by Maureen Tan
At the midpoint was Little Vietnam.
Uncle Tinh’s information after dinner on Friday had supplemented my scant knowledge of the neighborhood. Thanks to the resettlement efforts of the Catholic dioceses of Louisiana and the chronic vacancies in an apartment complex near Chef Menteur Highway, Vietnamese refugees had been added to the eclectic mix in New Orleans East in the mid-1970s. From that start, the neighborhood had grown into an island of Vietnamese language, tradition and culture.
The house where I would be living was off of Chef Menteur Highway, in a swampy, low-lying area too far from the bustling shops on Alcee Fortier Boulevard and the neatly kept residences on Saigon Drive to be considered desirable by almost anyone. Uncle Tinh had offered the place to me when I’d telephoned him from the hotel and outlined my course of action.
“Perhaps, chère, you can make good use of my associate’s home,” Uncle Tinh had said. “His renovation plans were, uh, interrupted when the state of Louisiana provided him with other accommodations. He gave me keys for safekeeping.”
I’d thanked my uncle but told him I needed only the address, not the keys.
“Be careful, Lacie,” was all that he said before he disconnected.
When I called Beauprix with the address, he, too, urged me to be careful. But only after arguing with me about my choice of neighborhood.
I stood on the cracked sidewalk with my suitcase at my feet and my backpack slung over one shoulder and looked past the weed-ridden yard to a structure obviously suffering from decades of neglect. A Greek revival cottage—two-story frame construction with a porch supported by twin pillars at the front.
The derelict building seemed perfect for my purposes. A teenage runaway would need a place to live and would be unlikely to have the resources to do anything but squat. But I didn’t want to spend my nights fighting off high-demand pimps, desperate thieves or crack-addicted roommates. All this house needed was a bit of breaking and entering to make my residency seem authentic.
Unlike much of Little Vietnam, this area of New Orleans East had not benefited from prosperity, hard work, housing demand or urban renewal. For a couple of blocks in every direction, it looked like a war zone. Houses spotted the street, separated from each other by lots filled with the remains of collapsed structures and abandoned cars. A few of the less dilapidated structures might have been inhabited, but it was impossible to tell what lay behind the boarded-up windows.
Running down the center of the street was a wide median strip that New Orleans natives called neutral ground. In some areas of the city, it was a pleasant island planted with trees and flowers and spotted with benches. Here, the remains of a bench poked out from beneath a mound of vines, dead limbs lay on the bare, muddy earth beneath the parkway’s few tall trees and drifts of garbage acted as a magnet for stray dogs. From where I stood, I could see—and hear—two scrawny brown mongrels fighting halfheartedly over something that looked like a dead rat.
I glanced up and down the street, looking for movement, wondering if anyone was watching me from behind some torn shade, ragged curtain or through the cracks of a boarded-up window. This didn’t seem like the kind of block in which one wanted to appear helpless, out of place or abandoned on a front doorstep. And not because there were well-intentioned neighbors watching out for each other’s welfare.
The front porch had a surprisingly intact waist-high decorative wrought-iron railing enclosing its sides. In the front, on either side of the entrance, half a dozen red clay pots were clipped to the interior of the iron railing. They were filled with soil and sprouted very large, very dead, plants. Between the tall oleander bushes, I could see that a sturdy-looking wooden lattice surrounded the space beneath the porch. But the half-dozen steps up to the porch sagged dangerously and about half the boards seemed to be missing from the section of floor between the steps and the front door.
I decided not to go in that way. Instead, I picked up my suitcase, went around the porch, tucking in close to the house as I walked along a packed-dirt driveway bounded by a thicket of overgrown oleanders and a six-foot tall kudzu-covered fence. The drive ended at a garage whose collapsing roof had trapped a derelict car inside, an overgrown yard and a back door with an overhang that sagged so badly that someone of average height would have had to duck to avoid hitting their head. I simply glanced upward and worried.
