Protection for Hire (23 page)

It was a bad sign that even though it was late, Uncle Teruo was still awake. It meant other things weighed on his mind, so he already wasn’t in a good mood. And what she had to tell him was not exactly going to make him say, “Let’s go to Disneyland!”

Alerted to her visit by the security guard at the front gate, he answered the front door himself, wrapped in a dark blue
hanten
. Underneath the padded cotton housecoat, he wore bright green pajamas printed with turtles — the pajamas Tessa had bought for him a couple months ago for his birthday, because he had a thing for turtles.

The sight of the pajamas would normally make her laugh and tease him. But not tonight.

He gave her a hug, since they were in private, but he didn’t smile. He knew that her coming so late wasn’t a casual visit to raid his refrigerator for any leftover
onigiri
rice balls and
miso
soup.

He brought her into his den, warmed by a fire in the traditional
irori
open hearth in the center of the room. The ocean wind whistled outside the French doors leading to the terrace, and the occasional roar of ocean waves snuck into the cozy space.

He sat on a cushion beside the square hearth, and she folded herself onto another cushion catty-corner to him. He’d had time to collect the papers he was looking at into a folder that lay next to him on the straw
tatami
hearth mat that protected the wooden floor.

“Uncle, I went to a party tonight and saw Triad gang members there.”

His salt-and-pepper eyebrows flattened over his eyes. “Why were you at a party with the Triads?”

“I didn’t know they were going to be there. I would never have expected them to even recognize me — I’m not a
kobun
, it’s been over seven years since any of them saw me, and I’ve only been seen in public with you once since I was released from prison. But one of them was Dave Ong.”

Her uncle didn’t groan, but he exhaled heavily and his heavy eyelids closed briefly. “He recognized you?”

“He attacked me.”

His eyes narrowed. “Unprovoked?”

“He, uh … pulled off my wig —”

“Why were you wearing a wig?” Uncle’s voice had risen dangerously.

“I was afraid other men at the party would recognize me.”

“That’s all he did? Pull off your wig?”

“Well, I didn’t think he’d simply drop it and say, ‘Oh hi, Tessa, long time no see, let’s do lunch.’”

Uncle’s mouth tightened.

Watch it, stupid, or he’ll slap the sarcasm right out of your mouth.

“Please tell me the Triad members were not there to do business,” he growled.

“Uh …” She bit her lip. “You want me to lie?”

He pressed his lips together and rubbed his forehead with the fingers of one hand. “So you fought Dave Ong.”

“And two others.”

“Two others?” His eyes bore into hers. “Time and again I have asked you to control your temper, to stay out of trouble.
You cannot attack when I haven’t given you permission to do so.”

She dropped her head. He was right — he had too many other things to juggle, too many intangibles like face and reputation. And yet this time, his phrasing struck a wrong chord in her. “I wasn’t attacking. I was defending myself,” she said.

“You should have let them give you a few bruises, a few broken bones. They’ll heal. You were at a party where a Triad was doing business, which meant you had no right to be there.”

She understood this side of his life, she knew what it required, but tonight, his callousness pricked her. “I couldn’t just lay down and take it. I wasn’t alone.”

“Were you with one of us? If Itchy was with you, I’ll —”

“No, not Itchy. Just a man.”

“Then you should have let them beat him up too.”

“They would have killed him,” Tessa protested.

“Then you let them kill him.”

The dark words echoed off the walls of the room.
Yes, Tessa, you let them kill him. You chose this life years ago. You have to live with the consequences.

“But I didn’t.”

His breath exploded out of him in frustration. “Why did you do this? Why did you bring this down on my head? Have you no respect or concern for me, for your family?”

She curled her shoulders against his verbal attack.

“Have you forgotten the Triads outnumber us in the Bay Area? Our relationship with them is guarded at best.”

She said nothing, just let his words flay her.

“You haven’t told me why you were at that party.”

She answered hesitatingly. “It was given by a company I’m investigating for my client. We didn’t know a Triad was doing business with them.”

“Stay away from that company,” Uncle Teruo said. “Do nothing to them.”

“But my client —”

“If you stay away from the company, you’ll stay away from the Triad’s business. This may yet blow over.” He exhaled sharply, his mouth pinched. “Leave me now.”

She shifted to sit on her knees, bowed with her hands on the floor in front of her. And left the house.

She asked the security guard at the front gate to call her a taxi, and she stood in the shadows of the estate wall and shivered in the sharp sea winds as she waited.

How had it come down to this? She’d thought it was just about Heath and Elizabeth. Not his company, not the Triads. And now she had to choose:

Elizabeth or her uncle.

Y
’
all are throwing me out to drown in a sea of Asian men,” Elizabeth complained.

