Wendy Hornsby - The Color of Light

“I wasn’t referring to the house.”

“Ah.” I sighed, feeling weighted. “That other thing.”

“The murder of your friend’s mother.”

“I think Beto and I are the only people who want to know what happened to her,” I said. “Everyone who knows something is stonewalling me in the same way I was stonewalled about Isabelle.”

“Then one day Isabelle walked up and introduced herself to you.”

“I doubt that whoever shot Trinh Bartolini is going to walk up and say hello.”

“Maybe next summer at the Hungry Ghosts celebration she’ll speak to you herself.”

“Enough about that, Jean-Paul,” I said. “You told me you had some news.”

“Three things, yes,” he said, cocking his head, watching me. “How do you say it? What do you want first, the good news or the bad news?”

“How bad is the bad and how good is the good?”

“That depends, I think.”

“Let’s get the bad news over with, then. Should we drink a lot of wine first?”

“We should keep clear heads.” He took both of my hands in his and looked into my eyes. “ Chérie , I made a call or two and I found Thai Van for you, but he will be no help.”

“I should know by now that when you say you’ll make some calls, the earth will move.”

“I don’t know about moving the earth,” he said with a little laugh. “But making the right call can sometimes open a door. It is the business I am in, yes?”

“I’m not exactly sure what your business is. Or was, before you were appointed consul general,” I said. “But, what did you find out about Thai Van?”

“Maggie, he died a very long time ago.”

I mulled that over before I asked. “In Vietnam?”

“You knew?” he said, brows furrowed.

“No,” I said. “But I began to suspect it. Earlier today, I was talking with Beto’s Aunt Quynh-you met her.”

“Shrimp spring rolls?”

“Yes. And tonight’s dessert,” I said, moving her pink pastry box toward him. “Anyway, Quynh told me that she was kidnapped from a re-education camp in Vietnam and held in the mountains for ransom. One day Thai Van came in like Indiana Jones, she said, with men armed with M-16s, and rescued her. He fell off everyone’s radar at about that same time. It would have been difficult, probably dangerous, for him to go to Vietnam then, and very difficult for him to get back into the U.S. I wondered if he just stayed there.”

“When was that?” he asked.

I gave him a rough idea of the time frame and he nodded.

“Thai Van died in a firefight around then.”

“How did you find that out?” I asked.

“If I told you my sources,” he said, smiling his upside-down French smile, “I’d have to kill you.”

“I’ll take that risk.”

“I made a call to a friend, who called a friend,” he said with a little shrug, picked up a long barbecue fork and headed for the back door. I grabbed the wineglasses and followed him out.

“You’re CIA,” I said, handing him his glass. “I’ve always suspected it.”

“It would be DGSE in France,” he said, as he prodded flaming coals in the barbecue. “ Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure . But no. Please don’t be disappointed, but it’s simply a matter of having connections.”

“Maybe so, but they’re pretty hefty connections.”

“You know I attended one of the grandes écoles .” That little self-deprecating shrug again. “Most of the upper echelon of the French civil service attended the same university. A very small club, if you will. It was because of connections with certain people I became friends with in school that, after Marian died and I moped around like a wounded duck, they arranged for my appointment as consul general to Los Angeles. I don’t know whether my friends were hoping a change of scenery would cheer me up, or they just got tired of seeing my sad face.”

“I think I like your friends,” I said.

“I hope that you will,” he said, setting the fork aside. “The coals won’t be ready for the meat for another half hour.”

I asked, “How does your contact know about Thai Van?”

“You know that Vietnam was once part of French Indochina,” he said. “Our troops came out a very long time ago, 1955 to be exact. But like any messy divorce, there were property entanglements to resolve and long relationships that were not severed. Remnants of our intelligence apparatus remain in place to this day.”

He took my hand and walked with me over to the garden, where the last of the day’s sun lingered. While I snipped basil for the salad, he told me that Thai Van’s father, Thai Hung, had been a leader in an organization of Vietnamese refugees down south in the Orange County community now called Little Saigon that raised money, recruited support and trained men to launch an invasion of Vietnam and overthrow the People’s Republic. A Bay of Pigs sort of endeavor, as it were. The FBI planted informants in the organization to keep close watch on the father and the son and their cohort.

“There were reports that Thai Van split with his father,” Jean-Paul told me. “The regime in Vietnam had its own spies in the U.S., so they knew what Thai Hung was up to. Word got back to Van that his relatives were being punished for his father’s activities. For their sake, Van begged his father to step away, but he refused.”

“Did you learn anything about what happened to Quynh?”

“No, not specifically her. Probably she was sent for re-education because of her family’s position before the takeover,” he said. “But the kidnapping for ransom was a different matter. There were those in positions of authority in the regime who used intelligence gathered by the state for their own criminal enterprise, kidnapping and extortion being one of several. Desperate acts in desperate times, yes?”

“Don’t be too generous,” I said. “Extortion is a vicious game any way you play it.”

“Bien sûr.”

“Quynh also told me that the ransom money was deposited into an account here. Is there anyone you could call to find out about that?”

A little shrug while he considered. “I can try. And that brings us to topic next.”

“Is this good news or bad?”

“Again, that depends on what you make of it,” he said. “You wanted to know if your father’s Colt is traceable, so I asked a friend to trace it. He learned that your gun was part of a large order placed with the manufacturer by the United States Army and it was then shipped to the National Armory in San Francisco. From there, it was allotted to a National Guard unit where, as far as I can ascertain, it remains.”

“Except that it doesn’t,” I said. “It’s in a drawer upstairs.”

“A mystery, yes?”

“But there’s someone we can ask.” I put my hand through his arm. “How long until your coals are ready?”

“Maybe twenty minutes.”

“Shall we call on the neighbors?”

“Dear George? Certainly. Shall I go upstairs first and collect some fire power?” He was smiling so I laughed, but I wasn’t at all sure if he was serious or not about getting the gun out of the drawer.

As we walked next door, I asked, “You said you had three pieces of news. The last one, good or bad?”

“Depends.”

“Of course it does,” I said, laughing. “So?”

“A question for you first: How long will you be in Normandy?”

“Through the fall, at least.” We reached the Lopers’ front porch and started up the steps. “I’ll probably make at least three more trips later so that we can capture all four seasons at the farm.”

“Would you consider staying for the entire year?”

“I think you’d better tell me your news now.”