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Chapter 5

I entered Uncle Tinh’s hotel through a locked door on a narrow alley. The word Private was stenciled on the door, which was just a few feet removed from the entrance to the restaurant’s kitchen. During my first visit to New Orleans, Uncle Tinh had given me a key to the private door.

Unlocked, the door swung open to reveal a small foyer and a smooth wall of marble hung with two simply framed photos. One photo was in color, taken of Uncle Tinh standing in front of Tinh’s City Vu. Matted in the same frame was a newspaper article about the hotel’s recent renovation and the restaurant’s grand opening.

The other photo was older, black-and-white, and looked like a candid shot. In it, a middle-aged Vietnamese man, who I recognized as Uncle Tinh, sat at a sidewalk café sharing a meal with a group of American soldiers and journalists. He wore a uniform shirt, but the camera angle made it impossible to see his rank. Everyone in the photo was laughing or smiling.

The photo had been taken just weeks before Saigon fell to the Vietcong, Uncle Tinh had told me. Uncle Tinh was among those taken by chopper from the rooftop of the American embassy to an aircraft carrier bound for Hong Kong. From there, he had immigrated to the U.S. and settled in Evanston, Illinois. In all the years I’d known him, I had never heard Uncle Tinh speak of who or what he’d left behind.

To the left of the foyer entrance was a highly polished wood panel that, at the push of a button, slid silently open to reveal an elevator large enough to accommodate two people comfortably. I tapped a five-number code onto the keypad inside, the elevator door closed and I was taken upstairs to Uncle Tinh’s apartment—the entire fourth floor of a seventeenth-century Creole town house.

Uncle Tinh and I sat in a pair of upholstered, high-backed chairs at one corner of the long dining table. It was just past noon but, as was Uncle Tinh’s custom, he ate his primary meal before the start of his busy business day. Downstairs on the first floor, in the bistro atmosphere of Tinh’s City Vu, he worked nonstop and was completely devoted to serving his customers. But in the privacy of his home, he indulged himself. That meant having a live-in staff, including a chef. As far as I knew, Uncle Tinh rarely stepped into his ultra-modern kitchen except to pour himself a cup of coffee or a glass of wine.

The meal was, by Uncle Tinh’s standards, informal. I had dressed appropriately in a simple black sheath topped by a red linen jacket and wore the string of pearls that Uncle Tinh had given me on my twenty-fifth birthday. Tiny silver clips just behind my temples anchored my long, unruly hair back from my face. Uncle Tinh wore a white shirt, tan slacks and leather sandals. Despite the simplicity of his outfit, the quality and cut of the fabric made me wonder if he and Beauprix shared the same tailor.

A uniformed male servant I didn’t recognize from my last visit carried a large silver chafing dish into the dining room and brought our conversation to a halt. With a quick bow—first in Uncle Tinh’s direction and then in mine—the servant placed the dish on the table.

“Thank you, Vin,” Uncle Tinh said in Vietnamese.

Vin reached to lift the chafing dish’s lid, but Uncle Tinh stopped the motion by laying the fingers of his left hand lightly across his wrist. Vin stiffened at the unexpected touch and his eyes widened. Uncle Tinh casually moved his hand and lifted the linen napkin that lay beside his plate.

“My niece and I will serve ourselves,” he said as he carefully arranged the napkin in his lap. “I will call should we need anything.”

Vin, who now held his arms rigidly at his sides, bowed again, this time only to Uncle Tinh. And his fear made me wonder anew if Uncle Tinh was, as Uncle Duran had often insisted, the anh hai for the central region of the United States. Anh hai was a traditional title of respect that Vietnamese gangs had co-opted for their most senior leaders.

As the kitchen door swung shut behind Vin, I said in English, “He’s new. And obviously intimidated.”

I raised an eyebrow, making it 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 giving me. I sat quietly sipping his expensive Scotch, letting it trickle its way down my throat and warm my belly. Then I returned the nearly empty tumbler to the table. At the slight sound, Uncle Tinh looked up, put the wine bottle aside and tucked his glasses back into the drawer.

“When I finally looked away from the body and drawing pad, I discovered that Beauprix was standing just inside the doorway, leaning against the wall near Joe’s desk, watching me. I suspect he had been there for quite a while. When he saw that I was done, he crossed the room and took the drawing pad from me.”

“And you told him what you saw.”

I shook my head.

“Not then. When you called me in Washington, you said that three people had been killed. I asked Beauprix about them, asked what they had in common. Nothing, he said, except that they were all Vietnamese immigrants living in the same small community. And each of their bodies was dumped in New Orleans East, below I-10 where the Inner Harbor Canal meets the Intercoastal Waterway.”

