Little Mountain Read online

  Little Mountain

  By Bob Sanchez

  Praise for When Pigs Fly

  Bob Sanchez writes like Carl Hiaasen on speed…Only a few novels have made me laugh out loud, but this is one of them.

  —Midwest Book Review

  A madcap criminal caper…Perfect for those who like their eggs scrambled, steak rare and thrillers hammy.

  —Kirkus Discoveries

  Masterful writing with marvelous metaphors.

  —Kaye Trout’s Book Reviews

  Wonderfully zany, fun, action packed…I highly recommend this book.

  —Reader Views

  Bob Sanchez hits all the right notes in this zany comedy that will keep you turning the pages—and laughing out loud!

  —Leslie Meier, author of the Lucy Stone mystery series

  One cool debut.

  —David Daniel, award-winning author of The Marble Kite and Reunion

  A masterpiece of comic writing.

  —Kathryn Mackel, author of The Hidden

  You wrote a book? That’s nice, dear. I hope it doesn’t have any dirty words.

  —The author’s mom

  Praise for Getting Lucky

  Seamy and steamy...a page-turner

  —Ruth Douillette

  Fun, quirky, and simply enjoyable.

  —Rebecca’s Reads

  What I like best about Sanchez's writing is it's obvious he's having fun.

  —Wayne Scheer

  "Getting Lucky" is a great summer read, a beach book with plenty of sass, saavy and surprise character twists.

  —Jack Shakely

  Little Mountain

  By Bob Sanchez

  Copyright © by Bob Sanchez 2011. All rights reserved.

  Also by Bob Sanchez:

  When Pigs Fly (Read a sample chapter)

  Getting Lucky (Read a sample chapter)

  Blog:

  bobsanchez1.blogspot.com

  Contact:

  [email protected]

  LITTLE MOUNTAIN

  CHAPTER ONE

  Lowell, Massachusetts, 1990

  Viseth Kim took a last long drag and filled his lungs with smoke. Across the street from the park where he stood, a row of tenement houses crowded together behind a row of street lamps. He’d paid a dollar for a nine-year-old boy to do what the boy would have done for free: put rocks through a street lamp. Behind the dead light was Bin Chea’s house. Only the flickering blue glow of a television showed any sign of life on the first floor. The second and third floors were dark. Dim light showed through from the back of the fourth-floor apartment, then a light went on in front. The silhouette stood at the window, then disappeared.

  Finally, the signal. Show time. The smoke drifted out of his nostrils. The cigarette hadn’t calmed Viseth any, and his muscles tightened. He didn’t have to do this. He’d gotten half payment, enough to get to California, and he wouldn’t risk jail.

  But he wanted the whole thousand. He picked up the shotgun at his feet, reached for the shells in his shirt pocket, and loaded them the way he’d been shown. Would he get away from there in time? And why the hell did the landlord have to live on the top floor?

  There’s a lot of money and shit stashed in that house, his friends said. We should team up and split everything. You don’t know this guy, Viseth said. You fuck up, you don’t know what he’ll do to you. He’s got guys’ balls bronzed, you know like baby shoes? So there was no chance he’d use only one barrel and save the other one for holding up the place. Too much could go wrong, and this was guaranteed. No time to fool around. Just pull the trigger and split.

  He slipped between two parked cars, but a moan broke the silence. What was that? Through the front windshield on his right he saw the face of a girl, an American teenager with her eyes closed and her arms wrapped around a boy’s bare back. He stared, fascinated at the girl’s look of ecstasy.

  Viseth rubbed at his crotch. “I should finish that job for you, boy,” he said.

  The girl’s eyes opened, and she looked at him out of the corner of one eye. He suddenly remembered his real business. He shifted the shotgun to his left, hoping she didn’t notice it. Her friend was too busy to turn around.

  This could really ruin things. Time to take a stroll, maybe they’d be gone in a few minutes. His own girlfriend never liked to stay where they’d been seen making out in his car, especially when--

  Behind him the lovers’ car engine started, a radio blared with the screech of an electric guitar, and tires squealed. When he looked around, the car was at the bottom of the hill and racing through a stop sign.

