The Orange Curtain (8 page)

One of the jets shrieked past and all his hair stood on end. He’d never seen enough of the war so it constituted a sense memory out of the past, but he still didn’t like it. Sweat broke out on his forehead though the temperature couldn’t have been much over sixty.

“Man, I hate that.” He was frozen in his tracks, and when he looked up Marty Spence was watching him. The second jet followed, just as loud with full afterburner flaring. He could understand wanting to shoot them down. In fact, he wouldn’t have trusted himself with a shoulder-launch SAM right then.

“Viet Nam, huh?”

“Just a little. I only got caught in a few days of combat at Tet, but it was plenty.”

“Sometimes I regret missing the seminal experience of our generation. I was finishing grad school, and then I was too old.”

“Yeah, well. The principal human experience of everybody’s generation is dying, but it’ll keep.”

He turned and watched the sleek jets circle far out over the sea of tract homes. El Toro Air Base spread immediately below with a big X of runways and a deep green golf course, the two essentials of a military air base.

“We were up to the ’50s.”

“Sure. That was when the big boys started moving into the county with a vengeance. National corporations, a lot of electronics companies fleeing their unions. Medical technology, information companies, warehousing, Fortune 500 subsidiaries. Some of them even had headquarters here, like the international construction giant Fluor. They don’t have quite the same interests as the local businessmen. For example, there was a bitter fight over growing the county’s commercial airport, John Wayne Airport down between Newport and Irvine. The big boys want the infrastructure to fly in their Japanese customers, the little boys
live
down there under the 100-decibel runways. That was probably the last gasp of the small capitalists. Big generally beats small, as we all know. What they did to win was set up extra-governmental planning bodies like the County Transport Commission to escape the fiddling of local governments and control the things they really cared about.”

“The Industrial League?”

“That was where the game was played. It was set up in 1970 by executives of the big corporations, ostensibly to boost business. In fact, it was to fight the chambers of commerce, who were controlled by local business.” He looked back and grinned. “I love my job. It’s like watching medieval tournaments, big armies meeting out on the plain with their visors down, and trying to figure out who’s wearing the black insignia on their chest armor and who’s in the red.”

They reached a rock outcrop near the crest of the first range of the rolling hills below Saddleback, and they sat side by side just off the trail. His heart thumped a bit. He wasn’t in the greatest shape. The county spread away under them, going bluer and fainter in the haze beyond the air base. Fancy high rises were visible along the 405 and in a few scattered islands.

“So what’s at issue now?” Jack Liffey asked.

“You’re looking at it. Airport again. Back in the ’80s, when expanding John Wayne Airport was the agenda, the county begged the Marines to give up the air base there. It was surrounded by miles of open land then and would have been a perfect regional airport. The Marines said Never-Never, Absolutely Never, so the county rebuilt John Wayne, but it only had room for one runway and it’s already pushing its traffic limits.

“Then the ’90s and irony struck. El Toro became a small part of the peace dividend, scheduled to close soon. Most of the big boys perked up and want this to become a regional airport, but look at all the homes that have crowded up to it in the last decade. It’s the John Wayne airport fight all over again. Though, this time, the smaller businessmen who live near John Wayne would
love
to see El Toro become the main airport so they could cut back on theirs. There’s the knights in black, galloping down the fields with their lances stuck out in front. But who’s in those suits?” He grinned. “It’s so much fun to watch.”

“Not as much fun if you’ve got a house down there.”

“
I’ve
got a house down there. I’m rooting against the airport, but that doesn’t mean I think of it as a moral issue. People just follow their interests. Even Marx said capitalism had a historical mission to raise the productive capacity of society.”

“That’s an edifying thought,” Jack Liffey said. “Did he say anything about when the productive capacity would get high enough so they stop trying to eat us for lunch?”

“Not that I recall.”

“Is this airport feud bad enough to get people hurt or kidnapped?”

Marty Spence made a series of faces as he ran a hand along the grooves in the dog’s neck, like the folds in an outsize spacesuit.

