by Andrew Lanh
Both brothers were dressed in black clothing, hooded sweatshirts under black vinyl windbreakers, black jeans, military boots. The hoods were up, pulled over their foreheads, but there was no mistaking who they were. A different look from before—gone were the sleek linen suits, the silk black shirts.
I watched as they disappeared into the diner.
I waited.
With my window rolled down, I could smell bacon grease from a block away. Burnt coffee. Garbage overflowing bins. A breeze carried a whiff of motor oil from the auto body shop. A smoky backfire from a lumbering city bus that chugged by. My stomach turned.
A half-hour later they walked out, looked up and down the street as if waiting for someone, lit cigarettes as they strolled back to Mrs. Homer’s. They stood on the front porch, silent now, inhaling, then flipping the butts into the bushes. Again they looked up and down the street, leaning into each other. They looked angry as they went into the rooming house.
I waited.
My mind wandered as I daydreamed about a new fraud case that involved an office manager at the Cigna in Bloomfield. Complicated, sensitive investigation. Higher-ups. I was nodding to myself, eyes half-shut, when I realized that the brothers were leaving Mrs. Homer’s, both toting over-the-shoulder satchels. Khoa carried a pair of work boots, the laces tied together and draped over his shoulder. They popped the trunk of the Toyota and slipped in the bags. In seconds the car pulled out onto Buckingham, headed toward Little Saigon, three or four blocks away.
I slid out into traffic, two car lengths behind them. Khoa was driving, and jerkily, shifting lanes, tailgating, at one point irritated, leaning on his horn. They stopped at a red light, and even before it turned green, the Toyota jumped ahead, almost sideswiping another car. Gunning it, slowing down, shifting lanes erratically. A heavy-footed driver.
The car pulled into a parking lot of Enterprise Rental, just across from a Subway, and idled. Pulled over on the street, a half-block back, I could see the driver’s door open and Khoa step out, looking down the street, shielding his eyes from the sun. Arms waving, he said something to Diep, but then got back into the car.
The car jerked out into traffic so quickly that a passing car slammed on its brakes, the driver raising a fist. Khoa, glancing in the mirror, gave the woman the finger.
I followed, watched them circle back to Buckingham, idle by the Enterprise lot, and then speed away.
The car stopped at a Mini-Mart, and Khoa left the car running, rushing in for a pack of cigarettes, ripping off the cellophane as he pushed open the door. He lit a cigarette and looked up and down the sidewalk. I could tell he was irritated—body stiff, jaw set, head jerking left and right. The car didn’t move, idling at the curb, waiting. Then it darted out onto the street.
A stupid game, this rushing up and down the street, but finally the Toyota cruised slowly toward Park Street, maneuvered its way to Little Saigon. Then, suddenly, it pulled up a half-block away from a Second Niagara Bank on the corner of Maynard and Park, then inched its way forward. Again, the waiting. Then, finally, it slowly moved around the corner, stopping alongside a fire hydrant. Diep stepped out of the passenger’s side, leaned back in for a second. I’d pulled across the street, parallel but unseen behind a panel truck.
Casually he strolled into the bank.
I waited.
I didn’t feel good about the move, but I told myself that even thugs do legitimate banking.
A short wait.
The sudden wail of an alarm, piercing, intense.
A shot fired.
Yet Diep strolled back out in a sleepwalker’s gait, his hood pulled over his forehead, his head dipped into his chest. He had a leisurely amble, but his arms cradled a canvas bag. He turned the corner, and Khoa plunged the Toyota forward, and Diep, now trotting alongside, leaped in. The door still wide open, the car pushed ahead, and Diep’s arm reached out to shut the door.
My heart pounding, my throat dry, I trailed the car. A block away it slowed, as though going about its normal business, easing its way across a lane, slipping in front of a Connecticut transit bus.
I tapped out 911 and told the dispatcher what I’d seen.
“We have officers heading to the scene.” The dispatcher sounded harried. “The bank called in.”
“I’m following the car,” I told her.
A slight pause. “You’re what?”
