I looked over at Byron. He downshifted just before a series of serpentine curves, his face set, mouth a straight line.
“I haven’t asked myself questions about why people do things since I was a little kid.”
“What happened then?” he asked.
“Nobody answered,” I told him.
The Ly Mang looked like a Hudson River scow with a shack growing out of it. I left Byron in the car, made the approach myself. A short, muscular man with the face of an Inca was doing something to a net on the deck, working at a slow, deliberate pace. He raised his head as I came closer; watching, not moving.
“Is Gem around?” I asked him.
“Who are you?” he responded, his accent more in the rhythm than in the sound.
“She’s expecting me.”
“Today?”
“Yes.”
“Stay there,” he said, flicking the knife he had been using closed with one hand.
I slouched against one of the massive posts holding up the pier, patting my pockets for the pack of smokes that wasn’t there. A mistake. Habits are patterns, and patterns are paths. Trails for trackers. I was somebody else now, and I had to stay there.
A girl in a pink T-shirt and blue-jean shorts came out of the cabin. She said something I couldn’t hear to the Mexican, then vaulted over the railing to the pier, landing as lightly as a ballerina.
Her hair was jet black, framing a delicate Oriental face. A slim, leggy woman with a tiny waist, she could have been sixteen or thirty-five. But when she got close enough for me to see her eyes, there was no chance of mistaking her for a teenager.
“I am Gem,” is all she said. If standing out in the cool weather dressed like that bothered her, it didn’t show on her face.
“I don’t know who you spoke to, but I’m the man who—”
“The man from New York?” she asked, her eyes deliberately glancing down to my right hand, where the fat emerald on my pinky finger sparkled in the sun. Mama’s ID.
“Yes.”
“You need someone who speaks Russian?”
“And writes it. Like a native.”
“Yes. For how long?”
“I don’t … Oh, right—you mean, how long will I need your services?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t say, exactly. I want you to write a letter. Then I want you to meet the people you are writing the letter to. And talk with them.”
“Where would this be?”
“Vancouver. Near—”
“I know where it is. You came from there?”
“Yes.”
“I would go back with you, is that correct?” Her voice was precise, unaccented. Soft.
“You don’t have to. The letter you write, it will say you will meet them in Portland … so there would be at least a week between the letter and the time you go into action. You could write the letter here—I brought everything you would need with me—and come up to Portland on whatever date we pick.”
“A week would be all right. I have business in Portland. You will cover my lodging and meals while I’m there, is that fair enough?”
“Sure.”
“You must have a car …?”
“Right over there,” I told her, pointing to the Subaru.
She took a long, slow look at the car, making it clear she saw Byron in the driver’s seat.
“Perhaps you should tell me a little more, first.”
“Like what?”
“Who told you where to find me?”
“Look, the only person I dealt with is Mama. I don’t know who she—”
“Mrs. Wong is your mother?”
“Not my biological mother. It’s a term of respect. Everyone … close to her calls her that.”
“Ah. I do not know her, not personally. But the people I deal with, the people who I get my jobs from, they know her.”
“Since they know her, why don’t you—?”
“Yes. All right. Give me twenty minutes, please.”
“She’s a pro,” Byron said to me as the woman approached the Subaru, pulling one of those airline-size suitcases on wheels behind her.
“Why do you say?”
“No way a girl like her packs in fifteen minutes. She had the suitcase stashed somewhere, ready to roll.”
I got out of the car, opened the little trunk. She retracted the pulling handle, picked up the suitcase with one hand and gave it to me. It was twice the weight I expected.
I closed the trunk, opened the passenger door, and started to climb in the back seat.
“May I ride back there, please?” she said. “I will fit much better than you would.”
“That’s okay.”
“I insist,” she said, not smiling.
I found the ratchet on the side of the seat, slid the backrest forward, and stood aside for her to climb in. She studied the back seat for a few seconds, then spun around gracefully and dropped down without a glance or a handhold.
“This is Byron,” I told her. “Byron, this is Gem.”
They each made polite noises. Byron started the engine, shoved the gearshift forward, and we were off.
The Subaru was loud—the combination of a high-stress engine and soundproofing sacrificed for lighter weight. After a while, it felt like being inside a small plane.
“You can stay at the—” I began, turning as I spoke so I could engage her, start a little connect between us.
She was curled up in the back, asleep.
“Do you live in Portland now?” she asked, startling me out of wherever I’d gone in my mind.
She was sitting up in the back seat, hands in her lap, leaning forward so her face was close to mine. She smelled of jade and ocean.
“No,” I said, rotating my head on my neck, hearing the sharp little cracks as the adhesions blew out. “We’re just in town for this … assignment.”
“You have hotel rooms, then?”
“Yes.”
“Together?”
“No.”
“I would prefer not to be registered anywhere,” she said, shifting her focus to Byron. “May I stay in your room?”
