Caught Dead (4 page)

But Molly always intrigued me. I loved the way she floated into any room. She'd always been, of course, one of the “beautiful Le sisters,” so she was used to flattery and attention. But unlike her dead sister Mary, she'd married a very rich man, Larry Torcelli, the ambitious son of a local hotshot Hartford politico and businessman, once questioned by the FBI for illegal contributions to a gubernatorial election fund. Larry was a striking, charming man who'd inherited one of the most lucrative automotive enterprises on the Eastern Seaboard. He'd also fallen in love with the stunning Molly Thi Le, a romance that surprised him, but especially alarmed his unhappy father. He took her off to a sprawling estate in the Farmington hills, where she produced Jon Dinh and Kristen Thi, cookie-cutter pretty children, the envy of absolutely no one. And so, over time, Molly became the “rich one” of the beautiful sisters whom people saw only at holidays and funerals.

Last winter, at a Vietnamese New Year's party at a VFW hall in East Hartford, in the shadow of poor neighborhoods whose souls struggled to make ends meet, Molly swept into the dreary room, late as usual, very Ethel Merman with her booming voice and over-the-top Broadway gestures, and the room stopped. I remember that she wore an expensive fur. A mink, I was told. “She has three,” someone whispered. But she also had on a traditional
ao dai
, the high-neck silk dress, slit to the waist, worn over black satin slacks. Very eye-catching on a woman so beautiful. Now, striding into the late August sweltering hall, she struck me as still in silk and furs—the effect was always there, despite the simple blue dress she now wore.

At New Year's I remember hearing Mary Le Vu, sitting with Benny at a nearby table, announce, “That's why I'll always be the one that people talk of as ‘the poor one.'” There was neither rancor nor envy in her voice, only a world-weary resignation to the unpredictable and heartless fate that had hooked her up with poor—and always to be poor—Benny Vu, nice guy with no bank statement.

Everyone at the table had laughed uncomfortably.

So the beautiful Le sisters had found disparate destinies: One had a subsistence life, lived off a struggling Asian market, life in the slow lane. The other had a Learjet housed at JFK in New York and a beachfront cottage in the Bahamas.

Now, in a room that became electric with the dramatic entrance of wealth and privilege, I watched the stylized routines as Molly embraced Benny, burst into tears, clung to him, then sought out Cindy and Tommy and embraced them. No one in the crowded room said a word, everyone eyeing the drama. Benny started sobbing again, but his kids didn't.

Molly's Larry stood behind her, not so much awkward—this guy never had an awkward moment in his life—but wholly deferential, waiting for his turn to shake Benny's hand, say the appropriate remarks, nod at the kids, and then find a folding chair against the back wall and sit and wait for his wife to be finished. The Vietnamese community, a little intimidated and a whole lot nervous, didn't know how to deal with him. He wasn't friendly. Hank had told me once that people suspected he didn't like the Vietnamese. He'd married Molly Le for one reason only—he couldn't take his eyes off her ravishing face and her drop-dead body. No other reason. And he'd admit to that. He was inordinately proud of her beauty. He had no interest in Vietnamese culture—and he only followed certain obligations, like all-important New Year's celebrations, funerals, and occasional weddings, because Molly looked good at those occasions. People didn't like him. No, that's not true—they didn't want to know him. They felt that knowing him would be too much baggage to carry around.

“The rich are not as we are,” Hank whispered.

I'd had one conversation with Larry, the two of us standing outside during a New Year's party, getting fresh air. Staring straight ahead, he asked me what I did for a living, and then told me he was rich.

“I know you are,” I'd commented.

“You do?” he'd responded.

“That's what people know about you,” I'd said.

He walked away.

No one spoke to him now.

Larry hadn't been at the church service, only Molly and her two children, arriving late, ushered to a front pew, and then leaving quickly. They didn't linger to talk on the sidewalk with the priest or the mourners. They avoided the TV cameras. Nor did they show up at the gravesite at Cedar Hill.