She pointed to Charles’s computer screen, where pictures of Triad members were tiled across. “Did you count these? There have to be a hundred faces here.”

“Forty,” Charles said. “And I’ll have you know, it took a lot of digging for the private investigator to get these pictures. Triad don’t exactly strike a pose when they see a camera.”

“They’re more likely to break the cameraman’s face,” Tessa murmured. She was sitting next to his mama on the couch in the living room, trying to knit a scarf, but she kept tangling the yarn. She’d been quiet since she returned from her uncle’s house. Charles hadn’t asked her what had happened, and she hadn’t said.

He himself was waiting for the hammer to drop. Since the night of the party, he’d gone into work and done his job like normal, but he hadn’t heard from Mr. Greer at all. Surely by now Heath’s firm would have told Mr. Greer about seeing Tessa there, and it wouldn’t be hard to guess the man with her was Charles, sneaking into a party when Charles had been warned off investigating the firm.

He hadn’t told anyone, although he noted Tessa’s apprehensive eyes on him when he left for work the past few mornings. Mama and Elizabeth may have forgotten about it, but Tessa knew the implications of what they’d done, and how it would affect him soon.

“Mama!” Daniel ran to her side and shook Slasher at her face in a blur of pink flopping limbs. “Slasher! Aarrr! Grrr!”

“Not now, darling. Give me a few minutes. Forty pictures? I know I’ve lived in California for several years now, but Asian people all look alike to me.”

Tessa’s mouth quirked. “I could say the same for Caucasians.”

“And Heath hosted tons of parties where there were Asians there. How am I supposed to remember them all?”

Even Charles had to admit they might be asking for a tall order. “Just take another look at them —”

“Maybe I can make it easier.” Tessa’s eyes crossed as she brought a knot of yarn almost to the end of her nose so she could try to untangle it. “Charles, you said the Triad is probably using this investment to launder drug money?”

“Probably a lot of money, hundreds of millions. A private equity investment is perfect for that. There’s basically no government regulation and the minimum investment is typically in the tens of millions. It’s not unusual for a single investor to put in a billion or more.”

“Dollars?” Mama’s eyes bugged out. “No wonder they want Elizabeth. What’s one woman when there’s that much money at stake?”

Elizabeth had paled.

“Thanks, Mama,” Charles chided her.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I was just shocked.”

“Mama!” Daniel thrust Slasher at her again. “Aaarrr! Grr!”

“Darling, we’ll play dragon later.”

Tessa pulled at a string and the knot went tight. “Aargh.” She got up from the couch, tossing down the tangled mess of pink and red yarn, and leaned over Elizabeth’s shoulder. “Okay, so we know for an investment of this size, the head honchos will be involved. And accountants. Anyone else?”

Charles threw his torso back against the leather recliner he was lounging in. “It could be any number of people who might be involved in getting the money to them …”

“Well, let’s start with just the leaders and the money men.” Tessa tapped on the keyboard, and all but fourteen pictures disappeared. “Recognize any of them?”

Elizabeth stared at the pictures for a good five minutes, then slowly shook her head. “I don’t know, it’s just so hard …”

“Mama!” Daniel’s voice went into a high-pitched scream. “Dragon! You promised!” He threw Slasher on the floor, plopped his bottom down, and began to cry.

Elizabeth reached for him, but Mama got up and picked him up instead. “Don’t feel bad,” she said. “He refused to nap today so he might be cranky. It’s a little early, but I’ll see if he’ll go to sleep now.” She carried him out of the living room.

Elizabeth bent down in her chair to pick Slasher up from the floor, and her hand stilled. “Oh!”

“What is it?” Tessa asked.

Instead of answering her, Elizabeth turned back to the screen, stared intently. “Him,” she said, pointing to one of the pictures. “And these three.”

Charles shot out of his recliner and looked at who she picked out. Three of the eight main leaders of the Triad, and one accountant. The four men had been mentioned by name at the party — Wang, Chang, Tong, and Yang — although he and
Tessa had deliberately kept that information from Elizabeth.

“How did you — ?” Tessa said.

Elizabeth held up Slasher. “I remembered one time Daniel had left a stuffed animal in the living room, and it got shoved under the couch. There was a meeting between Heath, those four Asian men, and a few other Caucasian men. One of the Asian men saw the toy, picked it up, and handed it to me. I was mortified.”

“You said other Caucasian men were there?”

“Some men I already knew from the company — Albert Richmond, Chip McFinney, Reginald Duffey. And also some other men, I don’t remember their names. But now that I remember that meeting, I might be able to remember their faces.”

“I might have their pictures.” Charles leaned into Tessa so he could reach the keyboard and mouse. She smelled like rain, and cherry blossoms, and yarn. He wanted to bury his face in her neck and breathe.

