Julie came across the littered floor, her face tight, eyes quick and angry. She sat beside him. “They got away from you?”
“They got away.”
“Did you get close enough to see them?”
“Someone at the plaza must have. Not us.”
Julie lit a cigarette. They watched the police photographer snapping away at the body on stage.
“General Dien shot him,” Frye said.
“I was under a table.”
“He must be seventy years old.”
“Seventy-six. I should never let gang people in here. This is what happens. In Saigon I was a singer. I open this cabaret so I can have music, but I get guns instead.”
Julie rose when a cop waved her over. Her eyes were hard and dark as she looked down at Frye. “She will be all right. No one would hurt Li.”
Just one night with her in my bed.
Frye stood and worked his way to the back of the room. Their table was flipped over, chairs scattered outward. A pair of sunglasses lay twisted amidst the napkins and stir sticks. The tape recorder was crushed. Had they planned on coming back?
He touched the recorder with his toe, and behind him someone yelled. “Hey!” Frye turned: it was the big-bellied sergeant, arms swinging as he approached.
“Get the hell out of there.”
Frye stood, frozen like a rabbit in a headlight. Authority figures were never his specialty.
The sergeant’s face was now in his own. “Get back to that chair and sit there until Detective Minh wants you. Otherwise, out.”
“Whatever.”
“ ‘Whatever’ don’t cut it. In the chair.”
He sat down next to Crawley, put his face in his hands, and tried to think. His ears rang from the shots. The air still smelled of gunpowder. Julie brought him a cup of Vietnamese coffee — strong, black, and sweet.
Burke Parsons walked up a moment later, adjusting his cowboy hat. He shook his head, took a breath, but said nothing. At first he seemed nervous, but a closer look showed Frye that Burke was close to furious. “People don’t mess with my friends. I told Bennett and I’ll tell you too. You need something, call me. Anything you need. Anything.” He swallowed hard, appeared ready to say something else, but didn’t. He gave Frye a fierce look, then turned and strode toward the door.
Frye wandered over to the stage and watched the crime scene investigator doing his ballistics. He knew his face from an interview a year ago, but the name wasn’t attached. Three feet away lay the body. They’d taken off the gunman’s mask. He was a small Asian man with a slick of blood leaking from his head and a look of mild surprise in his eyes. He stared up at the stage lights.
The investigator pulled a roll of string from his case and looked at Frye. “You wrote that crime lab article for the Ledger, didn’t you?”
“Sure did. Chuck Frye.”
“I’m Duncan. Good job. It helped our budget.” The CSI pointed toward Bennett. “Your brother?”
“Right.”
Frye watched as Duncan pushed a tack into the floor near the dead man’s head, then tied the string and walked off ten steps to a table. He looked at Frye. “Forty feet away and he gets it in the skull with a .22. Not his lucky day.”
“More like fifty. The general was next table over.”
Duncan stepped around a chair, string held high, and brought it down to where Frye was pointing. He tacked it down, along with a yellow tape measure.
“Dien leave?” Frye asked. “I didn’t see him giving a statement.”
“He took off. We had three people say he was the one who fired. ‘Course the Viets change their minds about every five minutes. Worst witnesses in the world. You see him shoot?”
“Yeah. One shot.”
Duncan paced back to the stage, trailing the tape.
“Then what?”
“This one stood right there and sprayed the floor.”
“Well, if you want to look on the bright side, there was a miracle here tonight. A couple of hundred rounds fired in a place full of people, and the only one hit is a bad guy.”
“What’s that tell you?”
“That they were more into shock value than slaughter.”
Frye saw in his mind that second — that one blessed second — in which a gunman seemed to have singled out Bennett, but held his fire. “Me too. But I won’t quote you on that.”
“Don’t, I’m just the CSI.” Duncan eyeballed the tape, then looked at Frye. “Fifty-two feet, four inches.”
In the far corner of the room, the plainclothes was still talking to Bennett. Frye looked across to Donnell Crawley, who sat mute and solid as an Easter Island statue. From below him, the dead gunman burped. Frye considered his dark face, the thick black hair, the trace of mustache. White cotton shirt. Black pants. Two black leather bracelets with silver studs. Black shoes with a crust of dried gray mud on the sides and bottoms.
“Where do you think he picked up that mud, Duncan, in the middle of August?”
The CSI set down his clipboard, walked to the aft end of the body. He touched the mud, smelled it, and shrugged. “CDL gave him a Westminster address. Nothing from Sacramento on him, Probably a local gang punk.”
“What’s his name?”
Duncan tasted the mud. “Sorry. If you really have to know, ask Minh. Our new dick for Little Saigon.”
“Vietnamese?”
“Half. Half American. He’s supposed to be the perfect recipe for down here.” The CSI sounded doubtful.
When the sergeant wasn’t looking, Frye picked his way across the dance floor, then drifted over to the backstage door. Leaning against the wall a moment, he watched the cops work. No one seemed much interested, so he went back into Li’s dressing room, closed the door behind him, and flicked on a light.
Her perfume still lingered. The makeup containers were stacked neatly on the table. The chair was pushed away. Her street clothes still hung in the open wardrobe: jeans, blouse, a light silk jacket.
The Halliburton case was gone. In its place were three bottles of French champagne. The mirror had “BAN — You Have Lost” scrawled across it in bright red lipstick.
Frye sat down in Li’s chair and looked at the words, then the bottles. Taunts from the kidnappers? What’s bạn?
The top drawer contained a hand mirror, a couple of brushes and combs, a new package of emery boards, three black elastic stretch bands that hold hair without pulling it out. There were several pencil-like items of various color and utility. Something to do with the eyes, he reasoned. The second drawer had tissue, creams, ointments, unguents, oils, astringents, powders — a beauty blizzard.
Drawer three contained five cassette tapes still in their boxes, a small sixer of V-8 juice and, beneath a clean white towel, a large caliber two-shot derringer.
Frye dropped the towel back, slid shut the drawer, and stood up. One side of the wardrobe held a few bright dresses and blouses, a half-dozen ao dai, a coat or two. The bottom looked like a bargain bin — shoes piled high, all colors and shapes. The other side was almost empty, except for Li’s street clothes. He brought a chair over and stood on it. The top shelf held only a portable radio — the kind with detachable speakers — and a small bundle of cassettes tied with one of Li’s black hair bands. Frye examined the radio, put it back.
He was about to step down when he saw the buzzer attached to the far corner of the shelf. It looked like the mounting of an old doorbell, with a tarnished brass base and a black button. Looking under the shelf, he saw the wires disappearing through the back of the wardrobe cabinet. He leaned closer, blew off some dust, wondering. A call button for service? Then why put it way up here? An alarm? Again, why here, where it’s hard to get to?