by Andrew Lanh
“But he couldn’t be stopped.”
“Molly got suspicious after Mary died, suspected something with Danny and Tommy. Christ, she was thinking pot-smoking. He said there was no problem, but he lied to me. He promised me nothing would happen. Molly had gone nuts about the joint she found, but I thought the matter was over. Kristen was foolish.” A deep sigh. “Every foolish thing she’s ever done leads to disaster.”
“This time it was murder.”
He winced. “I couldn’t believe it when Danny had Molly killed. He promised me he wouldn’t. I made him promise. Promise, I said.”
“You let it happen.”
“I loved her. She was so beautiful. He didn’t care. He didn’t care what I thought. He had no conscience, no soul. But by then I couldn’t open my mouth. What could I say to anyone? If they arrested Danny, they’d find out about our deal. They’d find out I knew about Mary. Then it would be all over. I didn’t know what to do. Then Molly was dead, and I fell apart. He knew he had me. I was grieving for Molly’s death, and I couldn’t sleep knowing I was responsible.” He held my eye. “I still can’t make any sense of it. He said he would do what he had to do to survive. I couldn’t believe it when he told me that. ‘Now it’s my turn to be rich,’ he said to me. Nothing will stop me.’” Larry bit his lip. “I couldn’t be poor. You know. I just couldn’t.”
“So Danny used you—and Kristen.”
“Kristen,” he moaned. “Oh, my God, I didn’t know he did that to her. Will she be arrested?”
“That’s up to Ardolino.”
“When he killed Mary, I flipped. I told him I’d handle Molly, talk her out of her suspicions. One killing. Mary. Okay. No suspicion. But two—like that. Didn’t he think the cops would wonder? Nobody is that stupid. The second murder made it not an accidental drive-by. That was clear. But he said it was covered. What bothered him, I know, was when you got involved. He never thought the family would do anything. The whole thing would have gone away, he said. You made him nervous. He tried to keep track of everything you did. But he felt you were getting too close.”
“Was he gonna have me killed?”
Larry stared into my face. “He considered it. Talked of it. Another stupid act on his part. He was out of control. But I couldn’t go to the police. But if I had gone to the police after Mary, Molly would be alive.”
“But you would have gone down.”
He looked at me. “If I had a choice between jail and Molly dying, I would have gone to jail.”
“Danny thinks he’s invincible.”
“I made him that way.” His raw, dark laugh broke at the end. “Isn’t that ironic? I made him believe he could do anything.” He closed his eyes. “I’m glad it’s over, frankly. I’m glad. At the end I felt that Danny controlled me. I created him, and I was afraid of him. I was in over my head. What choice did I have?”
“You had a choice.”
“Did I really? Have you ever been poor?” He waited.
“Yes. I’ve been poor.”
“Then you know it sucks. I’ve been rich all my life. I had money and a beautiful wife and I…”
“You what?”
“For one moment I decided money was more important than love.”
“But you were wrong.”
He met my eyes, and dropped his chin.
Epilogue
We sit in Grandma’s steamy kitchen, the three of us, Hank, Grandma, and me. The house is quiet. Hank’s parents and grandfather are at Benny’s tonight, sitting with him in his kitchen. Everyone has been quiet or depressed these past three days, ever since the surprising arrests of Danny, Larry, and sad, sad Kristen. Everyone has hidden from the omnipresent cameras, the intrusive microphones, the deliberate cruelties.
On TV you see pictures of Susie running from the courthouse, her head covered under a jacket. You see Jon drinking coffee at Starbucks, by himself. He gives the finger to the camera, but they blur the image. The story plays itself out again and again, a delight for twenty-four-hour CNN and the Fox network. Commentators discuss it as a morality tale of greed, lust, and mendacity.
But we three sit in the kitchen, under the overhead garish light, and say little to one another. The window-box fan stirs up hot air from the clammy, awful night and sends it back into our faces. No one moves. A mosquito buzzes near my ear, its sound raw and metallic. My eyes follow its haphazard flight.
