City of Strangers (Luis Chavez Book 2)

by Mark Wheaton

  “First of all, you’re wrong. Plenty of people saw the girl. She was in the congregation every Sunday for the past several weeks. Maybe people don’t like talking about it or getting involved in a murder case, but they saw her. If they don’t remember her, it’s because she was so slight, so clearly uncomfortable and unhappy, that she did everything she could to disappear into the pew. What angers me and, perhaps to my discredit, provokes my disrespect for Father Chang’s memory is that I saw that and prayed for her. He saw that and took advantage. I wish I’d known then what it was that caused her such displeasure to be in the house of God. But if it had been revealed to me, I’m afraid I might’ve done what her father did, and we’d be having a completely different conversation right now. She’s real, Father Chavez. And now she’s gone. Whatever the circumstance, it’s just one more person this church has managed to fail. So, pardon me if I try to alleviate some of my own guilt in this by venting my anger at the late Father Chang.”

  Luis extended his hand. “Thank you for your time, Father.”

  “If you find her, please tell her I’m sorry.”

  Luis nodded and headed away.

  VI

  In the age of Google Maps and Waze, addresses in a big city like Los Angeles should have been the easiest things to find with a smartphone in hand. So why was it, Michael thought, that he couldn’t locate the law office of Caesar deGuzman, Yamazoe’s attorney?

  He’d called to make an appointment, the receptionist registering surprise to hear that a deputy district attorney was coming in to meet her boss.

  “Of Los Angeles?” she asked to confirm.

  “Yes,” Michael had replied with relish. “Can he see me?”

  But now, as he made his way up and down the stairs of what looked like a courtyard apartment converted into offices, including one that had the logo of a recently canceled television series on it and two more for a so-called wellness clinic, Michael wondered if he was even in the right part of the city.

  “Mr. Story?”

  Michael turned. A young woman with hair so unnaturally red it looked less taken from a bottle and more from the side of a fire engine waved a hand at him from a doorway across the courtyard.

  “That’s me,” Michael said, striding over. “Couldn’t find the place.”

  “Oh, that’s Koreatown for you,” the woman said, pointing to one of three placards alongside the door that listed deGuzman’s name under several others. “We’re all on top of, under, and behind everybody here.”

  Michael resisted uttering the single entendre that entered his head as he followed the receptionist inside. For someone who spent thousands placing ads on the back of every bus and phone book in the city, the firm’s actual office space was no larger than that of the two-bedroom apartment deGuzman’s place of business now occupied.

  “He’ll be with you in just a moment,” the receptionist said, taking a seat behind a desk which sat, Michael imagined, in what had at one time been the kitchen.

  He’d just picked up an aged copy of Popular Mechanics when a squat man with a long black ponytail and bushy facial hair emerged from a back room. At first, Michael took him for another client. It wasn’t until he extended a hand that he recognized him as the man from the bus ads, just an additional forty pounds and at least a decade further along on his journey through life.

  “Mr. Story,” deGuzman said, eyeing the deputy DA through thick glasses.

  “Thank you for seeing me,” Michael replied, shaking his hand.

  “Come on back,” deGuzman said. “And tell me how I can be of assistance to the great city of Los Angeles today.”

  Though the ads and trappings read ambulance chaser, what Michael saw in deGuzman’s obsidian eyes was someone who in another life could’ve been a law professor or Supreme Court justice. He looked shrewd, and his eyes missed nothing. He folded his hands and sat at the head of a small conference table as he waited for Michael to speak.

  “It’s about Shu Yamazoe,” Michael said.

  “So you told Irma.”

  Michael decided that was the receptionist’s name and pressed on. “I’m just curious as to how you and he came to know each other.”

  “You can’t believe I’d actually have a conversation about this with someone from the prosecutor’s office,” deGuzman said. “I assume you thought I was someone who might wish to curry favor with a deputy district attorney by hanging a controversial client out to dry, but that’s incorrect.”

