by Andrew Lanh
I swerved out of traffic, did a risky U-turn, and got back to the restaurant. Alone at a front table, Liz waved at me through the window.
“Am I losing my mind?” Her first words to me as she smiled lazily. “Didn’t I just see you…?”
“No, I may be losing my mind. I thought…never mind.”
“Ah, the two words most remembered from our brief marriage.”
I grinned. “I do?”
“Never mind.”
I leaned in to give her a peck on the cheek.
“This is going to be interesting,” she commented, pointing over my shoulder toward the entrance. Hank and Dustin were walking in, Dustin trailing a few steps behind Hank, who was nervous and kept looking back at the boy.
Hank had called me earlier that morning, checking in, and surprised me by saying that Dustin had become a regular caller. “A chatterbox,” Hank had laughed. “In person he’s quiet, morose sometimes, a goddamn Sphinx, but on the phone, late at night or early morning, he has a lot to say.”
“Like what?”
“It’s like he never had a chance to use his voice—or to have anyone listen to him—and so he rattles on like a faucet that won’t turn off.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not, Rick. He only reaches me when I’m not working, of course, but also when I want to talk to him. I think it’s important…”
I’d interrupted. “And has he told you the true story of his battle with Ben?”
I could hear him laugh. “I ask him.”
“And he says?”
“The same nonsense. A spy. Maybe a spy who changed his mind. The spy who came in from the cold. Variations on a theme—this boy is hard to rattle. He’s like a smoldering firecracker. Impossible to read.”
“He is aware the cops suspect him of murder?”
“It doesn’t seem to cross his mind. It’s because he doesn’t believe anyone would think he’s a killer.”
“You better shake him up a bit.”
Then he told me Dustin had agreed to lunch. “I told him we gotta talk.”
Impulsively I’d said, “I’m meeting Liz at Brasso’s at noon.”
“We’ll join you.”
I’d hesitated. “Liz does want to meet him, but this may not be the best time.”
“There’ll never be a better time,” Hank had said. “Getting Dustin to say okay to lunch was a monumental decision. I won’t give him a choice. Maybe we’ll learn something.”
“Yeah, the sound of silence.”
Now, settling into seats, coats draped over the backs of chairs, Dustin sat next to me and faced Liz, while Hank sat next to Liz. Only Liz was smiling. Hank was staring at Dustin’s blank face, and I was nodding at Hank. Liz extended her hand to Dustin, introducing herself; his handshake was so tentative and weak he could have been checking the direction of the wind.
Small talk was engineered by Liz, funny and trivial, often directed at Hank or me, but with slight humorous and gentle turns with Dustin. He was clearly befuddled by the exchanges. Watching him with sidelong glances, I could tell he was interested, showing a twitch of his lips when Liz gave him attention. The upturned chin. The flicker of his eyes. The large ears getting a tinge of color. His fingers tapped the bridge of his eyeglasses. A slight hesitant smile when she teased him about the company he kept.
“Dustin,” Liz began, “do you like this place?”
His head swept around the room, his eyes staying on a huge wall mural that depicted romantic landscapes from a sentimentalized Italian countryside. “I’ve never been in a fancy place like this.”
Hank started to say something about Brasso’s—a mom-and-pop eatery with red-and-white checkered tablecloths and dripping candles in wicker Chianti bottles, a giant clock over the ovens in the shape of a pizza—but Liz forestalled him.“Then I’m glad your first time is with us.”
He smiled at her. “I’m used to…like Burger King. The diner I used to work at.” He made a fatalistic whatever gesture. “They told me not to come in anymore.”
She went on in a smooth voice, “Relax, okay. You’re among friends.”
He started at that word, peered into her face, but that sweet smile reappeared.
“You smell like flowers,” he said abruptly.
“Lilacs,” she said. “Do you know that flower?”
He shook his head. “I heard of it.”
“You like it?”
“I don’t know.” Then he seemed apologetic. “Yes.”
“You don’t have to like everything about your friends,” she told him.
