Burning Moon

by Richard Barre

  “He was a fine boy, Jimmy, smart and clever,” she said when he’d gone through it or tried to, not sure how much was sinking in about the two CD cases. “Always he was making his sister laugh.”

  Wil slipped the cases back in his pocket. He said, “I have a question about your future daughter-in-law. Did you welcome her?”

  Li Tien paused. “How does any mother feel? At first, we did not: Wen was so different than our hopes for Jimmy. But with the baby, what could we say? Later, we came to like her. Jimmy said she loved poetry, that she knew the ca dao folk poems and sang them for him.”

  They sat silent a moment.

  “She was working on her own poems, he told us, but we never offered to sit for them. Such is our loss.”

  “Did Jimmy tell you where she came from, and how?”

  “Despite our curiosity, we talked little of those things.”

  “What about Wen’s mother?”

  Li sat as though framing the thought. Then, “She came here with Wen, we knew that much. But I never felt Nguyen Diem was honest with us. She distrusted us, I believe.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “We were Vietnamese, she was part Chinese,” Li said. “As in our homeland, it was enough to divide us.”

  “So you never learned the circumstances of their arrival?”

  “Only that to get here she gave up all of what her husband left her, and still it wasn’t enough. Certainly she had no money beyond what Jimmy and Wen could provide. No skills to speak of.”

  Wil said, “Have you heard from her since last year?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  Curled at her feet, Matt gave a little sigh. The bamboo rustled in a breeze. The phone rang. Li rose, and in a moment she was back with their portable, handing it to him.

  “Hardesty,” Wil answered, raising the antenna.

  “Figured you might be there,” Frank Lin’s voice said. “Can you talk?”

  “Depends…what’s up?”

  “I’m at the jail,” Lin said. “I’ve been trying to raise that shyster lawyer of theirs, the activist? No luck.”

  “Raymond Ky? What for?”

  There was a pause; then, from Lin, “Just what we needed, three of our finest trapped Vinh Tien in the shower. He whaled on one, but the others beat the crap out of him. He’s in the infirmary, check that, Valley Hospital. Possible skull fracture, among other things.”

  Matt stirred again. Li looked at him. The herons dripped water. A gust momentarily tossed the bamboo.

  “Wil? You there?”

  “On the patio having tea, thank you.”

  The line was quiet. Then, “You going to tell her or should I?”

  ***

  He was in a private room with a uniformed deputy outside when Li and Wil entered, Frank Lin having volunteered to have Mia picked up and transported there. Vinh’s face was chalk; his eyes were closed, the sockets swollen. His nose was packed with bloody cotton and stitches ran from behind one ear into a shaved area in his scalp. Another cut running eyebrow to forehead had a bandage over it. A tube ran solution to a vein while a nurse transferred his vital signs onto a clipboard. In one motion Li took the chair beside the bed, took his hand in hers.

  Vinh’s eyes opened briefly, then closed; as the nurse left, a young doctor hustled in with a manila file folder. “I’m sorry,” he told them. “But I really must insist.”

  “Doctor?” Wil said, motioning him aside.

  “What is it?…”

  “I go, Mrs. Tien stays. Non-negotiable.”

  “This man has sustained severe trauma—you do get that?”

  “Understood. Thank you.”

  Outside the blinds, traffic pulsed through an intersection; morning sun glinted off cars moving on the recently reopened San Marcos Pass.

  The doctor said, “I know you. You’re the one who’s been on television.”

  “Unfortunately.”

  He clutched the file to his chest. “For your information, my uncle died in that godforsaken war. And I’ll be taking this up with my superiors.”

  When the door had shut, Vinh raised his other hand a few inches. “Hang on,” Wil said, taking it. “We’re getting close.”

  He was in the waiting room when Frank Lin entered with Mia. “Where is he, where’s my dad?” she said, face flushed, eyes searching before coming back. “I have to see him.”

  “He’s with your mom,” Wil told her.

