by Andrew Lanh
“Come on. Let’s go.”
With a passing hello to Jimmy—“No one tells me anything and Hank here runs by me like I’m a pest”—we left the house. Jimmy’s voice followed us out the door, though I also heard Gracie’s demand that he lower it. “What neighbors?” he bellowed. “Rick? You call him a neighbor?”
“Why would Simon leave a note this time?” Hank wondered.
“Let’s find out.”
“This may be a wild goose chase,” Hank said as he drove into Frog Hollow and pulled up in front of Frankie’s apartment house. The front door was cracked open, a brick wedged in place, the buzzer in the lobby disconnected. We trudged up the two flights of stairs, stepping past graffiti-smeared walls, a burnt-out light bulb on the second floor landing, and rapped on the door. No answer. I knocked again. From inside the garbled cough of a smoker, a spat-out “goddamn,” and the sound of feet dragged across a hardwood floor. The door squeaked open, and Doris Croix, her head wreathed in cigarette smoke and a narcotic haze, peered out.
“Christ, what is it? Can’t I get a little sleep?”
I leaned in, and she jumped back, startled. “Mrs. Croix.”
“Oh, it’s you.”
“We’re looking for Frankie and Simon.”
The hallway light made her face waxy, grayish. Looking up into the light, she blinked her eyes rapidly, and then squinted. “Somebody already called. Earlier.” A harsh, unhappy laugh. “Woke me up then, too. Frankie left with his brother some time ago. And no, they said nothing about Saigon. Is something happening?” For a moment her eyes widened. “Is Frankie gonna be taken in again?”
I didn’t answer. “Where did your boys go?” I asked.
But she was already closing the door. Through the closed door, she muttered, “Jesus Christ. I had more peace when he was at Long Lane juvie.”
In the car, fuming, Hank said, “Well, she may get her wish again—for all she gives a damn.” His knuckles drummed the dashboard nervously. “Well, I don’t think Simon is with his buddy.”
“Not if Frankie is with Jonny.”
Hank grinned. “Okay, Sherlock, where to next?’
“Russell Street, Hank. Where I knew we’d end up. Two birds with one stone, I hope. JD may know something—God, I hope Simon is there, for once—and I want to get in contact with Diep and Khoa.”
“Why?”
“Their story is connected with Frankie and Simon. And I swear they were near the attack on Whitney Street, idling in that Toyota. Maybe Simon is with them.”
“That’s not good news.”
“I don’t think anything to do with that pair can be good news.”
“I don’t trust a guy with a tattoo that wraps around his neck.”
“Even if it’s a good-luck dragon?”
“I don’t care if it’s a four-leaf clover inside a horseshoe.”
But the Russell Street storefront was closed, though I noticed a dim light somewhere at the back of the room. Peering into the plate-glass window that hadn’t been scrubbed in ages, I detected ghostlike movement. I waited. I knocked. Suddenly bright light flashed throughout the room as an overhead light was switched on. A shadowy figure paused at the back, then disappeared, then reappeared near the front door, standing to the side, looking out, suspicious. The door opened. JD stood there, his face stony and his clothing rumpled. A shirt hastily donned, some military-style olive green fatigue, but left open so his chest showed. A landscape of tattoos. Curlicues, arabesques, Chinese symbols, daggers, the patchwork quilt of a drunken sailor. An irregular heart with one word: Toi. Green lettering. Crime. Another word below that. Tien. Money. Across his navel, jagged letters. DOA.
“Yeah?”
“We’re looking for Simon.”
“He ain’t here.” A thin smile. “Every time you come here you ask the same question.”
I moved closer. “Well, one day maybe you’ll give me the right answer.”
He yawned. “He ain’t here.”
“Was he here today? His family’s worried.”
He scratched his stomach absently. ”They have a lot to worry about.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means nothing.” He started to turn away.
“Have you seen Frankie?”
He was already closing the door but stopped, deliberated. A quick glance toward the back room. “Yeah, as a matter of fact, yes. Him and his brother, Jonny. Looking for T-Boy.”
“Where’s T-boy?”
