“I don’t know,” she said. “Seems like you’re much more a liability than insurance. Say my mother shows up and you find out about the money and everything. There’s no way you send her back knowing all that. You sneak her out of the hotel and out of town in a cab or something — and with the money too. They end up losing everything.”
“Yeah, but if I sneak out your mother, I flush out the money. That’s when they swoop in. The money’s what they want, don’t you see? Sonny doesn’t give a shit about getting your mother back. They need me to disobey them.”
“Aren’t those all unnecessary risks? They’d know that. Sonny’s a poker player, after all. You gamble when the odds are in your favor, when the payoff is worth it. If the money’s all he cares about, bringing you here makes no sense. Victor and his brothers could have easily waited at the hotel for her themselves. Why add another potential liability if it’s not absolutely necessary?”
I was startled by how thoroughly she was thinking through all this. Part of me appreciated it. Part of me was annoyed.
“Sonny’s a poker player all right,” I said. “You think he won’t do anything to get back a hundred grand?”
She looked at me sharply. “You think gamblers care only about money?”
“This one shoved a woman down the stairs and tried to put a kitchen knife in my fucking chest. You know he once chopped off a guy’s hand with a cleaver?”
“Even Hitler had a pet dog, a woman he loved.”
“What exactly are we arguing about here?” I glanced at the time and felt like snatching the keys from her and driving the Jeep myself.
“If it’s just about the money, then Sonny would be smarter than this.” She spoke clearly, as if this was what she had intended to say all along. “So maybe it’s just about my mother. He might actually love her enough to take all these dumb unnecessary risks.”
“That’s some logic.”
“It’s not logical. That’s my point. He’s on tilt. He’s the guy at the poker table who’s been losing big in bad ways, and now he’s playing emotional. He’s making decisions he’d never normally make because all he cares about is getting back what he lost — and that’s not always money. What I’m saying is: this whole thing only makes sense if Sonny really does want you to bring my mother back to him.”
“And so what if he does? It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s got nothing to do with what we do next.”
“It does. It makes it easier to trust everything Victor said.”
“I trust no one,” I said, realizing at last what she’d been working toward — and what I had to do now. “I’ll stay,” I declared. “You go. I’ll make sure Sonny gets all his money back, and then he’ll have no reason to care about me or you or anyone.”
She was wielding her sudden silence with one hand gripping the steering wheel, staring past it like a sulking child.
“Come on now,” I told her. “Do I really need to tell you that taking the money is a horrible fucking idea?”
“It’s simple.”
“It’s insane.”
“Victor — the way he talked to me. It’s a Vietnamese thing. I trust him.”
“Doesn’t matter. I don’t trust the situation.”
“You wait it out at the hotel until tomorrow like Victor said. What can they possibly do to you there? I’ll take the money with me tonight and go to LA and wait somewhere for you, and when you get there, I’ll split it with you.”
“Jesus Christ, I don’t want the goddamn money. And have you forgotten I’m a police officer?”
“You told me you already did some bad shit here.”
“What, am I on some downward spiral? I’m not some good cop gone bad, kid.”
“I leave with nothing, then. I let these guys drive me out of town — these guys who think I died twenty years ago.”
“That’s exactly what you do. Look, even if Victor was telling us God’s truth, you take that money and you’re asking for them to find out about you. Remind yourself what they did to Happy — what Victor did. How the hell is he protecting you by telling you to skip town with stolen fucking money? Take me back to the hotel and let me handle this. And forget LA. It’s not far enough. Go to Oakland. A police buddy of mine will put you up. He won’t ask questions. Once I get home and this all blows over, we’ll figure out what to do next.”
The poker chip was now buried in her fist. Her eyes still averted, her voice calm again, she said, “You think it’s just about the money. And it is. Of course it is. But that money means something to me, Robert.”
Her using my name, like we were familiars, reminded me that we had only met three hours ago. She had seemed fully American to me, but what I heard now was that melodramatic tone that immigrants can’t help sometimes, the Vietnamese especially, like a lament for their old country haunting the back of their throat. In her mother’s story, she saw more than just her own ghostly visions, she saw her own loneliness too, her mother’s true legacy.
I swallowed and tried my best not to sound condescending: “I get that. I do. But you can’t be sentimental about this.”
She was shaking her head slowly. “No, you don’t get it. Stealing that money. . it’s the only thing she’s ever done for me. And she owes me, goddamn it. For twenty years, she’s owed me. If I don’t go get it and that asshole gets it all back, then everything that’s happened the last two months, everything I found out today — it won’t mean anything. It’ll be like the last twenty years all over again, except now I’ll know exactly what I’ve lost.”
For once, I had no response. It was like being full and arguing the ethics of stealing food with someone dying of hunger.
She said, “I’m going back to that hotel room and hauling that suitcase out of Vegas with me. You can help me or not, but I’m doing it.”
She turned on the ignition and the Jeep roared to life, trembling violently. She turned to me and her expression was part wary kindness, part obstinate bravado, like she was both asking me to help her and telling me to fuck off.
I sat back in my seat and sighed. “Let’s go get your stuff first.”
Without another word, she thrust the Jeep in gear and we lumbered out of the parking lot. But then she braked at the mouth of the exit, despite the road being clear. She sat there gripping the steering wheel, staring up the road as the blinker flashed the other direction.
“What is it now?” I said.
She raised her voice above the engine. “Happy. She knows I exist.”
“Don’t worry. She took a beating to protect you. If she didn’t tell them then, she’ll never tell them.”
“But what else might she know about my mother? Where she’s going. What else she’s done — or might do. We don’t even know if she’s left town yet. We’re just assuming she has.”
“Make up your mind, girl. You want the money, don’t you? Then let me worry about everything else.”
“You want to know too. You’re dying to know. We could ask Happy.”
“I told you — I don’t know where she lives or even what her number is.”
“But I know where she works. She was wearing a casino uniform that afternoon.” Mai pointed up the road at the Stratosphere. “There’s a chance she could be there right now.”
I looked at the tower, its neon-red antennae piercing the thick clouds. I was shaking my head, but I wasn’t sure at what.
“What if she ends up disappearing too?” Mai persisted. “This might be our only chance to talk to her. You want to risk losing your only chance to find out the rest of the story?”