I nodded. “Go on.”
“We couldn’t take much. I had a small rice bag with some clothes and food. And a little doll she’d traded cigarettes for. That was all I could take. It was all I had. Auntie gave it to Mr. Nguyen to keep for me. He put it in the pile with his family’s things. They were going to watch over me. Anyway, I hugged my aunt and then she stood on the dock until we left. I tried to watch her, to call out goodbye and that I loved her, but it was too crowded. I couldn’t see her, except for just flashes, between the people crowded by the rail. I was crying. Everyone was nervous because of the patrols and wanted me to be quiet, but I couldn’t. I was only ten, and I was very afraid. Then Mr. Nguyen slapped me until I was quiet. Later, after we were past the patrols and it was time to sleep, I asked for my doll. He told me it was lost. He was still angry because I had made too much noise and the others had yelled at him, I suppose. But he said my doll was lost, and it was the only thing I had from my aunt. Later I saw his daughter playing with it. When I asked her for it, she threw it into the water. I ran to the back of the boat and watched for it, but it was gone into the darkness. I spent the rest of the night there, looking back into the dark. I was so scared. But I didn’t cry anymore. Not in front of Mr. Nguyen, anyway.”
She had spoken quietly, staring out over the pine forest. She noticed that my hands were still on her shoulders and shrugged them off. I walked over to the rail and stood with my back to her. “What happened then?”
“Nothing. The trip wasn’t too bad. It seemed to take forever, but it couldn’t have been more than two weeks.” Her voice was steady again. “Mr. Nguyen gave me my things a day later. He acted indifferent to me. Not sorry that he gave away the doll. But I suppose he thought it was justified. I had to be punished, you see. To learn about keeping quiet.
“We were low on food toward the end, but we were just hungry. That was all. Many people in the camp had it much worse. And I didn’t have to stay in the camp very long. Only six months. Some of them are still there, I bet. Mr. Nguyen. The girl who threw away my doll. Serves her right.” She managed a small laugh. “Some sad story, huh? My father’s dead and all I talk about is a stupid doll.”
I shrugged. “It’s a story, anyway. You hungry?”
She nodded. I went into the house and started some rice. There was a small pork roast in the refrigerator. I sliced it into long strips and dumped them into a bowl with cornstarch, oil, and a dash of soy sauce, then put the wok on the fire and left it to heat. While I was chopping a head of broccoli, I heard her clear her throat behind me. When I looked over my shoulder, she was standing in the doorway watching me, her keys in her hand.
“Bring in your things,” I said. “There’s a spare bedroom on the left of the hall.” She stared at me for a long moment, then nodded and disappeared. I stir-fried the meat and the vegetables, added some oyster sauce, and let the mixture simmer.
When I heard the shower running, I walked quietly down the hall and opened the door to her room. The bathroom door was half open and the glass shower door was steamed up. April was vaguely visible, a slender shape moving behind the mist. A small suitcase was open on the bed. I went through it quickly. It was new. Two days’ worth of dirty clothes were wadded up on one side of it. The clothes on the other side still had price tags. Her dress, underwear, and sandals were on the floor by the bathroom door. Her purse wasn’t visible. I took another peek into the bathroom. It was on the vanity, beneath the mirror. Some cosmetics had been taken from it and spread over the counter. I avoided taking a longer look at the body in my shower and went back to the stove.
Dinner was on the table when she appeared. I’d opened a bottle of Chablis. She accepted a glass, but didn’t do much more than sip at it. She ate the meal without commenting on it. While we ate, I questioned her about the trip.
She had driven as far as Phoenix, taken a room, and slept most of Wednesday. She awoke in time to find a mall and a new wardrobe, then got back on the road. She made it to Albuquerque early this morning. Instead of driving straight out, she took another room, slept for a few hours, and asked the desk clerk if he knew where Placitas was and how to get here. She dithered around for a few hours, working up her nerve, I guess, and then drove to the village and asked around until she found someone who knew who Paul Porter was and where he lived. The rest I knew.
