Tony Qi, the outsider. Tony Qi, the street hustler who’d gained the respect of the most powerful Chinese businessmen in Los Angeles. Tony Qi, the triad’s number-one fixer.

  “Good. Maybe they’ll follow that lead and stay out of prison.”

  He knew his words were a mistake before they even left his mouth. Even if he hadn’t, the look of disgust and anger that flashed across Billy’s face drove the point home. Though it disappeared just as quick, Tony straightened himself and bowed.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that how it sounded.”

  “No, I know what you meant,” Billy replied. “And you’re right. These hotheads will end up in prison for nothing one day. But maybe your example will help.”

  Billy excused himself. Tony became flushed. What had he been thinking to demonize prison to a young man whose father was incarcerated? Slights could go unforgiven for years, if not lifetimes. How could he have ruined the young man’s day in that way?

  Of course, he knew what he’d been thinking about. She’d been the only thing on his mind since he’d met her twelve hours before. She’d been so merry on the drive, so full of life and mischief, that he’d found himself delighted in her presence.

  Tony wasn’t insane. Making an overture to Jun Tan of any sort was outside the realm of possibility. In fact, it’d be the quickest way to find his head and hands separated from his body. But he hadn’t met anyone quite like her in some time, if ever. It was as if she knew the role she was meant to play and had decided to subvert it, at least while she was in America.

  How curious and clichéd of him to find attractive someone who couldn’t be more his opposite.

  The previous night Tony had been under strict orders to take Jun from the airport to the hotel with no stops. But as they cruised down the Sunset Strip, Jun had announced that she wanted to stop and get out. There were small packs of young people moving up and down the sidewalks toward the various restaurants and clubs. She wanted to be among them and cloaked the request by saying she was hungry.

  Archie had shot a look first to Tony, then the “aunt,” whose name had been revealed as Chen Jiang. Jiang looked at no one directly, but Tony saw that she was watching him carefully in the reflection of her window to see how their host would handle this.

  “Most of the restaurants along here are booked up this time of night,” Tony had announced, producing his cell phone. “But if you see one you like, I can call and find out if they’ll make an exception.”

  Jun had smiled. It wasn’t a smile of relief at hunger soon to be satisfied, but one of gratitude. He’d chosen her over the dictates of some faraway keeper. She’d soon spotted a tucked-away place with a courtyard surrounded by trees. Tony made the call, and they turned around to pull up to the valet station a moment later. Though Archie was clearly uncomfortable with the breach in protocol, Jun lightened him up with her tales of Hong Kong’s wild nightlife and the adventures she’d had before the child in her belly tied her down to Kuang. Before their entrées arrived, the driver was eating out of her hand.

  Tony tried to speak to the aunt, only to discover that she was not from Hong Kong but Jinan. She was an old hardliner still waiting for Mao to self-resurrect and punish the degenerate capitalists. He wanted to tell her that the late Communist Party chairman secretly lived a life more decadent than any of China’s new money vulgarians could even imagine, but he doubted it would go over well.

  So he let her stew and had enjoyed Jun’s stories late into the night.

  As he turned to leave the Blue Lantern ceremony, his thoughts returning to how he might erase the implied insult to Billy’s father, he spotted one of the triad’s most prominent lawyers, Jing Saifai, entering the back of the small restaurant in which the triad held their observances.

  As a woman she had no place at triad functions. Even more so, as a prominent attorney she could hardly be seen at such a place. Tony idly wondered how long she’d waited outside. A passerby might’ve thought it odd seeing such a well-dressed woman standing outside a closed restaurant at this hour.

  The biggest surprise, however, came when she approached Billy Daai, bowed, and leaned in close to speak to him. The show of deference was likely due to it being a special day for the young man, but the intimacy of their conversation that followed was unusual. Tony didn’t even know the two were friendly.

  She must have something to do with one of Billy’s endless new schemes and businesses, Tony decided. He was always looking for that new marketplace to exploit.

  He averted his eyes for fear of offending Billy twice on this day and moved away.

  “He was filth, plain and si
mple,” declared Father Ian Siu-Tung, the parish pastor of St. Jerome’s. “Filth.”