Jon and Kristen sat down at Tommy and Cindy's table as Hank darted over to join them, though I noticed he sat quietly, listening. No one paid attention to him, but Tommy did nod at him. Tommy talked on his cell phone for a minute. Kristen never let go of hers. Meanwhile Molly wandered throughout the room, hugging, weeping, and whispering. When Hank wandered back a while later, he was shaking his head.

“What's up?” I asked.

“You know what the kids are talking about?” he grumbled. “Jon just got a new car from his daddy. He showed us a picture he uploaded on Instagram.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Well, what else is there to talk about?”

Hank squinted, gauging just how serious I was. He tapped me on the shoulder. “Let's go. I wanna get out of here.”

In the car he wasn't happy. “They're talking like nothing happened.” He paused. “You know, these families are somehow related to me through my mother.”

“I know.”

“That doesn't make me happy.”

“It has nothing to do with you.”

“I overheard someone ask Molly about Mary, and she just turned away, almost angry.”

“Asked her what?”

“About the sudden loss.”

“Well, maybe she was too hurt.”

Hank grinned now. “God, you are so…so forgiving at these funerals. Where's the old cynicism?”

“Well, Hank, this is a blow to the family…”

“I
know
that. You know something else?”

“What?”

He turned in the seat. “Everyone avoided talking about the murder. I heard people talking about how good Mary was, how her death was so sudden and such a shock, how Benny looked horrible, what is he going to do because he loved her so much, how the kids looked like rejects from some MTV video—on and on, over and over. But no one used the word
murder
. No one.”

I sighed, thinking back to my days as a New York cop. “It's a hard word to wrap your lips around.”

“Spoken like an ex-cop living in the suburbs.” The words came out too sharply.

“What's the matter, Hank?”

“For God's sake, Rick. Mary was murdered.
Murdered
. It's not like
she's
the
murderer
.”

“Here's another cliché for you, Hank. Murder makes people uncomfortable.”

He sucked in his breath, then gazed out the window as he drove along. “I don't give a damn. To ignore the way she died is to, well, dismiss her life.”

I quoted Buddha: “‘The killer and the one killed are the same. Parts of the whole.'” I glanced at him. “Forevermore she and the killer are one.”

“You sound like Grandma.”

“That's the nicest thing you've said today. When you were away from the table, she said to me, ‘We need your eye on this tragedy, Rick.'” I laughed. “Then she added, ‘There is an incompleteness that the universe hates. When there is a void, there must be an end to a void.'”

“Avoid what?”

“Never mind. She thinks I have some power that the police lack. She
insists
I talk to people.”

“Are you going to?”

“Do I have a choice?”

He grinned. “No, you don't.”

“But you're wrong about one thing, Hank. Some people did talk about the murder. In my earshot. A couple of times the talk was about what Mary was doing in that neighborhood. Why in God's name would she venture into drug war territory? Goodwin Square. Christ, it was a
Courant
banner headline just a month ago. I even heard Molly telling one of the old ladies, ‘Mary wouldn't be caught dead there.'”

“But that's exactly what happened.”

Chapter Five

Later that afternoon, I stopped at my office to check the mail. Though I do most of my investigations out of my Farmington apartment, I am officially part of Gaddy Associates, Private Investigation, Inc., housed in the historic Colt Building in the South End of Hartford. When I pulled into the half-empty parking lot, I noticed the air conditioner whirring in the sixth floor office. Gaddy was there.

Gaddy is Jimmy Gadowicz, a rough-and-tumble PI, a man in his sixties, overweight, at times overbearing. He likes truck-stop diners and all-you-can-eat home-style buffets. Fat-free is a four-letter word.