When I asked what she was doing for money, she looked surprised. If I’d had a daughter, I probably wouldn’t have thought to ask. Credit cards, of course. That gave me something to worry about. Plastic leaves a trail. But it was probably all right. It’s a hard trail to follow, unless you have access to the right computers. There was another problem. I asked whose name the cards were in. Of course they were in Toker’s.
“You know you’re probably breaking the law?” I asked.
She looked surprised.
“They aren’t your credit cards. They belonged to Toker. He’s dead. The card companies will consider them invalid.”
“They’re all I have! They can’t take them away!”
“They can and will,” I told her.
“But how will I live?” She thought a moment. “And who’s Toker?”
“Your father. It was his nickname when I knew him. He called me Rainbow and I called him Toker. Don’t worry about living. I can take care of you for a while. Your father must have had a lawyer, and he probably left a will. You can pay me back later if you like.”
“His lawyer.” She nodded. Then a thought struck her. “Do I have to go back? Right away?”
“Tomorrow morning. I’ll go with you. There’s the funeral, for one thing. And the police will want to know why you ran away and where you went. We have to find the lawyer and the will. We have to find out who is executor of his estate and get that settled. You’ll have some explaining to do to your professors. There are other things I haven’t thought of yet.”
She took a deep breath. “What about the person who searched our house?”
“That’s another problem. The cops probably think you did it. They will want to ask you why.”
I didn’t add that they might want to ask her what she knew about detonating a Claymore. If she hadn’t called it a clayman bomb, I’d be damned curious about that myself. I asked her what she was studying at UCLA.
“Business administration,” she said.
At least it wasn’t theater. If she were an actress, that would be one more thing to worry about. I stretched and started heading her toward bed. There are two bedrooms in my house, both the same size. Big. Eighteen by twenty feet, with large closets and one large bathroom between them. It has a shower, Jacuzzi, soaking tub, double sinks in the vanity, everything I thought might be useful when I designed the place.
April appreciated the bedroom and bath, but looked a bit uncertain when she realized that the second door off the bath opened onto my room, and that neither of them had locks. I knew what she was thinking and waited to see if she would say anything. She didn’t. My opinion of her went up. Common sense is a rare thing.
She closed the door behind her. When the radio in her room came on, I headed for the office off my bedroom and spent a few minutes thinking. A call to a man in Albuquerque got me the number of a useful man in West Los Angeles. Next, I fired up my computer and found an account of the bombing. There was nothing of interest there, except that it had really happened. I made two reservations to Las Vegas in the name of Miller, then dug out a suitcase and packed for a week. Just in case, I dug out a fall-back identity. Harold Stephenson. I hadn’t been Harold for ten years, but I’d kept him alive.
I poured myself a double scotch, grabbed another cigarette from my stash, turned out all the lights in the house, and walked out onto the deck. The woods aren’t quiet at night. Things move in them. But I was used to the woods. I was not used to the things that were stirring in my mind.
Toker. I hadn’t seen him in sixteen years. I’d seen a lot of him in ’seventy-four. And of course, I’d seen him daily from June of ’seventy throug
h July of ’seventy-one, while we were both in-country. In-country meant Saigon, mostly. What had happened there after I left? Or what had happened to him later, that led him to seek out and adopt a Vietnamese child? Did he go to Hong Kong looking for one, or was he really just on vacation, as April had said? Was there some significance to the fact that he’d picked a girl?
There had been two kinds of soldiers in Vietnam. Those who hated the locals and those who liked them. Toker was one of the first type. He called them slopes or gooks. That made April harder for me to understand. Had Toker been trying to assuage some guilt I didn’t know about?
Guilt. That word sent a lot of things scurrying for cover in the recesses of my skull. I let them go. I knew all their hidey-holes if I had to track them down. With luck, they would sleep peacefully for the next few weeks.
