“But... that is not what troubles me.” She rubbed a hand over her eyes. “My son, I did wrong by Max and I am ashamed.”
“Ashamed?” What was she talking about? It was Max who should be ashamed to show his face in thecolonia.
“You do not know...” More tears slid down the wrinkled pathways of her cheeks. “He begged me not to send him with his father. I made him go.”
Max hadn’t wanted to go with Dusty? Oscar couldn’t hide his surprise. “What? Why?”
“I thought he needed a father, and...” Mamá looked away. “I saw how you loved Maria Carmen.”
Oh, Madre. His gut wrenched like a fist. She had meant well. But sending Max away hadn’t saved Maria Carmen for him. Oscar swallowed hard. How would things have been different if Max had stayed in thecolonia?
She pulled her handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped her eyes.
“You did what you thought was right, Mamá.” Water runs under a bridge and is gone forever. Oscar went to the stove andpoured a fresh cup of coffee. He set it beside her thin hand. “Will you tell Francesca? That you saw Max?”
“No.” Mamá frowned at her handkerchief. “Francesca, she is... I have known her all my life, in Mexico and here, and through it all with Maria Carmen. But I’ve never seen her like this.”
“Do you think she knows about Minerva Sinclaire?” That’s all he needed. Francesca didn’t keep things to herself. And he didn’t trust Alonso farther than he could throw him.
“No,” his mother answered with a shake of her head. “But she is keeping a secret from me, as I am keeping one from her. And secrets between friends are not good.”
Oscar covered his mother’s cold hand with his own. He wasn’t about to try to figure out Francesca’s problems when he himself had so many. “She’s been through much. And now she is without a job. She is worried, that is all.” They all were.
She stood before he went out the door, leaning up to kiss his forehead like she did when he was a boy. “Tell Max, if you see him, that he is welcome here.”
A twinge he didn’t understand went through his chest. Anger, still? Jealousy, maybe? Or guilt? His mother had sent Max away for his sake, misguided as it was. Did he bear some blame for what Max had become? Did they all share some blame in what happened to Maria Carmen? He gave his mother a peck on the cheek and went out the door. His head hurt too much to think any more on it.
Brody had called yesterday with three leads on Feng. “Maybe his people will talk to you,” he’d said.
“Mexican and Chinese aren’t the same thing,” Oscar had retorted.
“You’re not a white police officer—that’s something,” Brody answered.
Oscar would check them out—maybe even find Feng and another piece to the puzzle. Then, he would look for Roman. Maybe it was his pounding head or the threat of the ominous gray clouds, but he had the uneasy feeling he was running out of time.
It took five cranks to start the Ford. As he turned out of thecoloniaonto Broadway, his thoughts returned to Max. Could he be in love with Mina? He’d tried to save her from Lester with the drugged drink. But if he loved her, wouldn’t he want to prove her innocence? Maybe that wasn’t Max’s kind of love.
Chinatown was only a few blocks from thecolonia, but it might as well have been across the ocean. Narrow streets were crammed with shops and temples with curled rooftops and red globe-like lanterns. He parked the Ford and walked by a shop displaying long curved pipes and tobacco in carved ivory boxes. The next window held a line of scrawny plucked ducks, dried fish, and bins of vegetables. He found the address Brody had given him down an alley not much wider than his shoulders. He pulled a yellow envelope withCosmopolitan Productionswritten in bold letters from his jacket pocket and knocked on the door.
“Registered mail delivery,” he said when an old Chinese woman opened the door. “For Feng Li.” The tiny woman eyed the thick envelope and held out her hands eagerly. Oscar pulled it back. “I can only give it to Mr. Feng.”
She shook her head and made it clear she hadn’t seen her son in a long time. He left with what sounded like Chinese curses following him all the way down the street. The envelope holding nothing but a folded newspaper went back in his pocket.
Oscar got back in the Ford and turned south toward Macy Street. He knocked on the door and replayed the ruse to a dingy blonde in a tattered dressing gown. An unfamiliar odor, sickly sweetand cloying, drifted from her. Feng hadn’t been by in months, she said, and the bum owed her money. “You’re not the first to come looking for that loser,” she said.
“Who else?” he asked.
“Some joker. Looked like a blond John Gilbert, smelled like a cop.” She eyed the envelope. “I can help you get rid of that,” she said with a brown-stained smile. Revulsion curled in his stomach and he didn’t hide it well enough. Her bloodshot eyes narrowed, and he left quick, before she summoned a thug from the dark den behind her.
Back in the auto, he took a deep breath of damp air and headed to the next address—a pawnshop near the Santa Monica Pier. So far, the rain held off but that was all the luck he’d had. He showed a picture of Feng—one Brody had gotten from Central Casting—to a leathery old-timer in a ten-gallon hat and alligator boots. “Yep. The big Chinaman. He came in a couple times,” he said. “Always had something to hock.” He nodded to a display case. “That cigarette case, jewelry.”
“Where’d he get it?”
The cowboy’s brown face wrinkled, and he spit a brown stream into a brass jug. “Not my business. Petty thief, I reckon.” Nope, he hadn’t seen Feng in weeks. Another dead end.
By the time Oscar turned the Ford toward the city late in the afternoon, he was hungry and tired and had wasted a full tank of gas. The clouds had darkened to the color of ash, and he knew he didn’t have much time before the rain started.
He pulled up beside Queen of the Angels as the first rumble of thunder rolled in with a damp wind from the west. Padre Ramirez was bending over the rosebushes that ringed the courtyard. He stood, rubbing his back, as Oscar approached. “Oscar, thank thegood Lord.” He handed him the ball of twine and a sharp knife. “I was just praying to get these taken care of before the rain came, and here you are.”
