A Perfect Cover. Maureen Tan
a question, wondering if this would lead prematurely to the questions—the confrontation—that I dreaded. It never crossed my mind that Uncle Tinh would lie to me.
But Uncle Tinh’s long-suffering sigh hinted at an explanation that had nothing to do with crime—organized or otherwise. I found myself swallowing laughter that was directed not only at Uncle Tinh, but at myself and my suspicions.
“Lee Leng hired him because she felt Odum was too—I think her words were ‘coarse and common’—to wait at table. Odum splashed soup on her dress.”
Lee Leng was my uncle Tinh’s mistress. She had glossy, raven-black hair, large, dark, almond-shaped eyes set above high cheekbones, a slender nose and a delicate, rosebud mouth. A dozen years my senior, she had been educated at one of France’s most prestigious finishing schools and, in her best moments, was disarmingly sweet and charming. In a different time, spilling soup on one such as Lee Leng would have been punished by death.
“What happened to Odum?” I asked.
“He now assists Cook.”
I bit my lip, but couldn’t keep a chuckle from escaping.
“I’m surprised he still has a job.”
Uncle Tinh sat up very straight and lifted his chin.
“I say who works and who doesn’t work in this household.” Then he slumped into his chair and shook his head sorrowfully. “Unfortunately, I say it quietly so as not to offend my beautiful young mistress.”
Then, I did laugh.
Uncle Tinh sighed again, then reached over to lift the lid of the chafing dish. A waft of ginger and pineapple scent accompanied the sight of a whole red snapper resting in a nest of pale white scallops and surrounded by a sauce that was colored with slivers of vivid pea pods, toasted almonds and bright carrots.
“Ah, I see Cook has outdone himself,” he said with great dignity. “Shall we eat before the rice grows cold?”
“What about—”
“We will continue that conversation after dinner. For now—because my lovely Lee Leng is shopping in Paris this week—I will take the opportunity to describe the difficulties of living with such a woman. You will listen sympathetically and offer advice, my dear Lacie.”
Lie. See. As always, he spoke my name as no one else in America did, emphasizing both syllables equally, making it sound much like Lai Sie, the Vietnamese name from which my American name had been derived.
We resumed our more serious conversation as we sat in a pair of deep leather armchairs in the study. Behind us, French doors opened onto a balcony that overlooked the manicured front lawn of the Old Ursuline Convent. Between us was a low, leather-topped table. At the moment it held an open bottle of wine and two nearly full glasses.
“So, I embarrassed myself by getting sick at the sight of the body. That went a long way toward proving to Beauprix that he was correct. I might be good at cloak-and-dagger stuff, he said, but I was obviously too refined for the reality of street crime. Especially murder. He suggested—politely, mind you—that I go back to Washington where I belonged.”
Uncle Tinh’s eyes widened momentarily. Then he shook his head and reached past the table to briefly pat my hand.
“Obviously, I misjudged the man. Without his cooperation…” As he shook his head, Uncle Tinh raised his hands, palms upward. A very American gesture of hopelessness. “I apologize, chère, for dragging you into this. I will call Senator Reed, thank him for your services and ask him to bill me for any expenses incurred on my behalf.”
I hadn’t told my Vietnamese uncle about my American uncle’s suspicions. Nor had I told him that agreeing to help him had cost me my job. Fortunately there was still no need to bring up either subject.
“Actually, Detective Beauprix has agreed to work with me. For a time, anyway.”
“That’s very good news,” Uncle Tinh said. He looked less surprised by my success than he had when it seemed that I’d failed in my mission. “Please, explain how you accomplished this miracle.”
“After the bathroom…incident…I returned Beauprix’s gun and he offered to drop me off at my hotel. I agreed, intending to use the time to convince him that I could help. But his cell phone rang before we left the building. As he talked, I stood waiting in the hallway near the entrance, trying not to eavesdrop. And I found myself thinking about the dead boy. Recalling details.”
I paused, wondering how best to explain what I’d done. The hollow ticking of the clock on the mantel above the fireplace filled several minutes.
“And?” Uncle Tinh prompted.
I sighed and lifted the delicate wineglass. The multicolored facets of an ornate Tiffany lamp were reflected in the pale liquid the glass held. I took a sip, swirled the Chardonnay in my mouth, savored its grassy, slightly astringent taste and swallowed.
“So much that is bright and beautiful to build a lifetime around,” I said softly. I set the glass aside, searched my uncle’s face. “And yet—”
“And yet the dark and grisly holds a certain appeal,” Uncle Tinh said matter-of-factly. “I assume you went to look at the body again.”
I nodded.
“Uh-huh. You know that I always carry a drawing tablet and pencils with me….”
Uncle Tinh didn’t bother answering. Instead he swept his hand toward the opposite side of the room, in the direction of a series of matted and framed drawings hanging behind his desk. All studies of Uncle Tinh. All done by me. They ranged from an early and very childish sketch of him frying a duck in a deep wok to a formal pen-and-ink portrait I’d drawn a few Christmases earlier.
“Well, I walked back down the hallway to the morgue and grabbed a pair of latex gloves as I passed Joe’s desk. He looked confused, but didn’t try to stop me. I remembered which drawer Nguyen Tri’s body was in and walked directly to it. I opened the drawer, peeled back the sheet and began drawing.
“It was awful, Uncle Tinh. Almost worse than the first time. I was almost sick again, but I forced myself to look at the boy as if he weren’t really human. As if all the horrible things that had been done to him were merely elements of an elusive pattern.
“I concentrated on specific areas. First I sketched his face, then his torso. And then his arms and legs, hands and feet. I asked Joe to help me roll the victim over and repeated the process. Then I stepped away from the body and worked from my sketches, reassembling the pieces into a whole, trying to discover…”
Uncle Tinh’s expression remained bland as his dark eyes studied me.
“And you found…?”
“A pattern so clear that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it right away. And what I saw made me angry. Angrier, I think, than I’ve ever been in my life. I looked up, wanting to tell someone. Wanting someone to catch the fu—”
Uncle Tinh arched an eyebrow.
I bit back the obscenity as a sudden chill made me shudder and huddle back into my chair. Beauprix was right, though that was something I hadn’t told him. Nothing in my work for Uncle Duran had prepared me for this.
Uncle Tinh frowned slightly. He stood, walked over to the liquor cabinet and poured two fingers of Glenfiddich into the bottom of a chunky tumbler. He recrossed the room and wordlessly handed me the glass.
“Thank you,” I said as he settled back into his chair.
He nodded, lifted the wine bottle to refill his mostly full glass with more wine when something about the bottle seemed to demand his attention. After opening a drawer on a nearby side table, he found a pair of reading glasses and cleaned them thoroughly on the edge of his shirt before putting them on his nose. He turned the wine bottle slowly, examining its label.
I was grateful for the time he was