  “No, I’m actually acting in an unofficial capacity at the behest of the Los Angeles archdiocese. They are concerned that Yamazoe’s confession—”

  “They should be,” deGuzman interrupted. “So, they’re already looking to discredit my client, are they? I guess I would be, too.”

  “No, they’ve just made mistakes in the past, so they want to approach this case as a model of what to do right next time.”

  “Because with the Catholic Church and statutory rape there’s always a next time,” deGuzman said.

  Michael sighed. He wasn’t getting anywhere with this man, who clearly enjoyed thumbing his nose at an office that he’d likely sat across from in contentious situations for decades. Michael realized he’d probably have had more of a shot if he’d announced himself as a ditch digger or trash collector. Saying he was from the DA’s office meant deGuzman was more than prepared to stonewall and toy with him for as long as he sat there.

  But then something occurred to him.

  “You called Yamazoe your client. When did that become the case?”

  “What do you mean?” deGuzman replied quietly, though his face said he was rapidly searching back over his words to check for miscues.

  Not quite a Supreme Court–worthy poker face there, Counselor.

  “I’ve read the confession. He didn’t ask you to be his attorney. You only inferred that from the fact that he sent you the e-mail. How did you know he didn’t send it to twenty lawyers, hoping one would show up?”

  DeGuzman shrugged. “I didn’t.”

  “But when you spoke to officers you called him by name,” Michael said. “You said that you were there because of Shu Kuen Yamazoe. Correct?”

  “Yes,” deGuzman said warily.

  Michael took out his iPhone and found the copy of Yamazoe’s confession that had been sent to him by Detective Whitehead. He stared at it for a long moment before looking back up at deGuzman.

  “How did you know his name?” Michael asked simply.

  “It was at the end of the letter.”

  Michael held up the letter on his screen in the original hanzi. To a native Mandarin speaker, he was sure it looked just fine. To someone familiar with the Roman alphabet, it looked like Chinese logograms. But unlike a letter written by a Westerner, there was no real signature. Shu’s name was simply the last three letters on the page.

  “There are about a dozen words here that don’t properly translate when plugged into a translation app. How did you know the difference between the ones that were actual mistakes and then the ones that were your soon-to-be-client’s full name?”

  DeGuzman said nothing, choosing to merely eye Michael through his thick glasses as if waiting for the younger man to continue. Michael simply sat back in his chair.

  “So, you can either tell me how you came to know Shu Yamazoe’s name,” Michael said. “Or I can get a warrant from a judge to search your offices and suspend your license.”

  DeGuzman took off his glasses and placed them on the conference table. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, sighed, and leaned over the table toward Michael.

  “I guess you’ll just have to go see that judge then.”

  Luis had believed finding Shu Yamazoe’s house wouldn’t be easy. But then a simple search of the archdiocese’s parishioners’ mailing list database during his off period revealed an address of an apartment in Monterey Park straightaway. This was unlucky. A house he could’ve probably broken into if he needed to get a look around. An apartment meant a building manager and likely a
sealed-off door.

  Rats.

  Still, at the end of the school day he hurried to take out a parish car to check out the space before he had to return to help with evening Mass. He had told Pastor Whillans in vague terms what he was doing. Whillans gave his equally vague approval.

  “If you get arrested, say you were impersonating a priest,” the pastor had said.

  Luis had considered wearing street clothes when he went to the apartment. The problem was, he more often than not felt this invited trouble, as if announcing that he was denying the Lord in some way, which in turn would make the universe deny him. So he kept on the collar, drove to Monterey Park, and parked in front of the building.

  All he really wanted was that one piece of evidence telling him that the girl, whatever her name might be, had stayed with her father at the apartment—it could be an article of clothing, a second bed, a book, a keepsake, anything—so that he could erase the skepticism of her existence from his mind. So when he arrived at apartment 12B and found the front door wide open, he was about to say a quick prayer of thanks to God when he suddenly noticed that the place was completely empty. No furniture, no wall hangings, nothing.

