What We've Lost Is Nothing (4 page)

“We'll do all we can,” Wasserman said. “We'll check the pawnshops, run the prints. But I'll be honest with you here, Mr. . . .” He struggled to remember the name, trailed off for a minute. “Mr. Gardenia. These are tough cases,” Wasserman said, his voice confident again. “Tough cases. Guys get in and out pretty quick. Something like this . . . quiet, easy entry. No locked—and I'm not blaming you, I'm just saying—no locked doors. It's tough.”

The policeman coughed. “Sir, we've got another hit. Right across the street.”

4:00 p.m.

T
he Kowalskis were on vacation in the Florida Keys. Their dog, Chester, was on vacation at Dan Kowalski's in-laws' house—George and Arlene Dixon's—in Naperville. Both canine and couple ate well on their respective vacations.

4:15 p.m.

S
ary smiled, nodded, wadded tissues. She sat on an embroidered pad atop a wooden chair. Lilacs with a tea-stained background. Her husband, Dara, stood behind her, his hand on her shoulder, trying to comfort her, as if they were posing for a portrait. He had the voice and confidence of a prepubescent boy, it seemed. Something about it all was unsettling.

“My daughter. My daughter.
Kone srai,
” Dara said. “I, little ­little English.” He held his finger and thumb in the air two inches apart, the universal sign for small. Insubstantial. He knew tiny, tiny En­glish. “My daughter, Sophea.”

Sophea was hiding in the sunlight, by the untidy boxwood shrubs. She was still high on ecstasy. Torn between helping her parents navigate the linguistic terrain, as was her duty, and keeping the secret of where she'd been and what she'd been doing. It was never easy to watch your parents suffer. She couldn't be her parents' translator in this moment, not for the police.

Sophea had always been the conduit between her parents' lives in Cambodia and their lives in the United States, and she wondered how they'd ever survive without her. Once, when Sophea was still in elementary school, she and her mother had been rear-ended in Sary's Toyota Camry by a young man driving a rusted-out Gremlin. Sary had briefly inspected the damage—lots of scratches and one largish dent—then waved the young man away. Wasn't that what was meant by
accident
? The other driver knew the law, knew he was getting lucky, and quickly sped away before Sary—through Sophea—changed her mind. What was the point of laying blame, Sophea's parents had said to her later. No one was hurt. Why did it matter to make sure someone was at fault? Wasn't the lesser of the two the victim? they wondered. Richer should pay poorer. That was the way it worked in Cambodia most of the time. Blame was rarely the center of the debate, particularly when all parties tended to agree that it was an
accident
. Didn't the very word offer amnesty?

“Just tell us what's gone. What's missing?” Detective Wasserman asked.

Dara shook his head. “I don't know.”

“You don't know what's missing?”

“My daughter.”

“Your daughter is missing?”

Nervous laughter.

“You're laughing?”

But Dara didn't understand the conjugated word. He knew
laugh.
He knew
smile
and
loud.
He did not know
laughing
,
laughter
,
laughed
,
chuckle
,
grin
,
howl
,
cackle
,
shriek
,
giggle
,
chortle
, or
guffaw.
He knew only that a man of authority was standing in his living room, so he stooped a fraction lower. The policeman's little, white notebook had just a few notations. Another policeman milled about their kitchen, looking at their back door and into the enclosed back deck. Sophea squeezed herself smaller behind the boxwoods. A translator, who'd been called in by the first responding officer, stood by the detectives, admiring a nylon cushion of the Hello Kitty variety on the unpadded sofa. The translator was Chinese. Dara and Sary were Cambodian.

“Did someone take the other cushions?” Wasserman pointed with his pen, clicking the spring in and out.

Dara was confused. He followed the point of the pen to the couch. Did he want Dara to sit on the sofa? Did the man himself want to sit on the sofa?

“The cushion. Padding. Pillows. You understand? Only wood here. Was the padding stolen?” Wasserman spoke slowly.

“Who the hell would steal cushions?” growled a policeman from inside the kitchen.

“Same kind of asshole who'd steal half a bottle of liquor,” Wasserman snapped.

Dara took a half step toward the couch. He was being ordered to sit on it, perhaps. That seemed so. Maybe he didn't like Dara standing behind Sary. Maybe Dara should show more respect for his authority, sit while the man stood. Then, confusingly, the man pointed to the television. Dara knew he'd misunderstood.

“You see? TV on floor, okay. So what's gone?” Outside, Wasserman could hear vehicles pulling up, voices. He recognized the din. The press had arrived.

“We.

“Need.

“To.

“Know.

“What.

“Is.

“Gone.”