  “And he’s going be all right?…”

  “They have every reason to think so,” Lin said.

  She turned on him. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “That he’s strong and resilient, that a doctor will be updating us soon. He’s in good hands.”

  She said, “He was in your jail, your custody. How could you let this happen to him?”

  “We’re looking into it, believe me.”

  “You’re looking into it. How pathetic is that?” A shade this side of losing it. “Get away from me and my family.”

  “Mia,” Wil said, “I have some—”

  “Nothing, as usual. Why don’t you go play beach volleyball? At least be useful.”

  “Maybe you should sit down, Mia.”

  “The big whoop hero, hoping I’d fall all over him from the time he showed up at our house. Derek was right. You are an asshole.”

  “How about we all sit down,” Wil said. “I’ll get some tea.”

  “Tea should do it, all right. Leave me alone!” Then, as if the valve in the pressure cooker had blown itself out, “Haven’t you done enough already?”

  For a moment, they just looked at each other. Then she looked away and he and Lin left for the parking lot.

  Getting into his black-and-white, Lin said, “Much as I hate it, she has a point about the jail. If I find out my guys turned their backs, it’ll be the last time they do something like that.”

  Wil said, “Ever wonder where they hide the crystal balls when you need one?”

  “Only about every two minutes.”

  Lin started the engine, gunned it, and chirped out of the lot.

  62

  Wil wasn’t due to meet Denny till three, so he stopped at Peet’s, then drove to Lisa’s office. She was in a meeting, the receptionist said, due out, but no guarantees. He left a message, then went down to the courtyard, took a seat in the shade of the metal umbrella. He was sipping coffee and listening to the fountain when he heard her footsteps and, “Hey, sailor, what brings you downtown?” Faded navy skirt and loose lavender top, pin in the shape of a hand he’d bought her at the Museum of Art gift shop—a whimsical expressive enameled thing that always seemed to elicit comments.

  “Coffeeman,” he said, handing her hers. “He delivers.”

  “You any relation to Pizzaman?”

  “Fewer anchovies.”

  She took a sip from it. “Thanks. Sorry to keep you waiting out here. A very long audit.”

  “How you feeling?”

  She shrugged. “My appetite’s better, I think.”

  “Anything we should infer from that?”

  “Look, I appreciate it, I do. But—”

  “Get a life?”

  “You already have a life.”

  He sipped coffee.

  “Wil, having this baby at my age isn’t a decision you just make.”

  “It isn’t what I meant, either.”

  “Sorry, it’s been a swell day so far.” Pause. “Want to know what Brandon said when I finally pinned him down? Two words going out the door: ‘Whatever and Babe.’”

  Wil counted down from ten, chased it with coffee..

  “Reassuring, huh?” she added. “At least I know where you stand.”

  “That’s what I came to clarify, Leese. If you’ll hear me out.”

  She looked at him, started to speak.

  “No—wait,” he said. “If you decide having it isn’t for you, I’ll back you up. If you decide in favor, we’ll make it work. Period and somehow. The point is you wouldn’t be
going it alone.”

  For a long moment, she was silent, hands clasped under her chin. Then she said, “Another man’s child.”

  “Your child, my commitment. So stated.”

  “To what purpose, Wil? Some dream you want to reinsert yourself into? Because it doesn’t work that way. And if you’re thinking it’s your duty somehow, don’t.”

  “All right. But how does it work, Leese? By turning away from a friend who wants to help?”

  Time passed, the fountain filling the gap, sun backlighting the spray. She ran a hand through her hair.

  “It wouldn’t be Devin back, Wil. Nowhere close.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “Are you?” she said. “Really?”

  “The past is the past, Leese. It won’t come back.”

  “This from you…”

  “This from me.”

  “And what would this arrangement look like?”

  “Days on, days off,” he said, “I don’t know. We’d have to talk about it. Hell, we did it once.”

  “We’re not the same two people, Wil, not in miles or years. What about Kari Thayer?”

