Caught Dead (7 page)

Molly turned to Jon. “Hank and Rick have come to talk about your Aunt Mary.”

“Why?” From Jon.

I spoke up. “Everyone feels that there has to be
some
investigation, some answer to why Mary drove her car…”

Jon interrupted, brusque. “You mean,
everyone
in the Vietnamese world.” He ran his tongue over his lips.

“That's right,” I insisted. “Closure, I guess.” I despised the handy word. “We may never know.”

On the defensive Hank added, “The Vietnamese need to tie all the strings, you know. Right, Jon? To leave little unanswered. What did Buddha say? ‘When the line of a circle begins to be drawn, it must go until it finds itself again.'” He looked at me. “Rick taught me that.”

I smiled. “Good for you, Hank.”

Jon just stared.

“We're Catholic,” Kristen said suddenly.

Jon frowned. “I never knew Aunt Mary that well, so I don't know what you want
me
to say. I couldn't even guess why she went
there
. I know Tommy and Cindy, but I knew them better a few years back, when we went to the same school for a while.” He stared over my shoulder. “Our lives have gone in different directions. I don't know what they're up to these days. I mean, we're all friends on Facebook, but that's a way of
not
caring about people, right?”

“When we'd hang out with them, Aunt Mary wasn't around much,” Kristen added. “She didn't like to talk to us.”

“You know, she seemed uncomfortable around us,” Jon said. “Sometimes she looked at us like we were dollar signs, two little privileged kids.”

Molly spoke up. “You
are
privileged kids.”

Jon looked at her. “Thank God for that.”

Kristen smiled. “She was always nice to me.”

Jon smirked. “Everyone's nice to you, Kristen. They want something.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

Kristen suddenly said good-bye. “Gotta run, gang.” Nodding at her mother, she left the room.

Hank and Jon had started discussing Hank's desire to be a state trooper. “Sort of cool,” Jon admitted. “Not for me. But sort of cool.”

Molly didn't look too happy with the conversation, eyeing her son. I glared at Hank.

“When was the last time you spoke to Mary?” I asked her.

For a second, she got flustered, uncertain. “A day or so before she died, I think. We talked all the time on the phone. I‘d got her on a local Asian Relief charity that I chair. She had better connections to the old Vietnamese community, and—and—I, well, I was supposed to pick her up for a meeting. It would have been the day of her funeral.” She paused. “I missed her phone calls the day she died. She called me a few times—nothing unusual there. I called her. We played phone tag. Back and forth. We never spoke that day.” She began sobbing and reached for a handkerchief.

Jon got up to leave. “Ma.” Impatience in his voice.

I nodded at Hank. We said our good-byes. As we stood up, Kristen suddenly bounded down the stairs. Surprisingly, she'd gone to her room and changed her outfit, replacing the silky red blouse and baggy shorts for some tight jeans and a skimpy top.

“Going out?” her mother asked.

“No. Why?”

She disappeared back up the staircase.

Hank hugged Molly, who held on a long time. I could see Hank squirm. The maid stepped into the room. “Susie.” Molly introduced her to us. “Do you know Susie? Her name is Suong but somehow, years back, we started calling her Susie.” The short woman grinned, uncomfortable. We introduced ourselves. Susie led us into the foyer, but she hesitated on the threshold.

“Yes?” I encouraged her.

In broken English: “I know Miss Mary when she came here now and then. I always like her. A lot. She bring me cookies from her store, and she always asked about me and my boy. So sad to learn what happened to her. So cruel for a woman so good like her.” She looked into my face, and I saw her eyes were wet. She held my hand.

We stood there, awkward, the three of us.

Somewhere in the house Larry was barking at his daughter, the words biting and angry. “What the fuck do you think you're doing? You don't have a brain in that goofy head of yours.”

Susie saw me glance at Hank. “No listen to Mr. Larry. Please. He's, well, a rough man, but only on the outside. Inside he's a good, good man, let me tell you. I would not work in this house for more than twenty years if a man is evil.” She opened the front door for us and watched us leave. I looked back. She was looking over her shoulder in the direction of the father-daughter altercation. The door closed.

In the car I said to Hank, “Why is it I'm not liking these people?”

“I feel the same, and they're my family. But I gotta tell you, Rick, they're distant, distant cousins. Maybe not even real cousins. You know how Vietnamese call lifelong friends family, like brothers and sisters and uncles. We probably don't even share blood….”

