The Butcher's Granddaughter (13 page)

“She have heavy calluses on her feet?”

“Not that I remember. You working a prostitute angle?”

“Maybe. I’m doing some things down in Orange County that might tie in, that’s all.” I thought for a second. I didn’t want to ask any questions that would pique Gene’s interest any more than was necessary. “Where was she found again?” I asked offhandedly, as if I’d merely forgotten this insignificant detail, when in fact I’d never known it.

“It says here she was found, uh...last Wednesday night behind a bar on 3rd Avenue called Al’s.”

“Thanks Gene. I’ll try not to bother you anymore.”

He said, “Sure,” and hung up. I went back to the booth and crossed “prostitute?” off my napkin list. There was no way a downtown girl could get along in that line of work without it leaving its violent footprints on her somewhere.

I forced myself to quit thinking about it. I stuffed the list in my pocket, finished the burger in about three bites, and paid the bill. Kiki made sure I had a mint and a toothpick before I left. By the time I got out to my motorcycle I had decided I would rest, not think about it anymore, see Li, give her the flowers, and maybe let her take advantage of me again.

I stripped off my jacket and set it on the seat while I lit a cigarette. The sun was getting high and drawing out the beach people—the sidewalk bustled along with kids on skateboards, surfers with their wetsuits stripped to their waists, and middleaged women shopping while their husbands played golf at the Newport Beach Country Club across the highway. Two girls in bikinis caught my attention, and I watched attentively as they waltzed past me, gossiping about some friend of theirs named Cyndi, and what she’d done with various guys.

I wondered what time it was, whether Li would be at work yet. I glanced behind me at the sign that blinked the time and temperature at the Corona Del Mar Savings and Loan. It was 73 degrees at...

I don’t know how long I stood there next to my bike, frozen, staring at the sign. Maybe five minutes, the huge capital letters above the clock, “CDM”, careening around the snippet of gossipy conversation about Cyndi...Cyndi...Cynthia. The wheels churned in my head like heavy diesel pistons, slowly pulling huge blocks out of a loosely tumbled pile and into neat, well-lit, orderly structures. I didn’t notice people starting to stare until I broke back into the restaurant and placed a call to the Robbery/Homicide Division of the Los Angeles Police Department. Kiki watched with interested eyes as I spoke breathlessly into the phone.

“Caz, those murders aren’t serial,” I said quickly. “They’re professional hits.” I paused a long time before adding, “And I think I know who’s ordering them.”

Chapter 9

“Why here?”

“Because no one here’ll recognize you—or me.”

Detective Cazares and I were standing on a fire escape landing three stories above a backalley coffee joint in Pasadena called the EBar. The door behind us was padlocked from the outside, the room inside deserted and forlorn, dust and peeling paint mixed with spider webs in the corners. I squinted through the cloudy pane of glass in the door, then turned around and surveyed the street below.

Fifty feet to the right of the fire escape, the E-Bar’s alley stops short in three stories of dead end. Fifty feet to the left another alley intersects it in a “T” that butts up against a huge commercial building. Anyone walking in or out could be seen through the grating of the fire escape. I liked that. I was getting jittery.

Secondhand tables and chairs are scattered in the dead end of the alley, occupied by the wide range of customers regular to any hip coffee house. Everyone from blue-suited businessmen to folksingers to avant-garde artists sporting green-and-orange hair are sitting, sipping, and talking all day long.

It was almost eleven o’clock in the morning and I was stretched thin. I hadn’t slept since lying down with Li over twenty-four hours earlier, and I had a headache that felt like someone was jamming a screwdriver into my right eye. It had come on as I began to consider the ramifications of what I’d stumbled upon, and now I couldn’t decide which hurt worse, my stomach or my head. I lit my third cigarette of the day, tossed back a handful of aspirin, and sipped a triple shot of straight espresso. Caz had a regular coffee and when I lit up, she used my match to get one of her skinny cigarettes going. She didn’t push me. I didn’t look like I could be rushed.

Caz
was understandably concerned. She’d let me have it over the phone that she thought I was crazy, but I let her think that and told her to meet me if she wanted to know about the two dead women in the morgue. Even at that, it took about twenty minutes of convincing. And a promise to buy the coffee.