“I’m going to have company tonight,” Byron told her. “At least, I sure hope I will. Burke’s got a whole suite. Two bedrooms.”
“Would that be all right with you?” she asked.
“It would be fine,” I said, wondering why she’d asked Byron first. Keeping the question to myself.
Byron dropped us off at the back entrance on Eleventh Street.
We took an elevator to the top floor without having to go anywhere near the front desk.
“This is it,” I said, opening the door to the suite. I gave her one of the plastic slot-cards most hotels use instead of keys now. “This will get you in and out whenever you want.”
“Thank you.”
“That one’s empty,” I said, pointing toward the second bedroom. “Do you want me to—?”
“I will be fine,” she said, taking the suitcase from me and walking into the bedroom.
I went into my own bedroom, closed the door, undressed, and took a long, hot shower. After putting on fresh clothes, I went out to the living room. Gem was seated delicately on the couch, a laptop computer open at her side.
“If you want to tell me about it, I can tailor my work more properly,” she said.
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You want a note written in Russian, is that not correct?”
“Yes.”
“There are several translation programs,” she said, tilting her head in the direction of the laptop. “They are technically adequate, but they have no feel for the idiom. Anyone with high language skills or native fluency could detect the use of software. So, if you need authenticity, especially if you require a certain persona—an elderly lady, a young man, a business person, a …” She looked directly into my face, her eyes so dark I couldn’t see a separate pupil. “… a soldier—the programs would be inadequate. Certain kinds of … messages would n
ever be in a person’s handwriting. In such cases, a mechanical device of some kind would always be used.”
“I understand,” I said, wondering how many ransom notes she’d typed in her young life.
“Yes? Then you must decide how much you wish to tell me.”
“I have to make a call first.”
“Of course,” she said, curling her sleek legs under her and pulling the computer into her lap.
It took a few hours for the cell-phone relay to connect. Finally, I got Mama on the line.
“Mama, I need to know: how far can I trust this woman? You said you didn’t know her.”
“Not know her. She know me.”
Meaning: Gem knew her by more than mere reputation—she knew people who knew Mama personally. And what Mama was capable of.
“Is that enough?”
“She make call, earlier. Ask about you, why you call me ‘Mama.’ ”
“She called you?”
“No. Call friend. Pao.”
“She’s Cambodian, then?”
“Yes, Cambodian. All same with Pao. This girl, Gem, Pao call her ‘Angkat.’ Girl easy to find. Anytime. No problem. What you tell girl, she not tell anyone, okay?”
“Okay, Mama. Thanks.”
“Watch everyone,” she said. And hung up.
Pao was a Cambodian woman who ran a network like Mama’s. I’d only met her once, at the restaurant. I couldn’t begin to guess her age, any more than I could Mama’s, but I knew they went way back. Mama had told me “easy to find.” Meaning, if Gem double-crossed me, there’d be no place for her to hide … and she’d know it.
When I went back into the living room, she was still on the couch, as if I’d been gone minutes instead of hours. I sat down in the armchair and said, “Do you want to hear the story?”
She got up without using her hands, like smoke rising from a cigarette. She took a couple of steps toward me, then dropped to her knees, clasped her hands, looked up at me expectantly.
“There is a Russian couple,” I said, not looking directly at her. “Man and wife. From Chicago. They had a child. A son. He was abducted when he was around four years old. Disappeared without a trace. There never was a ransom note. No body was ever found. They never heard a thing. A lot of years passed.
“Then, one day, they were contacted by a man who said he had their boy. The man wanted to exchange him for money. A lot of money. The Russians, they were immigrants. Nervous. Didn’t trust the police. So they went to a gangster. A Russian, like them, in New York. He hired me to handle the transfer. I was there, with the money. A kid got out of the ransom truck. At least it looked like a kid—it was dark. But it was a trap. The kid shot me. So did some others. They ran away, thinking I was dead.
“It took a long time for me to heal. Then I went to see the man who set it up for me to make the transfer. He told me that the Russians had insisted on me for the job. So whoever was lying in wait, they knew I’d be the one coming. I’m who they wanted to kill. It was never about a ransom payment—it was a murder setup.
“The Russians don’t live in Chicago anymore. They have someone there who keeps up a front for them, but all their mail is forwarded here. To Vancouver, I mean.
“I need to talk to them. I don’t know what they look like. Or where they live—the Vancouver address is a mail drop. I figure, if I … if you … write them a letter, in Russian, I might be able to get them to come out in the open.”
She knelt there quietly, deep dark eyes on me, waiting. When she saw I was done, she blew out a long stream of breath, a cleansing act like yogis do. Then she asked, “You wish to find out who wanted to have you killed?”
“That’s not past tense. If they knew I was alive, they’d still want me dead. I have no way of knowing what they know. It cost major money to set this whole thing up. So they may have resources I don’t know about. Access to information.”
