Naomi Hirahara - Santa Cruz Noir

In Wong’s version, there was cognac. When he flambéed scallops, table-side, he would pour a glug of Rémy Martin onto the shellfish, swallow a glug himself, then tip the wok toward the burner. Blue flames would erupt, then applause. Every other table would order the dish. By the second or third order, a lot more of the cognac sauced Chef Wong than the scallops.

“Then,” Kelly said, “this came yesterday, registered mail.” She handed me a nine-by-twelve envelope. The return address was an impressive San Francisco law firm. The sheaf of papers inside explained that a trust had been established in the name of Kelly Wong. On the last page was the full dollar amount, a little over a quarter-mil.

Kelly had teared up. I pushed the tissues across. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “I’d been calling him since Sunday and he wasn’t home and he wasn’t at the restaurant. Nobody knew where he was.”

“Your mom?” I ventured.

She teared up again. “I lost my mom two years ago. There were too many problems for her.” I let that one slide. “My dad has a lot of enemies,” she continued, “because of the restaurants, the investors. He likes to gamble. So, I’m worried. Can you please look for him?”

I was still mulling. “How did you hear about me?”

“That was kind of weird. I have finals starting Monday, so I went to my advisor to see if I could do a makeup. I told her the whole story. I didn’t want to go to the cops in case it turned out to be a ransom situation. She thought I needed legal advice and called a friend at the law school. He recommended you.”

“What’s his name?”

“Brad Turner. You know him?”

“We have some history. Do you have someplace to stay here? I don’t want you staying at your dad’s.”

“I can stay with my dad’s cooks. They won’t say anything.”

“Do that.” I told her what I’d need to get started. She didn’t blink. The only thing she asked was if she could pay the thousand-dollar retainer in two checks. Sure. She wrote two checks for $499 each and handed me two dollar bills. She explained that it was a condition of the trust. Any checks above $500 had to be approved by the trustee. “My dad told the lawyers he didn’t want me paying off his debts.”

“Go get some rest,” I said. “Call me here tomorrow morning and I’ll give you an update.”

“Don’t you want my phone number, or the address where I’m staying?”

“I don’t want to be able to answer that question until I figure out what’s going on. As you said, your dad has enemies. You want me to call you a cab?”

“No,” Kelly said, “I want to walk down the railroad tracks. I can catch the bus on Park. My dad’s first restaurant was in Capitola. It was just my mom and dad cooking and working the front. I helped out from the time I was five or six. A lot of customers couldn’t figure out who I was. I was my dad’s favorite joke. He’d say, ‘This is my daughter Kelly. She’s living proof that two Wongs can make a white!’”

“He’s got a lot to answer for.”

“Yeah, not many customers laughed, even back then.” She put on her pack and jammed the stocking cap over her curls. I watched her walk up Center.

At Manuel’s, Leobardo, the head waiter, was lounging on the bench in front, reading the Santa Cruz Sentinel . Leobardo didn’t even look up as Kelly passed, which surprised me. Usually he checked out anything with a bounce and a pulse.

Kelly crossed to State Park Drive, walked up to Moulton’s Union ’76, and headed north on the railroad tracks.

So Kelly Wong had said Brad Turner recommended me. A blast from the past. I knew Brad for the same reason I knew Lars Guthrie and Carter Wilson: my shady academic past. I was a failed professor. I did my four-year stretch in Rubber City. When I was denied tenure at UCSC, I did what my role model Annie Steinhardt did when she was denied. I went over the hill and started dancing at Jolly’s, a topless bar in the pits of San Jose. Annie wrote a book about it, Thunder La Boom. There wasn’t a novel in my future, I wrote poetry — but I liked the idea and the money was good and immediate.

About my third month at Jolly’s, I encountered a former student, Brad Turner. Or, should I say, Brad Turner looked me up, and looked me down. It’s a little hard, peering over your own bouncing breasts, to acknowledge a former student, but I nodded and we met in the parking lot.

“Dr. Sukenick,” Brad said.

I had to smile. “Call me Sukie.” It was my stage name, but it fit. “Did you graduate?”

“Yeah,” Brad said with a grin, “my stepdad just about stroked out.” Brad was one of my salvage jobs.

“I’m here to return the favor,” he said. “I’m working for the public defender’s office. They want smart people and I thought you might fit.” Brad came from a family of lawyers and he’d avoided that fate as long as he could, but the PD’s office had sniffed him out, and hired him as an investigator. He was off to Boalt and he thought I might be the ideal replacement.

It worked out. More than worked out. Turned out that intuitive instinct I thought would lead to chapbooks and tenure was ideally suited to listening to liars. I spent six years learning the trade and, more valuably, getting to know every judge, prosecutor, public defender, and most of the cops in Santa Cruz County. My three-month stint, topless, had more cachet with them than my four years at the university.

I made the obligatory calls on Chef Wong. Leonard didn’t turn up much on the criminal front: two DUIs and an arrest without charge in a mass bust in Prunedale — one of a crowd of two hundred — plus at an alleged cockfight.

Civil was a different matter. Leonard Wong had been, and was currently being, sued by investors, landlords, suppliers, contractors, and even a live seafood supplier from Korea who he’d stiffed. The investors came in clumps. It appeared that he had sold the restaurants at least four times to five groups of overseas investors. He hadn’t done the bankruptcy out, which was interesting. That meant he hoped for new investors. I checked with my sources in the DA’s office and learned there were more lawsuits pending. Then I checked my darker sources and learned that in addition to his drinking and money problems, Leonard also had a cocaine problem, and that was overtaking the rest. The profile was shaping.

Estelle blew in around eleven thirty a.m., looking, as she was wont to say, rid hard and put away wet.

“If you look in the dictionary under blowsy ...” I said.

“Stuff it.” Estelle reached for the Visine, tilted back, and shuddered as the drops hit her tender eyeballs. “Made the sale. At least I damn well better have made that sale. His wife would not like to see what my security camera saw.”

“Leonard Wong?”

Estelle sat up. “Interesting story, but I only know the parameters. He used to own the land his restaurants sit on. Three refi’s in three years. New case?”

“Time for lunch.”

“Gotcha.” Estelle turned on her desk lamp, put on her dark glasses, and spun her Rolodex.

I walked over to Manny’s. It was pleasantly dark, as always, and quieter than usual. You could actually hear Manny’s favorite soundtrack, delicate jarocho harp music from Veracruz. Manuel Santana was an interesting man, successful restaurateur, and failed artist, according to him — and Chicano Centrál if you were involved in Democratic Party politics. He kept the lights low and stocked chardonnay, which kept the gringas of a certain age coming back.

The head waiter’s wife, Socorro, was behind the cash register, comparing the tale of the tape to the handwritten bills, then stapling them together. I touched her on the shoulder as I went by. She lifted her head and smiled at me. Leobardo approached; he nodded and it was almost a genuflection — then, full smile. He leaned in attentively with his pad and we went through our ritual.