“Yes, you do.” A blunt, quick answer. Hank turned his head, surprised.
“He’s wearing something.” Dustin was indicating me with a flick of his wrist. “I don’t like that.”
Hank had been taking a sip of water and now, caught off-guard, sputtering, let the water dribble out of the corners of his mouth. “Old Spice,” he laughed. “Rick wears Old Spice.”
“It smells like old people.”
I sat back, watching Hank’s utter delight at Dustin’s frankness. Finally, I said. “When I was first in America, maybe thirteen years old, I lived in New Jersey with American parents. My father wore…Old Spice. I liked it. It was American, and I was desperate to be American. So, sort of for sentimental reasons I sometimes buy myself a bottle of Old Spice at Christmas time. For old time’s sake.”
That seemed to make no sense to Dustin who stared at me, unblinking.
“Do you cook, Dustin?” Liz asked, shifting the talk.
He waited a bit, sizing up the question. “No. A little. I make rice. Sometimes a burger. At home.”
“Your mom doesn’t cook?” Hank asked.
He shook his head. “She makes a big pot of rice, you know, like in a rice steamer. It’s always there. Rice, I mean. I help myself. She doesn’t like cooking.”
“What does she do?” Hank asked.
Dustin contorted his mouth. “She watches TV.”
I noticed Dustin staring at Liz’s hands—her slender hands with two small rings on her right hand. A red ruby and dark green jade. My presents, years ago. Manicured nails—once a week at Le Salon on Main Street—painted a delicate rose shade. His eyes drifted to her face, and he blinked slowly. She was dressed in a light blue sweater, a string of pearls around her neck. Dustin was obviously enjoying the look.
He sat in baggy khaki trousers, bunched over brown work boots. An oversized rust-colored sweater, so big it exposed bony shoulders. No shirt on underneath. Poorly chopped hair that convinced me he scissored his own hair, and not very well.
“Dustin,” she said slowly, “I’ve never seen you at any Vietnamese functions.”
That surprised him. “You go to them?”
She nodded quickly. “Tet celebrations at the VFW Hall in East Hartford. Every year.”
“Why?” A puzzled look, then, “I used to go when I was small. With my mother. I don’t remember much about them.”
“You don’t go any longer?”
He shook his head vigorously. “No.”
“Hank likes to dance,” she said mischievously as she poked Hank’s arm. She mimicked a cha-cha-cha rhythm, and grinned.
“They don’t dance there,” Dustin said quickly. He glanced at Hank.
She laughed. “I know. But that doesn’t stop him.”
Dustin grinned.
“Liz can make a mean happy pancake. Banh xeo.” I stressed the words. “She’s a whiz with rice powder.”
He squinted his eyes. “Banh xeo. You?”
“But usually it turns out unhappily.”
He waited a bit. “How do you know…them.” A pause. “Him.”
The him was obviously me, given Dustin’s quick glance at me.
The him in question answered. “Liz and I were once married.”
He
shot a look from Liz to me, his neck jerking forward, an expression on his face that communicated disbelief that her radiant lilacs once flourished in the ethereal atmosphere of my old-folks-home Old Spice.
“Then why are you sitting here?”
“Because we love each other.”
Dustin considered that but lifted his chin, a doubting gesture. “I don’t understand.”
Liz smiled at him. “Sometimes people find out they’re better with each other when they’re not married.”
“We were very young,” I added. “In college. Intoxicated. Bad timing.”
Liz was watching me closely. “Yes, bad timing.” A chuckle in her voice. “I couldn’t deal with Rick becoming a cop…”
Dustin yelled, “You’re a cop?”
“Not any longer.”
“I am,” Hank said.
“I know that. But I thought…”
“I’m a private investigator now. Former cop.”
Liz laughed out loud. “And formerly married to me.”
Dustin seemed puzzled. “But you love each other?”
“Madly,” Liz beamed. “In all meanings of that word. Or—insanely. As in—animal crackers.”