“Why were the arrangements so complicated?”
“I thought about that, too. And maybe they weren’t. Not all that much. I don’t live aboveground. I don’t have a home. Or an office. Or a hangout,” I said, dismissing Mama’s from that category—she wasn’t exactly open to the public, and I couldn’t think of a worse place to try and take me out. “If they wanted to hit me, they couldn’t just go out and look for me; they’d have to bring me to them.”
“Do you believe this gangster person was involved?”
“I don’t think so. For two reasons: One, I’d had to meet with him to get the money to deliver. So, if he was going to hit me, why not just do it right then? Two, there was a kidnapping. There was a missing kid. The Russians did run.…”
“How long?”
“I don’t … Oh, you mean, how long have they been running?”
“Yes.”
“About a year, as near as we can tell.”
“And the attempt on your life was … when?”
“Sure. I know. They were in the wind before it all went down. There’s pieces missing. Big pieces.”
“Would it not be better to ask this gangster person more questions?”
“He’s no longer available,” I told her. “I see.”
She went quiet then. So did I. Finally, she looked up at me from under her eyelashes, said, “Do you feel comfortable with me … like this?”
“You mean … talking about this stuff?”
“I mean with me on my knees,” she said softly.
I closed my eyes, reaching for the answer.
“Yes,” I finally told her.
“Because …?”
“It’s … I don’t know …”
“Safer?”
“Yes.”
“I understand,” she said, barely above a whisper.
We ate in the restaurant attached to the hotel. A nice place—clean and pretty quiet, considering the bar was right in the center of everything. Gem ate … carefully, I guess would be the word for it. Slowly, chewing every bite a great number of times. But steadily, too, never varying her pace. She finished a whole roasted chicken, right down to cleaning the bones with her small, very white teeth. And a large tossed salad. Four helpings of rolls. Three large glasses of apple juice. A plate of fried onion rings. A side of roasted potatoes.
I did most of the talking, and there wasn’t much of that. A thin rain slanted down against the plate glass of the window next to our table. All around us, activity. Between us, peaceful quiet.
The waiter came and went, raising his eyebrows a couple of times, silently comparing the diminishing pile of food in front of Gem with her slim frame. He opened his mouth to ask her where she put it, but I caught his eye and he closed right down.
Gem ordered a slab of double-fudge cake for dessert. I had the same, mine with twin scoops of vanilla ice cream on top. “Oh!” she said, when she saw my addition. Then she helped herself to one of the scoops.
When she was completely finished, Gem wet her napkin in a glass of water, then patted her mouth and lips. “You didn’t say anything,” she said.
“About what?”
“About me being such a pig.”
“A pig? You eat as neatly as a … I don’t know.”
“Neatly, yes. But a lot.”
“I understand.”
“You … understand? I do not understand.”
“I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”
“It is I who should apologize. I invite your comment, then I make you feel bad for it. Please tell me … what you meant.”
She returned my gaze. Serene, not confronting. But not backing away.
“There was a time when food was very precious to you,” I said.
“Yes. Do you know when that was?”
“Twenty, twenty-five years ago?”
“Yes. But you … guess, do you not? I mean, you do not know this for a fact; it is a surmise?”
“That’s right. The beast got loose in Cambodia in 1975, I think.”
“I was five years old,” she said, her voice soft and dreamy, b
ut her eyes stayed on mine, unblinking. “My father was a lawyer. You know what happened to anyone with an education? To anyone with any knowledge of the world outside the fields?”
“Pol Pot.”
“He was only one of them. A symbol. A horrible butcher, yes. But he did not kill three million people by himself. The Khmer Rouge were swollen with lust for blood. If the Vietnamese had not come, the killing would have gone on until there was no one left to die.”
“How did you—?”
“My parents knew they were coming. They knew there was no escape. My mother was a peasant born. She had friends in the fields. My parents handed me over. My new people tried to provide for me. It was … impossible.
“I … eventually lived with a guerrilla group near the Thai border. They purchased me from the people who had me. They were not freedom fighters; they were drug lords. When the leader discovered I could do sums very quickly, he got me books. About money. He was very interested in money.
“The books were mostly in English. Some were in Russian. There were Russian soldiers in the jungle. Independent outfits. It was as if they all knew governments would fall, but heroin would always have value. Like gold or diamonds. So they traded together. Made alliances. I became the translator for the leader. He could trust me, because I was a child, so I had no power. Even if I could have escaped, the jungle would have devoured me.
“I was very patient. One night I was able to leave. In Thailand, money is god. I had to be very careful. Anyone would hurt you. Anyone would take your money. But I did speak English. I found some students. American students. In the Peace Corps. One of them helped me buy papers. I came here. First to California. I had names of people. I found some of them. And then I found myself.”
“Why would you tell me this?” I asked her.
“To be fair. I know about you.”
“What could you know?”
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