The area that Beauprix had described was sprawling, isolated and very industrial. Built to accommodate river-and ocean-going vessels and the cargo they carried, the canal and the waterway linked Lake Pontchartrain with the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico beyond. Heavy industry and Port of New Orleans container terminals spotted the marginal land east of the canal and on either side of the waterway with busy, sprawling complexes. Every day, billions of dollars’ worth of imports and exports were created, transferred, stored and transported.

“According to Beauprix,” I continued, “bodies tend to turn up in that area with some regularity.”

“And so?” Uncle Tinh said, sounding distressed.

“And so, the official view is that the killings are unrelated. They are an unfortunate coincidence in a city where it’s not all that unusual for strangers of the same race living in the same neighborhood to end up dead. Not that Beauprix believes that. But he was working on instinct. The sketches—my observations—gave him something more substantial than his gut feeling.”

I paused and, as I finished the Scotch remaining in my glass, I recalled how Beauprix had stopped speaking and simply stared at me when he’d turned over the last page in the drawing pad, the page that put all the pieces back together. What he had seen on the paper, or perhaps what he’d seen in my face, convinced him that his investigation needed me. Undoubtedly he was relieved to have his hunch confirmed by someone else. But, at that moment, he had looked at me as if I were something…alien.

That reaction was nothing new to me. Most of the people I’d worked with over the years had eventually been able to overlook my gender, my size and my appearance. But few were able to accept that which they didn’t understand. And they didn’t understand how observation, talent and memory could intertwine to produce insight. Witchcraft, a federal prosecutor had once judged it.

When I’d come to live in the U.S., I’d left behind the taunts that I was dust beneath the feet of true Vietnamese. No longer Vietnamese but not quite American, I struggled to find my place in a society where I was neither black nor Asian, but had Caucasian parents. It was my adopted uncles who taught me to value myself for who I was, to stand alone by choice. Thanks to both of them, I had grown into an adult who found it easy to ignore people’s reactions to who I was and what I could do.

But when Beauprix had looked at me that way…

Why should I care what he thought of me?

Agitated, I stood, stepped out through one of the French doors onto the balcony. I braced my hands against the decorative wrought-iron balustrade and leaned forward, looking out over the convent grounds. On the wide brick promenade leading to the building’s front door, the alabaster statues of three Ursuline nuns knelt in perpetual prayer. Deliver us from evil, I thought, thinking about the horrors that I’d seen that day and adding my silent petition to theirs.

Then I went back inside and told Uncle Tinh the rest of the story.

“Beauprix showed me photographs of the other victims taken on the scene and, later, at the morgue. He carries a set with him, admits he can’t get their faces—their stories—out of his head. As he told me about the other victims, I sat beside him in the front seat of his car, studying the photos and sketching what I saw.”

I tried to make my voice sound as cool and professional as Beauprix’s had when he’d given me the information.

“The boy was the third victim. Multiple stab wounds. The official view is that the boy got mixed up with the wrong element. Drugs, maybe, though the investigating officers couldn’t find anything in his background to suggest any kind of criminal activity. He was a college student, studying to be a graphic designer.

“Seven weeks ago, the only female victim was found beaten and strangled. Her name was Vo Bah Mi. She was fifty seven. Her ring had been removed from her finger.” I shuddered at the memory of her hands. “Her husband didn’t have an alibi, so he was taken into custody and charged with the murder.

“Beauprix thinks that Yu Kim Lee, thirty-two, was the first victim. He was found almost six months ago, bludgeoned to death. His extremities were crushed. There are no suspects.”

As I spoke, I watched my uncle’s horror grow, watched as it stretched his eyes and tightened his mouth.

“I’d already found the pattern in the third killing, so it didn’t take much time to discover a similar pattern in the first two. Different methods, perhaps. But beneath the appearance of unrestrained violence, there was the same cold, calculating deliberation. The same focus on destroying their hands. And the same cruelty. Cruelty like I’ve never before seen, Uncle Tinh. It’s the work of one person. I’d stake my reputation on it.”

“May I see the sketches?” Uncle Tinh asked, and I heard the tremor that his business-like voice could not quite disguise. “Did you bring them with you?”

“They’re in my briefcase. With my jacket, in the foyer. I’ll get them.”

As I began to rise, Uncle Tinh waved his hand in my direction.

“Stay where you are,” he said. “Finish your drink.”

He crossed the room to his desk, lifted the telephone that rested there and tapped two numbers into the keypad. From somewhere in the apartment, I heard faint ringing.

“Vin. My niece’s briefcase is in the closet in the foyer. Bring it into the study, please.”

He put the phone back in its cradle but, instead of returning to his chair, he perched on the edge of his desk. Vin came in, handed the glove-leather briefcase over to my uncle and scurried away.

“With your permission?” he said, and I nodded.

Uncle Tinh opened the briefcase, found the drawing pad, lifted the cardboard cover and began turning pages. A few pages in, and he shook his head, then looked at me.