“Keep talking.” I was smiling. “It's not helping you distance yourself from your, excuse me, cousins.”

Hank waited a second. “When you asked Molly why Mary might be at that drug-dealer corner, I noticed her body tighten so fast it caught my attention.”

“Not only that.” I told him I saw some confusing flicker in her eyes, a flash of fear.

“Does it mean anything?”

“Maybe nothing at all. Grief sometimes is hard to translate.”

Chapter Nine

Liz called with news.

“Just a tidbit that may mean nothing. Benny's store was once cited after a municipal-FBI raid. They confiscated bootleg Asian videos, but nothing came of it. No fine, just a warning. But you know how the mom-and-pop Asian markets thrive on bootlegging Hong Kong and Vietnamese tapes. Benny's was one of four shops raided in Little Saigon, a few splashy lines in the
Courant
, an indignant editorial from the paper about the death of legitimate free trade or something like that, what would the Founding Fathers say, and then the shelves were restocked with grainy copies of Jet Li kung fu flicks.”

Lying on the sofa, I absently scratched my stomach. “Hartford thrives on an illegal underworld of drugs, hookers, and knockoffs of Sean John sweat suits—and Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee DVDs.”

“I lift my torch…”

“Anything else?”

“How'd you know?” I could hear her smile. “The only other arrest was for little Tommy Vu, back when he was a senior at the hoity-toity Chesterton School. He had a couple of minor-league run-ins as a juvenile, shoplifting stuff. Nothing much. But he had one serious count of possession of a controlled substance—an ounce or so of pot. Intent to sell. Some lawyer got the charge reduced, a fine, probation, no lockup. Nothing since.”

“How was he caught?” I asked.

“With the goods.”

“I mean where?”

“In a club downtown near Union Station, one of those dance clubs for high school and college kids. No alcohol, just Ecstasy and sex in the bathrooms. By the time it wound its way through the courts, it seemed small potatoes in comparison to the high-level street traffic elsewhere in the naked city, what with slaphappy gunfire and all those gold teeth that shine in the dark.”

“Doesn't sound like much of anything.”

“I agree. But in the original police report a cop noted that Tommy struggled with the undercover agent, tried to flee, had to be cuffed. He said he'd get even with the snitch, even if it killed him.”

“What snitch?”

“Report didn't say. You're the venerable PI. You find out.”

***

The next morning, close to noon, I drove to the Elmwood section of West Hartford, to the three-family house where Tommy lived on the third floor with two roommates. I figured he'd be home, probably still in bed. The first-floor apartment was boarded up, the result of a fire. “No Trespassing” signs were plastered on the plywood sheets covering the windows. But there were fans whirring in the second- and third-floor apartment windows, and the door to the front entrance was wide open. I climbed the stairs, the acrid scent of burnt wood lingering in the stairwell.

He answered on the third knock, dressed only in baggy denim shorts and all those earrings. His chest displayed a sunburst tattoo around his navel, and a painful-looking ring dangled from his left nipple. He looked a little glazed so I figured he was stoned. But it could have been the haze of sleep. He stared at me, eyes half-shut. He stuck his hand under the elastic band of his shorts and scratched a nether region best left unexplored.

“Oh, it's you. The PI. You're…”

“Rick Van Lam.”

Confused: “You want something?”

“Can I come in?”

He was uncertain. “Sure, why not? Anything happen?”

“No. I wanted to talk to you about your mother.”

But he stood there, vacant eyed, blocking my path.

“Is this a bad time?” I hoped he'd move.

“What?” Did he speak English, I wondered? Finally he turned. “Sure, come in.” But he didn't move.

“You have a fire downstairs?”

He grinned. “Small one, in the living room. Crackheads knocked over a candle.”

“I can smell the smoke.”

“Cool, ain't it?”

I didn't think so.

But he stepped aside and waved me into the room, where I noticed another young man sitting on a stained, patched sofa. At first I thought it had to be one of his roommates, but he looked too much like a visitor—that, or he was going on a job interview, dressed as he was in a suit and tie.

“Tommy, take care of yourself, okay?”

