Unfit to Practice

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  WELCOME CENTER read the wooden plaque on the wall of a small bungalow in the old part of town. Letters in a strange and beautiful alphabet just underneath must have said the same thing to those in the know. Paul pulled into the parking lot behind the building.

  Inside a fan circulated air. Greenery filled the windows. Hardwood floors and a few straight-backed chairs left the front room austere. In the larger room beyond, Paul saw a large group of preschoolers sitting on the rug, singing a ditty to their teacher, a young lady playing the piano.

  “Well, that’s sure not Dr. Mai,” Wish said, disappointed.

  Paul noticed a door marked Kitchen and poked his head inside. A scanty-haired elderly man who met Nina’s description of Dr. Mai worked at the sink, washing a huge aluminum kettle, rubber gloves on his hands and a dishtowel around his waist. When he saw Paul and Wish, he dropped the kettle, which bounced onto the linoleum, and looked around wildly for an escape as if confronted by thugs armed with AK-47s. Clearly, he had been through a war. Paul held up his hands, showing his palms in the universal sign that he came in peace. Then he reached into his pocket and presented the old fellow his P.I. card, telling him that Nina Reilly had sent him.

  Dr. Mai sagged in relief, catching hold of the sink edge. “Just a moment,” he said, and straightened up. He took off the apron and gloves, hanging them neatly over the sink. “She has regretted her decision? You have the check?”

  “She has a few questions first.”

  “No check?” he mumbled to himself, shaking his head as if in disbelief. “After all this, no check. Why come here, then?”

  “To find out about the family.”

  “She doesn’t need Kao. She has the power of-”

  “She’s stubborn that way.”

  Mai shook his head. “Kao is safe,” he said. “They are all safe.”

  Wish picked up the pan and carefully placed it in the dish drainer. Paul leaned against the wall, put his hands in his pockets, and said, “You know, sometimes when people come to this country it doesn’t go smoothly. Sometimes they open up businesses that bad people want a piece of. Sometimes they still owe money to the agents who brought them here. Is something like that going on here?”

  “No, no,” Dr. Mai said. “It’s nothing like that.”

  Hmm. The old guy dismissed the idea so easily, it had the ring of truth. Paul had developed his own private working theory, sure the urgent need for the settlement money came from a shakedown gone bad. It had crossed Paul’s mind that Kao had shot one of the enforcement boys and had his store burned down in retaliation.

  Then again, maybe not.

  “What are you cooking?” Wish asked Mai.

  “Vegetable stew,” Mai answered shortly, while Paul wondered how to get the information he needed.

  Wish nodded. “Want some help with the chopping?” When the old man didn’t say no, Wish washed his hands and picked up the knife and skinned an eggplant with expertise Paul had never suspected he had. Also watching, Mai appeared to relax. “Your mother must be a good cook,” he said to Wish.

  “My dad taught me. You should taste my dad’s chili. My dad, he used to run a store on the Indian reservation where he grew up. Sold everything you can think of, fishing gear-he lived by Pyramid Lake, you ever hear of it?-canned food, toilet paper.” Wish finished the eggplant and took a big yellow onion and had the skin off it in half a second. Chopping rapidly, he added, “He never could make a living off it, though. He went into truck driving after that. Gets me thinking about Mr. Vang. I know he doesn’t want to see us, but maybe Mr. Vang doesn’t know Nina’s awfully worried. If only we could tell her he’s all right.”

  Dr. Mai seemed to be mulling this over. Paul decided to lie low and see if Wish could take this situation somewhere.

  “You want me to put some water in the kettle?” Wish asked. Mai went over and started doing that. He was thinking, and Paul let him think. Mai let Wish put the heavy kettle on the stove, turn on the heat, and dump in salt. He picked up a potato peeler and handed it to Wish.

  “I’m tired,” he said.

  “Sure.” Wish started peeling potatoes into the garbage can.

  Mai pulled out a step stool and sat down slowly. “Kao deserves peace. He has suffered gravely. I have stayed with him all this time, through the surgeries and the fear.”