  If she hadn’t seen the gun, he was okay. Probably she didn’t. Yeah, she had other things on her mind. He ran back to the house and hoped he’d avoid the lights of passing cars.

  Inside the front door, he sat for a moment on the stairway that led to the upper floors. The step squeaked under the weight of his body. Would any of the tenants hear him sneak up the stairs? Maybe he wasn’t cut out for this business. His nerves tugged at his muscles and wrapped his guts into an aching ball.

  Through the walls came sounds of laughter from the television. Off-and-on blue light flashed under the door of the first-floor apartment. No hall lights were on. Viseth felt his way up the stairs, holding the railing with his right hand and the shotgun with his left. The stock of the shotgun felt slippery with the sweat from his palm. Why the man wanted it done this way Viseth had no idea and didn’t care to ask questions. His heart thumped like a pipe on a garbage can. On the third floor, he began to hear the hum of an air conditioner from the top floor above him. Did Massachusetts have the death penalty? Would they execute a Cambodian or just send him to jail? Just send him to jail, maybe, if they caught him. Couldn’t be worse than the refugee camp in Thailand. Thai guards had shot anyone trying to cross the barbed-wire fences in either direction. Smugglers often paid the guards to look the other way, but the price was too high: five times the cost of a camp whore.

  On the top floor, he stopped and wiped the sweat off his forehead, then off his hands. He wiped the shotgun’s moisture onto his shirt, which clung to his skin. He still had time to back out, but he raised a shaking hand--

  --and rapped on the door.

  Through the door came a muffled yell and a pause. He raised his shotgun as the door opened wide.

  The victim stood paralyzed by the sight of two barrels aimed at his face. Viseth stood paralyzed by the sight of this old Cambodian man he’d been paid to shoot. The man had white hair, and one eye looked puffed from a beating. So that’s how--

  His mind went blank for an instant, then his finger twitched and squeezed.

  The night exploded. The butt of the shotgun smashed into him and sent a wave of pain flooding into his shoulder. The man went down on his back, and now he was red from his shoulders up. An old woman screamed. The room smelled of gunpowder and fresh blood and chicken soup. At the kitchen table, another man stood up, put a wallet in his pocket, and looked at him.

  “Follow me,” the man said, and they hurried down the stairs.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Detective Sambath Long didn’t think the first-floor hallway looked like a murder scene. It was well-lighted and clean, though slightly musty, and it was still hot at midnight. The odor of garlic seeped through the walls and pervaded the hallway. An orange cat stalked unconcerned by his presence, looking like a mouse cop. Mouse Cop. Sam smiled. Even the pets policed the place.

  But by the third floor, a different smell filled the air, one that grew worse with every step. It reached into the folds of Sam’s brain and dredged up memories of Cambodia, of boiled swamp water, of a dead neighbor rotting on the path to the rice field. By the time he got to the fourth floor, the stench reached down and twisted his gut. It h
ad to be his imagination at work; no homicide victim would smell so bad so soon.

  Five years before, a bomb had blown up a Cambodian couple in their New York apartment. They had been Khmer Rouge, a book had said. The book turned out to be wrong, but the man and his wife were still dead. How often did it happen: mistaken identity, hasty revenge?

  Sergeant DeVito stood at the doorway to ward off the curious. “What took you so long, Sam?” he asked. “Wilkins said you’d be right out.”

  Sam looked at his watch: Twelve-oh-five Saturday morning. In less than six hours he would be up again for his regular shift. “Wilkins called me only--” The victim lay on his back, the remains of his face a bloody pulp. Sam’s throat burned with a late dinner that didn’t want to stay down. “--twelve minutes ago,” he whispered.

  A half dozen officers milled about, which was too many. An evidence tech snapped the victim’s final pose while another waited to take a set of fingerprints. Sam took a deep breath, then knelt down and scribbled in his spiral notepad.

