by Andrew Lanh
He reminded me of little Simon, I suddenly realized. Yes, little Simon was a short slip of a boy, while Michael was taller, also bone thin but lanky, his arms long and bony. And Simon, like his father, had a dark complexion, a chocolate smoothness, his black hair wiry, ragged. Michael was fair with the delicate mocha of so many Vietnamese, but similar facial structure, pronounced cheekbones, small dark eyes, rigid chin, ears a little too big. What they called Buddha ears—bigger than they should be, with elongated lobes—prized as symbols of longevity. But a wide, broad nose. Good-looking, I realized—no, more striking than good-looking. He thinks he’s white, Hazel had said of her brother, dismissing him.
“I still don’t understand why Simon started visiting you.”
He rubbed his palms together. “Look, Rick. When I lived at home, when I was at Kingswood-Oxford prep, little Simon followed me around. So small, cute as a button. He would walk so close to me that if I stopped suddenly he sometimes bumped into my back. It was a joke—we laughed. Then I went away.”
“National Merit Fellow at Trinity. Full scholarship.”
His eyes widened. “You do your homework.”
“I’m an investigator who knows how to Google.”
He laughed. “I don’t go home anymore.”
“Hazel told me you think you’re white.”
He bit his lip. “Do I look white?” His question was addressed to the white girl sitting across the room. He made a har har har sound, exaggerated, and then closed up.
“You’re Vietnamese.”
“I’m an American college student.”
“Why don’t you go home?”
Again the quick glance at Cheryl, as if checking her response to a conversation she seemed to be ignoring. “I have a new life here. A couple more years at Trinity. A political science major. An internship planned for a state legislative office in Boston. Grad work at Harvard. A life there.”
“You could still stop in at your folks’.”
He waved a dismissive hand in the air. “You asked me why Simon found me. I never told him where I lived. I don’t want anybody from my family visiting me. Yes, I talk to my mother because she worries and doesn’t understand any of her children because she’s not allowed to. I feel sorry for her. So I call her every so often. Community outreach, I call it. Charity. It’s less painful than canvassing for a cure for cancer.”
“Christ, you’re cynical.”
“That’s not cynicism, Rick Van Lam. That’s the first lesson in survival I learned.”
“So Simon found you because…”
“Because this last arrest threat is serious business, and maybe he remembered bumping into my back. He’s a boy hungry for…well, a safety net.”
“And do you help him?”
“I let him sleep on my sofa. A few nights.”
“Why?”
“He’s my brother.”
“His buddy Frankie?”
He shivered. “Christ, no. That two-bit street punk. Foul-mouth trash bucket. Simon brought him here once and I said—no, no, no. God no. Do I look like a halfway house for white trash? The next time Simon came alone. I’m an escape route. Underground Railroad. Three, maybe four times. As I say, it surprised me.”
“I sense you want to tell me something scandalous about your home life.”
He laughed. “Quick, you are.”
But I noticed a bead of sweat on his forehead. The tilt of his head told me he was nervous.
“Your father.” I let the two words linger in the air, explosive, accusatory.
“Quick, you are. Pop. I have a grudging respect for the man. But the pressure—the constant drive. The—pain of expectation.”
“Your father made a decent life for you kids.”
A smirk. “He did that. I told you I have a grudging respect. But we paid a price for his American dream.”
“His noble dream, no? A boy dumped onto the Hartford streets, a boy taken in just to get some greedy folks to America. A boy living hand to mouth. A boy…” I stopped, deliberately. “Tran den. The black American.”
He winced, pulled back in his chair. “I hate that.”
“I know you do.”
A low, clipped voice. “You don’t think we heard it all growing up? ‘Do good in school. Be polite. Make America love you. Get all A’s. Go to prep school. Go, go, go. Christ, the family religion.”
“He only wanted…”
“Stop saying that. Give me a fucking break. You must have seen that wall of awards. First prize, second prize. Spelling bees, Math competitions. Science fairs. Nutmeg Boys State. D.A.R Civic Award. Elks Club medals. A wall of fame—and, ultimately, shame. Each new addition a testimony to the wonder of the children he produced.”