  “We want to help him,” Paul said.

  “Kao Vang knew the men who robbed his store.”

  Paul grabbed the word men and filed it. The police reports had only mentioned one robber, Song Thoj, the man Kao shot during the second robbery attempt.

  “What really happened, Dr. Mai?” Paul said. Mai shook his head with a look that said, next you’ll be asking me to describe the hereafter.

  “Will she be satisfied if I take you to talk to Kao right now?” Mai asked. “Will she stop this stubbornness, this misguided attempt to help?”

  “If he personally directs us to give him the check.”

  “All right. If we must do it this way. I have to finish the lunch. Come back in an hour.” He didn’t invite them to lunch, but that was fine, Paul wasn’t into vegetable stew, he was into easing Nina’s mind about this family so he could run down other leads on the lost files.

  “It’s a deal,” Paul said.

  He and Wish went outside to sit in the car, which by now had surpassed the temperature of Mercury’s sunny side. The hood had been pocked by hail the night before. That would cost a pretty penny to fix. He turned the engine on and got the AC blowing.

  “Nice job softening him up,” he said.

  Wish, leaning back with his eyes closed, said, “Huh?”

  “The story. About your dad and his store. That worked.”

  “Well, my dad did have a store. But I did lie some.”

  “Which part?”

  “Well, about him becoming a truck driver. What happened was, he fell in love with another lady-”

  “You mean, besides your mother?”

  “That’s what I mean-and then they took off. My mom tried to run the business but she couldn’t keep it going. It reminded her too much of him.”

  “Well, I’ll be.” Paul knew Sandy had divorced Wish’s father, Joseph, years earlier, and remarried him only the year before. He had never heard the details.

  “I was still pretty young,” Wish said. He reached into his pocket, took out an apple, and bit a huge chunk out of it.

  “Damn, I’m hungry,” Paul said. Wish offered him the other side of the apple but Paul shook his head. He checked his watch, a Swiss Army Chronograph he had found on eBay. “We’re going to have to wait on lunch. I don’t want Dr. Mai to change his mind and leave. Did you catch what he said? He mentioned more than one man involved in the robberies.”

  “So-one is still alive!”

  “And he’s a good prospect for the man Kao’s hiding from,” Paul said. “We don’t have much in the police reports, but one thing we do have, the last known address of Song Thoj.” He consulted his notes. “He lived near the Chaffee Zoological Gardens on Palm. The Hmong have a tight community. The other bad guy might live there himself.”

  “Do you want to go there after?”

  “Maybe we won’t have to. Maybe Kao will be fine, and maybe we’ll see him and go home and Nina will get him his check.”

  “Okay. So we wait for Dr. Mai. So I was saying how my mom had a broken heart.”

  “I always thought she did. I’m glad the story has a happy ending. She and Joseph found each other again.”

  “Yeah, they’re happy,” Wish said. “It’s a love story.”

  Paul leaned back and dozed. He was trying to decide who could play the lead part in the movie of Sandy’s life. Gertrude Stein would be good, but she was long gone. He thought of the Eskimo receptionist he had seen in recent reruns of the TV series Northern Exposure, who might even have hit the forty-something mark by now. Perfect.

  His thoughts moved on to Nina, another love story, this one belonging to him. The question was McIntyre. W
ould he actually make a play for her again? Would she be interested? Jack had always liked women, many women, though Paul had enough collegial loyalty never to mention that to Nina.

  Nina could never choose him over Paul. Jack was built like a kiln and as cynical as a bookie. However, she had in fact married Jack once, he couldn’t imagine why. The clear thing to do right now was to take care of her problems, so Jack could recede back into her past where he belonged.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t leave Dr. Mai alone,” Wish said. “Somebody might try to kill him while we’re sitting out here. Aren’t you nervous?”

  “Nobody tried to kill him before we got here and nobody’s going to try now,” Paul said. “He’s not a target, he’s a go-between. He just needs to finish his cooking.”