  The man was perhaps in late middle age, an Asian with thinning white hair and a slight build. He had no visible marks besides the immediate injuries--no tattoos, no old scars. The M.E. would have more details later. The victim’s right hand was mangled as though he had tried to stave off the buckshot. His left hand had dirty nails and an old bandage on the thumb. He wore gray slacks and a white shirt that was open at the throat and spattered with blood, a pair of mismatched socks, and brown shoes worn down at the heel. Several stitches had broken and loosened the soles, which looked only one short walk from wearing through.

  From inside a closed room came the moans of a woman--a freshly-made widow? Sam tried to block out his emotions, but anger seeped through. By the time he was twenty, he’d seen hundreds of corpses. Maybe he could find some justice for this one.

  On a small table opposite the door sat a photo of a smiling woman, her elegant features defaced by a spray of blood. A powerful image flashed across his brain: a man in black pajamas held the muzzle of a shotgun to the bridge of Sambath’s nose, and suddenly the barrel disappeared in a sea of red.

  Ugh. Where did that old dream come from?

  DeVito picked a pen from his pocket and chewed on the nub. “Let me guess,” he said. “You and Julie were getting it on when the phone rang. And Wilkins said get off your old lady and on the job.”

  Getting it on. The slang took an extra second to register. “You get too personal,” Sam said.

  “Bet you’re pissed.”

  “Of course I’m not,” he lied. “Had to detour around the accident. Looked bad.”

  “Those kids? Yeah, a fatal. We got that call first and then this beaut. Just another quiet night in Lowell.”

  The evidence tech’s camera flashed again as Sam turned toward the body. “Was the apartment robbed?” Sam asked.

  “Nah. Guy just delivered his message and left. By the way, condolences on making detective. We all know how much you love Wilkins.”

  “I never talk about the lieutenant,” Sam said. At least not with DeVito, who held his secrets the way a drunk held his gin. “Anybody with nothing to do should talk to the neighbors,” Sam said.

  “Got a couple guys looking for neighbors who speak English,” DeVito said.

  “Send two more. The M.E. show up yet?”

  “He’s on his way. He’ll take one look and say, ‘Yep. The son of a bitch is dead.’ Like we need Katsios to tell us.”

  Sam nodded toward the closed bedroom door. “Is the victim’s family in there?” he asked.

  “Yeah, Willie’s with the guy’s wife.” DeVito mimicked Groucho Marx with his eyes. Sam went in; DeVito’s leer was beneath comment.

  Patrolman Willie Johnson stood next to an old Cambodian woman, who sat upright on the bed with her fists clamped onto the bedding. “Oh no, husband. Not like this.” She spoke in Khmer, the Cambodian language.

  Sam touched her arm gently and introduced himself in his old language, the one he now used only for work. “Not like what?” he asked.

  “Not like this,” she said. “Not like this.” She barely seemed to notice him. He slipped his fingers under her wrist. Her pulse raced, and her breathing was fast and shallow.

  “Willie,” he said, “Get an ambulance to take her to the hospital.” Johnson spoke into his two-way radio while Sam turned back to the woman. “Is it your husband?” he asked, this time in English.

  She seemed suddenly aware of his presence, and opened her mouth--in surprise? To speak?

  “Ma’am, what happened?”

  The woman stared past Sam, her dark pupils dilated to take in the horror of this summer night. Deep creases lined her face, and she had tied her hair in a gray bun. She had perfect-looking teeth that couldn’t be real. “They--they shoot my husband!”

  “Who did, ma’am? Who shot your husband?”

  “They shoot! They shoot my husband!”

  “Who are they, ma’am? Do you know their names?”

  She looked down at her lap. Teardrops formed pools in her glasses. “No, I never see them before.”

  “How many were at the door?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then they didn’t come in and rob you?”

  The woman shook her head.

  “How many did you see?”

  “Just one.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “No.”

  “But you think there were others?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “The man who shot your husband. What did he look like?”

  “I don’t know. Already so dark!”