Stepping on the gas, I got close to the Toyota. I provided the license plate number and a description of the car. “Headed east on Park, almost at the intersection of Ledger. It’s slowing…”
She interrupted. “Stay on the line, sir.”
“I plan to.”
I heard the wail of distant police sirens.
The Toyota hesitated.
Then, just as they neared the turn off Park, I spotted Simon and Frankie walking up the sidewalk. They’d stopped, probably caught by the wail of police sirens coming from different directions, but they seemed to spot the Toyota the same moment I spotted them.
No, God, I thought. No.
The Toyota pulled over behind a stopped transit bus, its front tires scraping the curb. The passenger window rolled down. Diep yelled at the boys, who hesitated, backing off, jittery. Simon turned, as though ready to run, but Frankie looked paralyzed. The bus pulled away, and the Toyota jerked forward, then stopped. An arm reached out. Simon moved, but Frankie ducked down. The glint of a gun, waved wildly at them.
Simon pulled at Frankie, who stumbled.
The gun on them.
Bumping into each other, fumbling with the door, the boys toppled into the backseat, and the car sped off.
I caught my breath.
Maneuvering in front of another car, shifting lanes, I struggled to stay with the Toyota as it careened down the street. No longer the slow pace now, but a wild ride. In the distance a police car’s flashing lights. The Toyota scraped the fender of a parked car, a high-pitched whinnying squeal of metal against metal. The car blew through a red light and two other cars, reacting, crashed into each other. One car spun onto the sidewalk and plowed into a plate-glass window. The other rested against a trash bin, its radiator smoking.
I was behind the Toyota, maybe ten feet, maybe less.
It was impossible to see through the dark tinted windows, but I detected movement—the boys in the backseat squirming, twisting around.
The Toyota did not slow down now, whipping past other cars, weaving in and out of lanes, tailgating, swerving, a bumper-car frenzy. The squeal of brakes. Khoa was heading toward the entrance to I-84.
In my rearview mirror I spotted the flashing lights of two squad cars. Cars behind me were pulling off to the side, stopping. Double-parked cars blocked lanes. The cop cars careened left, then right.
I kept going.
Then, approaching a red light, the Toyota suddenly swung to the right, but a Coca Cola delivery truck occupied the right lane, idling. In the left lane a transit bus. Both were waiting for the light to change. The Toyota considered squeezing through—I could see the car edge close to the back bumper of the truck—but couldn’t. The light changed, but the truck and bus hesitated.
Police sirens shrieked from behind. No one moved. The Toyota tried to swerve around them into the opposing lane, but a sudden rush of opposing traffic blocked that escape. The Toyota swerved back to the right, smashed into the curb, and seemed to be trying to ride the sidewalk. But the right front fender snared a trash barrel, and the car limped along but finally squealed to a stop.
The Toyota shifted back and forth, managing to shake off the bin, but the car hesitated. Suddenly, as I watched, the right back door swung open, and Simon and Frankie toppled out, hitting the sidewalk, managing to crouch behind a parked car. The Toyota plunged forward and swerved back into traffic, nearly rear-ended by the Coca Cola truck.
I breathed in, closed my eyes.
The boys were nowhere in sight.
A squad car hit the intersection, another blocked the street from the front, and the Toyota tried to jump the sidewalk again but managed only to careen into a streetlight. The hiss of a blown tire. The crunch of fender against metal. The front hood flew up, steam bellowing out. Cop cars everywhere, sirens wailing, a bull horn, yelled orders.
Unable to move forward, I’d pulled over and jumped out of my car. Crouched behind a parked car, perhaps thirty yards away, I watched cops circling the faltering Toyota, rushing out, assuming position, guns drawn.
The grinding of gears as the Toyota belched and shimmied.
Suddenly Khoa opened his door and jumped out. He fired a single shot at the cop facing him. An insane move as the shot ricocheted off a street sign. A ping and an echo. He hunched over, a madman, extending his arm as though at a firing range, his face contorted.