  “But-”

  “It’s not always gonna be excitement and broken windows and getaways. It’s mostly steaming in a hot car, starving.”

  But hyper as a greyhound right before the rabbit runs, Wish pointed. “Ah ha!” he said, which made Paul jerk upright.

  “What? What’s happening?”

  “He’s coming.”

  The elderly man in shirtsleeves and shiny pants right off the Salvation Army rack exited, holding tight to the rail as he came carefully down the steps. Nothing much was happening, it was just a hot, quiet afternoon in a sleepy town, but Paul felt a thrill, because this particular old man knew something Paul didn’t know. Paul started to explain that to Wish, then thought, let the kid figure it out for himself.

  That thrill kept Paul in the business, not the tension and aggression and the rush of adrenaline, but the pursuit, the persistent uncovering of the facts, the coaxing away of denials and obstacles, the buttons slowly unbuttoned, the murmured confessions, and finally, the moment of eye-widening, naked, sexy truth. He eyed Dr. Mai and thought, now we get down to it.

  Wish climbed into the backseat and Dr. Mai, smelling comfortingly of onions, sat next to Paul as they turned onto the shaded street. Mai’s face was thin and bony, the skin not much wrinkled. He led with a long, yellow-nailed finger to the freeway on-ramp, and they moved north on the highway. At the off-ramp he pointed again, and they moved onto the boulevard of used-car lots and strip malls. Paul didn’t disturb the silence. He didn’t want to accidentally offend, even though the KFCs and Burger Kings they were passing made him want to moan with hunger.

  “Here.” They turned onto a residential street and Paul stopped while a school bus let off some kids. They scurried in all directions, heavy backpacks flopping. Following the finger of fate one more time, Paul stopped in a driveway halfway down the block at a tract house just like the rest. No car rested in the driveway; the garage door presented a blank facade. Dry grass and a couple of thirsty-looking bushes flanked the front porch. Paul assumed they were expected.

  The door opened. A lovely young girl stood there with long black hair, big almond long-lashed eyes, and a pair of brown legs with just that turn of the flesh, that absolutely perfect curve of calf and thigh that Paul had dreamed of every night from the age of thirteen to the age of eighteen. These firm, luscious legs thrust beyond ragged cutoffs, descending into sockless athletic shoes.

  “Uncle Mai,” she said, and pulled the door open, giving Paul and Wish hardly a glance, her mind clearly somewhere else.

  “This is Yang.” Mai slipped off his shoes before he went in, which caused a delay as Wish’s hiking boots took awhile to unlace and pull off. The girl disappeared and they finally entered a barren living room furnished primarily with a low, round table and big patterned seat cushions. In the window alcove Paul noticed a red cabinet with a mirror and a Buddha statue draped with white scarves and flowers. White votive candles burned and the room smelled of incense.

  “Kao!” Dr. Mai called. “Kao!” He said a few more words in his language, the warning tone unmistakable.

  A small Hmong man came into the room, wearing shorts and a black T-shirt. He paused in front of Paul, then stuck out a hand.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “As you can see, he’s fine,” Dr. Mai said.

  Kao Vang did look fine, perfectly healthy, a sheen of light sweat over his scarred face, no signs of torture or duress, no cameras in the corners that Paul could see, no shadowy figures lurking in the kitchen. But tension entered the room with him.

  “Can we sit down?” Paul said. He pulled up a pillow and found it wasn’t so bad so long as he could lean his elbows on the table. “You know who I am?”

  “I explained to him,” Dr. Mai said.

  “He said ‘hi’ just then. He doesn’t speak English?”

  “Only some. I will translate.”

  “Okay. How are you, Mr. Vang?”

  “He says ‘I am fine.’” As if to illustrate how fine he was, Vang pulled out a pack of Indonesian cigarettes and lit one, looking away from Paul. A moody customer, Paul decided, and not a happy one.

  “How is your wife?”

  He stiffened. He had understood that.

  “Also fine.”

  “Is she here?”

  “She is working so the family can eat while waiting for the check.”

  “Where does she work?”

