remembering.
Spencer waited.
“By late April, nineteen seventy-five, when Saigon fell, I was thirty, with four children, my wife Mae. My mother was still alive, and one of my three brothers, two of his children. Ten of us. After six months of terror, my mother, brother, one of my nieces, and one of my sons were dead. I failed to save them. The remaining six of us… we joined thirty-two others in an attempt to escape by sea.”
“Boat people,” Spencer said respectfully, for in his own way he knew what it meant to be cut off from one’s past, adrift and afraid, struggling daily to survive.
Eyes still closed, speaking as serenely as if recounting the details of a walk in the country, Lee said: “In bad weather, pirates tried to board our vessel. Vietcong gunboat. Same as pirates. They would have killed the men, raped and killed the women, stolen our meager possessions. Eighteen of our thirty-eight perished attempting to repel them. One was my son. Ten years old. Shot. I could do nothing. The rest of us were saved because the weather grew so bad, so quickly — the gunboat withdrew to save itself. The storm separated us from the pirates. Two people were washed overboard in high waves. Leaving eighteen. When good weather returned, our boat was damaged, no engine or sails, no radio, far out on the South China Sea.”
Spencer could no longer bear to look at the placid man. But he was incapable of looking away.
“We were adrift six days in fierce heat. No fresh water. Little food. One woman and four children died before we crossed a sea-lane and were rescued by a U.S. Navy ship. One of the children who died of thirst was my daughter. I couldn’t save her. I wasn’t able to save anyone. Of the ten in my family who survived the fall of Saigon, four remained to be pulled from that boat. My wife, my remaining daughter — who was then my only child — one of my nieces. And me.”
“I’m sorry,” Spencer said, and those words were so inadequate that he wished he hadn’t spoken them.
Louis Lee opened his eyes. “Nine other people were rescued from that disintegrating boat, more than twenty years ago. As I did, they took American first names, and today all nine are partners with me in the restaurant, other businesses. I consider them my family also. We’re a nation unto ourselves, Mr. Grant. I am an American because I believe in America’s ideals. I love this country, its people. I do not love its government. I can’t love what I can’t trust, and I will never trust a government again, anywhere. That disturbs you?”
“Yes. It’s understandable. But depressing.”
“As individuals, as families, as neighbors, as members of one community,” Lee said, “people of all races and political views are usually decent, kind, compassionate. But in large corporations or governments, when great power accumulates in their hands, some become monsters even with good intentions. I can’t be loyal to monsters. But I will be loyal to my family, my neighbors, my community.”
“Fair enough, I guess.”
“Rosie, the waitress at The Red Door, was not one of the people on that boat with us. Her mother was Vietnamese, however, and her father was an American who died over there, so she is a member of my community.”
Spencer had been so mesmerized by Louis Lee’s story that he had forgotten the request that had triggered those grisly recollections. He wanted to talk to Rosie as soon as possible. He needed her last name and address.
“Rosie must not be any more involved in this than she is now,” Lee said. “She’s told these phony FBI men that she knows little about Ms. Keene, and I don’t want you to drag her deeper into this.”
“I only want to ask her a few questions.”
“If the wrong people saw you with her and identified you as the man at the house last night, they’d think Rosie was more than just a friend at work to Ms. Keene — though that is, in fact, all she was.”
“I’ll be discreet, Mr. Lee.”
“Yes. That is the only choice I’m giving you.”
A door opened softly, and Spencer turned in his armchair to see the napkin folder, his polite escort from the front door of the restaurant, returning to the room. He hadn’t heard the man leave.
“She remembers him. It’s arranged,” the escort told Louis Lee, as he approached Spencer and handed him a piece of notepaper.
“At one o’clock,” Louis Lee said, “Rosie will meet you at that address. It’s not her apartment — in case her place is being watched.”
The swiftness with which a meeting had been arranged, without a word between Lee and the other man, seemed magical to Spencer.
“She will not be followed,” Lee said, getting up from his chair. “Make sure that you are not followed, either.”
Also rising, Spencer said, “Mr. Lee, you and your family…”
“Yes?”
“Impressive.”
Louis Lee bowed slightly from the waist. Then, turning away and walking to his desk, he said, “One more thing, Mr. Grant.”
When Lee opened a desk drawer, Spencer had the crazy feeling that this soft-spoken, mild-looking, professorial gentleman was going to withdraw a silencer-equipped gun and shoot him dead. Paranoia was like an injection of amphetamines administered directly to his heart.
Lee came up with what appeared to be a jade medallion on a gold chain. “I sometimes give one of these to people who seem to need it.”
Half afraid that the two men would hear his heart thundering, Spencer joined Lee at the desk and accepted the gift.
It was two inches in diameter. Carved on one side was the head of a dragon. On the other side was an equally stylized pheasant.
“This looks too expensive to—”
“It’s only soapstone. Pheasants and dragons, Mr. Grant. You need their power. Pheasants and dragons. Prosperity and long life.”
Dangling the medallion from its chain, Spencer said, “A charm?”
“Effective,” Lee said. “Did you see the Quan Yin when you came in the restaurant?”
“Excuse me?”
“The wooden statue, by the front door?”
“Yes, I did. The woman with the gentle face.”
“A spirit resides in her and prevents enemies from crossing my threshold.” Lee was as solemn as when he’d recounted his escape from Vietnam. “She is especially good at barring envious people, and envy is second only to self-pity as the most dangerous of all emotions.”
“After a life like yours, you can believe in this?”
“We must believe in something, Mr. Grant.”
They shook hands.
Carrying the notepaper and the medallion, Spencer followed the escort out of the room.
In the elevator, recalling the brief exchange between the escort and the bald man when they had first entered the reception lounge, Spencer said, “I was scanned for weapons on the way down, wasn’t I?”
The escort seemed amused by the question but didn’t answer.
A minute later, at the front door, Spencer paused to study the Quan Yin. “He really thinks she works, keeps out his enemies?”
“If he thinks so, then she must,” said the escort. “Mr. Lee is a great man.”
Spencer looked at him. “You were in the boat?”
“I was only eight. My mother was the woman who died of thirst the day before we were rescued.”
“He says he saved no one.”
“He saved us all,” the escort said, and he opened the door.
On the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, half blinded by the harsh sunlight, jarred by the noise of the passing traffic and a jet overhead, Spencer felt as if he had awakened suddenly from a dream. Or had just plunged into one.
During the entire time he’d been in the restaurant and the rooms beneath it, no one had looked at his
