Heat Lightning

are you?”
    “Hanoi. In a pastry shop.”
    “Who got shot?” Virgil asked.
    “He was a college boy who supplied the boat and the vehicles,” Mai said. “He was supposed to go back to school, but now he’ll have to find another school. He’s here.”
    “Hurt bad?”
    “The bullet broke his leg,” she said. “I had to carry him. When we were in the truck, I looked back at you and saw you aim, but you didn’t shoot.”
    “Ah, there was a farmhouse in the background. I couldn’t see what was behind you.”
    After a moment, she giggled and said, “You could have thought of something more . . . I don’t know. Sensitive? Romantic? You didn’t shoot me because you thought you might hit a cow?”
    “Well, Mai, I was pretty . . . intent,” Virgil said. “I would have put your little round butt in jail if I could have.”
    “Mmm. How is Mead?”
    “Mead’s fine.”
    “I could not believe your governor’s press conference,” Mai said. “I was in Victoria when I began to see news stories about it. I couldn’t believe it.”
    “Get you in trouble back home?” Virgil asked.
    “No. You know, here, what’s done is done. Then you go on. I would have liked to have told you about the people who were killed in Da Nang,” she said. “The old man was my grandfather. The woman was my aunt, the little children were my cousins. I never knew any of them. My father, in his whole life, was insane with the grief of them dying. They went through the whole war, and then, just as the victory arrives, they are killed by American criminals. When this chance came, well, our whole family took it. Justice too long delayed.”
    She waited for a reaction. Virgil finally came up with “There would have been a better way to handle it.”
    “Well—my great-uncle is dying,” Mai said. “Nothing but old age, and he is famous here, the head of our family, so his life is good enough. But this justice was his one last wish. We didn’t have too much time; he will die this autumn, I think.”
    “So what do you want from me?” Virgil asked.
    “Closure. Say good-bye. I liked dancing with you, Virgil. I liked sleeping with you. We’d be friends if we could be, but we can’t.”
    “Mmm,” Virgil said.
    “So when you get rich and start to travel, if you ever come to Hanoi—give me a ring,” she said. “Or even a good neutral country. China.”
    “I wouldn’t go to China if I were you. To Hong Kong,” Virgil said.
    Another bit of silence. “Virgil—what did you do?”
    “I talked to that Chinese cop again,” Virgil said. “He’s a little annoyed that Vietnamese intelligence came into Hong Kong and murdered a guy without even a courtesy card.”
    “Oh, Virgil. Goddamnit. He knows who I am?”
    “Yeah, we squeezed that out of Mead,” he said. “So, if I were you, I might hesitate before going in there. For a while, at least.”
    Then she laughed. “Virgil . . . you were a surprise.”
    “So were you, Mai.”
    “Good-bye,” she said.
    And she was gone.
     
 
“OLD GIRLFRIEND?” Lark asked. She had her legs up on the opposite seat, two empty Grain Belt bottles by her elbow; clicked her front teeth with her silver tongue stud after asking the question.
    “Not exactly,” Virgil said. “Now, Lark, about these goddamn baby pants ...”
    THE TAIL END of August was hot. Davenport got in a lot of trouble working a new case, and called for help. Virgil went north, in the night, and found the entire east side of St. Paul in darkness. Some cog or gear in the power system had given up under the strain of the hundreds of thousands of screaming air conditioners, and popped.
    The BCA was a puddle of light, minimal services—not including the air-conditioning—running off an emergency generator. He checked in with the duty man and was told that Davenport, Del, Shrake, and Jenkins were out on the street somewhere, looking for a crazy guy in a wheelchair. “You’re welcome to wait in Lucas’s office, but I don’t think he’s coming back. Not soon, anyway.”
    Virgil went up to the office, walking down dark hallways; only the emergency lights were working in the halls. Davenport still had some power. Virgil got a fan going, pointed it at Davenport’s chair, turned on Davenport’s small flat-panel TV, and sat back in the chair.
    The convention had arrived. The parties had started, the champagne was flowing, the Young Republicans were barfing in the Mississippi, the anarchists were flying the black flag in Mears