  “This is bigger,” he said. Sounding like a doofus to himself.

  “What?” she said. “You two have a falling out or something?”

  His fingers drummed the table.

  She said, “I should be getting back. Thanks for the coffee and the try, Wil.”

  “Wait a minute, Leese. Bigger meaning that if Kari and I were or weren’t, this would come before.”

  “All right,” she said, “let’s call it that. What if it meant laying off what you were doing? Your work?”

  The still-molten core of it.

  “Could be I need another yardstick.”

  “Could be?” she said. “I know you, remember?”

  “And I know you. If that’s what it took, yes.”

  Her eyes searched his face. “Don’t take this wrong, but you haven’t been drinking, have you?”

  “Nope. Six days and counting. Meetings, if it comes to it.”

  For a while they just sat, the city’s hum neither distant nor near. Finally she said, “How’s the Tien thing progressing? Still a mess?”

  “Coming to a head,” he answered. “One way or the other.”

  “Illigitimi non carborundum: Don’t let the bastards grind you. You’re too good not to make it work.”

  “Nice thing to say, Leese. Thanks.”

  “I never had a quarrel with how you did anything, Wil, just what. And I’ll think about what you said. I promise.”

  As they stood to get back, Lisa the third floor northeast, Wil to map out the rest with Denny, she said, “Thanks for thinking about it.”

  “It’s going to be all right, Leese. You’ll see.”

  “Wil?” Pausing as he turned back. “Whatever it is you’re into, be careful, will you?”

  “Whatever it is I am, I’ll do that.”

  63

  The Queen of the Missions sat midway up the rise beginning to get serious about the Santa Ynez mountains. Copied from a pre-Christian book on Roman architecture, its pink towers awaited the Angelus, its facade yet another snap of the camera. Yet on weekdays, the mission and grounds were largely empty, Wil knew, its inner gardens a sanctuary of copa de oro and agave, the occasional brown-robed padre tending to duties or shorts-clad tourist consulting the self-guided tour.

  He’d pulled into a parking space off the fountain and was casting for Denny’s Explorer, spotting it finally in the far lot, when his phone sounded.

  “And where are we today, pray tell?” FBI Special Agent Al Vega.

  “Close, but no cigar,” Wil answered him. “You get wind of the brouhaha up here involving ATF? Or not, according to them?”

  “Anywhere you are is a brouhaha,” Vega said, and before Wil could respond, “That name you left with my secretary, Maccafee? Since we’d already nailed our quota of bad guys, I went ahead and ran him.”

  Wil watched a man lining up a picture of his wife and two children on the mission steps. “Ex-CIA,” he said to Vega. “Three tours in Nam, Air America, Golden Triangle. The full monte.”

  There was a pause. “Somebody at the next urinal just happen to lean over and whisper in your ear?”

  “Gang cop named Leong I met in San Francisco. Quite a mover.”

  Vega said, “Then yes to all the above. But what struck me was why our ATF friends booted him. Such as I could glean from their meager notes on it.”

  “That’s why you get the big bucks, Al.”

  “Apparently your guy was taking money from not just both sides but anyone who had it. Downright embarrassing. Even some question he might have gotten his partner killed.”

  The family hustled back to their car and drove away; next up, the wharf: wife and kids with town and mountains. “The partner being one E. Russell Lorenz.”

  “What is this, Jeopardy?” Vega groused. “You going to tell me you know what the E stands for, too?”

  “Email. All sorts of them now.”

  “Emmett, wiseass. Not that it went anywhere. Nobody wanted to look bad.”

  “With Maccafee gone before they could nail him. Right?”

  “If he wasn’t offered the option first to avoid a stink,” Vega said. And after a muffled Be there in five, “Anything else you need from your government? Wash your car on Saturdays?”

  “Thanks, Al. And if it breaks the way I hope, you’ll be hearing from me.”

  “Yeah, I was afraid of that,” he said before hanging up.