Dara understood
TV
,
floor
,
see
. Should he sit on the floor? Turn on the TV? He often sat on the floor. He recognized the peculiar tone Americans took when they realized they weren't being understood, separating words slowly, carefully, into linguistic pileups. It happened at work every day. Dara was ashamed of his lack of En­glish after all these years. He believed himself too old to learn, and his daughter's fluency had made it easy for Sary and him to avoid taking the time to study. Dara's eyes followed the silver-blue point of the pen from the wooden, nearly cushionless sofa to the television sitting on the floor, and then around the room. There was the chair holding Sary. A picture of their wedding on the white wall, a portrait, Sary beautiful with white skin in red, fine silk, a patterned orange sash going from her shoulder diagonally across her chest. Beside it a picture of Sophea from her first year in American high school, a dynamic blue background with white streaks as if she herself were a grand announcement. Sophea, now an American named Sofia. So. Pee. Ah. She had tried to explain to her parents, it was embarrassing, the kids laughing at her. “So go pee ah, So Pee Ah,” they taunted. Her teacher, that first year, gently suggested the slight alteration.

“We've got to get another translator in here,” Wasserman said. “Call down there, see if they found someone.”

Sofia, hiding in the boxwoods near the far corner of the house, listening through the screen door, picked up a twig and began to scratch at the surface of the caked dirt. She traced her own name, then wondered how many thousands of grains of soil she'd displaced, how long it would stay. The ecstasy was wearing off.
We are Cambodian,
she thought.
Not Chinese. Fucking Cambodian!

“I think his daughter's missing,” Wasserman said, and took the picture of Sofia down from the wall. A bland square showed on the wall underneath. Sary blushed, ashamed of the filth they'd allowed to build up. She stood up. She'd planned to go get a damp cloth and clean the wall before he put Sophea's picture back. But the men were moving toward the door, holding the picture. Had they forgotten it? Did they want the picture? She began to panic. She made a noise like
suh
and pointed to the picture with a worried look on her face.

“Yes, ma'am. I know. Don't worry. We're going to find her.”

Sary responded in Khmer. “Where are you going with my daughter's picture? If you wait a few minutes, she'll be here to translate.”

She and Dara thought they had escaped this kind of chaos when they left Cambodia. They never guessed that more
bad
lay ahead when so much
bad
had already happened to them. Sary knew, though, that even then, with American police milling all around, lights flashing, people yelling, it could never be as bad as what they'd already lived through.

Dara took out his cell phone to call Sophea. He thought she was at cheerleading practice.

In the boxwoods, squatting in the dirt, her cell started to ring, and Sofia felt her heart drop. Confusion bloomed on her parents' faces as they turned and looked out their back screen door, in the direction of their daughter's ringing phone.

5:17 p.m.

W
hen the detectives knocked on the back door of
É
tienne's restaurant, Frite, he knew exactly why they were there. He'd intended to call them in four days. Just four more days. Long enough to have returned from a vacation that he never actually took. He'd already cataloged what was missing from his house: a leaded-crystal vase from the middle of his white, Louis XIV–style coffee table. The vase had had a note card inside of it for his weekly cleaning service:
NO WATER! NO FLOWERS!
The vase was gone. Also missing: one set of Bosch speakers; a Tissot watch from his bedside table; a music box—baroque, of course, which played “La Vie en Rose”; a bouquet of lavender made from blown glass from which several purple-bud and green-leaf shards littered the doorway and the backyard grass; his television; and his collection of European travel DVDs (though, curiously, the DVD player itself had been unplugged from the television and left). His laser printer and fax machine were both gone, as was his backup hard drive (perhaps the first time he'd felt relieved over his laziness—he'd never bothered to use the thing). He was missing an eighteen-karat chain-link bracelet and a set of mother-of-pearl-and-gold-leaf coasters that had been sitting next to the vase.

The knocking was insistent, but not obtrusive. Étienne considered not answering, but his car was parked in the lot just behind the door, and the door was unlatched. He wore an old, gray T-shirt and a pair of jeans. He wished he'd taken the time to put on his chef's uniform and hat, but settled on his bib apron instead with the yellow stains down the front. Details mattered. His T-shirt was faded along the seams, and tiny holes had begun to form across his shoulders like moth bites. He hadn't showered since the day before.

Étienne grinned, then swung the door open widely. “Yes! Yes! Do come in. Sorry. I was in the lockup and didn't hear you. The freezer! I mean, we call it a lockup. Ha-ha! I was going to call you, yes, I've been terribly busy.”

The restaurant was dark. Closed. One pan on the stove held cooling caramelized shallots. Sliced mushrooms and chopped leaks sat on a carving block.