“Wild.” Dustin’s final comment, shaking his head. “I don’t know if I believe any of this.” He narrowed his eyes. “People make up stories all the time.”
“I save my lies for insignificant things,” Liz told him, then smiled. “What about you? Do you want to get married some day?”
He nodded. “Yeah, of course. I plan on it.”
“Good for you.”
But Dustin was already speaking over her words. “I’ve thought about it. I’d like five children.” He counted them off on his fingertips.
Hank whooped it up. “Five, Dustin? You already planned…”
Dustin beamed. “Yes, it will happen.” His fingers turned into a fist that he rested in his lap.
“What if your wife protests?”
He stared into Hank’s face. “A wife has to do what a husband wants her to do.”
The words hung in the air as Liz, Hank, and I exchanged glances. Liz, mouth agape, started to say something but stopped, stupefied. Hank, rocking in his chair, was flicking his eyes like a mischievous child. I waited for the next line.
“What?” From Liz, finally.
“Yes.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“No. Not yet.”
She tapped the table, a rapid Morse code I could easily interpret. “You’re gonna find it hard to find a wife who obeys your every command, Dustin.” But her words were soft, smiling, gentle.
“I know. I’ll go back to Vietnam.”
“Still…” She persisted. “Dustin, women have a right to their own lives. You do know that?”
He was shaking his head, a little unsure of himself now. Quickly, like an agitated rabbit, he bit the corner of a fingernail.
“I suppose you can tell her what to eat?”
He nodded. “I order the food.”
“If she wants steak.”
“I choose what she eats.”
Liz, frustrated. “Dustin, someday you and I have to have a long talk.”
That pleased him, and he beamed at her. But Hank, grimacing, leaned into him. “Dustin, you gotta look out at the world you live in.”
Dustin quoted something in Vietnamese, which perplexed Liz.
Hank repeated it, and then translated: “Ong an cha ba an nem. Sort of—men get the meat, women get the bread. My loose translation in the interest of personal safety.” He nodded at Liz.
We ordered food in silence. Dustin pointed to spaghetti and meatballs on the menu. “With a Coke.” Liz ordered the lunch special of pasta alla vodka. When it arrived, Dustin stared at the dish and then asked, “Whiskey?”
Liz laughed. “A little vodka goes a long way.”
“People shouldn’t drink.” He scrunched up his face.
“Well, I’m hardly getting plastered at happy hour, Dustin.”
His face reddened. “I only mean…not you. I mean, people. Drinking.”
Out of the corner of my eye I watched as he ate his lunch. An incredibly meticulous boy, precise. He maneuvered his napkin under the knife and fork, positioning it so that it was straight. Then, when the food arrived, following our lead, he placed the cloth napkin on his lap, once again aligning it, smoothing the edges. Everything about him was ordered, mechanical. Sitting with an erect spine, he brought the fork to his lips with the precision of a submarine torpedo. Fascinating to watch, this routine, so careful an execution it seemed robotic—and alarming. He cut his strands of spaghetti into small pieces, measured, moving his way from one corner of the dish to the other with the frightful calculation of Sherman marching to the sea. We all watched him, surreptitiously, though I caught Liz’s eye once or twice. Periodically, he would dab at his lips, a gentility that struck me as a gesture he’d appropriated from some TV show he’d seen. When he was through, he sat back, folded his hands on the table.
“Thank you.” The words said to no one in particular.
Liz smiled at him and then, in a sudden gesture, reached across the table and grasped the back of his wrist. It was so sudden that Dustin jerked his hand back, let out a faint yelp as if hit by an electric shock and dropped his hand into his lap. Liz watched him closely.
She was smiling at him.
“What do you do?” Dustin asked her.
“I’m a psychologist.”
He drew his mouth into a thin line. “So that’s why you’re here? To analyze me?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m here to have lunch with friends. I don’t analyze friends.” Then glancing at me, “Although I do psychoanalyze ex-husbands.” A high laugh. “I have to—by court order.”