I dropped my suitcase and backpack beside the back door, spent a minute examining the lock and smiled happily when I discovered that this one was cheap and ill-considered. Hadn’t the owner heard of double-bolt locks, I wondered, and celebrated that he hadn’t. It made my job easier.
A few minutes searching among the pile of junk and construction rubble in the backyard yielded a hefty piece of iron pipe and a rusted wire coat hanger. Ignoring every skill I’d ever learned about breaking in and leaving no trace, I smashed in one of the eight-inch square, smoked-glass panels at the top of the back door. Tiptoeing to reach in through the broken window, I used the hanger to fish for the lock, snagged it and gave the hanger a tug. A satisfying click and I was able to turn the exterior knob and push the door inward.
I shut the door behind me, twisted the useless lock back into place and then turned and breathed out a slow, appreciative whistle. The beginnings of a ruddy sunset reflected brightly off the glossy black-and-white-tiled floor, white countertops and tall chrome-and-black kitchen stools. I stayed in the kitchen long enough to discover that the gas was on and the electricity—if the wall switch next to the back door was any indication—was off. There was hot water and a working oven and range. No phone, which didn’t matter because I had my cell phone. The pantry, in the form of the cabinets and a brand-new matte-black refrigerator, was very bare.
Nice, I thought, and was briefly concerned. Anyone following me home would be hard-pressed to believe that this house was available to a squatter. Worry vanished as I stepped into the next room. Wall-to-wall drop cloths covered the floor and makeshift scaffolding divided the scarred walls at a point halfway up to the twelve-foot ceiling. The room smelled of damp plaster and mildew, and as I walked through ankle-deep tendrils of old wallpaper several enormous roaches scuttled noisily for cover. At the end of the room, I pushed through a doorway hung with overlapping translucent plastic sheets and then stopped short, convinced that a thoughtless misstep would be disastrous. An obstacle course of splintery lath, jagged chunks of plaster and broken two-by-fours bristling with nails lay before me.
With all my possessions in tow, I picked my way carefully through the debris to an open staircase to my left. The steps were uncarpeted and steep, and the absence of handrails made the climb treacherous. The fall wouldn’t kill you. Maybe.
As I’d walked through the house, I’d noted the location of each door and window. Then I paused on the small second-floor landing, looked down over its unguarded edge to the rubble-covered floor below and considered what I had seen. In contrast to the flimsy lock on the back door, the windows on the first floor were all barred. Leaving the back door and front door as the only way in. Or out. But, though my imagination had offered the possibility of feather-masked men in every shadowy corner, there were no closets or human-size nooks where an attacker might hide. On the first floor, I was vulnerable to a surprise attack only when entering a room.
Renovation had not found its way upstairs. Blessedly, neither had demolition. The single door from the landing opened into a large bedroom hung with pale blue floral wallpaper that had been popular in the 1950s. An ancient gas heater made me grateful for the moderate October weather. The only light source besides the pair of guillotine windows that flanked the bed were dozens of candles. Melted and cooled wax had bound the varied sizes, shapes and colors into mounded sculptures on the tops of the mismatched dresser and nightstands. But the room was clean and nothing scuttled for cover as I crossed the bare wood floor to drop my suitcase in the center of the double bed.
I recrossed the room to investigate what I thought must be a closet despite the solidity of
the door. At once, my imagination suggested that a masked man might lurk inside. Such thoughts were a reasonable reaction to trauma, I knew. I’d probably be fighting them for weeks to come. But that didn’t keep me from being irritated with myself. Ignoring the slight increase in my heart rate, I yanked the door open.
And was greeted by birds. Dozens of them. Singing in the treetops beyond the house. Feeling a little foolish, I stepped through the doorway onto a long, narrow balcony. As I walked its length, my right shoulder brushed against the house’s solid wood exterior and my left hip was just inches from a low wrought-iron railing crumbly with rust. Immediately below me was the driveway.
From the second-floor walkway, I could see past the kudzu-covered fence. Separated from me by a vacant lot was my nearest neighbor—a long, single-story shotgun double house supported by concrete blocks that lifted it above the damp earth. Trees—some whose trunks were five or six inches across—had grown, unchecked, from beneath it. Gaping holes replaced every window and the roof was collapsed in several places. I suspected the place was abandoned.
