by Andrew Lanh
“You touch Dustin again and I’ll haul your ass to jail. Hear me?” I said.
“Scared of you, asshole.”
“You’re on record, hear me? Trust me. The cops are on my side. I got all the odds. You’ll be watching your own ass in jail.”
He stood up and gave me the finger. “They teach you sign language in cop school.”
“Among other things.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I can spot a coward at ten paces.”
He rallied. “I’m outta here. My girlfriend’s waiting for her bucket of bolts she calls a car.” He grabbed a coat off a rack by the door, shot a look back at me, and left, slamming the door.
I stepped to the window and watched his back as he bustled down the sidewalk, slipping on a patch of ice. Through the shut window I could hear his “Fuck, fuck” as he kicked the ice. At the curb he tumbled into a car, a decades-old Cadillac with plastic covering a back window that had been knocked out. The car slid from the curb, bounced off a snow bank, and disappeared.
Quiet in the room.
“Nice guy,” I said.
Uncle Binh was shaking his head. “Nothing is ever good anymore.”
His face flushed, Timmy stood up and peered out the window. Another button had come undone on his shirt as he scratched his belly.
He was shaking his head. “You know, I ain’t got much in my life, but it’s a whole crap load better than that loser.”
“He’s your brother.”
“I don’t care, man. Yeah, he’s my brother, but that dude scares the shit outta me.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Liz phoned from Sophia Grecko’s apartment, and for a second what I heard was the sound of a beep beep beep, a truck backing up, followed by muffled yelled voices. Then Sophia’s dark laughter covered Liz’s soft words.
“Come over. Now. Sophia’s. You free?” A whisper. “You better be.”
“What’s up?” I swallowed the last bite of a tuna-on-toast sandwich I’d made, my eyes scanning my laptop screen where an itemized bill to HR at Aetna was aching for my SEND touch, and squinted at the icy rain slamming my old windows. A day to stay indoors, though Liz’s call suggested differently.
“The Martin and Melody Show, act two.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Martin is moving Ben’s stuff out of the apartment. His friend just backed a U-Haul onto the lawn and smashed into the frozen shrubbery. The whole house shook. He’s been running around like a deranged nut.”
I found myself grinning. “And I should be there for what reason?”
A door slammed shut. Liz raised her voice. “I met Melody in the hallway as I came in. She’s getting sentimental and talkative. She mumbled something about dreams of her father.” What sounded like glass breaking. “And one of their conversations.”
“So? Important?”
“You’re the detective, Mr. Lam. When people are waxing sentimental about their murdered father, perhaps you might want to eavesdrop on such chatter. Useless but…” She trailed off with a slight laugh. “Sophia also made a huge pot of soul-searing chili.”
“I’m on my way.”
The door to Ben’s apartment was blocked open with a stack of books, and as I walked past, headed to the stairway leading to the second floor, I peered in. A madhouse. A young man I didn’t recognize was pushing cardboard boxes across the floor while Martin circled him. Red-faced, sputtering, he was complaining that something would break. “What are you? An asshole? Well, you must be. I wouldn’t put it past God when he…” On and on, delirious, irate, while the friend—I’m assuming soon-to-be-former-friend because that’s what happens when you ask a friend to help you move—narrowed his eyes and said nothing.
Sitting primly on a wing chair facing the doorway, her hands clasped in her lap, Melody watched the circus.
“Something has happened.” Liz’s first words to me as I walked into Sophia’s apartment. “All was calm and all was bright when they started emptying Ben’s apartment. But then, like bombs exploding, we heard Martin yelling at the top of his voice, cursing, foot stomping, something glass smashed against a wall. Very Joan Crawford when she became box-office poison.”
Sophia added, “We heard Melody pleading, ‘Think of Dad, think of Dad.’”
“The friend is doing all the work,” I commented.
“Why are you surprised?” From Liz, motioning me to a table where a pot of hot coffee rested. “Have some coffee, and then you can make a class field trip into darkest subterranea.”