The man leaned in and with his fist gently bumped Tommy's shoulder, some atavistic male bonding that seemed to energize the lethargic Tommy. He grinned, almost shyly. “Mom wouldn't like my manners,” he said to me, and I found the statement oddly endearing. “This is my old friend Danny,” he pointed. “We went to school together a million years ago.”

I shook Danny's hand. He introduced himself. “I'm Danny Trinh.”

“If there's anything I can do, buddy…” The young man's voice trailed off. “As I said, I'm sorry I missed the funeral. Bank business in White Plains. You know I couldn't help it.” Tommy looked surprised. Danny was saying this for my benefit. Another young guy with proper manners. God, what was happening to the uncivil generation?

“I know,” Tommy seemed confused. “You told me.”

“It's just that everyone was there but me. The old gang. I wanted to be there.”

“Hey.” Tommy was dismissive. “What can you do?”

“Well, I gotta get back to the bank.” Danny buttoned his sports jacket. A beep from his cell phone. He tapped his pocket.

Danny was a stark contrast to the slovenly Tommy. You could see how muscular he was under the beige summer jacket, the way the shirt hugged his body, the way he walked to the door in lithe, graceful strides. Scrawny, stringy Tommy, his ragged Mohawk haircut looking a little like a bristle brush, seemed a fitness center's “before” ad while Danny was the “after.” This Danny was a man comfortable with himself. With his close-cropped hair, with that smooth sepia complexion, and with those expensive designer sunglasses tipped into the breast pocket of an expensive suit, he looked nightclub debonair. Poised and sure—the words that came to mind. If he were a shade lighter and didn't have those slanted eyes, he could be the newest suburban member of the Kiwanis Club, and a Young Republican to boot.

“Nice to meet you.” Danny nodded at me in a polished, careful voice. To Tommy: “I'll stop in to talk to your father later this week.”

They shook hands again.

“Sit down,” Tommy told me after Danny left. I didn't know where to sit, so I sat in the spot Danny had vacated. The place was a shambles, like a freshman dorm room. Empty crumpled Coke and beer cans, a soup-dish ashtray of ground-out cigarette stubs, gamey-looking Chinese takeout containers, open with chopsticks jutting out. A pizza box, open, crusts scattered inside like petrified wood. CDs littered the floor near a boom box. A copy of the
Hartford Advocate,
an alternative newspaper. “Well?”

“Some of your relatives,” I began, “want a clearer picture of your mother's last hours. Why she did what she did.”

He watched me warily. “I dunno.” He paused. “Look, I don't know. You don't think I haven't thought about it? Like…well—Mom driving there to that place. I know the place. Everybody I know does. You drive
around
it. It's always in the news.”

“And you came up with nothing?”

“Nada. I swear.”

“When did you last see your mother?”

He thought a minute “The day before she died. She stopped at the store and I was working.”

“You talk to her the day she died?”

“No. No reason to.”

“No idea why she went to Goodwin Square?”

“No.”

“People who don't live there go there for drugs.”

His eyes got wide. “You can't think Mom was on drugs?”

“God, no.” Then, abrupt: “Do you ever go to Goodwin Square for drugs?” I waited.

The question made him angry. “Goddamn it. I was wondering if my arrest was gonna come up somehow. I mean, I hadn't thought about it, but everything online…or on TV…is drugs this and drugs that…in
that
place…and Mom…”

“After all, that was prep school—what happened to you. Right? Years back.”

“You got that right, man. Prep school. Another world. Dumb kid shit. Stupid on my part, man. A real dumb-ass move by me. Sure, I toked a little weed, still do, but recreational, like everybody today, including probably you. It ain't like…heroin. But someone says ‘drugs,' and everyone in the family looks at
me
. One time—and no other trouble with the law. You hear me? Nothing. Christ, I learned my lesson.”

“But your mother…”

He broke in. “Man, it almost
killed
my mom. She was so
crazy
about it. You know, she had this thing about drugs. Scourge of the land, you know. You know the drill. But with her religion crap and her own son involved, well, she thought I was headed to heroin addiction and a psycho ward at Middletown. But if you're thinking that had
anything
to do with Mom…”

“At the time, when you were arrested at the club, you ran.”

“So?”

“I'm just curious. You did threaten to get the ‘snitch,' as you called it. Did you believe someone set you up?”

He laughed. “My, my, you do your fuckin' homework, don't you? No, that was just trash talk. I got the bag off this dude bartender—we all did—and I'm thinking he's undercover. But no, he's still there, a fuckin' cokehead himself now.”