“You got a lot of questions.”
“And still no answers.”
He grinned at me, though when Hank grumbled, the grin disappeared. “You got the cop with you.”
“He’s my protection.”
“Low rent,” JD said, but there was a curious humor in his tone. I watched Hank, who spotted it. He actually smiled.
“Is Simon with them?”
“God, no. Saigon don’t like Jonny, and Jonny don’t like Saigon. Jonny don’t like most dudes.”
“So you can’t help me?” I looked into his face.
“No.”
“One more question. I’d like to talk to the brothers. Diep and Khoa. Joey and Kenny.”
His body stiffened. “Them?” He took a step backwards. “I ain’t too keen on them boys.”
“Why’s that?”
A quizzical smile. “Shit. Another question. Man, you got a truckload of them.”
I laughed. “And still no answers. Look, JD, I’m looking for Simon. He’s in trouble. Two men dead now. Help me out, okay?”
He watched me closely for a minute. “Diep and Khoa are trouble. They moved up from Bridgeport, gun-happy, talking smack, acting like wild cards, telling me what’s what, and they impress the boys with shit. We don’t want them around here. I told them to stay away.” A wide, happy grin. “Our revolution wants brains, not trigger-happy punks.”
“Brains?” From Hank.
JD considered him for a while, a burning stare, his head nodding up and down. “You heard me.” But then he looked at me. “They buy off the kids with cash and…ugly promises. They scare them. That ain’t my style.” He waved his hand behind him. “The VietBoyz got a code. It ain’t your code, but it’s a code.”
“I believe you.”
“Well, that’s nice for me then.” Sarcastic, his tongue running over his lower lip. “So I ain’t seen them around here lately because they bring the cops here. Now and then”—he paused, looking over my shoulder into the street—“they bump their piece-of-shit car up to the door, boom boom boom, but they ain’t scaring nobody. And I don’t know where they hanging out, and I don’t give a damn. Don’t push it.”
“I want to find Simon.”
“Then you better look somewhere else.”
With that he closed the door quietly. In a second the overhead light switched off, plunging the room into darkness. A shadow drifted across the room, disappearing into the backroom. I heard a girl’s high soprano, a laugh that only stopped when JD barked, “Shut the fuck up.”
She did.
In the car I turned to Hank. “I don’t know if he’s telling us the truth. But it’s clear he’s not a friend of Diep and Khoa.”
“Who knows where Simon is?”
“C’mon, Hank. Any ideas?”
He was smiling. “Yeah. The mall.”
I pointed a finger at him. “The mall.”
A teenage boy’s miraculous mecca. Nirvana for the wandering kids with bus tickets or their father’s cars. Fast food courts and video arcades and girls walking by. Lots of girls.
***
Simon was sitting by himself on a wooden bench outside a busy Arby’s. He was staring into space, ignoring the bustle of strolling shoppers. Slouched on the bench, the collar of his spring jacket turned up around his neck, his legs stretched out, his arms folded
over his chest, he looked dazed. He also looked a bit menacing, as in—Don’t come near me. As we approached, I noticed the laces of his oversized, clunky sneakers were undone, though the brilliant red stripes seemed freshly painted on. He was wearing baggy jeans, the cuffs rolled up, and under his jacket a black T-shirt. I read the message: EVERYTHING IS A LIE. In huge black block letters. But tiny cursive letters below it said: Especially This.
“Simon.” I stood ten feet away and tried not to sound threatening.
He looked up.
“It’s okay,” Hank reassured him, sliding into the seat next to him.
“No, it ain’t.”
“I was worried about you,” I began. “You left that note.”
He looked up into my face, his cheeks becoming pink. “I didn’t know what to do.”
“Why leave home?”
He closed his eyes for a minute. When he opened them, they were fiery. “There was so much yelling yesterday. Everybody so crazy. And Wilson said it was my fault—I brought it on. Me and Frankie. He said it was all right, but…I don’t know.” A boyish shrug of his shoulders. “So I took the bus here.”
“Not with Frankie?” Hank asked.