Not talking, we sat at the table, our silence punctuated by sudden outbursts from below. What sounded like a table dragged across a hardwood floor. The rumble of a dolly as someone ran it up the corrugated incline of the U-Haul. But Martin’s fury was unrelenting. Indeed, growing—at one point, he must have been standing on a stepladder, his head inches from the floor of Sophia’s apartment. We heard his raspy breathing. A heating vent magnified the noises. Sophia spooned out bowls of chili as we tore off chunks of fresh-made Italian bread, warm and crusty and moist, popping them into the chili. “Dinner theater,” she commented wryly.
“How long have they been here?” I asked, sitting back.
“A couple hours,” Liz said.
“I’ve been waiting for Martin to come. Ever since I gave him the key. I’m surprised he waited.”
Idly, I compared Sophia’s apartment to the one below—two lovers living in such close proximity. Whereas Ben’s old apartment had a ramshackle feel to it with his thrift-store couches and church-bazaar tchotchkes, with the frayed scatter rugs and piles of books and magazines in sloppy piles on the floor, Sophia’s place was its opposite. A sleek, art-deco arrangement of sharp-lined furniture, black enamel finish, bronze fixtures, Frankart lamps of sleek slender women striking poses with green-and-black fans. Chase chrome-plated floor ashtrays that no one would dare to use for a cigarette. A polished, machine-age apartment. I remembered Ben joking that when he went up to Sophia’s apartment he felt he was toppling into a movie set for a Gatsby remake.
And Sophia happily answered him. “And your apartment is the back room of a hoedown rummage sale.”
Now Ben’s apartment was disappearing into a U-Haul truck.
Standing at the window, I watched the friend rolling up boxes into the truck. Icy rain pelted his bare head. He stopped, rested the dolly on the side, and lit a cigarette. Coatless, he wiped his brow with the back of his hand as smoke covered his face. Then he shivered from the cold, dropped the cigarette, but still didn’t move. From the apartment Martin’s voice sailed out the open door. “I’m paying you to stand around?”
“I knew there had to be a reason,” Sophia said over my shoulder. “Hired help. I didn’t think he had any friends left. They all stayed with his beleaguered ex-wife.”
“Wish me luck,” I said with a smile. “I’m going down into the mosh pit.”
Liz’s eyes twinkled. “If you don’t return, could I have that lovely Le Po watercolor you have over your desk? I’ve already identified it on the back with a label-maker when you weren’t paying attention.”
I did a half-bow.
Downstairs the apartment was quiet, Melody still sitting in that wing chair facing the open doorway. I greeted her, but a voice shocked me from behind.
“What are you doing here?”
Martin’s face was flushed, his chin quivering
“I was upstairs visiting and…”
His face a mixture of dislike and wonder. “I’m moving.”
“You found an apartment, Martin?”
“In Wethersfield. Near the old center. In a house. This”—he indicated the contents of his father’s rooms—“is what I got to live on.”
“Your divorce is final?”
“You ask a lot of questions.” He turned away.
The hired help
walked in, wiping his wet face with a handkerchief. Maybe one of his students in need of spare change. The boy spotted the scowl on Martin’s face, grabbed a box, rolled his eyes, and disappeared. Martin’s eyes followed him, and he walked out after him, grumbling, “Let’s see how that minimum-wage serf destroys another box of glassware.”
“I don’t know why I came.” Melody was not speaking to me but to a wall. “The rain is so cold.”
“Melody,” I began, “why are you here?”
“He asked me to help. He never asked me for help before.”
“So you came?”
“My mother insisted. I wanted to make her happy.”
I counted a moment. “Is it working?”
She eyed me closely. “Nothing makes my mother happy. You know that.” Then, gazing toward a desk, the papers rifled and scattered. “Martin found the letters.”
“What?”
“The cause of his…hysteria. Rage. Insanity.”