“So that was that.”

“Right.” He stared into my face. “Whoa, man. Ricky boy, is that why you're here now? Over
that
? What the fuck are you up to, man? That was like eight years ago, got nothing to do with this shooting of Mom. I admit she still hounded me about it, glanced at my arms for needle tracks or something. Years later. Good old Mom. But no, sorry to disappoint you. Are you saying I go to Goodwin Square to cop drugs? Like my mom was hunting me down there?” He made a fake laugh.

“No, just…”

He laughed that false laugh again. “Headline in the old
Courant
: Slacker Druggie Rubs out Mommy Because She Saved His Ass from Jail Back in Prep School. How's that for a big story? Guess not, Mr. Rick Van Lam, PI. Too long for a headline, maybe. You got enough Viet Cong in you, Lam boy, to understand what I have to say to you.” He sneered, “
Du ma may.
” Fuck you.

He stood up and stormed into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him. When I realized he wouldn't be coming out, I left.

***

I called Hank that afternoon, told him I wanted to talk about the Torcelli-Vu kids, and he suggested we meet for a pizza. “What about work?” I asked him.

“I'm on strike. Besides, I need a break. In a few weeks I'll be back at the Academy.”

So, abetting his diminishing work ethic, I picked him up, and we headed down to Pepe's old-fashioned coal-fired pizza on Wooster Square in New Haven. It was a forty-five-minute drive and we had to stand in line with Yalies and the old Italians from the neighborhood, baking in the late-afternoon sun, just to get frosty Foxon Birch Beer and dusty crusted, mouth-watering pizza.

Seated after a long wait, relaxed, I asked him, “Now tell me the story of those four kids. The cousins.”

“They're not kids. Kristen is the youngest at twenty-three.”

“She's two years older than you.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Just talk about them. You know them.”

“Only a little bit. We never hung out or anything, like at each other's houses. Just at New Year's or weddings. That kind of thing.”

“They like you. I sensed that Kristen does, at least.”

“She likes everyone. Well, sometimes I like them.” He sighed. “Sort of. Maybe. One or two of them. Most times they irritate me. Especially Jon.”

“Well, I'm glad you've thought this through.”

He laughed. “You know, for a while, when they were young kids, even through the first years of prep school, the four were good friends. Or so my mother tells me. It didn't matter that Jon and Kristen were rich, and Tommy and Cindy were poor. I guess blood meant something, even though Jon and Kristen—half-white—always had, you know, the best electronic gadgets, the most expensive clothing, ski trips to Vermont, the best of everything. But Mary and Molly wanted them to be friends because Molly and Mary loved each other.” He looked me in the eye. “They were the beautiful Le sisters.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, they took that label seriously. It was like Molly, after she got married, was afraid she'd lose her connection to her family, her sister. Their parents were dead. They only had each other. But you know how it is—time started pulling Molly away. All that money and prestige, Larry's business connections, those business parties, those husband-and-wife cruises to the tropics, the rich friends flying to their place in the Bahamas. But Molly still kept that allegiance to her sister, her twin sister, her only sister, and her sister's poverty rankled.”

“She blamed Mary for being poor?”

“She blamed Benny for keeping Mary poor. So she pushed Larry to make things smooth and easy.”

“Larry was agreeable?”

“Yeah, Larry's a gruff, loud guy. That's the way he's always been. But he's not a bad guy. Pretty generous, in fact. He likes to keep Molly happy. Lord, he worships her, frankly. It's just that, as he got older, like Molly, the money became more and more important, especially when he had more than he knew what to do with. There were more and more things separating Molly and Larry from her sister. He's never been poor, but he was okay with Benny and his family.”

“Sounds like he was more accepting than Molly.”

Hank nodded. “Way back when, he used to go fishing with Benny down in New London.”

“From the wharf?”

“From his yacht,” Hank roared. “For God's sake, Rick, think
rich
.”

“Must have made Benny feel good.”

“Benny's a humble man. He felt out of place, my mother says. Benny prefers Vietnamese to English. He
likes
Larry because Larry mostly treats people decently, despite his explosive temper tantrums and hard-edge personality. I like him. He
wanted
Mary and Benny around. After all, he landed one of the beautiful Le sisters. That was something.”