Free Obedience by Joseph Hansen Page B

would she do that?”
    “Why would you eat lunch at Hoang Pho?”
    “Four wealthy Vietnamese were murdered there, and it’s near the Old Fleet Marina, where Le was killed.” Dave wanted a cigarette. He’d smoked the pack he’d taken with him. He bent to get a fresh one from under the bar, and the doll-boy made a sound in his throat and stepped close. Dave held up the cigarette pack. The boy glowered. Dave opened the pack, got a cigarette, and lit it. Pham was watching him. Dave said, “I’m not comfortable with coincidences. They always start me looking for the real story.”
    Pham smiled. “Not just another story? Ms. Davis wants her client freed. Isn’t that why she’s paying you?”
    Dave read his watch. Cotton’s DC-10 was thirty-two thousand feet above the black and slumbering Mississippi River by now. He drank from his glass again, and jerked his chin at the bodyguard. “What if I told you that a witness saw two men like your dainty friend here running away from the Old Fleet Marina at the time Le was murdered?”
    Pham stared at him without expression. He seemed not to breathe for a minute. He chose his words carefully. “I would say that the witness misunderstood what he saw.”
    Now it was Dave’s turn to stare, his turn to measure his words. “You mean that they were in fact there? But not to kill Le? Is that what I’m to understand?”
    “You are to understand,” Pham said, “that they did not kill Le Van Minh. On that you have my word.”
    “I take the word of people I’ve learned to trust,” Dave said. “I don’t even know you, Mr. Don.”
    The smile was crooked and came and went quickly. “My family name is Pham. I have Americanized the order of my names, and dropped the middle one. So, I’m Mr. Pham, but call me Don—I like the name Don, don’t you? So American.”
    “You’re in the gambling business,” Dave said.
    “And the prostitution business.” Pham nodded. “And the protection business, and the drug business.” He gave a short, sharp laugh. “No, I’m not incriminating myself. I checked this room for electronic listening devices. There aren’t any. And your only witness is asleep.”
    “The crime business, then,” Dave said.
    Pham inclined his head slightly. “And the crime business is a watchful business, Mr. Brandstetter. I have to know what’s going on at all times, in all places. If I get careless, I could end up like Mr. Le.”
    “Who was not in the crime business?”
    Pham laughed. “Quite the reverse. An upright man. An old-fashioned man. A man of conscience.”
    Dave studied him. “Which made him your enemy, right?”
    “Don’t be a slave to logic, Mr. Brandstetter.” Pham turned and walked away. The bodyguard stayed put, pointing his Uzi at Dave. Pham called, “I and mine had nothing to do with the death of Le Van Minh. Don’t waste your time on us. Look into the Le family.” He opened the front door. “A wealthy household, Mr. Brandstetter, but a very unhappy one. Old Vietnamese ways clashing with new Western ones.” He went out into the dark. The doll-boy, running backwards on silent feet, followed him, and slammed the door.
    “Cecil?” Dave ran for the stairs to the loft.

7
    C ECIL MOVED ANGRILY, YANKING clothes from the hospital room closet. Wire coat hangers flew. His long fingers groped for the ties down the back of the short, starchy garment they’d put on him at four in the morning. By Dave’s watch, it was five past eleven, now. The hospital bed coat flapped across the room. Cecil jerked into jockey shorts, a T-shirt. “There were two,” he said to Dave. “Two. It took two of them to pin me down.”
    “All right,” Dave said mildly, “there were two. I didn’t mean to insult you. I only saw one. The other one must have been out in the car and I missed him.”
    “Two of the little creeps.” Cecil sat in a chair by a tall window, and pulled on socks. “Jumped me in the dark. Otherwise it wouldn’t have happened.”
    “I