“What letters?”
She pointed. A bunch of letters dumped into a wastepaper basket alongside Ben’s old country-store desk. Stamped envelopes and creamy stationery, but now torn into pieces. “There.”
“Incendiary?” I asked.
She smiled impishly. “You could say that. Dad kept the letters from that…that UConn intern who dragged him into bed that semester and guaranteed the end of our home life.”
“Your father kept them?”
A bit of pique in her tone. “I just told you, no? There they are. And Martin read them.”
I was tempted to retrieve them, patch them together. But I said, “What’s in them?”
She blew out her cheeks, a weary look on her face. “That dumb affair lasted only a month or so. Dad came to his senses, and walked away. Unfortunately he confessed all to Mom. A mistake.” A pause as she swallowed. “Dad loved Mom.”
“She wouldn’t forgive him.” A flat-out statement that made her start.
A sad smile. “You’ve met my mother, Mr. Lam. She…she hasn’t forgiven a fourth-grade teacher for calling her…a sneak. I’ve heard about that too many times.” She sighed. “Anyway, Martin found the letters. I don’t know why Dad kept them. They were written after they parted company. Pleading letters, begging. I love you, love you. If you don’t love me, then drop dead. Over the top. References to lovemaking that was glorious, inspired, earth shattering, epic. You get the picture. Martin almost had a cow.” She laughed out loud. “It was almost worth the price of admission to this show.”
“So he tore them up?”
“Ritualistically, dramatically. I’m surprised there wasn’t some ancient runic incantation to exorcise the spirit that flew out of those letters.”
I checked to see where Martin was—outside, giving the boy the finger. Rain splashed on his head. “That’s why he’s in a rage?”
“You bet.” She shifted her position in the wing chair. “I was afraid to move. That mover was—in fact, is—ready to run for the hills.”
“Why doesn’t he?”
She sighed. “He needs the twenty bucks my brother promised hm. And he knows how to drive a U-Haul.”
“Martin’s taking everything?”
“I came because I thought there might be something I’d want.”
She indicated an accordion folder bulging with sheets of paper. A sheaf of printouts rested on top, bound with elastics. A few scattered photos. “I’m gonna keep his notes for his new book. Over there.”
I walked to the table and picked up the photos. “A new attack on evangelical religion?”
“My father only sang one note, Mr. Lam.”
“But he was good at it.”
A melancholy shrug. “If you say so.”
Among the eight-by-ten glossies were three photos taken from the Gospel of Wealth Ministry. The Reverend Simms preaching in his flowing robes, a miter clutched in his right hand. Another of the vast hall packed with worshippers. But the third surprised me—a close-up shot of one wing of the auditorium—the section where the contingent of Asian—mainly Vietnamese—sat, all with rapt, upturned faces. All holding their dollar bills up in the air. I spotted Uncle Binh and Aunt Suong, but not Dustin’s mother.
“Who took these pictures?” I asked Melody.
She shrugged. “How would I know? A spy? Dad couldn’t go to that carnival show and come out alive.”
A spy? I peered into the photo. Dustin the spy? His story to me—the Professor wanted me to be a spy. I was a spy. Was it possible? But I couldn’t imagine Dustin merrily snapping away with his iPhone. Or could I? How did I know? Maybe he was caught, and accused. Maybe that explained the Reverend Simms’ public naming of Dustin as Ben’s possible killer. The servant of a sadistic but righteous God.
“If you stare at the photo any longer, it’s gonna burst into flames.” Martin tapped me on the shoulder. “You can leave now.”
“Leave him alone,” Melody said in my defense, which surprised me.
Martin stepped into the kitchen and returned with a glass vase. He held it up to the light.
Melody watched him. “I’ve been dreaming of Dad.” Her voice was so soft I could barely hear her.
“What? Not that again.” Martin frowned. “I don’t wanna hear it. All morning you can’t shut up about it.”
