by Andrew Lanh
I shook Danny’s hand. He introduced himself. “I’m Danny Trinh.”
“If there’s anything I can do, buddy…” The young man’s voice trailed off. “As I said, I’m sorry I missed the funeral. Bank business in White Plains. You know I couldn’t help it.” Tommy looked surprised. Danny was saying this for my benefit. Another young guy with proper manners. God, what was happening to the uncivil generation?
“I know,” Tommy seemed confused. “You told me.”
“It’s just that everyone was there but me. The old gang. I wanted to be there.”
“Hey.” Tommy was dismissive. “What can you do?”
“Well, I gotta get back to the bank.” Danny buttoned his sports jacket. A beep from his cell phone. He tapped his pocket.
Danny was a stark contrast to the slovenly Tommy. You could see how muscular he was under the beige summer jacket, the way the shirt hugged his body, the way he walked to the door in lithe, graceful strides. Scrawny, stringy Tommy, his ragged Mohawk haircut looking a little like a bristle brush, seemed a fitness center’s “before” ad while Danny was the “after.” This Danny was a man comfortable with himself. With his close-cropped hair, with that smooth sepia complexion, and with those expensive designer sunglasses tipped into the breast pocket of an expensive suit, he looked nightclub debonair. Poised and sure—the words that came to mind. If he were a shade lighter and didn’t have those slanted eyes, he could be the newest suburban member of the Kiwanis Club, and a Young Republican to boot.
“Nice to meet you.” Danny nodded at me in a polished, careful voice. To Tommy: “I’ll stop in to talk to your father later this week.”
They shook hands again.
“Sit down,” Tommy told me after Danny left. I didn’t know where to sit, so I sat in the spot Danny had vacated. The place was a shambles, like a freshman dorm room. Empty crumpled Coke and beer cans, a soup-dish ashtray of ground-out cigarette stubs, gamey-looking Chinese takeout containers, open with chopsticks jutting out. A pizza box, open, crusts scattered inside like petrified wood. CDs littered the floor near a boom box. A copy of the Hartford Advocate, an alternative newspaper. “Well?”
“Some of your relatives,” I began, “want a clearer picture of your mother’s last hours. Why she did what she did.”
He watched me warily. “I dunno.” He paused. “Look, I don’t know. You don’t think I haven’t thought about it? Like…well—Mom driving there to that place. I know the place. Everybody I know does. You drive around it. It’s always in the news.”
“And you came up with nothing?”
“Nada. I swear.”
“When did you last see your mother?”
He thought a minute “The day before she died. She stopped at the store and I was working.”
“You talk to her the day she died?”
“No. No reason to.”
“No idea why she went to Goodwin Square?”
“No.”
“People who don’t live there go there for drugs.”
His eyes got wide. “You can’t think Mom was on drugs?”
“God, no.” Then, abrupt: “Do you ever go to Goodwin Square for drugs?” I waited.
The question made him angry. “Goddamn it. I was wondering if my arrest was gonna come up somehow. I mean, I hadn’t thought about it, but everything online…or on TV…is drugs this and drugs that…in that place…and Mom…”
“After all, that was prep school—what happened to you. Right? Years back.”
“You got that right, man. Prep school. Another world. Dumb kid shit. Stupid on my part, man. A real dumb-ass move by me. Sure, I toked a little weed, still do, but recreational, like everybody today, including probably you. It ain’t like…heroin. But someone says ‘drugs,’ and everyone in the family looks at me. One time—and no other trouble with the law. You hear me? Nothing. Christ, I learned my lesson.”
“But your mother…”
He broke in. “Man, it almost killed my mom. She was so crazy about it. You know, she had this thing about drugs. Scourge of the land, you know. You know the drill. But with her religion crap and her own son involved, well, she thought I was headed to heroin addiction and a psycho ward at Middletown. But if you’re thinking that had anything to do with Mom…”
“At the time, when you were arrested at the club, you ran.”
“So?”