Jimmy made me his only partner years back—“Don't need no partner, so I don't know why I'm doing this”—gave me office space, helped me get a Connecticut license, mentored me, and maneuvered me through the cumbersome ropes. He lent me the money to post the bond for my license—my right to investigate and gather info on criminal and noncriminal matters. His firm—our firm—does mostly insurance fraud. Hartford is the insurance capital of the world, of course, with Aetna, Travelers, Cigna, the Hartford, you name it—and where there's insurance, there are people trying to rip somebody off. A lot of my work is fielding cases Jimmy can't get to. That's how I make my money. We don't get into murder, Jimmy and I. We play it safe among the white-collar insurance execs.

I took the elevator to the sixth floor. The Colt Building is a nineteenth-century derelict factory building, once owned by Colt Firearms. You know, the gun that tamed and maimed the Wild West. With its dilapidated façade, dreary and bleak, it houses public TV access shows, fundamentalist religious crusades, starving artists, karate or tai kwon do classes, left-wing political action groups, and fly-by-night business ventures. A world of spirited people living off nothing. A catacomb of cheap, partitioned rents.

Gaddy Associates—everyone calls Jimmy by the nickname Gaddy except his friends—is a straight-arrow firm, no doubt about it. Yes, Jimmy's a man of incredible bluster, but always principled. I swear I've never met a man so honest…and so infuriating at times. He'd fought in Vietnam and that's why he had me around in the first place, why he discovered he could actually tolerate someone else around the office. So many Vietnam vets hold a lingering affection for the land of their early manhood. A shattering experience, one you couldn't get away from, lodged in the bone marrow, deep as death. Jimmy saw me as part of that past—his past. His dangerous rite-of-passage days.

“What the hell you doing here?” Jimmy greeted me. The room smelled of thick cigar smoke and old tuna sandwiches and stale breath.

“What are you doing here?” I asked back.

He clenched his fists. “Got a goddamn deadline on this Aetna fraud case. Fact is, I was making no progress until a few minutes ago. Think I got the answer.” And again, “Why are you here?”

I told him about Mary's murder, the funeral, Grandma's request that I investigate—he scrunched up his face—and I even told him about my dinner the night before with Liz. His frown deepened.

He's old fashioned. When you get divorced, you don't go out to dinner with the ex-wife, just the two of you. You just don't, even though he adores Liz. Now Jimmy never married because—well, “Nam ruined me for a good woman,” something that made no sense to me. But he has a lot to say about marriage. And everything else.

He's a big pile of a man, unshaven half the time, always sweating even in winter, mopping a grainy forehead with a gray handkerchief, a man poured into extra-large sweat shirts that ride up a tremendous belly. When he gets drunk on his celebratory rye-and-ginger highballs, his thinning blond hair stands on end, and he announces that he is the Polish Prince. Last year he didn't talk to me for three days when I told him I thought Bobby Vinton had that title. Didn't he watch late-night TV music offers? The Best of Bobby Vinton, the Polish Prince. Like the Best of Jerry Vale. The Best of Vaughn Monroe. On some sleepless nights, I sometimes wondered: Who
are
these people?

Jimmy doesn't give a damn about most things that don't matter, and a lot about things that do. We get along great—my good friend. I'd trust him with my life. I don't know if it would ever come to that, but I would. I don't say such things lightly.

“Murder?” he barked. “And you took the case?”

“It's not a case. I'm just gonna talk to…”

“I think you lost your mind. The money is in fraud, not murder. Murder is too messy.” He was getting ready to leave. “Turn off the air conditioner on the way out.”

I invited him to dinner that night at Zeke's Olde Tavern.

“Maybe. You paying?”

I nodded. I knew he'd be there.

“I'll close up in a bit,” I yelled after him. “Check the mail. Play with my computer.” That was his expression. When I became his associate, I computerized and streamlined his chaotic office, which he grudgingly accepted. He knew it was time, but he fought the idea. Nobody from Aetna or Travelers hires an investigator who keeps notes on slips of paper in his breast pocket. The man tucked important information in outdated Manhattan phone directories and then, forgetting, recycled them. He recorded crucial facts on the backs of gas station credit card slips.