I leaned into Dustin. “True. She has to. It’s part of the Geneva Convention. Rules of war.”
He seemed confused. “I’m not crazy.”
“No one said you are,” Liz noted. “I’d say you’re a very intelligent young man.”
“You think so?” Pleased.
“Of course.”
“My brothers call me stupid.”
“Your brothers?” she asked. “How many?”
“Two. A lot older. But they don’t talk to me.”
“What does your mother say about that?”
His eyes blinked furiously. “She doesn’t care. She doesn’t like them much either. One can’t even come into the house anymore.”
“Why is that?”
He didn’t answer. But I could see him relaxing, his shoulders slumping, his eyes warm as he watched Liz. He was trying to please her. At times Hank and I seemed not there at all, the two of them chitchatting like old friends. She asked him about school, about Bristol, about the job he just lost, a rambling question-and-answer run that he had no problem with, but he recoiled when asked about his friends.
“I got none.”
“What about Darijo?” I asked. “I’ve seen you with him. The Bosniak boy.”
“We’re not really friends. Like we don’t hang out or anything.”
“But I’ve seen you sitting with him.”
A puzzled look on his face. “He’s like…alone there, too. So we…you know, sit together. It’s…” He shrugged. “I guess you could call him sort of a friend. But I’ve never been to his house or anything.”
“He come to yours?”
He shuddered and let out a phony laugh. “God, no. He might bump into my brother or somebody. I wouldn’t do that to…” His voice trailed off.
Liz turned to me. “I do have to go.” She started to gather her purse, her gloves. “Dustin, could you walk me to my car? It’s snowing.”
In a body we all looked out the window at the wispy snow squall. Barely there. But Liz’s words suggested we’d sud
denly been dropped willy-nilly into Superman’s Fortress of Solitude in the icebound Arctic. Towers of ice blocked her path.
Dustin jumped up, inordinately happy, beaming, thrusting his arm into the sleeve of his coat. Then, gentlemanly, he grabbed Liz’s coat, held it out so she could slip into it. She took it from him.
“I can put my own coat on, Dustin.”
Startled, he handed it to her.
“But thank you.” She smiled at him.
He smiled back at her.
Liz waited a second, then said goodbye—“I think Rick is paying for lunch, right?”—and the two of them walked away. Dustin’s eyes never left her face, his head nodding up and down.
I shook my head. “Liz has charmed another.”
Hank’s eyes twinkled. “She’s already begun the re-education of that boy.” He made a face. “No one is gonna walk me to my car.”
“I’ll do it, Hank. I wouldn’t want you to get lost in the blizzard out there.”
“Thanks, but I’m the one usually leading you around.” He craned his neck to see Liz and Dustin. “Does Liz always solve all your cases, Rick?”
“Only the hard ones.”
Chapter Fourteen
The voice on the phone squeaked, words swallowed so that I had to keep saying, “Who is it?” to the point of absurdity. Finally, I heard “Phan Binh Suong,” followed by “Anh Ky’s aunt.” Uncle Binh’s wife. Trang Ky Binh. “Yes. You know me?”
“I know who you are.”
“It is important that we speak to you about the boy.” A pause. “My husband Binh told me to call. He hears horrible stories.”
“I understand. Dustin is in trouble.”
“Trouble,” she echoed. “No one wants trouble. We are quiet people.”
“I understand.”
“You will come here?”
“Of course.”
A deep sigh of relief, a few muttered words as she covered the phone and spoke to someone nearby. When she came back on the line, her voice was more assured, louder. Carefully articulated English, a practiced inflection. “I will give you the address now.”
Uncle Binh and Aunt Suong lived in the basement apartment of a three-family house two streets away from the housing project where Binh’s sister-in-law lived with Dustin. A tired street of old three-family, pre-World War II carbon copy homes, lost in the shadow of the projects. A dead-end street that led to a chain-linked out-of-business auto parts factory where, if I could judge by the rusted metal shells dumped there, stolen cars were stripped and abandoned.