I finished the cigarette and the scotch, then just sat on the deck for an hour and listened to the night. No one was stirring.
The radio in April’s bedroom was silent when I locked up. I tapped gently at her door. There was no answer, so I opened it and slipped inside. I stood for three or four minutes, an eternity, breathing through my mouth, listening. No sound. My eyes adjusted to the darkness. Her head was a dark blotch against the white pillow case. Her clothes were spread on the foot of the bed. Her purse was on a table under the window.
I padded over and took it, made my way out of the room, and went to the kitchen. Her driver’s license said April Bow. It was dated over a year ago. The plastic case looked scratched enough to be a year old. She had the right student ID as far as I could tell. All the credit cards had the right name on them. She carried no weapon beyond a nail file. It took ten minutes to get my night vision back and another three to replace the purse. It was after midnight when I turned out my bedside lamp.
At seven-thirty I had breakfast going, a large omelet with vegetables and a mild chile sauce. Toast and coffee. April answered my knock by opening the door a crack and peering around it. I glanced past her. The mirror above the dresser on the other side of the room showed her naked back, pale, without tan lines, slender. My thin face and blond hair peered over her shoulder through the cracked door. Her backside was very attractive. I didn’t like or trust the looks of the fellow in the mirror. I looked back into her eyes and told her breakfast was ready.
She grumbled a bit. “So early?”
“We’ve got some stops to make and our flight leaves at eleven. Eat now. You can dress later.”
She appeared in a few minutes, barefoot, wearing a pair of new jeans and a cream-colored blouse. I gave her our schedule while she worked on the omelet, then took a tour of the property while she cleaned up and dressed. I wanted to be outside, far from her bedroom door. It had been too long since I’d had a woman. And at least to part of me, she qualified. Despite her age and looks. Or maybe because of them.
The first stop in Albuquerque was at my bank. I picked up five thousand in cash. Then I made some arrangements with the woman who manages certain of my properties and left her with a check for a thousand in case I was gone longer than expected. We barely made it to the airport in time to pick up our tickets and take the long walk to our gate.
Chapter 2
LOS ANGELES
The flight from Albuquerque to Las Vegas took about an hour. When April asked why we weren’t flying direct, I told her I didn’t want to leave a trail back to New Mexico. She nodded, then dozed through the flight. As soon as we got off the plane, she started for the nearest restroom. I told her I’d meet her in the bar, then headed for the ticket counter.
I paid cash for two seats on the four o’clock flight to LAX, using Harold and Ann Stephenson for names, and arranged for a car at the Hertz counter, again using the Stephenson name. Then I met April, led her to a different ticket counter, and bought two first-class seats on a flight the next morning to Orange County.
I gave our names as James and April Bow and paid for those tickets with fives and ones. I fumbled around with the bills as much as possible, lost track, counted the payment all over again, and argued about the number of pennies in my change. By the time I was satisfied, the clerk and the people lined up behind us were steaming and April was pretending she wasn’t with me.
I grabbed a cab and headed for the first hotel I could think of, the Palace. April was getting nervous. I leaned into her ear and whispered, “Play along with me. You can always start screaming later.”
She relaxed a bit, and even gave me a tiny smile. The driver was watching us in the mirror. I made a kissing noise at her, then overtipped the driver by ten dollars.
Getting a room was easy. I laid two hundreds on the counter and asked for a single for the night. The clerk looked from me to April and made the bills disappear.
I signed the register as James Bow. A bellboy came over and asked about our luggage. I told him I’d carry it and could find the room myself, but he could do me a tremendous favor by locating a cold bottle of good champagne and getting it to the room as quickly as possible. I winked and told him I’d be very grateful. He handed me the keys and disappeared.
The room was like almost every other I’ve been in. Narrow. Bathroom by the entry. A double bed against the long wall, with a dresser and plenty of mirrors opposite. Windows behind floor-to-ceiling curtains at the end of the room, with a small table and two chairs.