Melody sounded wistful, ready to sob. “I’ve been dreaming about the happy days.”
“Shut the hell up, Melody.” He shot a look at me.
A bit of fire in her voice. “I went to see him, Martin. You didn’t. I snuck out of the house, away from Mom’s wrath—I came here. You didn’t.”
“Yes, I did.” A biting tone.
“Not till recently. Only because you wanted something. He told me. You asked for money.”
Martin checked me out again. “He was my father.”
“And you’re thirty years old.”
Sarcastically, “I know how old I am. Two years older than an old maid we all know.”
She caught her breath. “I came here. Not you. We talked. You never talked to him.”
“Maybe because he always found fault with me.”
She rushed her words. “No. That’s not true. He always forgave your lapses. Your wandering. Your…dumb marriages you toppled into because you…”
“Because what?” he yelled at her.
“Because you need someone to blame for your failure.”
A dark laugh. “God, you got everything wrong, Melody.”
She swung her head back and forth. “You think so? I’m sitting here watching you pilfer his life, a life you ran away from. You’re gonna sit on his sofa, eat out of his dishes, sleep in his bed. God, how can you live with yourself?”
The young mover walked into the room, listened for a moment, then turned on his heels. He looked back over his shoulder for a second and caught my eye. Though skittish, he was having the time of his life.
Martin snarled, “I have a life.”
“You live a lie.” She made a dismissive wave of her hand.
“I’m outta here.” He raised the glass vase over his head and hurled it against a wall. It shattered, shards covering a counter, slipping to the floor. “Fuck you.”
He left the apartment, slamming the door behind him.
Melody didn’t move.
“You all right?” I asked. “How you getting home?”
“I drove my own car, Mr. Lam. I sort of knew how this afternoon was going to end.”
I walked away, but she mumbled, “I have been dreaming about Dad, you know.”
“Good. You have to remember your father.”
She spoke over my words. “I’ve been trying to memorize his voice so I’ll never forget it. Things he said to me.” A wistful smile. “All our conversations. He talked to me, you know.”
“What did he tell you?”
“He told me how much he loved me.”
“That was good, no?”
“I needed to hear it, Mr. Lam.” Her lips quivered.
“Did he ever talk about his students?”
“Of course. All the time. That was the problem. He lived for his students. He said things that made me want to take notes. Isn’t that weird? My own father.”
“A smart man.”
Suddenly she studied my face. “I was here a day before he died. He said the strangest thing.” A faraway look in her eyes as she remembered. “He said, ‘Sometimes history falls like a ton of bricks on the innocent.’ When I asked him what he meant, he said sometimes life just gets too heavy to carry on your shoulders.”
“What was that all about?”
“He never told me.”
“Melody, you should go home now.”
She shook her head. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to sit here for a while. By myself. It will be the last time.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Hank’s grandmother asked him to invite Dustin for supper, a request that prompted a call to me. “Have you been talking to her?”
“Hank, you’re the gossip,” I told him, laughing. “The family town crier. Okay, we had that talk in Grandma’s kitchen when we talked about the Trang family debacle…”
“Yeah, I remember. But still and all.”
“Still and all, Grandma is a curious woman.”
“But Dustin?”
“I want to be there.”
“That’s why I’m calling. Grandma will go all Buddha dog day afternoon on him, and you are the only annoying Buddha pest that follows her conversation.”
“Wisdom, Hank.”
Dustin resisted the invitation, Hank let me know. He sputtered and hung up and Hank had to call back. Dustin claimed his license was expired and he was afraid of being pulled over—until Hank, breaking in, told him to be at his parents’ house at six. “I used my state cop voice.”
Not surprisingly, Dustin was late, but then we heard Dustin’s rattletrap Toyota choking to a stop in the driveway. We waited. He sat in his car for a few minutes, unmoving, the interior dark, until an impatient Hank, peering out the window, flicked the outside light on and off. Dustin got out of his car and scurried up the walk.