But she moved away from him.

He brought up his email program. “The P.I. found out who the principles are in this investment — at least, the legal ones on paper — and he sent me those pictures too.” He brought up three photos.

“Him.” Elizabeth pointed to Aloisius Rosenstein, his orange curls making his head look like it was on fire on the computer screen.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. Who could forget a man who looks like a carrot?”

Her confirmation should have felt like a victory, but all he could think of was that he’d given her the nails for her own
coffin. “According to what the P.I. dug up, the money is supposedly coming from Aloisius. Except for what we overheard Aloisius saying to Richmond at the party, there was no connection between him and the Triad members. None. But your testimony puts him in that meeting with them.”

“And that gets Stillwater Group in trouble, right?” Elizabeth said.

“It means Aloisius and Heath and his partners all know the money is coming from the Triad. They’ve probably erased any other connections that would prove they knew the money was being obtained illegally — except for you. Since you saw them, you can prove the firm knew about the illegality and knew the Triad was behind the transaction. The firm is in deep trouble with the Feds if this comes out.”

“Not only that,” Tessa said. “If Stillwater Group comes under investigation and the Triad loses its money, they’ll kill the people who ripped them off.”

Charles told Elizabeth, “When you left Heath, and they realized you might be able to destroy this deal, they panicked. That’s why they were hiring men to tail you and try to kill you. They probably didn’t want the Triad to know about you.”

Elizabeth’s lip trembled, and she twisted her hands in her lap. “I can’t do it,” she whispered. “I can’t testify. The Triad will come after me and Daniel too.”

“You have to disappear,” Tessa said.

Elizabeth shook her head. “How can I know they won’t find me? We’ll be running forever.”

Even if they caused Heath’s firm to crumble, it would still set the Triad after Elizabeth and Daniel, and with the amount of money they’d lose, they wouldn’t stop until she was dead.

Tessa was staring at the faces on the computer screen. “If we stop this deal,” she said slowly, “the Triad will think the yakuza is behind it, because they saw me at the party.”

And Charles suddenly saw the larger implications of this. “Would it start a gang war?”

“I don’t know.” She rubbed her knuckles against her sternum. “I don’t know.”

“A gang war?” Elizabeth breathed.

“Innocent people would die.” Tessa wasn’t looking at Elizabeth, at Charles, at anything. It was as if she were talking to herself. “And it would be my fault.”

“No, Tessa —” Elizabeth said.

“Tessa —” Charles said at the same time.

But Tessa turned her back on the two of them and walked out of the living room.

The two of them remained silent for a long moment. Elizabeth covered her mouth with her hand while tears spilled over her eyelashes. “There’s no way out,” she said. “There’s no hope. We’re going to die.”

He should say something, but he couldn’t. He didn’t know what to say.

And suddenly the doorbell rang.

At ten o’clock at night?

Tessa appeared in the front foyer as if he’d conjured her up. “Get back in the living room,” she ordered him quietly.

“I’m not leaving you to face anyone alone,” he shot back.

Something shifted in her face, something he couldn’t put his finger on, but she didn’t protest when he shadowed her to the front door.

But after looking through the peephole, her shoulders became
even more tense. He could see the pulse throb at her throat. She opened the door.

Kenta stood there.

Charles’s hands curled into fists. The tall Asian man looked first at Tessa, then at him, and their eyes held. Kenta’s gaze was black steel. Charles returned it, as hard as stone.

Finally Kenta blinked and said to Tessa, “Your uncle asks you to come.”

“Now?”

“He has questions about what you talked about a few nights ago.”

“What does he need to know?” Charles demanded.

Kenta spoke to Tessa, not to him. “He needs to know more about the business deal.”

“Then I’m coming with you,” Charles said.

“That’s not a good idea,” said Kenta.

“Did your mama drop you on your head too often as a child?” Tessa said to Charles.

Charles gave her a hard look. “Are
you
going to be able to explain to him the intricacies of this deal? Your uncle’s a businessman. He does not want the CliffsNotes version.”

Tessa and Kenta both hesitated, looked at each other. Charles clenched his teeth at the unspoken communication they had with each other.

Tessa took Charles’s arm and pulled him aside. “You don’t ask questions unless I say you can.”

“So no ‘How’s the drug running going?’”

“You don’t speak unless he asks you a question.”

“I’ll be quiet as a mouse.”

“And you don’t repeat anything you hear. Anything.”

“My lips are sealed.”

She looked like she wanted to seal his lips with her fist. He wondered what would happen if he kissed her in front of Kenta.

She turned toward the doorway. “Let’s go.”

Kenta gave him a level look. “You’re either very brave or very stupid.”

“I’m neither.”

I think I might be in love.