“He’s with his brother. They didn’t ask me. I don’t got Frankie. I got…no one.”
For a second his eyes shot around the open space, finally resting on a beefy security guard who’d been eyeing him.
“You could have stayed in your room. With Wilson. Video games.”
He scoffed. “Yeah, Wilson beats me at everything. He’s smarter. And when he wins he gloats. Like a victory lap or something. Lords it over me. It’s…”
“Hard to take,” Hank finished.
Simon snickered. “It’s worse when he feels sorry for me and lets me win. Then his—like triumph—is so disgusting because it’s not, you know, said. Just the looks.”
He pointed around the mall. “I just didn’t know where to go. This is a place we come to…me and Frankie. Other guys. They only throw us out when we stay too long or get loud or take things.”
“You take things?”
A crooked grin. “Not here.”
Hank’s words were soft, comfortable, as he leaned in, his hand brushing the boy’s shoulder. “You have to come home with us.”
Simon look confused, his head bobbing. A round head, I realized, too large for his scrawny short body. Those long ears—Buddha’s ears. A constellation of acne gracing his forehead, his nose. A small, sensitive mouth and a tiny chin. He looked like those Chinese kids on the Asian Relief charity ads you see on late-night TV. Faces to warm your heart.
He nodded and stood up. “Yeah. Home.”
I dialed Mike Tran from the car, reassured him that Simon was fine, that he was in our care, and that we’d be home shortly. “Thank God,” he said, and Simon, listening. When we got to the house, darkness had fallen, the street dark. Yet the Tran household was ablaze with light—upstairs, downstairs, front yard light, even a sweep of spotlight that stretched in the backyard to a neighbor’s fence.
We sat for a minute in the car, Simon hesitant to get out. “Saigon,” I said slowly, “can I ask you about Khoa and Diep?”
He sucked in his breath. “No, they’re nothing.”
“You told Hazel you had a secret—you were scared.”
He resented the questions, fidgeting, pulling at his jacket. He opened the door and slipped his feet out. Still he didn’t move.
Lucy and Mike stood on the front steps, illuminated by bright light behind then, silhouettes unmoving, waiting.
“Go,” I prodded Simon.
Then he started to run toward the house, but stopped, looked back and began to say a thank you—it emerged as a grunted “thank”—which was, I suppose, enough at the moment. Then he scooted toward his parents. When he reached them, they looked ready to grab him, squeeze, but Simon plowed between them and disappeared into the house. Lucy immediately disappeared. Mike stood in the doorway, facing out, watching the street and us, and finally, looking defeated, offered a hesitant wave. We waved back, and he waved again. It was like he didn’t know how to say goodbye.
Chapter Twenty-five
Napping on my sofa, I dreamed of the market in old Saigon. Nguyen Tat Thanh in District Four. The aroma of potent coffee. Monks beat hollow wooden drums and chant, “Kinh mu sieu.” A prayer for peace. A woman sits over a basket of dragon fruit, her teeth stained from chewing betel nuts. Horse flies buzz around her head. She whispers to me that ginger will let me see in the dark. Avoid ghosts. It is December. Chap ma. Time to look after my dead ancestors. The woman laughs—You, boy, have none.
It’s a dream I often have. Usually it forces me awake and into the kitchen where, groggy and unhappy, I brew my own anemic American coffee. But the raw power of Vietnamese coffee lingers in my head, and makes me smile.
But sudden thumping on the floorboards roused me. Since Jimmy was housed below in Gracie’s apartment, I’d been through this routine a couple times. Not exactly smoke signals, but the pounding of the war drums. Jimmy stretching up to the high ceiling and banging with a broom handle.
“I have two telephones,” I told him the first time after I scooted down the stairs in my boxer shorts and U.S. Open T-shirt.
“Which you ignore,” he grumbled. He pointed to the broom handle. “It worked, no?”
Now, again, I stood before him, scratching my side and realizing I had a magnificent hole in my Born in the USSR T-shirt. “Can I help you, Jimmy?”