“Do mami,” he screamed. Fuck you. The words sailed back over the paralyzed street corner. “Do mami.” Again. “You fuckin’ assholes.”
Wildly, he twisted around, losing balance, and fired another shot, willy-nilly, at a cop car. The windshield shattered. Then, his eye obviously on the cop he faced, he pointed the gun.
A shot from the cop hit him in the head. His face bloodied, a hole in his skull, his head lolled to the side like a rag doll’s. Another shot caught him in the chest. A third penetrated his side. His body folded, jerked back, bent.
Then it was over.
His body slipped onto the pavement, the gun still gripped in his right hand. On his back, his other hand twitched and slapped the cement.
It was over. Within minutes Diep was sitting on the sidewalk, legs stretched out in front of him, his hands cuffed behind his back. A sullen look on his face. Muttering, cursing, a volley of Vietnamese filth directed at any cop who neared him. He tried to shift his shoulders, but a cop yelled, “Don’t fuckin’ move.” Diep stared up into his face, turned his head toward the cop, and spat.
The area was cordoned off, cops everywhere, reporters, gawkers, the world come to see. I lingered at the edge of the yellow tape, watching, lost in the crowd. I looked for Ardolino, but there was no one I recognized. It didn’t matter. It was over.
But I stood there a long time.
No one touched Khoa’s body. He lay in a pool of blood now, his face contorted in an awful grimace. A trickle of blood seeped down the sidewalk, pooled in a crack.
Suddenly I felt pressure on my lower back, a hand digging into my spine. Simon and Frankie had come out of hiding. Little Simon was so close to me that his shoulders brushed against my jacket, his knees trembled against the backs of my legs. I could hear him breathing hard. One of his hands was moving, brushing my side. Startled, I turned and stared down into his face. Bloody, a face and hands scrapped from hitting the pavement, a purple welt on his lip, a swollen eye. He’d been crying, I could tell, wet puffy eyes, streaks of tears down his bruised cheeks. His face had broken out in red blotches, and he was blinking his eyes wildly. Next to him Frankie looked paralyzed, white as parchment, the gaunt look of a cadaver. A smear of dark blood on his temple, clumps of dirt in his hair, a closed eye.
“Simon,” I began, but stopped. These boys were scarcely aware of my presence.
Instead their eyes focused on the awful scene feet away.
The death car was still idling, the engine groaning, up against a streetlight. A wispy plume of smoke drifted from the radiator. The kaleidoscopic flash of police lights, a dance-floor light-show cast macabre illumination on the street. Diep, handcuffed, rocking back and forth, quiet now, his face frozen in hate. That gigantic red-and-green dragon tattoo across his neck. But what held the boys’ rapt attention was the twisted body of Khoa: blood-splattered, stiff, an arm unnaturally bent, that horrible death grimace gazing up from the pavement, his mouth agape, his tongue hanging to the side. The gun catching the brilliant sunlight. The outstretched hand that no longer twitched.
Chapter Twenty-seven
“Diep and Khoa wanted them to be scouts. Lookouts.”
I was sitting with Hank the next morning at Lucille’s Breakfast Bar across from the Farmington Courthouse, a room filled with lawyers and clerks and vacant-eyed defendants and accusers—a wholly curious mix of people. Hank had arrived late, but immediately pummeled me with questions about yesterday’s shoot-’em-up events. That bloody street scene was splashed across the front page of the Courant, not only the wrecked car against the streetlight, but two old mug shots of the brothers Pham—Diep before the dragon tattoo, and Khoa, his eyes half-shut and his mouth twisted. Neither looked happy. Bridgeport police had a warrant out for the two on suspicion of the murder of a Vietnamese restaurateur who famously kept cash in a home vault.
Hank had the newspaper tucked under his arm.
“Simon and Frankie,” he said matter-of-factly. “They were moments away from ruining their lives.”
“Tell me about it.” I sighed, sipping coffee. “When it was all over, the two boys crowding me on that street corner, I drove them to Gracie’s apartment—I’d called her first—where she bandaged them up. I mean, she was a delightful Florence Nightingale, mothering, feeding them. She calmed them down. They fell in love with her. Jimmy glowered through it all.”