“You hesitate,” Jack Liffey observed.

“When billions of dollars are involved, who can say?”

His old car rumbled along between the forbidding eight-foot concrete block walls that were so characteristic of the county and made the road seem an autoroute into Cold War East Berlin. Perhaps they were to keep foreign spies out of the ranch homes inside there, he thought. He understood the aversion to having your front yard on a six-lane through-road, but the architects should have looked for another solution. Every housing tract for miles was imprisoned in its own game preserve, with only the roofs and a few trees peeking out at him as he passed.

On the other hand, in some moods, he found driving along these grim and eventless Orange County streets restful compared to the level of oddity he had grown used to in L.A. No one popped out of an alcove to wave a tomahawk or tapdance in a pink tutu. The Orange Curtain had pretty well penned the bizarre and the random back into the big city. He found an opening in the walls beside a sign that said
Seahorse Riviera
that led him into the greener pastures.

It was only because the remote on his answering machine had decided to start working again, as it did just often enough to keep him checking, that he’d got Minh Trac’s urgent message to come back to his home. There were no details because the machine had cut the man off after about fifteen seconds as it was prone to do with people with soft voices, and when he’d called Minh Trac’s number, he’d gotten an out-of-service buzz.

For some reason Minh Trac was sitting on a lawn chair in his driveway. Beside him was a young man on another lawn chair. The younger man had neatly pressed slacks and a bright knit shirt, and Jack Liffey remembered Mike Lewis once describing a busload of Asian tourists as dressing like escapees from a golf magazine.

Minh Trac nodded recognition as he parked in front and then Jack Liffey noticed the orange crime scene tape strung across the open front door of the house. A white Crown Victoria plainwrap was parked up the driveway with the police bust light clearly visible in the rear window. Seagulls wheeled overhead, crying out now and again to remind him he was only a mile or two from the coast.

“Thank you for coming back so quickly.”

“What’s happening?”

The boy had risen to take his hand.

“This is Tom Xuan, my daughter’s boyfriend.” It was pronounced Swan, or almost. “Jack Liffey, the man I told you is looking for Phuong. Somebody broke in and wrecked my house. Luckily my wife was at her sister’s.”

They shook hands and the boy ducked and glanced up involuntarily as a seagull screeched, circling much lower than its pals, then he brought his eyes back.

“Pleased to meet you, sir.”

“How come you didn’t tell me she had a boyfriend?” Jack Liffey asked.

Something passed between the two of them that he couldn’t read. After a moment, Minh Trac shrugged, and a little chagrin showed through. “I didn’t know,” he said. “She never told me. He came to see me just now because he had heard she was gone and he wanted to help.”

Something was still heavy on the air, and finally the boy decided to let it out. “Xuan is a Chinese name, Mr. Liffey.”

“Mr. Liffey’s my late father’s name. Call me Jack. I know Xuan is a Chinese name. Does that matter?”

“If he were black and dating your daughter would it matter? I don’t care what you think you feel about tolerance. It would matter, wouldn’t it?”

“Not much. I’d like it a lot, actually. Without African-Americans and Jews, the only culture this country would have is football.”

“I believe I feel as you do,” Minh Trac said. “I have nothing against the ethnic Chinese who have lived for many generations amongst the Vietnamese in Viet Nam. They enriched our culture immeasurably. I can’t understand why Phuong doesn’t know I feel this way. Maybe because she has seen so much animosity in the fight over the Welcome Bridge.”

A cop came out and ducked under the orange tape and looked at the three of them, then ducked back into the house. Hundreds of gulls came over very low, squawking, and all three looked up at them for a moment.

“The official collective noun is a squabble of seagulls,” Minh Trac said. “I taught absurd things like that in English class.”

“Let’s talk about what happened to your house,” Jack Liffey said. “Do you have any idea who did this?”

“No. They smashed in the patio window and broke up all the furniture. It was obviously a message, but I can’t understand it at all.”