“You don’t tell me nothing, Rick.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
Jimmy was eating take-out from Wah’s Garden. He dripped soy sauce onto his sweatshirt, and ignored it. He reached for the General Tso’s chicken and slobbered it onto his lap. A chunk of crispy chicken toppled onto the carpet, and Gracie scurried after it. He examined a floret of broccoli as though it were an insult to epicures everywhere. When he was finished, he tore the cellophane from the fortune cookie and read out loud: “15 19 55 67 34. My lucky numbers. Rick, remember to pick me up a Mega Millions ticket at the gas station, okay?” I nodded. “And,” he went on, “my fortune: ‘Wisdom is what you offer the world.’” He waved the slip at me. “Now you know.”
I smiled. “Hey, Jimmy, I’ve known that for years.”
He pushed his plate away. The plastic fork he’d used flipped onto the carpet, and his unused chopsticks disappeared into the sofa cushions. “All right, let’s get busy. Rick, fill me in.”
So I did, beginning with the unpleasant incident in Mike Tran’s front yard, the ugly incident with Judd Snow and Frankie. “He’s trouble,” I said. “Slumped in his car, getting out when the police ordered him to and staggering on a bum leg, Judd still looked at the cops like he was going to spit at them. The cops gave him a warning, maybe because his father was there, promising that his son would comply, not show up again.”
“A mistake,” Jimmy said. “Hazel isn’t out of danger yet.”
“Liz sent me a text and said Judd’s daddy is raising the roof, his turn to call the cops, blaming everybody, accusing Mike Tran, throwing out phrases like ‘alienation of affection’ and other insults, talking of hiring lawyers.”
“The man’s a fool,” Jimmy noted.
“He is that. A playboy daddy who envies his son’s life—maybe.”
Jimmy eyed me closely. “For all your running around, Rick”—he smirked—“and Hank, who is not a part of my firm but serves as mascot, what have you found to prove Simon didn’t attack me and Ralph?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” he echoed.
“There are two dangerous players, Diep and Khoa, who are grooming them for more serious crime.”
Jimmy listened closely. “Well, what are you gonna do about it?”
“I’m gonna track them down.”
He waited a second. “Bring your gu
n.”
“It’s in my glove compartment, Jimmy. Locked.”
“It should be in your lap.”
Gracie chuckled. “The Wild West, Jimmy?”
“Second amendment. You heard of it?”
“I’ve also heard of the first amendment, Jimmy, but you seem to forget that sometimes.” Gracie smiled innocently.
“Okay, here’s how I see things.” Jimmy’s eyes were bright pinpoints, focused. “That family is like an old pinball game, metals balls pinging off each other. So much so that nobody can see straight.”
“But how does this help me clear Simon?” I wondered.
“Maybe it don’t, Rick. But you gotta keep in mind that maybe Ralph’s death got nothing to do with this family. But—and this is a big ‘but’—if they are involved, it’s because one of those pinball pellets banged into them.”
“Chance?”
“Choices,” he stressed. “So everybody’s got it into their heads that the boys got a bad reputation. A locked-in image of the bad boys roaming the streets. Probably the whole Vietnamese community.” He thought for a second. “Even Detective Ardolino zeroed in right away. He assumed Ralph’s attack was by the boys because, well, they’d cemented that image into his head. Farmington Avenue, late afternoon. Bingo, now they’re back home. The assaults begin right away, this time deadly. Who else?”
“So,” I nodded my head, “someone might be taking advantage of their bad-boy reputation.”
“Maybe,” said Jimmy. “Maybe not. Keep in mind there’s been another attack.”
“Which,” I went on, “could be a distraction. Or, maybe, the culprits found out they liked hurting people.”
“That’s ugly,” Gracie said.
“But it happens,” Jimmy told her. “Jackasses get intoxicated with what they can get away with.”
I summed up, “So maybe somebody wants us to believe it was Simon and Frankie.”
“Meanwhile,” Gracie said, “there’s Hazel to watch out for.”
“I talked to Liz. She’s moving through channels. She’ll orchestrate whatever needs to be done. She said that Judd tried to reach her through Facebook, but she’d unfriended him.”