“Okay, so he went overboard. Lots of Asian parents put pressure on their kids.”
“Pressure!” he bellowed. “You just don’t get it, do you? Christ, we were held to the ground by the Plymouth Rock. Study, study, study. By the time I was in high school, I suffered from severe migraines, sobbing in my room when I got an A-minus on a fucking quiz. He’s at my high school graduation, rushing in from the goddamn garage, a grease monkey, covered in oil and tar and…and…and he tries to hug me.”
I sat up, gob smacked. “You’re ashamed of your father.”
He waited a long time. He seethed. “I told you I have a grudging…”
“Cut the crap, Michael. You’re embarrassed.”
He looked away, but then watched me with an unfunny grin on his face. “On my college application I stupidly wrote he was a master mechanic. It just popped into my head. It sounded good. But he saw it—I left it out by mistake. Christ, it bothered him. But I couldn’t bring myself to say…what? He changes the oil in your brand new Infiniti…I’m sorry. He kept saying he was proud of me. Proud.”
“You’re blaming him for being proud?”
His two hands cradled the glass of lemonade. I thought he’d shatter it. “Let me finish, dammit. I feel sorry for little Simon because he’s not gonna make it. Him and Hazel who will use her looks to wrangle a life with that scumbag from Avon Mountain, Judd the Dud. Or meek little Wilson with his eyeglasses falling off his nose, whimpering when he has to show Daddy a less-than-A grade in biology. He’s not strong. You tell him to jump and he does. He’s so fucked up he doesn’t know that he can say no to the world. You wanna know why I let Simon sack out on my sofa? He needs a place to hide from the family. All good, good people who are doing their best to ruin his life because they don’t know any better. Running the streets and flirting with some Viet Cong gangsters because they tell him he is worth something. Little Simon, the one my father coddled—his own image. But the one he demanded the most from. To become him.”
“But your mother. You call her.”
“Because she’s helpless. And because she feels guilty because she didn’t protect her kids from”—his eyes danced wickedly—“school.”
“But you’re here”—I waved my hand around the room—“here at Trinity getting ready for a comfortable professional life. Because of your father and mother.”
“How trite you are, Rick Van Lam. Real Fresh-Off-the-Boat thinking on your part. Do you think that I’m that superficial? I don’t want to be around my father but not because he’s a grease monkey who wants the best for his kids.”
“But that’s what it sounds like.”
He sat back, smug, his head tilted up. “I haven’t told you the missing part of the Tran puzzle. Yes, he pushed us—continues to push Hazel and Wilson. And even Simon. And he’s made them so helpless they follow the orders of any Nazi they meet. Frankie Trailer Park or—or Judd the Crud. But I realized that Pop had changed when he actually got what he wanted. When that wall was filled with trophies and merit badges and imprimatur from the Governor of Connecticut—when the world bestowed gold dust on his progeny, well, he…changed.
”
“Meaning?”
A long, deliberate pause, deadly. “Simple. Real simple. He got jealous of us. His own kids. I realized that one day by the look on his face when I was feted in the Hartford Courant. My face next to a fat Rotarian handing me a scholarship. The world loved his high-achieving kids, and it left him behind. He got”—for the first time Michael’s voice quivered and his hands shook—“jealous. We had something he could never have. That was the day I realized a whole part of him resented us. That was the day I ran away from home. Do you see why I let Simon crawl into a fetal position on my sofa?” He actually pointed to the sofa I sat on. “He needs me. And that’s so—unfortunate.”
Chapter Fourteen
The door to Gracie’s apartment was open, the TV blaring. Inside, sitting on the sofa, his injured leg up on the coffee table, one arm cradling the remote control, Jimmy kept his eyes glued to the set. Behind him stood Hank, his phone gripped in his right hand, a look of utter wonder on his face. As I sat down next to Jimmy who was grunting at me without looking over, I started to say, “Jimmy, I need…” His free hand flew into my face.
“Quiet, dammit.” He pointed at the TV and mumbled, “That damned fool, Jesse.”