  “Not far away.”

  “I see that another young lady is staying here, too.”

  A few sentences went back and forth.

  “Yang is their oldest child. Their son Boun is twelve.”

  “Nina hasn’t met Yang yet, has she?”

  “Yang is busy with school.” Well, she ain’t in school right now, Paul said to himself. “How old is she?”

  “Fifteen. Why do you ask about her?”

  “No particular reason. Well, Mr. Vang, thank you for seeing me today. We can clear up this problem once and for all.”

  “There is no problem,” Dr. Mai said, although Vang hadn’t spoken.

  “Is there any special reason why you can’t come up to Tahoe to go to the bank with Nina and get your check?” Paul said. The Hmong began talking and gesticulating. Kao and Dr. Mai didn’t seem exactly mad at each other, but there was some disagreement.

  Wish got up and went over to the altar to examine the statue. He started edging toward the hall door, which was ajar. Yang’s listening to every word, Paul thought. An itch rode up his back to his neck and his scalp, and he thought, she’s part of this somehow.

  Wish pushed at the door. It opened. No one there now.

  Dr. Mai said, “Kao has to stay here right now-”

  “Why?”

  “This isn’t the Communists. You don’t get to know everything. Kao is very disturbed that he hired this woman lawyer who is keeping his money from him for no reason. Now. The money is urgently needed. Kao is returning to Laos. If I must, I will return to Lake Tahoe to receive it. Kao asks you to call your boss and ask her to deliver the check tonight or at latest tomorrow.”

  Paul thought this over. “Let me go outside and make a call to her.”

  “Yes. Get your instructions.”

  “I have to explain a couple of things to her when I call.”

  Dr. Mai’s eyes rolled upward.

  “This second robber, the one that got away. Has he threatened Mr. Vang?”

  “Call your boss! Get the check!” Kao yelled. He had been frustrated into using English. “I will call the police on her! She is a thief!” He held his jaw, moved it back and forth, grimaced. “Look at me! Look what that money is for! It’s my money!” He lapsed back into Hmong.

  In the back room, Paul heard a sound. Crying.

  “All right, I’ll go out and call.” He motioned to Wish and they walked out into the blazing sun. Paul stood under the garage overhang, far enough away from the house that he wouldn’t be heard, and called Nina.

  “Honey, this guy Kao is very annoyed,” he told her. “Nobody’s beating on him. Nobody’s got a gun on him.”

  “Where’s his wife?”

  “He claims she’s working. I could check that out. I could keep harassing this guy, checking everything he says. But you k
now, I’m not getting the feeling that the wife has been kidnapped. This is not a straightforward extortion. It’s something, but I don’t know what. And the thing is, they don’t want us involved. We could be making things worse. It’s his money, right?”

  He heard Nina sigh. “If he turns that money over to someone who is pressuring him, Paul-it’s his family’s future. It’s the difference between extreme poverty and college for their kids, a farm wherever they’re going-”

  “At some point you have to do what he says,” Paul said. “I think we have to give him the check. Kao himself is asking for the money, that’s clear. Still, there’s the young girl. She’s a beautiful kid, Nina, you should see her. She was crying in the bedroom. I got one of those flashes you always talk about. That she is involved.”

  “Where’s his son?”

  “At school, I think.”

  “Wonder why I never met his daughter. They brought their son to my office,” Nina said, mule-like, still balking at letting the money go.

  “By the way, there was more than one robber,” Paul went on. “Mai let that slip.”

  “So Kao lied to the police. Why would he do that?”

  “No idea.”

  “Someone dangerous is still out there and the police don’t know about it.”

  “I would say very simply that Kao wants the money to return to Laos,” he said, “maybe because of the second guy. But that isn’t all of it. This young girl-”

  He almost heard the decision being made during a portentous silence on the line.

  “I’m not going to do it yet, Paul. I’ve got it deposited in my trust account, but I’m not going to write out the check yet.”

  “So how do I wrap this thing for you? Make you feel like writing the check? What do I tell this angry client?”