“You're aware of the burglaries, Mr. Lenoir.” He pronounced it
Len-Or
.

“That's
Len-wa
.”

“Mr.
Len-wa
,” the detective said (did he have a hint of sarcasm? Étienne wasn't sure). “So, you're aware?”

Étienne rubbed his palms down the front of his apron and shook his head. “Terrible. Terrible. I can't imagine. We have such lovely neighbors.”

“Do you suspect a neighbor?”

“Oh, certainly not. No. I just mean . . .” Étienne didn't know what he meant.

The man introduced himself as Detective Witkowski, his partner was Detective Dadek. “We work with Detective Wasserman, who's coordinating the investigation.” Étienne recognized the Cicero accent. Nasal, and hard-voweled. Southside Chicago. Born and bred. He'd had it once himself.

“Experimenting,” Étienne said of his presence in the kitchen with the restaurant closed. “Menu changes, you know. Playing around.”

“I see. What's in the freezer?”

Étienne was suddenly aware that no frozen goods were apparent. He looked around the kitchen as if a bag of peas or hard fist of frozen duck breast might suddenly appear. He had nothing to hide, in the freezer nor out, yet suddenly he had the overwhelmingly absurd urge to keep them from looking in the freezer. As if, somehow, a body might unwittingly have ended up there, as if Étienne might be an accomplice to a dastardly crime about which he knew nothing.

“Veal,” he said.

“So you're the owner here? Of Frite?” Witkowski used the long vowel.
Fright
.

“It's
freet
,” Étienne said, nodding. “It means—”

Witkowski interrupted, “And you're the cook, too?”

“Chef. I'm the proprietor and the chef.”

“Mrs. McPherson thought you were out of town.”

“Yes. No. I'm not. Out of town. Ha-ha! Of course, as you can see.”

“Paris, was it? I believe Mrs. . . . McPherson mentioned Paris.”

Ah, Susan. She loved Paris, too, Étienne thought. “Indeed, I was supposed to go, but sadly had to cancel at the last minute.”

“That's too bad. Springtime in Paris.”

“Oh, yes, it certainly was. Paris in April.”

“When was that?”

“When was what?”

“The cancellation. The trip.”

“Oh. The cancellation. Of the trip.” Étienne saw that his shallots were congealing. He'd have to start again. “A few weeks ago. I was so far behind on this year's menu change, I mean, you might think a menu change would benefit from my having gone!” He offered a single laugh. Étienne stopped suddenly. Was he rambling?

Overhead, the fluorescent light buzzed and Étienne could feel a thin layer of sweat on his forehead. The mild smell of old, hardened butter permeated the kitchen.

“I have a list of what's missing,” Étienne said brightly. He reached into his pocket, unfolded it, and handed it to Dadek, who didn't so much as glance at it.

“We have you down as Edward Lenoir. Not Étienne. Is that right? Edward?”

Étienne didn't say anything. Here was the truth of it, he thought. Didn't we all have something to hide? Wasn't Edward his own secret? After all, he wasn't the one they were after. They had to know that.

“Yes,” Étienne said finally. “It's Edward. My real name. But I prefer Étienne.”

“Why is that? The preference? Edward.”

Étienne reddened. “I just . . . do. The food . . . and everything . . . ” His voice melted into the kitchen fan, melted down into his abdomen. It was one thing to be aware of the quiet shames in one's life, but quite another to have to own up to them publicly. He had learned from a pamphlet left behind on the el one day of the need to “brand” oneself in order to succeed in the modern age, and so the name change had merely seemed an extension of this exercise.

Étienne ran his hand over his hair, which thinned more every day; time surging at him in seconds, one tiny loss after another. His hand, unsurprisingly, came away with dozens of gray hairs. This loss, even this, was just another in an endless line. A particle of loss, invisible but open to measurement nonetheless. Suddenly the crystal tulip-bud vase, the one he'd never filled with flowers, meant much more to him than he'd realized; its sudden absence without his ever having used it for its intended purpose seemed inexpiably wasteful.

“Okay, Étienne, the
chef
.”

Dadek waved the paper. Étienne's list. “We'll look into this. Add it to the others, but you'll need to fill out a supplementary property list.”

They made their way to the back door.

“And Edward,” said Witkowski, “look around for that canceled-Paris-trip stuff . . . travel agent receipts, reservations, anything. Give us a call when you find it. We'll need to include it in our case files. Just a formality.” He smiled.

Étienne nodded. Of course, he wouldn't find the paperwork they wanted—no receipts, no vouchers of cancellation, no lost deposits. There was nothing. There had never been Paris. And Étienne knew they knew it, too.