Ed McBain - Three Blind Mice

“Leeds?”

“Maybe, I don’t know, we’ll have to run a lineup for her. But certainly a guy in a yellow jacket and hat.”

“Driving the boat?”

“Driving it, tying it up, going up the steps on the side of the dock there, and walking straight into the parking lot.”

“This was at what time?”

“Let’s say ten to eleven.”

“That checks out. When did she lose him?”

“When he got in the car and drove off.”

“What kind of car?” Patricia asked, leaning forward intently.

“A green Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme.”

“And the license plate?”

“She couldn’t see it from the bar.”

“Shit,” Patricia said.

Which Bannion found not only exciting but also terribly promising.

“Shall we order?” he asked, and smiled his most devastating smile.

“There’s yet another way to look at this,” Mai Chim said.

She and Matthew were sitting in a restaurant some seven miles from Kickers, where Bannion had just identified the make of the automobile Trinh Mang Due had been able to describe only as an ordinary dark blue or green car. But Trinh had seen the license plate. A Florida plate, he’d said. Very definitely a Florida plate. And Matthew had written down the number on that plate. 2AB 39C. Find the car, he was thinking, and we’ve got the man in the yellow jacket and hat.

“Another way of looking at what?” he asked.

He’d been surprised and pleased when she’d accepted his lunch invitation, and he was satisfied now to see her enjoying the meal so much. He’d frankly wondered whether Italian cooking would appeal to a woman who’d spent the first fifteen years of her life in Saigon. But she ate as if famished, first demolishing the linguine al pesto, and now working actively — and with seemingly dedicated intensity — on the veal piccata.

“The murder,” she said. “The rape. Whether or not they’re linked.”

“Do you think they’re linked?”

“Not necessarily. I think those men raped her, yes, but that doesn’t mean…”

“You do?”

“Oh, yes. Mind you, the Vietnamese immigrants in this city would prefer having it the other way round. They were very pleased when the verdict came in. Not guilty was what they’d been praying for. There is not a single Buddhist temple in all of Calusa, did you know that? It makes it difficult for many Asians coming here.”

“Are you Buddhist?” Matthew asked.

“Catholic,” she said, shaking her head. “But many of my friends were Buddhist when I was growing up. What are you?”

“Nothing right now.”

“What were you?”

“Whitebread Episcopalian.”

“Is that good?”

“I guess if you’re going to be anything in America, it’s best to be a Wasp, yes.”

“What’s that?”

“Wasp? White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.”

“Is Episco — could you say it again for me, please?”

“Episcopalian.”

“Episcopalian, yes,” she said, and then tried it again, rolling the word on her Asian tongue. “Episcopalian. Is that a form of Protestant?”

“Yes,” Matthew said.

“And is Whitebread a form of Episcopalian?”

“No, no,” he said, smiling, “Whitebread is… well… Wasp,” he said, and shrugged. “They’re synonymous.”

“Ah,” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

“Then Whitebread Episcopalian is redundant,” she said.

“Well, yes.”

“I like that word. It’s one of my favorite English words. Redundant. How old are you?” she asked abruptly.

“Thirty-eight,” he said.

“Are you married?”

“No. Divorced.”

“Do you have any children?”

“One. A daughter. She’s up in Cape Cod this summer. With her mother.”

“What’s her name?”

“Joanna.”

“How old is she?”

“Fourteen.”

“Then you were married very young.”

“Yes.”

“And is she quite beautiful?”

“Yes. But all fathers think their daughters are quite beautiful.”

“I’m not sure my father felt that way about me.”

“He got you on that helicopter.”

“Yes, he did,” she said.

“And you are,” Matthew said. “Quite beautiful.”

“Thank you,” she said, and fell silent.

He wondered if she knew this. How very beautiful she was. Or had she lost all sense of self during those war-torn years in Vietnam? Or in all those years of constant move and change since her father had lifted her into the arms of that black Marine sergeant? Was there in Mary Lee the bookkeeper any semblance of the little Vietnamese girl Le Mai Chim once had been? He wondered.

“Who do you think killed them?” she asked, shifting ground quite suddenly, as if wanting to distance herself from whatever thoughts their immediate conversation had provoked. Her eyes shifted, too. Away from his. Avoiding contact. He felt awkward all at once. Had she mistaken his sincere compliment for a clumsy pass? He hoped not.

“It’s not my job to find a killer,” he said. “I only have to show that my man didn’t do it.”

“And do you believe he didn’t do it?”

Matthew hesitated for only an instant.

“Yes, I do,” he said, but at the same moment Mai Chim said, “You don’t, do you?” so that their words overlapped.

“Let’s say I’m still looking for evidence,” he said. “To support my belief.”

“Will the license plate help?”

“Maybe.”

“Provided Trinh was seeing correctly.”

“I have no reason to believe he wasn’t. Unless… are your numbers the same as ours?”

“Oh, yes, our numbers are Arabic. And for the most part, our alphabet is the same, too. Give or take some missing letters and a million diacritical marks.”

“What’s a diacritical mark?” Matthew asked.

She looked at him.

“I don’t know what it is,” he said.

“You could have bluffed, you know,” she said, and smiled.

“Sure. But then I’d never know. What is it?”

“It’s a tiny little mark that’s added to a letter to give it a different phonetic value.”

“Ah-ha.”

“Do you understand?”

“Yes. Like the cedilla in French or the umlaut in German.”

“I don’t know what those are.”

“You could have bluffed, you know,” he said.

“Yes, but what are they?”

“Diacritical marks,” Matthew said.

“Okay.”

“I think,” he said, and smiled.

He liked the way she said okay . She made it sound foreign somehow. Okay. This most American of words.

“The Vietnamese language is very difficult for a foreigner to learn,” she said. “This was one trouble when the American soldiers were there. It is not a language you can easily pick up. And where there is no common language, there is suspicion. And mistakes. Many mistakes. On both sides.”

She shook her head.

“This is why the Vietnamese here were so happy with the verdict. If these men were not guilty, then there would be less suspicion of the foreigners, less abuse.”

“Is there? Abuse?”

“Oh yes. Sure.”

“Of what sort?”

“Everyone in America forgets that everyone here once came from someplace else. Except the Indians. Maybe they were here to begin with. The rest came from all over the world. But they forget this. So if ever an argument starts between an American and someone who is new here, the first thing the American says is, ‘Go back where you came from.’ Isn’t this so?”

“Yes,” Matthew said.

Go back where you came from.

He wished he had a nickel for every time he’d heard those words tumbling from the lips of a so-called native American.

Go back where you came from.

“Which is what I meant earlier,” Mai Chim said.