Free The Orange Curtain by John Shannon Page B

to complete a physics doctorate. I’m working on a neutrino experiment with a colleague of the Nobel laureate, Dr. Reines.”
    “When was the last time you saw her?”
    He thought for a moment. “A week ago. The student union told us a little film company wanted a Vietnamese couple to appear in an educational film about TB. Phuong thought it would be a lark. When we showed up, they decided we were too old—I think they wanted high school kids—but they used us in one scene, anyway. I had to go to a night lab as soon as we finished the scene, but she said she could get a ride so she stayed after me.”
    “What was the night?”
    “Tuesday.”
    “When was the last time you heard from her?” he asked Minh Trac.
    “Monday, the day before that.” His eyes were looking worried.
    “What’s the name of the film company?”
    “It was video really. They’re called MediaPros, over in Garden Grove.”
    “Do you have any idea who might want to harm her? Enemies? Campus racists?”
    “Racists?”
    “Didn’t you have an incident at UCI with a kid threatening Asians over the Internet?”
    He raised his eyebrows. “I forgot, it was so unusual. Really, we don’t have much trouble. Just a kind of silent resentment.” He smiled lightly. “It’s whispered we study too much and we’re overachievers. I suppose we should arrange it so a statistically significant group of Asians flunks out of school every year. Nobody’s really going to hurt anybody over getting good grades.”
    The kid on the Internet had threatened to kill Asians, one after another, until they were all driven off the campus, if Jack Liffey remembered right. Somebody like that might well have started with an honor student like Phuong, but it wasn’t something he wanted to say in front of her father.
    “She’s not on campus much any more,” the boy said. “She’s been doing a business project before starting the coursework for her MBA.”
    “What was that?”
    The Vietnamese cop that he’d met came out onto the lawn and stared at them with a melancholy frown.
    “She was working on something with a group of planners called the Industrial League. I think it had to do with plans to make El Toro a regional airport.”
    Frank Vo was the name, he remembered, a polite soft-spoken cop.
    “Mr. Liffey,” Frank Vo called.
    Jack Liffey apologized to Minh Trac and the boy and then crossed half the lawn to talk to the policeman.
    “Hello, Lt. Vo.”
    “Good day. Do you have any reason to believe this vandalism was connected with this man’s daughter’s disappearance?”
    “No. But I don’t like the concept of coincidence very much.”
    “Me either. Do you have anything else to tell me?”
    “I just got started.”
    His brow furrowed up and another squabble of seagulls came over low, crying and shrieking, but he took no notice.
    “My partner feels that you would be better off somewhere else right now.” He didn’t seem to want to say this.
    “I don’t want to cause any trouble. I’ll go.”
    “Thank you. Good luck to you.”
    “You, too,” Jack Liffey said. “I’ll tell you everything I learn.”
    He had enough information to get started, so he said goodbye to the father and the boy and walked to the car. When he saw the Anglo cop stroll out to watch him leave, he decided to come back up the lawn for a moment. There was a limit to how accommodating he wanted to be to a prick cop.
    “You can kiss my ass,” he said softly toward the cop, not loud enough for him to hear but distinctly enough to read lips.
    The cop’s head recoiled a little, as if struck.
    Jack Liffey smiled broadly. “Have a nice day,” he said, quite loud.
    The cop seemed not to know what was happening, and Jack Liffey walked away. It was good, occasionally, he thought, to take someone like that through a little opening into another universe.
    On the way to MediaPros, he stopped on a whim for a late lunch at a tiny Peruvian restaurant, the place graced with artifacts and