The balcony ended half a dozen yards from the bedroom at an ornate cypress door at the rear of the house. It had no exterior lock and opened into a large bathroom—an architectural afterthought oddly separated from the rest of the house and completely inaccessible from the first floor. Twilight crept in through a louvered, porthole-style window placed high on the wall overlooking the backyard. The weak light revealed facilities of 1920s vintage—a pedestal sink, a tall, narrow toilet and a claw-footed bathtub. The only modern innovation in the bathroom was a wholly inadequate aluminum hook-and-eye latch on the inside of the door. As I made use of the facilities, I wondered at the priorities of those renovating the house.
I returned to the bedroom, then checked all the drawers in the room. Except for a box of strike-on-anything stick matches, which was what I was looking for, they were empty. I spent a moment turning on my heel, examining every angle of the room. Once I was inside this room, I thought, I was safe. The thick cypress bedroom door with its heavy iron bolt and the solidly locked windows would discourage any unwanted guests. And when I slept, I could block the door out to the bathroom by jamming a chair beneath the knob.
Later, I promised myself, I would make a quick reconnoiter of the immediate neighborhood and “make groceries,” including an extra flashlight and batteries, at the GNS Food Store back on Chef Menteur Highway. But right now, with time and daylight to spare, I took my sketch pad from the backpack, tucked it under an arm and unlocked one of the huge windows. Surprisingly, it moved easily in response to my gentle tug and rolled smoothly upward. I stepped through the opening onto a tiny vine-covered balcony that overlooked the street.
I sat cross-legged so that my presence was hidden by a leathery-leafed vine, settled my sketch pad comfortably against my knees and, from that vantage point, I watched the neighborhood around me. I listened to the traffic and occasional voices, heard the mournful whistle of trains from the nearby tracks, hummed along with a radio someone had turned on loud inside a distant house.
For a while I thought about the danger inherent in the task I was undertaking, carefully separating genuine danger from irrational fear. Would I be better off armed? I asked myself. I was a good shot and practiced frequently, so my competence was not at issue. Over the years I’d judged the danger of some assignments significant enough to carry a gun and risk exposing my identity.
I’d assured Beauprix that, if I maintained my cover, I would be in little personal danger while I was in Little Vietnam. In fact, if the attack on Bourbon Street was not random, disappearing into a new identity would take care of the threat. So until the situation warranted it, I would resist arming myself.
With that issue decided, I began to draw. At first, I drew to confront my fears. Quayside cranes looming like hungry predators. People trapped and dying among the containers stacked on the dock. Two men in feathered masks running along a darkened street.
As my mind drifted outward and my body began to relax, I moved beyond fear. I drew the face of the mixed-blood teenage girl I saw when I looked in the mirror. A shock of spiky hair angled over one of her dark eyes and she was sticking her tongue out at me. And I realized that, despite the punk look, she was very pretty.
Then I worked on a portrait of Anthony Beauprix as he’d looked in the moment he was staring down at the body of Nguyen Tri. Before I began, I closed my eyes, recalling the sights and smells of the morgue, gradually focusing on his expression. It was not until I could see the slightest narrowing of his eyes, the set of his mouth and the tension that stretched and hardened his facial muscles that I began to draw. I struggled to capture his grief, determination and frustration, and the cold, clear anger that bound it together.
In the end, I turned the page, still dissatisfied by my work. There was something about the man, some complex emotional depth, that I’d seen and knew I hadn’t captured. I’d revisit that drawing, I thought, until I got it right.
One last sketch, I thought, remembering that I’d promised myself that I’d draw the boy in the restaurant kitchen as a grown-up. Silly, but it was the kind of challenge that would take my mind off Beauprix’s portrait.
I began with basic bone structure and built from there, projecting Tommy a few years into the future, leaving the tired eyes but building on the personality that could produce a winning grin.