  “Was he taller than your husband, or shorter?”

  She gasped for breath. “Maybe taller, I’m not sure.”

  “Could you tell if he was American or Asian?”

  “No-o-o!” Her answer became a wail.

  “What is your husband’s name?”

  “His name Bin Chea.”

  The name sounded familiar to Sam, but he wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was someone he’d met in the Khao-I-Dang refugee camp in Thailand. Chea was a common enough Cambodian name, though, and he could have heard it anywhere.

  “How old is Mister Chea?”

  “He already sixty.”

  “Do you have any idea why someone would do this to him?”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head. The glasses drained tears onto her cheeks, and a few strands of hair stuck to her face. Her lips quivered.

  Sam touched her hands, which looked raw from scrubbing. “I’ll have to ask you to officially identify him,” Sam said. “Do you think you can do that? And we’d like permission to search the apartment.” She nodded, and Johnson handed Sam a clipboard with forms and a ballpoint pen attached. What a lousy time for paperwork. Sam helped her fill out the forms. She signed them, her hands shaking.

  Above the squawk of police radios, DeVito greeted the M.E. in the living room. Sam nodded to Dr. Katsios and stepped past Bin Chea’s feet, avoiding the blood as he walked toward the kitchen.

  “He’s dead all right,” Katsios said.

  DeVito laughed. “Hear that, Sam? My hunch was right. Was it the head wound, doc?”

  “Shut up,” Katsios said.

  “Show some respect,” Sam said.

  “Lighten up,” DeVito said. “The guy can’t hear us.”

  Sam walked into the kitchen with his hands behind his back. The stove looked brand-new, the counters were spotless, the sink had no dishes in it, and the crisp white curtain on the back window appeared to be freshly washed. The kitchen floor was bright and shiny, the way kitchen floors look in television commercials. On the kitchen table sat a bottle of chili peppers and three half-eaten bowls of rice-and-chicken soup, the kao poun he used to eat as a child. A Bic lighter and an unopened pack of menthol cigarettes sat like paperweights. Underneath lay a lottery ticket and a stack of mail. Sam flipped through the mail with the button on the top of his pen. A grocery circular, some third-class stuff addressed to Resident,
an envelope marked “Extremely Urgent” in preprinted pink and addressed to “Bill Shea.” It was unopened. Either Chea didn’t read English very well, or he’d gotten wise to American mail-order gimmicks. Sam had gone through his own mail the night before, so he knew it was an offer for time-sharing condos.

  There were also bills from the electric and telephone companies. The envelopes were sliced open neatly. Sam held each by the edges and shook out the contents.

  The phone bill listed calls to Providence, Bangor, and Long Beach. Two pages of them, most to the same three or four numbers. At the bottom of the stack was a mortgage bill from the Cornerstone Savings Bank. This guy must have been the landlord. Maybe he’d evicted the wrong person.

  In the wastebasket under the sink were an envelope and a news clipping that sat on top of a pile of coffee grounds. He lifted it as carefully as he had the mail on the table. It was addressed to Bin Chea, with a 952 zip code on top of a flag stamp. The rest of the postmark was illegible. West coast, maybe California. Top of the trash. May have shown up in today’s mail.

  Besson, one of the techs, held open a plastic bag. Sam dropped the envelope inside. Then he did the same with the clipping.

  Through the clear plastic Sam saw the photo of a man, his eyes blacked out with a ball-point pen. Long, sharp teeth made him look like a cartoon Satan. The back of the clipping looked like part of a cigarette advertisement: “Alive with Pleasure,” it said. There was no other writing on either side. In the white margin at the edge of the page were two words in Khmer handwriting: “We know.”

  What do we know? What secrets had finally unraveled on the victim? Had he failed to follow the path of his ancestors?

  DeVito walked into the kitchen. “So the guy blasts a sawed-off shotgun on the fourth floor, and he gets away just like that,” he said. “Took a real chance with all that noise, doncha think? Lot quieter if he’d of just torched the place.”