Los Angeles Noir by Denise Hamilton Page A

his arm and pinned it to his side. Other hands tugged at his tie and he felt a ripple as it slid loose. Now his hands were shoved together and the tie, still warm from the heat of his body, was looped around his wrists and tightened.
    His wife had given him that tie. It was silk. Some Italian designer whose name he couldn’t pronounce. Now it bound their love together, he thought. What he would do to save his family.
    “The combination,” the boss repeated.
    Again Chen shook his head, bracing for further blows. He hoped he’d pass out if they hit him again. He knew his life hung by a filament not much thicker than the fiber optics that wrapped his beloved and lucrative circuits.
    “Open your eyes,” a voice ordered.
    Chen did and beheld a photo of himself, his wife, and the two girls, at a park near their home in San Marino. Chic and perfectly coiffed even on the weekend, Leila wore a quilted pink warm-up suit and clapped her hands as the children rocked on a seesaw. Chen stood off to the side in blue jeans, a white polo shirt, and tasseled loafers, talking into a cell phone. He remembered that day. An unseasonably warm Sunday in February. They’d eaten dim sum at a new place on Valley Boulevard and then, bellies full and relaxed, had given in to the girls’ pleas and taken them to the park.
    “We have people inside your house,” the boss said, his voice the sibilant hiss of a snake that Chen had been told lurked in the arroyo, with diamonds on its back and rattles that sang as it struck.
    At these words, Chen’s vision constricted to a pinhole, seeing only his children, their fragile limbs, their trusting eyes. He thought of the evil that lay camouflaged, coiled in wait in this hot dry land so unlike the humidity of home. He and Leila had made a safe place for their family in this New World, though Leila had never stopped pining for the southern province of her youth. They had sheltered their children in ways their own lives had not been, growing up under the lamentable excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Chen himself had been guilty of an excess of zeal, but that was all in the past. The American gold rush was on, and so he had emigrated and found a little door when the big one was closed and built up his business and used his skills. It meant long trips to Asia to search out the best price for raw materials, and he missed his family terribly, but such was the sacrifice one made. And after all, hadn’t he met Yashi there, and banished his loneliness in her arms, and brought her back and set her up in Arcadia as his mistress? He’d even bought her a townhouse on Huntington Drive. He hadn’t expected her to be so hot-tempered, his Yashi, with her flashing eyes and ebony hair rippling like a curtain. Yashi with her greedy red mouth fastening upon him, fingertips fluttering like tiny moths against his skin.
    The boss gave a buzz-saw laugh. He punched some numbers into a cell phone and gave an order. Then he put the phone on speaker.
    “Russell.” His wife’s quavering voice filled the car. “They promise that if you do what they say, they won’t …” her voice choked. “The children …” she said hoarsely. “They’ve got the children.”
    There was a scuffling as the phone changed hands.
    “Say something to your father,” a male voice demanded.
    Then a wet whimper. “Daddy?” said six-year-old Pearl.
    And when he heard that voice, usually so bossy, now reduced to a high whine of fear, something broke inside of Chen, and he slumped in his seat.
    How could he give these people what they wanted? How could he not? Even if his family was saved, all would be lost. He knew his wife—she expected a certain standard of living. A big house. Country club membership. Fancy cars. Ivy League schools for the children. The education they had missed out on, because of the situation at home. Then he heard his daughter’s gasp again, and he knew there was only one solution.
    He told them.
    The boss turned in his