  A middle-aged man pulling a commercial steam cleaner stepped out from a hallway. When he saw the priest, he stopped short, as if doing a quick self-assessment to see if he was in the process of sinning.

  “I heard this guy was a crazy killer, but did they really call for an exorcist?”

  Luis grinned. “New city requirement. Apartment vacancies have to be exorcised whenever someone’s broken a lease. Heading to jail counts.”

  “Hope the archdiocese is getting a big cut of that,” the man said with a laugh.

  “Oh, they are. Big-time. Bonus if we have to fight demons.”

  The man laughed and extended a hand. “Jerry Bunker.”

  “Luis Chavez.”

  “Are you looking at this place? I’m just finishing up. Building manager is around somewhere.”

  “No, I was just—”

  “Oh crap,” Jerry said, paling. “I knew this guy was a killer but didn’t realize it was the guy who murdered the priest.”

  “Yeah. That’s right.”

  “So what? You coming around to bless the place? That’s kind of weird.”

  “No, no. The shooter was a parishioner, and he had a daughter. We just wanted to check in on her.”

  It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the truth, either. Luis hated himself a little for putting it out there. To make it worse, Jerry nodded reverentially.

  “That’s something,” he said. “That’s very Christian of you. Ain’t no girl here now, though. I don’t know the story, but the place is getting cleaned out and ready to be rented again. Anything that was left behind I took to the Dumpster.”

  “Was there much?” Luis asked.

  “Nah. Trash mostly. Contents of the kitchen. Somebody had already come for the furniture. Which means the building manager probably sold it. Sinister business this.”

  “I agree,” Luis said. “Nothing of the daughter’s?”

  “Not a damn thing as I could tell. Sorry.”

  Luis turned to exit, then glanced back. “Which Dumpster, by the way?”

  There were three at the back of the building. Jerry had said he’d tossed everything in the one closest to the back door. Sure enough, Luis found two garbage bags of food pulled from the cabinet. As they were dry goods, he considered yanking them out to take back to the church’s stores, but then relented. They already smelled of the Dumpster, and there was no telling how long their contents had been in Yamazoe’s cabinet.

  Under the garbage bags, however, were a handful of pint glasses, a couple shattered, all with the logo of a bar, Old Taipa, including the address, a place down in the City of Industry. Each also featured a different animal and year. Luis realized they were commemorative glasses of some sort tied to the Chinese New Year.

  “Hey, did you pull these from this apartment?” Luis asked Jerry after carrying a couple of the surviving glasses back up.

  “I did,” Jerry said, nodding. “Tried not to break them in the Dumpster, as some trash digger might come along and get some recycling nickels out of them. Think I was only half-successful. If you want those, they’re all yours.”

  “Ever heard of this bar?”

  “Oh, of course!” Jerry said, smiling. “It’s not really a bar, though. Why? You feeling lucky?”

  Susan had slept for ten hours straight. She’d blown past the time she was supposed to be back on shift but surprised herself by not feeling guilty.

  Oh well.

  She got dressed, realized she didn’t have a single clean lab coat left, and made a pile of all her used ones to trade at the dry cleaner’s for the ones she’d dropped off the previous week. Even when they’d handed her the ticket and said, “Tuesday after five okay?” she’d grinned, knowing it would be days after that before she’d finally have time to come back.

  She checked her phone, was perplexed to see no messages from Nan, then hoped that meant he’d managed to get some sleep, too.

  As she drove from her tiny duplex in San Gabriel toward the clinic, she scanned through the radio stations looking for news but found none. She took out her cell phone and while in traffic flipped through the websites of the local TV news stations and the Los Angeles Times, looking for updates on the Father Chang murder. She wondered what it meant that there hadn’t been anything new reported in the past twenty-four hours. Weren’t people interested?