“I’m just curious. You did threaten to get the ‘snitch,’ as you called it. Did you believe someone set you up?”
He laughed. “My, my, you do your fuckin’ homework, don’t you? No, that was just trash talk. I got the bag off this dude bartender—we all did—and I’m thinking he’s undercover. But no, he’s still there, a fuckin’ cokehead himself now.”
“So that was that.”
“Right.” He stared into my face. “Whoa, man. Ricky boy, is that why you’re here now? Over that? What the fuck are you up to, man? That was like eight years ago, got nothing to do with this shooting of Mom. I admit she still hounded me about it, glanced at my arms for needle tracks or something. Years later. Good old Mom. But no, sorry to disappoint you. Are you saying I go to Goodwin Square to cop drugs? Like my mom was hunting me down there?” He made a fake laugh.
“No, just…”
He laughed that false laugh again. “Headline in the old Courant: Slacker Druggie Rubs out Mommy Because She Saved His Ass from Jail Back in Prep School. How’s that for a big story? Guess not, Mr. Rick Van Lam, PI. Too long for a headline, maybe. You got enough Viet Cong in you, Lam boy, to understand what I have to say to you.” He sneered, “Du ma may.” Fuck you.
He stood up and stormed into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him. When I realized he wouldn’t be coming out, I left.
***
I called Hank that afternoon, told him I wanted to talk about the Torcelli-Vu kids, and he suggested we meet for a pizza. “What about work?” I asked him.
“I’m on strike. Besides, I need a break. In a few weeks I’ll be back at the Academy.”
So, abetting his diminishing work ethic, I picked him up, and we headed down to Pepe’s old-fashioned coal-fired pizza on Wooster Square in New Haven. It was a forty-five-minute drive and we had to stand in line with Yalies and the old Italians from the neighborhood, baking in the late-afternoon sun, just to get frosty Foxon Birch Beer and dusty crusted, mouth-watering pizza.
Seated after a long wait, relaxed, I asked him, “Now tell me the story of those four kids. The cousins.”
“They’re not kids. Kristen is the youngest at twenty-three.”
“She’s two years older than you.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Just talk about them. You know them.”
“Only a little bit. We never hung out or anything, like at each other’s houses. Just at New Year’s or weddings. That kind of thing.”
“They like you. I sensed that Kristen does, at least.”
“She likes everyone. Well, sometimes I like them.” He sighed. “Sort of. Maybe. One or two of them. Most times they irritate me. Especially Jon.”
“Well, I’m glad you’ve thought this through.”
He laughed. “You know, for a while, when they were young kids, even through the first years of prep school, the four were good friends. Or so my mother tells me. It didn’t matter that Jon and Kristen were rich, and Tommy and Cindy were poor. I guess blood meant something, even though Jon and Kristen—half-white—always had, you know, the best electronic gadgets, the most expensive clothing, ski trips to Vermont, the best of everything. But Mary and Molly wanted them to be friends because Molly and Mary loved each other.” He looked me in the eye. “They were the beautiful Le sisters.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, they took that label seriously. It was like Molly, after she got married, was afraid she’d lose her connection to her family, h
er sister. Their parents were dead. They only had each other. But you know how it is—time started pulling Molly away. All that money and prestige, Larry’s business connections, those business parties, those husband-and-wife cruises to the tropics, the rich friends flying to their place in the Bahamas. But Molly still kept that allegiance to her sister, her twin sister, her only sister, and her sister’s poverty rankled.”
“She blamed Mary for being poor?”
“She blamed Benny for keeping Mary poor. So she pushed Larry to make things smooth and easy.”
“Larry was agreeable?”
“Yeah, Larry’s a gruff, loud guy. That’s the way he’s always been. But he’s not a bad guy. Pretty generous, in fact. He likes to keep Molly happy. Lord, he worships her, frankly. It’s just that, as he got older, like Molly, the money became more and more important, especially when he had more than he knew what to do with. There were more and more things separating Molly and Larry from her sister. He’s never been poor, but he was okay with Benny and his family.”
