The only good Lawyer

got it.” Trinh leaned back again. “I even call him ‘Charlie,’ like the fat detective guy in the old movies. And his woman, I call her ‘Dinah,’ get it?”
    I thought I did. “Dinah like ‘diner.’ “
    “Right. And they got to take it because they got to respect me.”
    Something was off. Huong remained stoic, but Trinh seemed relieved and kind of pleased with himself, like he’d just put something over on me.
    “So,” I said, “your owning the restaurant building had nothing to do with Woodrow Gant eating there the night he was killed.”
    “Zip, zero. Mr. Private Eye, I never even know the lawyer-man liked Vietnamese food. He sure never mentioned it when he was working on sending Oscar and me away.”
    Trinh rolled out the half-tongue smile, then checked his watch before looking up at his friend. “Oscar, how about you bring the car around, we get out of here?”
    That seemed more off to me. Why wouldn’t they want to leave together?
    Huong just nodded, though, watching me carefully as he backed out my door, closing it behind him.
    I waited for Trinh to turn back to me. “And I thought we’d never be alone.”
    He smiled, but just the little one. “I don’t like to say everything in front of Oscar. Sometimes he think I’m telling him to do stuff when I ain’t.”
    “Meaning?”
    “Meaning Oscar think you like a real threat or something to me, to my business, he maybe just decide to take you apart right here.”
    “Might be easier said than done.”
    Trinh looked me over, appraising something. “You one of those exercise geeks, go to the health club, jog by the river?”
    “Every morning, and twice on Sundays.”
    A better smile. “Don’t matter Mr. Private Eye. You never seen Oscar do his thing. He into that extreme-fighting shit.”
    “ ‘Extreme fighting’?”
    “You know, where these two guys get in a pit— with a fence like a schoolyard has around it?—and just beat the shit out of each other. No gloves, no rules except the eyes and biting.”
    I’d heard of it as “ultimate fighting” a few years before. “I thought that got outlawed?”
    “They trying, man. But you got to go with the will of the people, and the people, they want to see blood. First one was in Denver . Oscar the shortest guy climb in the pit, but he still come out fourth.”
    “What’s your point, Nugey?”
    Trinh nodded. “My point is, I want to whack that lawyer-man Gant, I ain’t gonna have him eat at Chan’s restaurant, then shoot him on a road. We just catch him in an alley sometime, like when he getting his cat, maybe. Then I tell Oscar to beat that Uncle Tom to death.”
    Trinh stood up. “Like I’m gonna have Oscar do to you, you don’t stay the fuck out of my business.”
    As Nguyen Trinh walked into the corridor; I began to register why he’d have wanted Huong to bring their car around. As soon as I heard him push the button for the elevator; I went into my desk drawer for the old photo album.

    I was already at my office door, making a mental note to call our superintendent and get it fixed, when I heard the elevator door close. Trinh had been right: The elevator was slow, slow enough that I could be downstairs and hidden by the time he was getting off and going out the main entrance. I watched him at the curb, folding into the backseat of a green, four-door Mercedes, which pulled away heading south toward the theater district.
    I gave it a count of five, then slipped out the door, hailing a cab from the cover of the next building. When the driver slewed over to me, I said into his open window, “This is your lucky day.”

    “For Yuri, lucky already fifteen dollars.”
    The driver looked over his shoulder and through the Plexiglas, his accent Russian, the meter running. My visitors’ green Mercedes was three vehicles ahead of us and showing no sign of reaching its destination.
    Back in my office, I couldn’t see any reason for Nguyen Trinh to have Oscar Huong bring their car around unless they didn’t want me following them somewhere. Which meant I wanted to. But I’d never have time to get the Prelude, and besides, Chan or Dinah at the restaurant might have seen me driving away and described it to them. A cab would be a little less obvious.
    If a lot more expensive.
    Yuri pushed back the Kangol cap on his head and picked up the mike to his radio, saying something in terse Russian before replacing it. “You think this close enough, three cars?”
    “Given the volume of