“I think it was
Quan sat
,” the boy said. “It means Body Count, but that’s just bravado. They’re too young even to remember the war. Somebody wrote
coi chung
! on the wall with lipstick. It means look out or beware, and I’ve heard it’s their motto.” He laughed derisively. “It was misspelled.”

Jack Liffey thought of the note in his pocket. The spelling wasn’t all too hot on the note either. “Do you think they could have kidnapped Phuong?”

“I doubt it,” the boy said. “Everyone knows their specialty is extorting protection money from rich businessmen, and they haven’t asked Mr. Minh for anything. But they are not very bright and they are very paranoid. Many of the
Quan sats
are camp boys who had to wait for years and years to get in the country and never got much of an education. Some of them can’t even dial a phone.”

The cop came out again, carrying a couple of silver Halliburton cases that looked like they contained film equipment. He put them in the trunk of the plainwrap and glared at Jack Liffey for some reason.

“Don’t disturb anything,” he called officiously.

Jack Liffey ignored him and turned back to the boy. “Where did you meet Phuong?”

“UCI, in the Vietnamese Student Union. I’ve got another year to complete a physics doctorate. I’m working on a neutrino experiment with a colleague of the Nobel laureate, Dr. Reines.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

He thought for a moment. “A week ago. The student union told us a little film company wanted a Vietnamese couple to appear in an educational film about TB. Phuong thought it would be a lark. When we showed up, they decided we were too old—I think they wanted high school kids—but they used us in one scene, anyway. I had to go to a night lab as soon as we finished the scene, but she said she could get a ride so she stayed after me.”

“What was the night?”

“Tuesday.”

“When was the last time you heard from her?” he asked Minh Trac.

“Monday, the day before that.” His eyes were looking worried.

“What’s the name of the film company?”

“It was video really. They’re called MediaPros, over in Garden Grove.”

“Do you have any idea who might want to harm her? Enemies? Campus racists?”

“Racists?”

“Didn’t you have an incident at UCI with a kid threatening Asians over the Internet?”

He raised his eyebrows. “I forgot, it was so unusual. Really, we don’t have much trouble. Just a kind of silent resentment.” He smiled lightly. “It’s whispered we study too much and we’re overachievers. I suppose we should arrange it so a statistically significant group of Asians flunks out of school every year. Nobody’s really going to hurt anybody over getting good grades.”

The kid on the Internet had threatened to kill Asians, one after another, until they were all driven off the campus, if Jack Liffey remembered right. Somebody like that might well have started with an honor student like Phuong, but it wasn’t something he wanted to say in front of her father.

“She’s not on campus much any more,” the boy said. “She’s been doing a business project before starting the coursework for her MBA.”

“What was that?”

The Vietnamese cop that he’d met came out onto the lawn and stared at them with a melancholy frown.

“She was working on something with a group of planners called the Industrial League. I think it had to do with plans to make El Toro a regional airport.”

Frank Vo was the name, he remembered, a polite soft-spoken cop.

“Mr. Liffey,” Frank Vo called.

Jack Liffey apologized to Minh Trac and the boy and then crossed half the lawn to talk to the policeman.

“Hello, Lt. Vo.”

“Good day. Do you have any reason to believe this vandalism was connected with this man’s daughter’s disappearance?”

“No. But I don’t like the concept of coincidence very much.”

“Me either. Do you have anything else to tell me?”

“I just got started.”

His brow furrowed up and another squabble of seagulls came over low, crying and shrieking, but he took no notice.

“My partner feels that you would be better off somewhere else right now.” He didn’t seem to want to say this.

“I don’t want to cause any trouble. I’ll go.”

“Thank you. Good luck to you.”

“You, too,” Jack Liffey said. “I’ll tell you everything I learn.”

He had enough information to get started, so he said goodbye to the father and the boy and walked to the car. When he saw the Anglo cop stroll out to watch him leave, he decided to come back up the lawn for a moment. There was a limit to how accommodating he wanted to be to a prick cop.

“You can kiss my ass,” he said softly toward the cop, not loud enough for him to hear but distinctly enough to read lips.

The cop’s head recoiled a little, as if struck.