“Sounds like he was more accepting than Molly.”
Hank nodded. “Way back when, he used to go fishing with Benny down in New London.”
“From the wharf?”
“From his yacht,” Hank roared. “For God’s sake, Rick, think rich.”
“Must have made Benny feel good.”
“Benny’s a humble man. He felt out of place, my mother says. Benny prefers Vietnamese to English. He likes Larry because Larry mostly treats people decently, despite his explosive temper tantrums and hard-edge personality. I like him. He wanted Mary and Benny around. After all, he landed one of the beautiful Le sisters. That was something.”
“Well,” I said, “one big happy family.”
“You know he paid for all the kids to go to the Chesterton School. All of them. Paid the hefty tuition not only for Jon and Kristen, his own kids, but for Mary’s kids.”
“I didn’t know that.” The pizza arrived—white clam—and Hank and I stopped talking for a moment of dutiful worship. Hank snapped a photo and immediately uploaded it to Instagram, though he saw me frowning. We each took a slice and ate quickly. “That’s quite a chunk of change,” I said finally.
“He didn’t have to do that, but Molly thought that would sort of level out their futures, give each kid a future.”
“But it didn’t work.”
“Never does, right?” He nibbled at a slice of pizza. “Part of the problem is that his only daughter Kristen, as you’ve been told, has only one functioning brain cell, and it’s covered with a designer label. She flunked out after a year, dramatically so, and continued her odyssey through Loomis Chafee, Kingswood Oxford, Rosemary Hall, and Miss Porter’s. Money money money. Larry wrote her applications on dollar bills. Jon graduated, a bright kid, went on to Yale—he’s still there, eternal student, talks about being a lawyer. Most likely not—life is a game to him. Likes to spend daddy’s money, but he’s hostile, nasty to people. But what really got to Mary and Molly was that Cindy, plain Jane, became antisocial, got in trouble all the time, did manage to graduate, but barely. She dragged herself through. Since then she’s drifted, this half-assed job, that one. And her brother Tommy, slacker central, never went to class, violated probation, ignored pleas, held on by the skin of his teeth somehow, and then dropped out near the end of his senior year. That rankled—here are poor kids given the chance and fucking it up. You’re not surprised when rich kids rebel at prep school. It’s like a rite of passage. But charity demands obedience. Larry never said a word about wasted money. He gave them a shot. Molly couldn’t complain.”
“But she did, I bet.”
Hank ate half a slice of pizza before talking, licking his chops. “Molly wanted a perfect world—the four chosen children of the Republic. Ivy League and Junior League. As far away as she could get from the poverty of Saigon.”
“She got part of it—with Jon. Sort of.”
“Did she? Who knows? He seems to make a career out of looking for that same perfection.”
I filled him in on my brief visit to Tommy’s apartment. He grinned. “Did the cockroaches get you? I’ve seen water bugs the size of Detroit carrying pizza crusts to the curb.”
I thought of something. “He had a school friend there, offering condolences.”
“Who? From Chesterton?”
“A rico suave named Danny, a banker who…”
He broke in. “I forgot about Danny. Trinh Xuan Duong.”
“You know him?”
“Oh yeah. Of course. Not well, but he’s been around. I’m surprised you don’t know him.”
I took a sip of soda. “If he doesn’t come to Vietnamese New Year’s at some VFW Hall in East Hartford, then I don’t know him.”
“True, I guess. He’s actually the real success story of the group. Larry paid for his tuition at Chesterton, and the dirt-poor Vietnamese kid who was born in the worst housing project on the East Coast, Dutch Point, flowered, a hungry, bright boy, ready to take advantage of his scholarship. He’s never looked back, that kid. Christ, he graduated from Harvard as a finance major.”
I thought of the sleek, expensive-looking young banker. “Hank, who the hell is he?”
“I just told you…”
“But why would Larry pay his way through school?”
