John Sandford - Heat Lightning

“The rim?”

“The Pacific Rim,” Tai said.

“Ah… so… well, heck, I just about used up my questions,” Virgil admitted. “That lemon thing is really bugging me. Have you seen the stories on TV, or the papers, about the guys who were murdered and left on veterans’ memorials?”

“Something about it, but we usually mostly read the financial pages.”

Phem nudged Tai, tapped his computer screen. Tai leaned over to look and said, “No way,” then turned back to Virgil.

“There’s some connection with Vietnam,” Virgil said. “One of the murdered men was going to meetings with a Vietnam vet group, and he’d talked to Sinclair, and I know nothing about Vietnam. Hell, I’ve never been much further away from here than Amarillo, Texas.”

Tai said, “ Amarillo? You ever have the chicken-fried steak at the Holiday Inn?”

“Oh, Lord, I have ,” Virgil said. “That one right on Interstate 40?”

“That always has some soldiers hanging around?”

“Ah, man, that’s the one…”

They talked about the effects of the chicken-fried steak for a minute, the effects lasting, depending on which direction you were going, at least to Elk City, Oklahoma (east), or Tucumcari, New Mexico (west).

When the talk died down and he couldn’t think of any more sane questions, Virgil stood up, took out a business card, and handed it to Tai. “Well, shoot. If you have the time, ask some of your Vietnamese friends about lemons. Give me a call.”

Tai tilted his head back and forth. “Mm. I think that would be… inappropriate… for people in our position. But I’ll tell you what you could do. You could call a guy named Mr. Hao Nguyen at the Vietnamese embassy in Ottawa, and ask him. Don’t tell him you got his name from me, for Christ’s sakes.”

“Who is he?”

“The resident for the Vietnamese intelligence service,” Tai said. He stepped across to the telephone desk, picked up a small leather case, took out a business card, wrote on the back with a gold pen, and passed it to Virgil. He’d written, Hao Nguyen .

“Really? You know that sort of stuff?” Virgil asked.

“The embassy isn’t that big,” Tai said. “You go through a process of elimination, figuring out who is really doing what. Whoever’s left is the intelligence guy.”

“Really.”

Tai was easing him toward the door. “No big secret. Don’t tell him you talked to me. That would hurt. I would be interested in his reaction.” He giggled. “Really get his knickers in a bunch.”

“I’ll give him a jingle,” Virgil said.

Just before he went through the door, he let Tai see that he was checking the facial scars: “Play a little hockey?”

“High school goalie. Started my last two years,” Tai said.

“A Patrick Roy poster above the bed?”

Tai smiled and shook his head. “There are actually several cities in Canada, Mr. Flowers. Pat Roy was a hell of a goalie, but he played for Montreal. If I’d put up a Pat Roy poster, I’d have been strangled in my sleep. By my brother.”

“Shows you what I know about hockey,” Virgil said as the door closed behind him. The lock went snick .

“And don’t let the door hit you in the ass,” Virgil said to the empty corridor.

As he was going down in the elevator, he realized that Phem had said three words to him: “What’s up, eh?”

Back in the truck, Virgil looked at the business card: Nguyen Van Tai, Bennu Consultants. An address on Merchant Street in Toronto.

DIDN’T WANT TO do it; did it anyway.

Mai Sinclair said she went to a dance studio in the evening.

It was almost evening.

He parked two blocks down from the Sinclairs’ condo, half the truck behind a tree. He could see the front porch clearly. He settled down, took out his cell phone and called the information operator, and got the number for the Vietnamese embassy.

A woman answered, and Virgil said, “Could I speak to Mr. Hao Nguyen? I’m not sure I’m pronouncing that quite the right way.”

“I’ll see if Mr. Nguyen is in.” No problem there.

Nguyen came on a moment later, a deep voice with a heavy Vietnamese accent: “Mr. Nguyen speaking.”

“Mr. Nguyen, my name is Virgil Flowers. I’m a police officer with the state of Minnesota down in the U.S. I was told that you might be able to help me with a question.”

“Well… Officer Flowers… I’m a cultural attaché here. I’m not sure that I’m the person…”

“You should know,” Virgil said. “What I need to know is, when the Vietnamese execute a criminal, or whatever, do you guys stick a lemon in his mouth to keep him from protesting?”

“What?”

“Do you stick a lemon…”

“Is this a joke?”

“No, no. We’ve had two murders down here, that I’m investigating, and both of the dead men had lemons stuck in their mouths,” Virgil said. “I was told that Vietnamese executioners sometimes did that, you know, like firing squads, to keep the man quiet.”

“Why would I know something like that? Who told you to call me?”

“Well, I was told that you’re really the resident for Vietnamese intelligence, and that it’s something you would know.”

“What? Intelligence? Who would tell you such a thing?”

“Just a guy I met down here,” Virgil said.

“I don’t understand a single thing you are saying. I am hanging up now. Good-bye.” The phone banged down.

“Sounded like a big ‘Yes’ to me,” Virgil said aloud.

HE KILLED MORE TIME with his camera, and was looking through a long lens at the Sinclair apartment when Mai came out, forty-five minutes later, carrying a gym bag. Watched her walk away.

He let her get another block down the street, then started the truck, eased onto Lincoln. She walked four blocks, then over to Grand, where she became involved in a curious incident.

Two skaters turned the corner, slipping along on their boards, hats backward, long shirts, calf-length baggy pants, fingerless gloves, nearly twins except that one was black and one was white.

The white kid said something to her, with a body gesture that was right next to a smirk, and Mai stopped and said something back to him, and held up a finger; and said something else, and waited; and the two boys turned away, got off the sidewalk, and slipped on down the street.

Virgil eased the truck back behind the corner before Mai could turn far enough to see it. When he eased forward again, she’d gone on, taking a left on Grand. He went up to the corner, looked left, and saw her turn at a tan-brick building with the red scrawl of a neon sign in the window. He was at too sharp an angle to read the sign, but it looked like a dance studio.

He thought about going back after the kids, to ask what she’d said to them, but there’d be a risk in that if they were local, and if she should encounter them again.

Besides, he didn’t really need to. He knew what had been said.

Something close to:

“Hey, mama, you wanna feel a really hard muscle?”

And she’d said, “Go away, little boys. You don’t want to mess with me.”

They’d gone, because they’d seen the same thing that Virgil saw.

Virgil didn’t know a hell of a lot about karate or kung fu or jujitsu, but standing there, Mai had looked like one of the sword women in the Chinese slasher films that Virgil had seen three of, with titles like The Pink Flowers of Eternity and Swords amp; Shit.

A certain pose that didn’t say dance, but said, instead, “I’ll pluck your fuckin’ eyeballs out.”

You find out the most interesting things by spying on people, Virgil thought. Especially if you’re a cynical and evil motherfucker.

Just take the girl dancing, Virgil.