“May I remove these?” he asked.

“Of course.”

I watched the blood drain from my uncle’s face as he began carefully tearing the pages from the pad and placing them, one by one, on the polished surface of his desk.

I didn’t tell him that as awful as the drawings were, the reality was worse.

“The killer used his victims like an artist’s canvas,” I said. “He or she was creating images for a specific audience. Whether that audience is one person or many, I don’t know. And whether the images were intended to horrify or satisfy or intimidate, I don’t know. I guess that’s what we—Beauprix and I—need to figure out.”

By the time my uncle put down the last page, his mouth had tightened until the skin surrounding it was pinched and pale.

“Mon Dieu,” he kept murmuring. “Mon Dieu.”

Chapter 6

W e went downstairs to the kitchen of Tinh’s City Vu. Uncle Tinh went because it was his job, because he had a business to run and there was no reason not to run it. I accompanied him because I always visited his kitchen and I’d promised to try his new dessert. But mostly because I longed for an activity so wholesome and pleasant that it might, even for a short time, supplant the poisonous images I’d recorded on paper and would carry forever in my memory.

I was a step behind my uncle as he went through the back door into the busy kitchen. A grizzled older man with a pot belly spotted him, paused mid-motion as he slid a steaming rack of glassware from a dishwater, and called out a loud greeting.

“Hey, boss. Where y’at?” he said.

It was a warning, I thought, for the rest of the staff.

There were dozens of men and women working throughout the bustling maze of a kitchen, but certainly everyone within easy eyeshot of me and my uncle suddenly became more efficient. A group of young women stopped chattering in Spanish, glanced our way, then continued arranging a colorful assortment of baby greens into dozens of small salad bowls. A redheaded woman who I recognized from previous visits as a hostess and a black grill chef with a heavy Cajun accent were distracted from an argument that seemed more domestic than business. A tall, thin woman wielding a pastry bag paused briefly, flashed us a quick smile, then continued scolding two assistants who, like her, were dropping quarter-size blobs of dough onto large baking sheets.

Then, from an adjacent storage room, a boy with Asian features, large ears and a bad complexion came into the kitchen. He was, I guessed, no older than sixteen and dressed in baggy pants and a sleeveless black net shirt that showed off lean, muscular arms and a six-pack. His straight black hair was streaked with hot pink and brilliant blue, and his nose, lip and ears were pierced in a dozen places.

He had shadows under his eyes and the look of someone who was chronically tired, chronically stressed. The look, I thought, was familiar. And though he was far too young, I realized that his drawn, exhausted face brought to mind at least a dozen of the boys I’d played with when I’d lived in the refugee camp.

The boy balanced a fifty-pound burlap sack of onions on one of his shoulders. He was moving slowly beneath its burden when he turned into the narrow aisle between two stainless-steel counters and noticed Uncle Tinh and me. Abruptly he straightened his back and quickened his pace. Unfortunately the top of the sack wasn’t completely sealed and his abrupt movements shifted its load. Dry red onions began tumbling to the floor. Startled, the boy took a half step forward to maintain his balance, put his foot down on one of the escaped onions and fell sprawling between the counters.

In the moment that it took the kitchen staff to recover from the sudden chaos, Uncle Tinh was on his knees at the teenager’s side. As everyone looked on, he helped the boy to his feet and waited as the boy turned his head left, then right and flexed his arms and legs. Once he had proved himself uninjured, Uncle Tinh patted him on the shoulder and leaned in close.

“Di dau ma voi ma vang,” he murmured quietly. “Ma vap phai da, ma quang phai giay.”

I was probably the only other person in the kitchen who heard and understood what Uncle Tinh said. The old Vietnamese proverb cautioned against reckless haste. Loosely translated, it meant “hurry up slowly.” The boy listened with eyes downcast and nodded.

“Then back to work, Tommy,” Uncle Tinh said as he slapped the boy’s back in a very un-Vietnamese-like gesture.

Vin, who had served us dinner upstairs, would have been terrified by such close interaction with his employer. But when Tommy lifted his head, his serious brown eyes, framed by long colorful bangs, looked directly at my uncle.

“Yes, sir,” he said in English, in an accent that was pure New Orleans. “Thank you for your kindness.”

Uncle Tinh watched as the boy began retrieving onions with the enthusiasm of a puppy chasing a roomful of balls. Briefly, a sad smile played across my uncle’s lips, making me wonder if he envied the boy’s youth. Or, perhaps, he was recalling how bittersweet youth could be. In any event, he gave himself a slight shake, stepped back beside me and addressed the entire kitchen.

“Everyone! Maybe you remember my niece, Lacie. She come from way up north to sample Tropicale Vu.”