So now I could bring up files via Wi-Fi in a split second, information that used to cost him weeks of foot traffic, as well as favors traded with people in high and low places. “Holy shit” is what he usually says when I give him instantaneous access to personnel and personal files of people he's investigating. Most of it is matter-of-fact online data available at the public library in Hartford.

“Go play with your computer” is his way of letting me know whose office it really is.

***

That night, after a dinner of steak and potatoes at Zeke's, Jimmy and I lingered over coffee—me—and tepid beer—him. He didn't want to return to the one-room efficiency he rented in the West End of Hartford, and he brightened when my landlady Gracie wandered in “for an early nightcap,” joining us at the table. I shredded a placemat while the two flirted with each other, danced around their mutual attraction. They'd been playing this game for a long time. Gracie's in her late seventies, maybe early eighties, a tall woman, a string bean, her hair tied back into a chaotic bun, her face pale. She refuses to wear makeup but creates the illusion that she does. I can never quite figure it out: a flick of an eye, her tongue rolling over her lips, even an upward thrust of her head into a shaft of window light. She has high, pronounced cheekbones and an aging dancer's spent body, all angle and wrinkle. She looks like she got lost, years back, on the way to the opera, what with her scarlet-lined Dracula cloaks and oriental scarves and whalebone hairpins. Sometimes she has the mouth of a street thug.

Gracie often stops in at my apartment, lingering, gabbing, annoying, trying to convince me to get remarried as quickly as possible, to eat more, to go to church. Some of the time Gracie is flamboyant and wacky, but other times she's rock-bottom rigid. She'd been a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall a thousand years back, had entertained the troops with Bob Hope in Korea, done some minor acting in failed Broadway reviews, and then followed a wealthy businessman husband to Connecticut. When he died, she inherited the elegant, sparkling Victorian home. She lives on the first floor, rents out an apartment on the second to me and one on the third to an old guy. Gracie considers us her boys, smothers us, loves us, admonishes us, abuses us, tries to run our lives. Her mission is to steer us into lives she would never want for herself. And we often let her.

Her smile reveals a showgirl's faded teeth: chipped caps, murky as puddles.

I ordered her another beer and she nodded her thanks. She always drinks from the bottle. Like a man, she says. After all, she entertained troops, in her words, “north of Seoul.” Sometimes she recalled it as “north of Panmunjam.” One time Jimmy, a little too drunk, said it was north of Jersey. She gave him a look that would have withered a lesser man.

Finishing her beer, she stood to leave, convinced she'd left some burner on or some gas jet flickering in the basement or some water running somewhere. It was always the same. Jimmy watched her leave.

“Christ, you two love playing this game,” I told him.

“And what game is that?” Snippy. He sipped his beer.

“Never mind.”

“You're damned right—never mind.”

My cell phone rang. Liz was in the neighborhood. “But let me guess, Zeke's?”

“Right.”

“The land that time forgot. The place where the bodies are buried.”

“Only the dreams of mankind.”

“Then you must be real comfortable there.”

“Are you joining us?”

“Who is ‘us'?”

“Jimmy and me.”

“I love that man.” She waited a second. “I'm a couple streets away.”

Jimmy was happy to see her, the two of them hugging like father and daughter. She gave me a quick peck on the cheek. She asked about Mary's funeral, but was shaking her head.

“So what I still don't get, Rick—and this is a big what-I-don't-get—is this: What does Hank's family want you to do about this drive-by shooting? If the Hartford cops can't locate any past shooters in those little urban bang-bang episodes, then what can you do? I mean, you're not a homicide investigator. Especially, too, if Mary Vu's killing was just wrong place, wrong time.”

“I don't know,” I agreed. “Grandma thinks I'm Superman.”

Jimmy was nodding furiously. “Yeah, I can see if there was a
motive
for Mary's killing, like someone knew she had hidden money in her home, broke in, surprised her. Or something to do with business, maybe. Like she was actually
targeted
. Then I'd say, it needs a look-at, especially since the Hartford cops have written it off.”