  Luis was kneeling beside the door to St. Jerome’s Chinese-American Catholic Church’s rectory, staring at the two bullet holes in the frame. Though forensics had come along to pry out the fragments, he could still make out splinters of lead.

  “I don’t know if he was even liked by the congregation,” Siu-Tung continued, as if unhappy with Luis’s lack of response. “He could be arrogant and self-righteous. That’s not me talking out of school, either. He’d say that to your face. He was far more interested in the secular world than most priests I’ve known. He had his own money, you know, and would go on these trips and retreats, only to come back frustrated with the way we did things in Los Angeles.”

  Luis put his hand on the concrete. It was already warm from the early-morning sun, giving him the sensation that Father Chang’s body had only just now been lifted away.

  “Did you know he even had his own apartment in the city? He didn’t think we knew about it. That’s where we believe he must have had the assignations with that poor girl. I guess he thought he knew better than God as to what a priest was allowed in this life, particularly when it came to the promise of celibacy.”

  Luis finally turned to the priest with a cold eye. Celibacy wasn’t the question. Statutory rape was. And murder. Luis was starting to believe that Father Chang might’ve been right to be frustrated here.

  “Celibacy in the priesthood came about in 1139 at the Second Lateran Council,” Luis corrected. “It was never an edict of God.”

  Luis didn’t admit he knew this only because his own parish pastor used it to justify his long-term affair with a laywoman, but he enjoyed the derogatory look on Father Siu-Tung’s face regardless.

  “Impudence,” Siu-Tung added, waving away Luis’s correction. “That was something else that branded Father Chang. Impudence.”

  Luis rose and pointed to a parking space.

  “That’s where he parked?”

  “Yes. It was towed away by the police to check for forensic evidence,” Siu-Tung explained. “We should get it back in a few days, they said.”

  “A parish car?”

  “Again, his own. He bought it used a few years ago. Perfectly acceptable by the rules of the parish.”

  The way the pastor said this last part told Luis exactly how he really felt about one of his priests having his own car. Luis reconstructed Father Chang’s path, exiting the driver’s-side door and moving toward the rectory. He glanced around, looking for where Shu Kuen Yamazoe might have hid.

  “And no one saw Yamazoe before?” Luis asked.

  “No, but most had gone to bed long before Father Chang returned from his party.”

  Thai Cultural Day festival.

  “So it’s possible he’d been hanging around?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Any chance the shooter could’ve ridden in the car with Father Chang?” Luis asked. “It would explain why no one saw him. Also, why the police towed it to look for forensic evidence.”

  From the look on Pastor Siu-Tung’s face, it was clear he hadn’t considered this at all.

  “I don’t know. Father Minxuan and Father Yali were the only witnesses,” Siu-Tung said, pointing up to two of the rectory windows overlooking the parking lot. “But then they heard, not saw. Both said they heard one car door open and close before the young girl’s father—”

  Not “the killer.” Not “Father Chang’s murderer.”

  “—called out Father Chang’s name. Then they heard the shots. They both came downstairs and saw Yamazoe sitting in the parking lot, legs crossed, the gun a little away from him. He was soaking wet. It had been raining that night.”

  No car ride, Luis thought.

  “Then what happened?”

  “Father Minxuan called an ambulance. Father Yali woke me. We couldn’t find our first aid kit, so we took the one Father Chang kept in his trunk and tried to save him, but he was already gone.”

  Luis nodded to a camera over the rectory. “Did the police take the original or a copy?”

  “Father Chavez,” Pastor Siu-Tung said, now annoyed, “I appreciate the archdiocese wanting a full report, but I cannot see how watching a man die is either respectful or appropriate.”

  “You haven’t had a respectful word for him since I arrived,” Luis said. “Why start now?”

  The look on Siu-Tung’s face soured even more, but he seemed to understand that the sooner he did what Father Chavez asked, the sooner he’d be gone.

  “We can watch a link in the office. Come along.”

  The security camera footage, as viewed on the church secretary’s iPad, was taken from such an awkward angle that Luis doubted it could be used at trial. Neither Father Chang nor his killer were identifiable in the few frames in which they appeared, though the image did go white with muzzle flash four times as Father Chang’s body almost immediately dropped to the pavement and convulsed. It was some time before the other priests cautiously emerged, but Luis could tell that the pastor was right. Father Chang was already dead.