  Wil skirted the fountain, up the steps to the gift shop and museum. Purchasing a ticket for the tour, he walked through the Spartan-living-quarters exhibits and out to the garden where a couple strolled, a brown-robed acolyte worked a flowerbed.

  No Denny.

  Wil poked his head into the restored church with its decorated beams and familiar smell of incense, stations-of-the-cross and sanctuary lamp, and saw him. He was by a statue of the Virgin, votive candles flickering in their red glass containers at her feet.

  Crossing to that side, Wil slid into the pew beside him.

  “You think Father Serra would approve?” Denny whispered. “Under the circumstances, I mean?”

  “Any and all,” Wil whispered back.

  “Spoken like a true altar boy. If memory serves.”

  “It does. Go outside and talk?”

  “I suppose it’s more appropriate.”

  Wil slid out his side, looked back. “After you, my son.”

  “Just so the door doesn’t land on me.”

  They exited, found a bench shaded by pepper trees near the old graveyard with its skull and crossbones above the gate. Oleander and trumpet vine cresting the adobe wall.

  “All right, here’s the deal,” Denny said. “The girl’s mother wasn’t there. Neither was the other woman you described. Just two old people and some kids running them ragged around a sandpile. Even in the language they knew nothing.”

  “Damn. That’s it?”

  “Not quite. Cruising around, I think I saw the blond who dropped the CD on you. Miss Sun and Fun on the triplex balcony?”

  “Amber,” Wil told him. “Your basic struggling student.”

  “Struggling to keep her top on. Is it me, or are girls different than when we were in school? What’s the word I’m looking for?…”

  “Earlier blooming might work.”

  “Hardly seems fair, does it?”

  One of the Franciscans passed in a ball cap reading Mission Santa Barbara; after they’d exchanged nods and he’d left via the gate, Wil said, “Are you sure about throwing in on this? Leong isn’t letting any moss grow looking for you. He was clear on that.”

  “Covered ground, Mojo. Any idea how you want to play it from here?”

  Wil looked up into the feathery pale-green. “Before anything, we need to alert whoever’s still around that we have what they want.”

  “Oh, they’re around,” Denny said. “Waiting to see how this thing
with your guy Tien shakes out. Or if anybody happens to stumble onto Luc’s code word. The feds, for instance.”

  “My thought, too. What they want is the disk. Or what we make them think is the disk.”

  Denny leaned forward. “Fill me in about that.” Tapping his fingers as if in prayer. “Luc’s hard drive can’t be accessed why?”

  “His erasure system,” Wil said. “My friend at the sheriff’s said it was unsalvageable.”

  Nod, Denny’s eyes drifting to the skull and crossbones. “Something else I’m not too sure about, Mojo.”

  “That being?”

  “That being the reason you’re still in it.”

  Wil blew a breath. “I’d thought it was clear. One, I need to prove somebody other than Vinh killed his brother. Two, I need to find out what happened to Jimmy and Wen.”

  “I didn’t mean what, I get that,” Denny said. “I mean given who you’re playing games with, why.”

  “Not this again,” Wil said.

  “How valuable would I be if I didn’t at least try?”

  “Leave it at a promise I made.”

  “Ah. Save the client or die trying.”

  Wil watched the birds darting in the oleander. “It’s what I do, Den. In a sense it’s what I am. Depending on who you talk to, it may be all I am.”

  “I take it back,” Denny said, shaking his head. “Save the client and die trying.”

  64

  They settled on Denny leaving to take care of business at a north county gun dealer’s, Wil calling the television station where Gail Velarde now worked. After numerous rings, he was about to punch off and take his chances driving there, when she picked up.

  “Velarde.” Short, sharp, reporterish.

  “Gail, it’s Wil Hardesty.”

  “The recollection’s vague,” she said. “Who?”

  “I need a favor,” he told her. “A message I need delivered.”

  “Giving back to the community: Why didn’t I think of that?”