Hank’s eyes got wide. “God, there is so much you don’t know. Larry and Molly have known Danny since he was a little boy, since he was born, in fact. A playmate for Jon and Kristen. They watched him grow up.”
I groaned. I must have looked stupefied because Hank grinned. “It’s not a big mystery, Rick. Just one more episode of Molly’s I’m-proud-to-be-an-American democracy. Danny is the son of their housekeeper. You met her today. Susie. Tran Thi Suong. Affectionately renamed Susie way back when.”
“The cheerleader of Larry’s fan club.”
“Now you know why.”
Chapter Ten
I woke up thinking of Molly’s eyes—that momentary flicker I’d spotted.
I drove to her estate without calling first. She wasn’t home. No one answered the door, but I spotted a gardener mowing the back acres. So I frittered the day away, billing clients, stopping in at the Gaddy Associates office, debating whether to call Liz or Hank but realizing I had nothing to say. When I drove back to the Torcelli estate late in the afternoon, I spotted a new gray Volvo in the driveway with the vanity plate: MOLLY2. The hood was warm to the touch, telling me she’d just arrived home.
Susie answered the door, called Molly, who became agitated. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing. I hope you don’t mind me stopping in?”
She looked flustered. “I feel like you’re gonna tell me something bad.”
“No, Molly, no,” I said quietly. “I just wanted to follow up on a few things.”
“Come in.” She turned to Susie. “I’ll go over that list with you later.” She smiled at me. “Susie and I just got back from Springfield. The traffic was horrible.” She looked distracted. “We’re doing a luncheon.” Then she paused. “I’m sorry. You’re not here to hear about my day.”
She motioned for me to sit down.
“I won’t take a lot of your time, Molly, but I was wondering about something. When I was here with Hank, I asked you if you knew why Mary went into that neighborhood. I thought I saw a moment’s hesitation—I don’t know, a bit of fright in your eyes.”
She parted her lips, and then closed them. “You have to be kidding.”
“That’s why I drove back out here.”
“Then, frankly, you wasted your time. Your question took me off guard, I have to tell you, but I guess that’s what you’re supposed to do. Maybe you did see fright, as you put it. The day after Mary died I made Larry drive me to Goodwin Square, where I’d never been, stop for a minute at the yellow tape. I was trying to see for myself what was there
. Trying to imagine Mary there, standing outside her car. The why of it. I hated it—that sordid neighborhood, boarded-up buildings, street thugs. When I cried, Larry took me home. It was a mistake going there, he told me. Foolish. I shouldn’t have gone.”
“It’s natural. I went there, too. With Hank.”
“But it’s etched on my mind now.” Her eyes watered. “When you shot the question at me, it was like a bullet to the head, Rick. I was suddenly there, right there, with my dead sister. If you saw fright or fear, whatever, you got a good eye because I was looking at the photograph in my head.”
“I’m sorry.”
A thin smile. “You shouldn’t shock people like that.”
I got up.
“I know you’re trying to make Hank’s mother happy. I’m glad. But don’t do that to me again.” Leaning forward, she touched my elbow, a quiet reprimand.
I felt like a little schoolboy back in the bleak Saigon orphanage, caught by the scary nuns in some foolish boyish prank. Molly had turned the tables on me. Buddha: A man has within him the child he must always be. Before I apologized again and reverted to knee-jerk childhood sputtering, I took my leave. I held out my hand, and she took it. “I know you’re grieving.”
She sighed. “I’m learning how to be an orphan.”
The line struck me as strange and obviously wrong, and I almost said, “I know firsthand.” But I’d already overstayed my welcome.
Susie was outside, a plastic bag by her feet, a light sweater over her shoulders despite the heat of the early evening. She was going home. Standing in the shadows, out of the sunlight, she smiled at me.
“I met your son Danny at Tommy’s.”
She lit up, eyes bright. The haggard face, wrinkled and pale, metamorphosed into a doting mother. “Ah. My handsome boy.”
“I was very impressed by him.”
“Everyone is.”
“A banker.”
“At Bank of America. Someday he’ll be president.”