He was watching Days of Our Lives.
Last week when I’d stopped in, he’d been positioned in that same spot, his leg suspended, and the minute Gracie left the room he’d whispered to me, “Can you believe this shit?”
“What?”
“Look. All these pretty people yelling at each other and then locking eyes as if someone told them the world was coming to an end. Baloney, all of it.”
Gracie had heard him because his stage whisper was loud enough to drown out the TV. “Jimmy,” she’d explained, “these are people in the thralls of an emotional…”
“Yeah, yeah, crisis. We had this talk, you and me.”
“When I was a Rockette in Manhattan”—Jimmy’s eyebrows had shot up and his eyes popped—“I was offered a walk-on part in All My Children, but my dance life was more important.” She’d pointed to the TV. “I could have been a soap opera star.” She’d dramatically thrown back her head and her bonnet of white curls shifted. Her hand patted them in a deliberate stage move, as though she were being watched from the balcony.
At the time Jimmy had caught my eye, a look suggesting there was no guiding light strong enough to lead Gracie anywhere. Or—enough days in anyone’s life.
They’d bickered back and forth. The War to End All Wars—Liz’s description of Gracie and Jimmy’s wonderful tit-for-tat exchanges, an old married couple’s sniping that skirted the edge of meanness—or kindness, in fact—but ended with Gracie rushing into the kitchen to take the pan of walnut brownies out of the oven because she knew Jimmy didn’t like them too chewy.
Now, a week later, he’d gone over to the dark side—to Hank’s horror, if I could judge by the look on his face. If Gracie allowed afternoon time dedicated to her “shows,” as she termed them, hell or high water, Jimmy, the reluctant captive who’d graduated from his bed to the living room, suddenly was entranced by the lives of the folks at Salem University Hospital. “Look, look, check out that creep. People don’t got sense these days, Rick.”
“You’re telling me,” I answered.
He pointed a finger at me. “What are you trying to say?” He never took his eyes off the TV. “You know better.”
Then we smiled at each other. Jimmy was on the mend.
Hank scurried into the kitchen to help Gracie carry out a tray of coffee and cookies.
“Gracie,” he said, grinning, “you’ve turned into a real girl scout with all these cookies.”
From the sofa Jimmy made a grunting sound.
“You know, I haven’t baked anything in years.” Gracie fluttered about, nearly toppling the plate of cookies. “My first batch were like hockey pucks.”
Jimmy looked over. “That was obvious to me right away.”
“Yet you ate every one I gave you.” Gracie tilted her head impishly. “You gnawed on those cookies.”
“I’m a polite guest.” His eyes on the TV. “What am I supposed to do—starve?”
Jimmy pulled himself up in the seat, tugging at the sweatshirt that rode up his tremendous belly, adjusting his foot as he let out a disturbing “Oww.” A task punctuated by heaving and sighing and a scattershot of “goddamn” and “Christ Almighty man.”
“Hurts?” I asked him, smiling.
He frowned at me. “This is a prison here”—he shot a glance at Gracie but there was merriment in his eyes—“and even the visitors are hell.”
“I can’t do this alone,” she’d whispered to me. “It’s like pushing a water buffalo upstream.”
“You got an attractive warden.” Hank pointed at Gracie, who beamed.
Jimmy eyed him. “And just why are you here today, Hank?”
“Well, Rick and I are headed into Hartford.”
“When?” From Jimmy.
Hank checked his phone. “In an hour or so.”
“I ask the time and he looks at his phone. What kind of world is this?”
“What’s up, Jimmy?” I asked. “You demanded I stop in.”
Jimmy turned to me. “Rick, two things. I wanted to talk to you about one of my cases. The Aetna one.”
I nodded. “I got your notes, Jimmy.”
“Great, but can you read my writing?”
“No one can,” Hank said smartly.
Jimmy beamed. “That’s because your generation never learned cursive. All you know is big block letters. You’re only qualified to write ransom notes.”
Hank threw back his head and laughed.