I took a deep drag on the cigarette and started talking, the smoke roughing my voice. “Remember when you broke in on Thursday and woke me up? The redhead was the reason.”

She nodded.

“Well, I told you that Li Nguyen and Song Ti Nguyen were friends. That was a lie. They’re sisters. I withheld that information because it didn’t seem important at the time, and I wanted to protect Li from any involvement. I can see now that might have been very stupid.”

“Why?”

“Because if I had told you the truth, you would’ve made a beeline for Song and gotten her involved. Asked questions. Given her attention.”

Caz
made her eyes narrow and shrugged. “Yeah? So what?”

“So, the kind of attention that maybe professional killers don’t want. They might never have gotten to Song if I’d told you she was Li’s sister. That’s part of what tipped me off about the killings not being some maniac, but the work of a professional.”

Caz
was taking the steaming coffee in great gulps, as if her mouth were made of asbestos. “You keep saying ‘they.’ Who might ‘they’ be?”

I shook my head slowly. “That’s a problem. I don’t know. At least not exactly.” I finished the espresso and set the cup on the guardrail. “After I met Song, she struck me as someone who might do anything to make a buck, and probably had. But she didn’t have the look or attitude of someone who’d lived on the streets, without parents, for a long time. She was too stupid. Somebody was taking care of her, or at least keeping an eye on her, but I didn’t know who it was. At first I thought it was Jay, but now I don’t think that anymore.”

“Why not?” she intoned. Caz listened offhandedly, even disarmingly, when someone was spilling their guts. She let you go ahead and think you could slip by. But once the whole story was out you realized that very little got past her.

“A couple of reasons,” I said, staring into my empty espresso cup. “I’ll tell you in a minute. Don’t let me get ahead of myself.” I went down the staircase and drew some regular coffee from the cafe. When I got back, she was unabashedly staring down into the v-necked t-shirt of an overdeveloped brunette at a table right below us. I said, “You’re sick. She could be your daughter.”

“It would make me wonder where my husband had been,” she said. “Get to it.”

“All right. I told you I was down at the Reading Room and Li came up and asked me to bail her sister out of a lover’s jam, which I did.”

“Right.”

“Li told me that Song was using the name Naomi—she didn’t give me a last name, so I don’t know if she was using one or not. But I used that knowledge to scare her into apologizing to Jay for screwing him over. When I used her real name, her reaction was way too extreme. She blew everything. And, when I said her name—I don’t know. It wasn’t surprise in her eyes that I saw...it was...
recognition
, I guess is the word. Realization. She looked at me like I was part of some plan or something.”

“You realize that this isn’t making a damn bit of sense,” Caz said, lighting a fresh cigarette.

“It will,” I answered. “Bear with me. How much do you know about Cynthia Ming?”

“Enough. She runs an escort service that borders on child prostitution off of some ship down the coast. The Newport boys are up to their noses in it. Why?”

“Because I think she’s the one ordering the hits.”

Caz
was quiet for a minute. The cigarette sat on her lips, unpuffed. Then her eyes narrowed and she said, “All right. Go.”

I took a deep breath and tore into it. “The redhead you found was dropped behind Al’s Bar on 3rd Avenue. To say the least, Al’s does not attract a crowd that’s overly-burdened with cash. Red was, but where’d she get it? This girl had none of the regular signs of having been a prostitute—no scarring, no evidence of brutality, nothing. Except,” I paused a little, “for an abortion. She was seventeen if she was a day, and not much older on the outside. She was wearing a huge diamond and an ornate class ring when you found her. That fact in itself led you to a logical conclusion: a psycho did her. Who would kill someone and not take a rock the size of a doorknob? All of that put you and the boys downtown onto a prearranged trail.”

“Whoa, whoa. Waddaya mean ‘prearranged?’ You telling me that the killers in this Hitman Theory of yours intentionally planted that stuff?”

“No. Actually, the rings probably belong to the girl, and one of them does for sure, but I’ll get to that. One way or another, she had no business being where she was when she got killed. Suddenly, you guys are looking for a redhead who goes to Corona Del Mar High, or maybe has a boyfriend that does. That’s who you were supposed to be looking for, because it makes sense. But a lot of other things don’t.