I glanced up at the sky, gauging the fading daylight, then down at the drawing again. My pencil froze as my breath caught in my throat and I stared at the page, wondering if I’d just seen what I thought I had.
Family resemblance is a curious thing. Like a magician’s trick. Now you see it, now you don’t. Mannerism or genetic trait? Family feature or racial characteristic? A father’s nose or wishful thinking? Illusion or reality?
Now you see it, now you don’t.
For a moment I had seen it. Maybe. And maybe I now understood the sadness I’d seen in Tommy’s eyes. I turned to a blank page, once again drawing Tommy’s face. But this time I removed the personality that animated his features. Drew him silent and motionless, without wild hair, pimples or piercings. Then I recalled another face I’d drawn. I held that face in my mind and overlaid it on Tommy’s.
By the time I was certain of what I had seen, the sun had set. I sat on the balcony in darkness, no longer able to see the pencil marks on the tablet. But I didn’t need to. I’d already compared Tommy’s boyish face, feature by feature, to a face distorted by violence and death. And now, there was little doubt in my mind. Tommy, whose last name I didn’t know, was a close relative of Nguyen Tri, the boy I’d seen in the morgue. A cousin. Or a brother.
For all the information he’d given me, I wondered why Uncle Tinh hadn’t told me that.
Much later that night, I phoned Beauprix. It was a call I’d agreed to make every night for as long as I worked undercover. We’d agreed upon that procedure over the remains of fried oyster po’-boys at Frankie and Johnnie’s.
“Maybe when you work for Duran Reed, it isn’t necessary,” he’d said, though he’d sounded as if he doubted it. “But here? In New Orleans? With me? No. That’s not how I do things. I’m not a big believer in solo acts. Or in unnecessary risk. Mostly, I don’t like worrying about my friends. Or going to their funerals.”
Friend, apparently, was a category I fell into. Though I wondered if he mothered his other friends so unmercifully, it cost me nothing besides a small scrap of my independence to do as he asked. And it was, to be honest, comforting to know that help—his help—was only a phone call away.
“I’m settled in,” I said when he answered his phone. I confirmed my new address and told him enough about the house to amuse him, not enough to horrify him. “Tomorrow, I find a job.”
We spent a few more minutes saying nothing in particular and then said good-night.
Chapter 10
On Monday morning the streets of Little Vietnam were already crowded with shoppers. I walked slowly down one block, th
en up another, reading store signs and shopping center marquis emblazoned with the flowing letters of my native tongue. Viet My Grocery. Thanh-Xuan Beauty Salon. Dr. Nguyen Nghiem, Dentist. Tran’s Automotive. Bao Ngoc Jewelry.
I wore the outfit I’d chosen the day before. Jeans, tank top, torn and faded khaki jacket. Now, wrinkled from the bus ride, it matched exactly the image I was trying to project. With every step, with every sign I read, I let my adult personality drift away and encouraged a teenage girl to bloom within me.
I told myself that Vietnamese was the language I spoke at home. But I preferred to speak English because it was important to me to fit in, to be like every other American teenager. I wanted to belong. As I walked, I held my chin high. But I was careful not to make my stride confident. I was an insecure teenager pretending to be secure, a half-caste unsure of my identity, a frightened runaway trying not to appear too young, too poor or too desperate.
Uncle Tinh had given me a list of businesses that were rumored to have drawn the unwanted attention of an extortion racket. Though I continued to question his motivation for passing the information along, I had no doubt that his “rumors” were fact.
It would have been easier to get a job at one of the businesses on the strength of Uncle Tinh’s recommendation. But that would have required an explanation that, at the least, raised suspicions about who I was and why I might be there. And why someone such as Tinh Vu would make the suggestion.
“These people are afraid and that makes them cautious,” Uncle Tinh had told me. “I know that the business leaders in Little Vietnam respect me, but as for trust? Yes, they come to me rather than the police but, in many ways, I am as much an outsider as you or Beauprix. My wealth, my business, my friends—all are tied into the French Quarter and the city, not the Vietnamese community. But I assure you, these businesses are worthy of your attention.”