Chapter 2 - The Person Jack Called
Sophie wanted her father to leave.
Jack refused.
“You called me because you wanted answers,” she said.
“I called you because you’re the one who’s been digging through Dad’s boxes.”
“That doesn’t mean we should stand in the middle of the road and start a war.”
“It isn’t a war.”
Minh overheard.
“You don’t know this street.”
Jack turned.
“Then start talking.”
The merchants’ association had closed two blocks of Freedom Avenue for a private memorial procession. Temporary permits allowed barriers during specific hours, though the public arguments about who could enter had grown increasingly bitter.
Minh said the motorcycle could leave.
Jack asked again why the flag had to come off.
Minh refused to answer.
Bao answered for him.
“Because we have had people come here looking for trouble.”
“With American flags?”
“With cameras.”
Jack glanced across the street.
Several people were still recording.
Sophie noticed something more specific.
One man stood beside a parked SUV with a professional telephoto lens.
He was not filming like a curious bystander.
He had been waiting.
She raised her own camera.
The photographer immediately lowered his.
Sophie walked toward him.
He turned away.
“Sophie,” Jack called.
She ignored him.
The stranger entered the SUV.
Before he could pull away, Sophie photographed the license plate.
When she returned, Minh was arguing quietly with Bao.
Jack caught only one sentence.
“You said there would be no press.”
Bao saw Jack listening.
“It’s none of your business.”
“It became my business when you put yourself in front of my bike.”
Huy looked uncomfortable.
Minh finally said, “Come inside.”
Bao objected.
“Absolutely not.”
Minh turned on him.
“I said come inside.”
They entered Tran Family Market, a narrow grocery that had occupied the corner since 1984.
Old photographs covered one wall.
Grand openings.
New Year gatherings.
Community fundraisers.
Ribbon cuttings.
Jack stopped at a photograph from 1988.
His father was in it.
Daniel stood beside Vinh again.
“That’s him.”
Minh nodded.
“My brother.”
“What happened to him?”
Minh looked away.
“He died.”
“When?”
“November 1988.”
“How?”
“Fire.”
Sophie had found that too.
“The Lantern Building fire.”
Minh stared at her.
“You know about it?”
“I know there was a warehouse fire behind this block. One fatality. Cause listed as undetermined.”
“My brother was the fatality.”
Jack looked around.
“And my father?”
“Survived.”
There was something in the way Minh said it.
Not gratitude.
Accusation.
“You blamed him.”
“For a long time.”
“Why?”
“Because Daniel left town three weeks later.”
Jack frowned.
His father had never told him.
Daniel moved the family from Orange County to Riverside in early 1989.
Jack had been eleven.
He remembered boxes.
His mother crying.
His father refusing to explain.
Minh continued.
“Before the fire, Vinh and your father were working together.”
“On what?”
Minh looked toward Bao and Huy.
“Land.”
Freedom Avenue had not always been prosperous.
In the early 1980s, the strip had been a declining commercial district with empty storefronts, cheap rents and absentee owners.
Families arriving in California with little money began opening businesses there.
Minh’s parents operated a grocery.
Bao’s father opened a jewelry repair shop.
Others started restaurants, pharmacies and print stores.
But the land underneath the businesses was controlled by outside investors.
“A company started buying parcels,” Minh said. “Quietly.”
“What company?”
“Stonebridge Development.”
Sophie knew the name.
“It disappeared in the nineties.”
“Companies disappear. Money doesn’t.”
Minh walked to a cabinet and removed an old map.
Several properties were marked red.
“They wanted the whole strip.”
Jack studied it.
“And Dad stopped them?”
“Your father was a surveyor.”
That surprised him.
Jack knew Daniel had worked construction management later.
He had never known about surveying.
“He discovered parcel boundaries did not match some deeds being used by Stonebridge.”
Sophie leaned closer.
“Forged deeds?”
“Vinh believed so.”
“And the flag?”
Minh looked at it through the window.
“That pole was there the night the Lantern Building burned.”
Jack waited.
Minh continued.
“Your father ran out carrying it.”
Jack blinked.
“A flag?”
“No.”
Minh met his eyes.
“Something hidden inside it.”
Sophie looked at Jack.
Jack laughed once.
“That pole has been in our garage for thirty-eight years.”
Minh moved toward the door.
“Then perhaps Daniel never opened it.”
They went outside.
Jack removed the flag assembly from the motorcycle.
The metal shaft looked solid.
Minh pointed beneath the brass eagle.
“There.”
A hairline seam.
Jack had seen it a thousand times and assumed it was decorative.
He twisted.
Nothing.
Sophie noticed two tiny holes.
“Do you have a hex key?”
Huy retrieved one from the market’s maintenance drawer.
Jack loosened two almost invisible screws.
The brass top came free.
Inside the hollow pole was a narrow cavity.
Something slid into Jack's palm.
Not documents.
A small brass key.
A metal tag hung from it.
27B.
Minh whispered, “Vinh’s archive.”
Bao stepped backward.
Sophie noticed.
“What's 27B?”
Minh stared at the key.
“A room that was supposed to have been emptied thirty-eight years ago.”
Bao said sharply, “It was.”
Minh turned toward him.
“How would you know?”
No one spoke.
Then Sophie’s phone buzzed.
She had run the photographer’s plate through a public-record contact from her reporting work.
The SUV was registered to a media-consulting company.
She showed Jack.
Pacific Strategies Group.
Minh’s face tightened.
Jack asked, “You know them?”
Minh nodded.
“They work for Crescent Pacific.”
“Who are they?”
Minh looked out at the storefronts.
“The company offering to buy this entire block.”
Bao interrupted.
“Offering. Not stealing.”
Minh faced him.
“They need seventy percent of owners to sign.”
“They have nearly that.”
“Because people are tired.”
“Because people want money.”
The argument sounded older than today.
Older than the flag.
Older than Jack.
Sophie held up the key.
“Where is room 27B?”
Minh looked toward an abandoned two-story brick building three storefronts away.
Faded letters above the entrance read:
LANTERN PRINTING & STORAGE.
May you like
The same building Vinh Tran had died inside.
And according to Minh, somewhere beneath it was a room no one had opened since 1988.