Jimmy straightened himself in the chair. “All right, Rick. But something else. The Ralph case. Some shit finally came back to me. You gotta tell Ardolino, I guess. Not that he cares to phone here.” His fiery look at Gracie suggested she’d cut the telephone wires. “I woke up his morning and I remembered something. I think it’s important.”
I was reaching for a cookie when he bellowed, “Are you listening to me?”
With a mouth full of cookie, I managed, “Always.”
“Anyway, when I woke up, I could smell bacon and suddenly I was back in that Burger King on Farmington Avenue.”
“You saw something?”
He shook his head. “Naw. I heard something.” He turned to face me, his face tight.
“Tell me.”
I glanced at Gracie who was watching Jimmy closely.
“I mean, I was listening to Ralph yammer on and on about some nonsense. Christ, he was a bore, that man—God rest his pathetic soul. Anyway, he’d been drinking, I think—no, I know—after all, it was daylight, so his talk was a little too loud and stupid. He rambled on that I was an ass because I took Rick into the firm.” Jimmy cast a disingenuous look at me, a sliver of a smile on his face. “He wasn’t as free-thinking and tolerant as I am.”
“Editorializing,” Hank mumbled, and Jimmy’s look shut him up.
Jimmy reached for a cookie, nibbled on the edge, then sucked down the whole thing. Crumbs dotted his chest.
“Anyway, Ralph was making a spectacle of himself as he munched on a cheeseburger. And then he mentioned some jackasses sitting at a table behind me. I didn’t pay it much attention because—well, it was Ralph talking. But I guess some kids were talking about him, or making fun of him, or something like that. ‘Creeps,’ he called them. ‘What?’ I asked and he said, ‘Punk kids. Someone should blow them away.’ Nice guy, right? I didn’t care. There are always kids in that Burger King, especially after school. They meet there, laugh it up, and bother people, you know.”
“But this was different?” I asked.
He shook his head vigorously. “I guess so. Ralph mumbled that one of the kids gave him the finger—or Ralph thought it was the finger. I mean, he was boozy-eyed, so th
e kid could just as well been counting to one or something.”
“But Ralph took offense.”
“He muttered that they were doing some nonsense on their phones or players or some gadget they got nowadays. He gave them the finger. I should have turned around, but I didn’t want to make the dumb scene into a—you know, big scene. Fighting with teenage punks in a Burger King? Come on. Now I wish I had. He imitated the sounds from their gadgets: beep beep bam bam pow pow. Something like that. I ignored it. Who cares what young people do nowadays?” He tilted his head toward Hank. “They ain’t the greatest generation.”
Hank commented, “That was World War Two, no? You were Korean War, right?” A dumb smile on his face.
“You know damn well I was shot at in Vietnam, Hank.” He drew his lips into a thin line. “Probably by Rick’s opium-smoking uncle.”
I smiled. “Becoming Jimmy’s partner was my family’s revenge.”
Jimmy smirked. “It worked.”
I bowed.
Gracie spoke up. “They must have followed you and Ralph out, Jimmy. Ralph made them mad.”
“If this is true,” I went on, “the two targeted Ralph. Not so much you, but Ralph. This wasn’t a random street attack.”
“Maybe.” Jimmy’s brow tightened.
Gracie was getting excited. “Rick, you gotta talk to the folks at Burger King. Maybe somebody remembers the boys.”
Hank jumped in. “Ardolino probably did that.”
“Probably,” I said. “He can be a pain, but he’s a bulldog. It’s logical that he’d retrace Ralph’s steps.”
“Anything else, Jimmy?” Hank asked.
Jimmy waited a bit, drumming his index finger on his chest. “Yeah, as a matter of fact. They were talking in a singsong voice, at least someone behind me was. Not that I could recognize a voice, mind you, but you know how you hear bits and pieces of folks’ talk nearby. There was this, like…rhythm, dud dud duh DUH. Then again. Duh duh duh DUH. Like a goddamn rap song. Christ, you even hear that shit in elevators these days. Duh duh duh DUH.”
Hank was laughing. “So they were rapping.”