“First, you find a pricey looking chick in a neighborhood miles from where she’d normally be. Second, she’s still wearing what anyone would assume is an engagement ring and a class ring. Third, she’s a knockout. Fourth, she’s been pampered. And yet, you hear nothing and can find no one who seems to be missing a beautiful, engaged, cared for woman. Now, aside from a wealthy husband who wants a quickie divorce, what’s the only party you can think of who wouldn’t come out and claim a murder victim fitting the above description?”

Caz
blinked. “A call girl ring.”

“That’s right, honey. Now, think back. Where was Song found?”

Caz
rubbed her chin and the side of her face with her palm. “Oh, yeah. Back of the Greyhound Bus Station. In the dumpster...no, behind the dumpster.” I was about to open my mouth and lead her a little further along when she said, “Which, by the way, blows a hole in your location-of-the-body-thing. Seems to me that part of town is
exactly
where that cute little ass liked to play.”

“True,” I said. “But what was the last thing I did before I left her? Do you remember?”

“Gave her the sister’s phone number...in...Santa Monica.” Her voice trailed off weakly and then suddenly came back strong. “Aw, but that’s mighty thin, Bird.”

“Li called me Friday and confirmed that Song was with her all day Thursday,” I interrupted. “In
Santa Monica
. She had nowhere else to go, Caz, and therefore no reason to leave. She’d opened up to her sister. She was home, and comfortable. And she thought she was safe.”

Caz
picked up the ball and ran with it. “But the pros don’t know that she’s moved. They pick her up on the street somewhere, kill her for whatever reason, which is another problem by the way, and then dump her in her known neighborhood.”

“True enough, I don’t know why they’re killing their own whores, but that’s not my problem, it’s yours. And there’s going to be another body, Sarge, because if Song had had the information they needed, she’d have disappeared, not turned up dead.” As I finished that sentence, three Asian kids maybe twelve years old came around the corner, casually glanced up at me and Caz, then went in the cafe, jabbering at each other in Vietnamese. They were dressed in surf gear and skateboards. Several tables noticed them as they strutted into the cafe itself.

“And where’s the connection to the Ming bitch?” Caz was asking.

“Have you gotten the DNA print results from Song’s fingernails?” I asked, still watching the kids.

“Saw ’em this morning. They—”

I held up a hand. “Let me guess. Negative.”

She gave a tired nod. “Just some traces of nylon fibers, like they make those fuzzy mountaineering jackets out of.”

“And car upholstery,” I added. “Somewhere in this town, there’s a back seat with a bloodstain and some nasty nailtracks in it.”

Caz
shrugged. “Maybe. But what about the redhead? How does she tie in?”

“Like I said, I don’t know the why’s, only the how’s, and she’s the clincher. But let me guess something else first. When you searched Song’s body, you found nothing bearing the name Naomi, no ID of any kind, right?”

A nod.

“Funny, because according to Li she’d been on her own almost two years, using that name. Why no ID?”

Caz
was incredulous. “I bet you’re gonna tell me.”

“Because I think “Naomi” was a stage name. I think she was known as Naomi on board the
Azure Mosaic
.” I paused long enough to smile a little bit. “When she was screaming at me in the street last Thursday night, she said the most interesting thing. She looked at me and said, ‘Do you know who I am?’ I mean, what kind of a question is that from somebody that young? It’s one thing for someone older to say that, but a teenager?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s the kind of question that comes from someone with heavy connections. The kind of connections that can kill—and get you killed.”

That got no reaction from Caz. “Like I said, Bird, thin. But interesting. You’re not expecting to get paid for this, are you?”

“Wouldn’t have bought the coffee if I did. If something pans out, though, I’m gonna get some love, right?”

“Naturally. But what about the redhead? You said she was the clincher.”

I took a last deep breath. “The class ring on her finger? Take it to any catalogue jewelry store and try to match the design to any known high school ring for Corona Del Mar High, ever. I’ll bet you six lunches you won’t find it.”

“You’re on. Why not?”

“Because I don’t think the letters “CDM” on that ring stand for Corona Del Mar, Sarge. I think they stand for Cynthia Dazhai Ming.”