  Nan had shown her where, in comments sections and on social media, people had hinted at the priest being a child molester. At first, she thought it was just unspecific anti-Catholic venom. Cracks about molester priests were omnipresent. But then they got more specific, referencing a teenage girl, suggesting the shooter was a relative, and so on.

  So they’re killing you twice, she’d thought.

  Susan put her mind to the murder now, trying to remember the last protest march or rally or sit-in Benny had attended. She usually found out after the fact, as he seemed to know which ones she’d try to talk him out of. There was the one against the state for potentially using eminent domain to kick poor people out of their houses to make way for a high-speed rail line running up to San Francisco. There was another following the police shooting of an unarmed teenager down in Watts. Then there was that teachers union that staged a silent protest outside schools for better pay.

  In one way or another he’d been involved in all of them. But so were a lot of people, and he was hardly the driving force. He was a presence. A presence in a Roman collar with all the baggage that came with it, but a presence nevertheless.

  When she arrived at the dry cleaner’s, she was surprised to find no one at the counter. It was a family-run joint that prided itself on service. Whoever was closest to the front would drop anything they were working on as soon as a customer walked through the door.

  “Hello?” she said, arms full of lab coats.

  That’s when she heard the commotion coming from the adjoining room. Though primarily a dry cleaner’s, they also employed two tailors to do alterations and repairs. One of them, Rabih Chamoun, a charming old Lebanese gentleman, was a patient at the clinic and traded his services in the form of coupons to the doctors who looked after him.

  “Are you guys okay?” Susan called, hearing chairs scraping, people talking quickly back and forth in panicked voices, and then the rasping cough of an old man.

  She dropped the coats and hurried around the counter. Pushing past the hanging clothes, she found the owner’s daughter, Celia, kneeling beside Rabih as he lowered himself to the floor. His face was bright red, and he clutched his chest as he coughed. Another worker, whose name Susan didn’t know, spotted her and looked relieved.

  “Dr. Auyong!” he said. “We just called 911. I think he’s having a heart attack.”

  Susan rushed to Rabih’s side. She wasn’t his primary physician but frantically tried to remember anything of his medical hist
ory. She thought he had high cholesterol and heart disease. But when she touched his skin, it was hot and clammy, indicative of a fever.

  “It’s not a heart attack,” Susan said, mainly to herself.

  But then Rabih coughed once more, sending up a gob of blood. As he continued to cough, bracing himself against his sewing table, more blood emerged. Susan grabbed the nearest article of clothing, wadded it into a ball, and shoved it under his head.

  “Mr. Chamoun, can you hear me?” Susan asked.

  “Ya allah,” Rabih said, though his eyes wouldn’t focus.

  “Mr. Chamoun. An ambulance is on its way. Please relax. Short deep breaths.”

  “But I . . . can’t breathe,” Rabih replied. “I can’t—”

  “Yes you can,” Susan said. “If you can speak, you can breathe.”

  She took his hand. Less than a minute later it went limp. And no matter what Susan did to try and resuscitate him, Rabih Chamoun was gone. When the ambulance finally arrived, Susan explained what she could, holding back the information that Chamoun was a patient at her clinic. The paramedics half listened, then had to make a few calls of their own.

  Susan consoled Celia for a moment, then took her dirty lab coats back to her car, only to find that she was blocked in by the ambulance. When her cell phone rang, she saw that it was Clover Gao and picked up anyway.

  “I’m stuck at a trauma scene just down the street,” she explained, hoping to sound distressed. “It was one of the clinic’s patients, Rabih Chamoun. I should be there in a moment, though.”

  In the silence that followed, Susan wondered if Clover actually gave a damn. This was historic.

  “Well, there’s a coincidence,” Clover said. “I was just calling you about another patient of ours. You saw César Carreño yesterday, did you not?”

  “Um, yes. He came by to pick up his pills.”

  “But you also saw his daughter a few hours later?”

  “I did,” Susan agreed, though she barely remembered the encounter.