The tall, thin pastry chef’s head bobbed appreciatively as she shoved the first sheet full of pastry into a waiting oven, then took the next sheet from the waiting hands of one of her assistants. Uncle Tinh snatched a clean apron from a peg, a tall chef’s hat from a shelf and a copper sauté pan from an overhead pot rack. Then he, too, went to work.

I found an empty stool in a relatively quiet corner, took my drawing pad from my briefcase and relaxed as I waited by filling a page with quick sketches of the kitchen staff. Then I turned the page and did a larger drawing of the boy, Tommy. Pimples, big ears, piercings and all. He had good bone structure, I thought, and nice eyes. Once his complexion cleared and he grew up a bit…

“Finis!” Uncle Tinh announced from across the kitchen, so I quickly put my drawing pad away. When I had more time, I promised myself, I would draw the teenager not as he was, but as he would be.

A short time later, Uncle Tinh and I sat together at a small round table just outside the kitchen door, and he watched eagerly as I sampled his creation. Colorful, delicate and bursting with flavor and texture, the dessert involved tiny pieces of tropical fruit encased in a crackling sugar glaze, ribbons of white chocolate, macadamia nuts and custard, and thin, round layers of buttery crust.

Like so many of Uncle Tinh’s hallmark dishes, this one, too, was a dramatic and sophisticated blend of France, Vietnam and New Orleans. It was heavenly and would undoubtedly become a favorite among those who took good food for granted. I told Uncle Tinh just that.

As I finished off the last of the dessert, I listened as members of his staff came to my uncle for instruction and resolution of problems. Nothing about the conversations reflected anything but business as usual in a successful restaurant.

Then I returned our conversation to a far less savory business.

“So Beauprix told you about the murders and he asked you for help.”

“Yes. But I was already considering calling you because of a…related…situation.” Uncle Tinh shook his head. “If you were a stranger, I would have called sooner. But to ask such a favor of someone you care for—”

That thought was interrupted by Tommy, who approached the table confidently.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, his polite manner at odds with the rebelliousness his appearance suggested. “The pastry chef says the raspberries that were delivered earlier are unacceptable. The top layer looked fine, but beneath that the berries are spoiled.”

“Tell her— No, I will tell her that we will no longer use that supplier. In the meantime, ask the cashier for some cash, drive quickly to the Market and obtain for us the quality we need. Can you do that, Tommy?”

Tommy nodded enthusiastically, then left on the errand.

“He is the first in his family born in America,” Uncle Tinh said. “A hard worker in a land of opportunity. I think he will do well.”

Then he waved his hand in the direction of the nearby hostess. She scurried to refill our coffee cups. Uncle Tinh waited until she was out of earshot before speaking again.

“I know you do dangerous work, Lacie. But I would not have called you if there were another option. No matter how competent you are now, my heart still sees the child you were. Perhaps that is why I am comforted that you have Anthony Beauprix as an ally. Working with another professional makes the situation safer. It made my decision to call you easier.”

I was not surprised by Uncle Tinh’s attitude, nor did I argue about whether or not I needed Beauprix. Though I often worked alone, I had never objected to having someone competent watching my back. And although I found his attitudes annoying, I had no doubt that Beauprix was competent.

“Tell me what you would have me do that the police cannot,” I said.

He nodded.

“A man in my position hears rumors—and receives information—from many sources. I have already told Anthony what I am now telling you. A gang has taken over Little Vietnam, intimidating the merchants, as well as the residents. Many business owners now pay protection.”

I told myself that if my uncle was himself the head of a criminal organization, he would have the resources to deal with this threat. But the moment of comfort I took from that thought might have been longer if I’d had less knowledge of immigrant gangs. It was too easy to remember that, less than a decade earlier, the well-entrenched criminal establishment in New York’s Chinatown had been shaken to its roots by the invasion of a psychopathic gang called the Born to Kill.

“Protection only?” I asked, pushing Uncle Tinh for answers to questions he didn’t know I had. “Or other activities? Like smuggling illegals? Or perhaps supplying them with documents?”

Uncle Tinh’s tone was bland and, when his dark eyes met mine, his gaze was unwavering.

“Like all gangs, they engage in whatever is profitable. Certainly, counterfeiting documents and smuggling illegals are profitable. As are drugs, gambling and prostitution. Profitability also provides a ready motive for one murder. Or three. Or a dozen.

“These are violent, dangerous individuals, Lacie. Treat them with caution. With the information I have given him, even a white policeman might eventually be able to gather evidence against some of the sai lows—the foot soldiers. But to stop this gang from poisoning the Vietnamese community with their violence? To solve three murders and prevent others?”

Uncle Tinh put his coffee cup down, reached across the table and took each of my hands in one of his.

“To destroy the viper, one must have the skill and courage to cut off its head.”

And that, it seemed, was my job.