For a second I flash back to a childhood memory that comes on me unawares. I’m a young boy sitting in an orphanage in Saigon—Ho Chi Minh City now—and the night is tropical, feverish, so humid a film of water seems to cover the whole world. I’ve been crying, and I sit there alone, watching older kids playing some game with sticks and ball. I have a cut on my shin, not because I’ve played ball but because someone has tripped me, one of the older boys, a mean kid I remember now as huge and monstrous. I’m bui doi. Child of the dust. A black dot on the landscape. I’m crying. The swarming mosquitoes bite me. I stare into the slate-gray nighttime sky, so stark it’s like a layer of rock pressing me to the earth. I can’t stop crying. I shake the mosquitoes away from my head, but they stay, refuse to leave.
Suddenly I come out of my reverie. Grandma has said something. She is offering me a sesame ball, chewy and tangy. I say no, I’m not hungry. I’d spent the early evening with Jimmy, Liz, and Gracie, the three of us having a mournful dinner at Zeke’s Olde Tavern. Out of the blue, crazily, I told Liz I thought we should go away for a weekend, to get away.
“Together? A weekend?”
Yes, I nodded. I don’t care. I’ll need her company to help me pull myself back together again.
She smiled. “I’ll think it over.”
Jimmy looked at her. “I wanna be best man.”
We all changed the subject.
Staring at Grandma, Hank is shaking his head. “This is the worst ending.”
Grandma looks at him. “Why do you say that?”
“I feel like Kristen was duped into the killings.”
“She was,” I say, “but there has to be a price.”
Grandma shakes her head. “This madness is now over.” She sits back and picks up the silk blouse I’ve bought her, an exquisite work of Thai embroidery in some glowing baby-blue metallic color. Earlier I gave it to her as thanks. “For telling me the answer.”
She’d smiled. “You knew it all along.”
You knew it all along. She means the conversation the two of us had about love and money and greed and motive. I know that. Her soft and utterly persuasive words made me dwell on Kristen’s deadly infatuation.
Hank is talking. “I can’t believe you got Larry to open up like that. Mr. Stoic. Mr. Hard-as-nails. I suppose when Ardolino called you and told you that Danny had confessed, well, he had no choice.”
I laugh. “True. He had no choice. But Ardolino never called me.”
“But didn’t you say Larry cracked after you got a phone call?”
“Yeah, but I haven’t told you that part of the story. It was Jimmy who called me, as planned, on schedule. I figured it might do the trick. I knew Danny was in Ardolino’s care, but I needed Larry’s part of it. At that point Danny was still protesting his innocence. He would be for another couple hours. I made the whole thing up. Larry fell apart, told me everything. When I left, with the Farmington cops coming to collect him, I called Ardolino. He came out of his interrogation and I told him. When he told Danny what Larry said, well, that was the beginning of Danny’s caving in.”
“You bluffed him?”
I nod.
Grandma is not listening. Instead she is running her old palm over the smooth silk, holding it to her wrinkled cheek. She smiles and closes her eyes.
“Grandma,” Hank says, “it did turn out to be about money after all.”
She puts down the silk blouse, smiles at me, and touches him on the cheek. “Tell h
im, Rick.”
“Tell me what?”
“I think she wants me to quote the real source of these crimes. One of the maxims from my child’s book of Buddha.” I look at Grandma. She is grinning.
“Tell him.” She is shaking her head.
I face Hank. “When there is love there must also be its opposite. The one is the other. They are parts of the whole.”
“But,” Grandma adds, “don’t forget. It is up to you to choose love or the lack of love. Choose one to hold onto, but one that leads you to goodness. Choose.”
“I still don’t get it,” Hank says.
She reaches out and holds both my hand and Hank’s. Hank looks uncomfortable. That’s because he’s young, I think. I still get a kick out of him, his friendship, that boyishness. For me, I feel like I am finally home among family. A mosquito buzzes around my head, maddened, frantic, but I let it live. It is a choice I make.
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