“Do you know Detective Ardolino?”

“By rep,” Jimmy answered. “Never met him. Heard he could be a hard-ass.”

“He's written off Mary's murder already.” I tapped my fingers on the table. “Or so I'm guessing.”

Liz was opening her purse, pulling out a sheaf of folded sheets. “Does anybody here wonder why I was circling the neighborhood?”

“I thought you were stalking Rick,” Jimmy smirked.

“Well, there is that. But no, sorry to report, I called to say look at this.” She handed over the sheets, more printouts. “I'll cut to the chase. Mary was killed by a bullet from a Glock 19, right in the head. One shot. Dead on. The gun of choice of street gangs. But I think you may be curious to learn that a kid was also shot. A known dealer, picked up a couple of times near that square and for some reason released over and over by a myopic judge, checked himself into the Hartford ER around six the next morning. Until then nobody knew there was a
second
victim. Gunshot—a slug extracted from a baggy-clad shin. Kid scared he was gonna lose a leg. Turns out it's the same gun. Big surprise. Kid said he was ‘walking by' on his way to see his baby's mama when a car he didn't see drove by and shot him. Oh yes, he saw the ‘old lady' hit, but he was too busy ducking into an alley.”

“Shit,” Jimmy roared. “Sounds like maybe
he
was the target.”

“Police were slow to release news on him to the press, questioning him, but to no avail. You'll read about it in tomorrow's
Courant
.”

“Lots of priors?” From me.

“Like a hundred. He claims he's clean. No longer selling—has no beef with anybody.”

“And the cops say?” I asked.

“What do you think? Detective Ardolino is crowing like a rooster in a hen house. Proves his case. More gang-bang rivalry.”

“But,” I insisted, “it doesn't explain why Mary was there. And out of her car. If you find yourself in the wrong neighborhood, you gun it, find your way back home.”

Liz spoke, “Maybe she got disoriented?”

“Over what?”

“You're the detective.”

Jimmy sighed, rubbed his belly, made gestures of leaving.

“I'm curious,” I began. “Do we have specifics on the earlier shootings there? Besides the notorious one where the little girl died in her father's lap.”

Liz took back the sheaf of papers from me, found one in the middle. “Well, four deadly shootings in the past year alone, but there may have been more attempted murders, unreported. One kid was Julio Sanchez, another Marcus Lopez, a third Mario Lucia. All gang members. The Latin Kings. It's their turf. And the sad little girl, member of no known gang. In the second one cops spotted a kid in a stolen Jeep, gave chase, lost him, but a cop knew him, a gangbanger from rival Los Solidos. Tracked him down an hour later at his sister's, but he was clean. That is, the stolen gun in his pants was not the shooter, no residue on his hands.”

“So?”

“So police are convinced he's the killer, and they suspect he did a quick gun exchange with a brother—everyone has more than one stolen gun these days—and then washed his hands in tomato juice. These kids are one step ahead. He knew they'd expect him to have a gun.”

“Are they looking at him for
this
shooting?'

“No reason to. Someone shot him six months back. In the head. Dead at eighteen. Right in front of the State Legislative Building.”

Jimmy snickered. “A loss for civilization.”

“That's cruel,” I said.

Jimmy got up to leave, mumbled good-bye, but Liz lingered, curling the edges of the printout absently. She looked up at me, smiled, and asked if I wanted some wine.

We ordered a carafe, and I was glad she suggested it. A glass of chilled wine on a hot, hot night. “Good idea.” We touched glasses.

“You know,” Liz leaned in, “there's one thing that bothers me about the killing.”

I tapped the sheet of paper in front of me. “I think I know what you're gonna say.” She waited. “Mary was shot around eight o'clock, still early, lingering daylight, on a busy intersection, with all the mom-and-pop bodegas bustling with people buying their lottery tickets, malt liquor, and smokes. It's a street that's alive that time of night.”