“But you didn’t tell the cops about them.” He glanced at the next booth where two Farmington cops were contemplating the menu.
I shook my head. “No, I didn’t. Jimmy had a problem with that, but only for a minute.”
“But is that right, Rick? They were in that car.”
I ran my finger along the edge of the cup. “No, Hank. Think about it. They chose not to be on that corner where they were supposed to meet Khoa and Diep. They hesitated. And yet, by chance, they were forced into that car. A gun pointed at them. I saw that. Luckily they bailed out. For once they made the right choice. They were not a part of that bank robbery.”
“But they could have been.” A note of pique in his voice.
I smiled. “Sometimes there are different laws that govern the universe. There’s no good that could come of handing them over to the police. What would be gained? I want to move them away from crime, not reinforce it.”
He smiled back. “And so you saved them?” He reached over and broke off a corner of the wheat toast on my plate, swallowed it. My frown meant little to him.
“I don’t know about saving them, but I know that they may have been scared straight, to use that awful and familiar phrase my captain bandied about during my Manhattan cop days.”
“Scraped and bruised?”
“Yeah, but they’re tough kids.”
“I can’t believe the brothers planned to use them.”
“Simon said the brothers had cased that bank, purposely near Little Saigon. I mean, JD had ordered them to leave town because he’d had it with them. But I suppose they were hoping the finger of the law would point back to VietBoyz—at JD. But extortion and petty graft are the bread-and-butter of VietBoyz, small-time crime, drug trafficking in the city. They want to keep it in Little Saigon. Simon told me Khoa knew there was a security guard stationed there some days, different hours, nothing constant. They wanted Frankie or Simon to walk in, stroll around, ask a question maybe, play stupid, then walk out, communicate with the brothers. The other boy would wait by the entrance, watch for any problems outside the bank. No one would pay attention to two young boys.”
“Devilish.” Hank was shaking his head.
“Yeah, fiendish. They’d already groomed them with weed, money, and gifts like bootleg watches and electronics. Most of all they gave praise, taking two boys with poor self-esteem and building them up. Big brothers, looking out for them. Simon figured they’d use them as shields—or foils.”
“But what would have happened to them if the robbery had gone off without a hitch?”
I drummed my fingers on the table. “The brothers were h
eaded out of town. They’d left another car off I-91 in a Newington commuter lot. Ditch the Toyota. Let the cops find it—what did it matter? They’d be gone. They didn’t count on me IDing the car to 911 so fast. They’d leave the boys behind. As it was, they were furious the boys didn’t show up, so when they saw them walking by, they forced them into that car. Maybe they were thinking, I don’t know—hostages, insurance. It never happened.”
He laughed. “I can’t believe they rolled out of the backseat.”
“Simon’s idea, he told me. Frankie whispered that the police would kill them, shoot at them through the rear window, and Simon whispered back, ‘Now. Get out.’ The car hesitated and they toppled out.”
“It saved their lives.”
“And it may have been the moment that they needed to—well, wake up. Life suddenly got a little too heavy-duty. Hey, the big boys carry guns. And they use them. Christ, Diep fired a shot in the bank, grazed a teller.”
“So they’re back home now.”
“Frankie delivered to his mother’s home, where no one was home. Simon into the arms of his mother, who wept when she saw the bandages. And we’re back where we started. Ardolino still on their case. Nothing has changed.”
Hank bit his lip. “Except maybe they have.”
“Ardolino’s a stubborn guy. He insists they were the ones in the ‘almost’ mugging in Little Saigon. He followed up on that, talking to the old man who had nothing to offer. But Mike Tran told me Hazel insists she was with her brother on Franklin Avenue the same time as that incident. She’s vouched for him. And she told Ardolino that Frankie showed up. The three of them were slurping shakes at Pinkberry a couple streets over from their house.”
“What did Ardolino say about that?”
“Not happy. I told him Hazel wouldn’t lie, but he didn’t buy that.”