  Though they were alone in Pastor Siu-Tung’s office, the older priest had kept glancing away from the computer showing the footage, as if fearing they’d be caught. When it came to Father Chang’s death, however, he made a show of looking away. Luis didn’t have the luxury.

  Even as the priests buzzed around him, Yamazoe sat stock still after the killing, as if meditating. Though Luis couldn’t make out his face, nothing about his body language suggested he even took notice of what was going on around him.

  Pastor Siu-Tung came into view, checking Father Chang’s car for the first aid kit, coming out first with a box before putting it back and taking the first aid kit.

  “What was that?” Luis asked.

  “Nothing. Prescription medication. I saw the cross on the side of the box and mistook it for the first aid kit.”

  “He carried prescription medication in his trunk?”

  “Our insurance, as you must know, makes us receive medication for ongoing conditions through the mail. Father Chang had hypertension and was on beta-blockers for it.”

  Luis nodded. He’d become intimately familiar with the archdiocese’s medical insurance plans due to Pastor Whillans. “Was there anything else in the trunk?”

  “No, just his dry cleaning, a box of dual-language Bibles like the kind we give out, and a couple of boxes of flyers for his causes.”

  “Like?”

  Pastor Siu-Tung glanced around until he spied a bulletin board out in the hall. “A couple of them are still up. Community outreach stuff. Low-income housing mostly. A couple of marches. That kind of thing.”

  Not your kind of thing, Luis surmised.

  “Can I see his room?”

  Pastor Siu-Tung led Luis to the rectory. Father Chang’s room had been locked but not sealed. Inside, the space was as familiarly spartan as Luis’s own room at St. Augustine’s. There was only a bed, a small chest of drawers, a wooden crucifix hanging on the wall, and a bookshelf. Luis opened the closet door and found clerical clothing and three pairs of shoes. The chest of drawers contained underwear and socks.

  “He only ever wore the collar?” Luis asked.

  “His uniform day and night,” Pastor Siu-Tung said, the first words he’d spoken about Father Chang that weren’t negative.

  Under the pretense of pushing the clothes aside to see if anything was tucked behind them, Luis went through the pockets. They were empty.

  “How about the bathroom?”

  As with the rectory at St. Augustine’s, the priests shared a bathroom on each floor. Continuing his search, Luis opened the small medicine cabinet above the sink and, sure enough, was able to identify Father Chang’s personal effects by a bottle of prescription eyedrops on the second-to-lowest shelf. There was a safety razor with extra blades, deodorant, toothpaste, a toothbrush, and a comb. Alongside all that were two bottles of a prescription for Lozol.

  “What abo
ut the apartment you mentioned?” Luis asked as he stepped back into the hallway. “The one he kept in town. Do you have the address?”

  “No. We only know of it because there were times he didn’t stay the night here.”

  “He couldn’t have been with friends or at a hotel?”

  “He’d return in fresh clothes.”

  “And these are things he couldn’t have brought with him?” Luis asked.

  The corner of Pastor Siu-Tung’s lip curled and fell. He looked Luis up and down reproachfully.

  “I still can’t for the life of me understand why the archdiocese would enlist an outsider to help in their investigation,” Siu-Tung said.

  Outsider. Now there’s a word that can be taken many ways, Luis thought.

  “I imagine the archbishop didn’t mean to impinge on you during your time of grief,” Luis said. “He and Father Chang go way back, and he doesn’t want to believe these allegations.”

  “Which is why you don’t, isn’t it?” Siu-Tung asked.

  “I don’t think I have enough information to form an opinion,” Luis replied.

  “But you have anyway,” Pastor Siu-Tung said, though his tone had softened.

  “I only have one more question,” Luis said. “Then I’ll be out of your hair.”

  The pastor raised a hand as if to say there was little he could do to stop him.

  “The girl. Yamazoe’s daughter. I know the police have a lot of questions about her. But you seem to be one of the only people who actually saw this person. As the entire case hinges on it, I think confirming her identity becomes pretty important.”

  Pastor Siu-Tung fell silent for a long moment, looking down to the carpet as if weighing his words carefully before giving them to Luis. When he looked up, Luis was surprised to see a sad smile on his face.