Once the door closed, April walked to the table and sat, looking as though she had put up with enough nonsense. Well, she had, and she deserved an explanation. When I sat opposite her, she relaxed a bit. Maybe she’d expected me to make a move toward the bed. “We’ve got to talk before we get to Los Angeles, April,” I said, “and we can’t do it on the plane. The room buys us privacy for a few hours. For talk, nothing else.”
There was a discreet knock. The champagne arrived, open and in ice. The bellboy presented it with a bill for forty-five bucks. I gave him a fifty and a twenty, told him to keep the change, and slipped the DO NOT DISTURB sign over the doorknob.
She looked at the bottle skeptically. “Why the champagne?”
“You look thirsty.”
“I’m not.”
“Fine.” It was window dressing anyway. I upended the bottle in the bathroom sink, dirtied two glasses, and returned to the chair opposite her. It was time for some questions. “How much do you know about your father’s business?” I asked.
“The dealership? Everything. I was his secretary. At least part-time, summers and on weekends.”
“Tell me about it.”
“There isn’t much to tell. He had a Jaguar dealership, but we bought and sold other cars, too. Mercedes and BMWs and the ones we took in trade. We never kept the American or Japanese models, though. They went to the auction. Dad didn’t like them.”
“Was it a good business? Profitable?”
She nodded. “I suppose we turned between four and five hundred cars a year, counting the trade-ins. We did all right.”
“Did you keep the books?”
“I saw them, of course. Mrs. Walters actually kept them. I only worked part-time, and we needed someone permanent for the books.”
“But you had full access to them?”
She nodded.
“How was the business going? At the end, I mean.”
“There wasn’t any change. You’re asking if he was in financial trouble, aren’t you? Well, he wasn’t! We netted about two hundred thousand a year, before taxes. We owned the land, too, so there wasn’t any rent to pay. We were doing very well.”
“Was all of the income from sales?”
“Yes. All of it.”
“And there was only the one set of books? He didn’t keep anything off the books?”
She looked at me scornfully. “Of course not. I thought you were his friend!”
“I’m trying to find a reason for someone to kill him, April,” I said. “Money’s the oldest reason there is. Or one of the oldest.”
“There was nothing like that. Everything was aboveboard. Very simple. ‘B
uy cars, sell cars,’ he used to say.”
“You’re sure? Would you know if anything funny was going on?”
“I was studying business,” she said indignantly. “Of course I would have known!” She lowered her eyes. “I…I was hoping that…”
“You wanted to take over the business,” I finished for her. She nodded.
“Did you know his lawyer?”
“Mr. Pearson. I know him.”
“When did Toker see him last?”
“A month or so before…before…”
“Okay.” I let it slide. “What about the correspondence? Did he ever type his own letters?”
“No. I did all that.”
“Visitors, then. Did he make any calls that he was secretive about? That he didn’t want you to know about?”
She cleared her throat. “No. Not to…No.” She wasn’t meeting my eyes.
“Tell me, damn it.”
She blushed. “Just to women,” she said.
“Talk about the women, then,” I said.
She hesitated. “There weren’t many…girlfriends.…”
“Women from the office? He was rich. Didn’t any of them ever make a play for him?”
“Never. Well, maybe some tried, but he wasn’t interested. He said…”
“What?”
She blushed again. “He said you don’t shit where you eat.”
I let that settle for a minute, then asked, “What about other women? Outsiders?”
“Well…maybe Mrs. Stillwell. Our neighbor. She and I were pretty good friends when I was fourteen or fifteen. She used to ask me about him. And one day she invited us for dinner. It was really nice. She’d worked hard on it. She had candles and everything. After dinner, they sent me home. I was watching a movie when he came in a couple hours later. He was kind of drunk and went right to bed. And she never asked us back again.”
I stared at her. “You never found out what happened?”
Monkey on a Chain Page 2
