by Jon Loomis
“Sure,” Coffin said. “Let’s try a 333 this time.” The waitress went back to the kitchen, but this time Coffin didn’t watch. He took a slurp of broth. It was wonderful: rich and complex, the aromatic wilt of basil leaves, a slight bite from the jalapeño slices. He set his spoon down and picked up a bean sprout with his chopsticks: It was crunchy and tasted like water. He used both spoon and chopsticks to lift a slithery clump of noodles to his mouth. He slurped them, as he’d seen the other customers doing. They were soft and mild and oddly satisfying. Vietnamese comfort food. He picked up the squeeze bottle of chili sauce (there was one on each table, like ketchup in a diner) and squirted some into his soup, stirring the broth a bit with a chopstick. The broth changed color, from amber to a rich light orange. He sipped it, and a slight sweat started on his forehead. He picked up a slice of meat and popped it into his mouth: It was tender and perfect and tasted like beef and broth and chili sauce. Coffin finished his beer and wiped his mustache with a paper napkin.
The waitress came back with a bottle of 333. “How you like?” she said, pouring his glass half full of foam again.
“It’s great,” Coffin said.
“You got to try tendon next time,” she said. “That my favorite.”
“Not the tripe?”
She shrugged. “It’s okay. I like the tendon.”
“Do many gringos order the tripe?” Coffin asked, slurping noodles.
“Nah. You kidding me? Only Vietnamese people.”
“Only? Gringos never get the tripe?”
“Well, sometime they try to impress their friends, but they never finish. Eat a little bit, that’s all. Very bad, waste food like that.”
Coffin took a photo of Priestess Maiya from his jacket pocket. Lola had printed it from her Web site. Priestess Maiya was dressed in a peasant blouse and lots of bangles. Her makeup was dramatic, her hair pulled up in a dark, cobwebby swoop. Coffin showed the picture to the waitress. “How about her?” he said. “She ever come in and order tripe?”
The waitress frowned. “Dude. You a cop or something?” she said.
Coffin showed her his shield. “Police detective. From out in Provincetown.”
“Why a P’town cop come here, ask questions in Chinatown?”
“The woman in this picture may be a suspect in a murder case. In P’town.”
The waitress took the picture from Coffin’s hand. She frowned at it. “Yeah, I know this girl,” she said. “She come in here sometimes. Always try to talk Vietnamese. Very funny. Crack everybody up, back in the kitchen.”
“Do you remember her coming in back in April, with an older man and a blond-haired Asian American woman?”
“Sure, I remember. Blond girl about thirty, right?”
“Right.”
“They having a big fight. Yelling back and forth—freak out other customers.”
“Who was doing most of the yelling?” Coffin asked. He tapped the picture of Priestess Maiya with his finger. “This one or the blond girl?”
“Funny you ask,” said the waitress. “Blondie shout a lot. Old man shout at blondie. Trashy girl just sit there smiling, kind of.” The waitress put a fingertip to her temple. “I think to myself, how strange.”
“Did anybody make any threats?”
“Sure. Blondie says she gonna cut trashy girl’s tits off.”
“That was it?”
“Dude—that not enough?”
Coffin gave the waitress one of his cards, which she slid into her front pocket. Then he opened his notebook and asked for her name and phone number.
“You call me, ask me out? That why you want my number?” she said.
“No,” he said. “I promise. It’s in case we need to ask you any more questions.”
“Okay,” she said, bending down, writing the information in Coffin’s notebook while he tried very hard not to look down her blouse. “Who knows, maybe I go out with you, you call me. I like older guy sometimes—body not so great, but always take you someplace nice, pay for everything, real polite.”
Coffin could see her entire left breast. It was very small, and the nipple was brown and erect. The waitress glanced up from her writing, and Coffin knew he’d been caught looking, but she didn’t pull her blouse together or act annoyed. Instead, she bent close to his ear and lowered her voice to a near whisper. “Young guy just want a quick fuck, you know? Wham bam, thanks a lot. I like older guy better. Take more time.”
Coffin looked at his notebook. Her name was Lang Nguyen.
“Lang—that’s nice.”
“It mean ‘sweet potato,’” Lang said, straightening up, thumbing a strand of black hair behind her ear.
“Sweet potato?”
“My mother have eight daughters,” Lang shrugged. “She run out of names.”
Coffin grinned. “If I didn’t have a nice girlfriend back in P’-town, I think I would ask you out.”
Lang grinned and poked Coffin in the arm. “Your girlfriend so nice, how come you looking down my shirt?” She turned and walked back to the kitchen. “We go out, you got to lose the mustache, dude. It’s so, like, eighties.”
Outside Phó Bo, Coffin stood on the sidewalk in the drizzle, trying to hail a cab. The few that whisked past on their way to New England Medical Center all had passengers. He looked at his watch; it was getting late. Pedestrian traffic was heavy, and the sidewalk was narrow. A man in a gray suit bumped Coffin’s arm with his shoulder bag, nearly pushing him into the street.
Coffin waved at another cab, wondering if he looked like a rube from the Cape in his bomber jacket and flannel shirt. The cab passed, the driver pointing to the OFF DUTY sign in the windshield. Then a green minivan pulled up, an Asian man at the wheel. The rear passenger door slid open on its greased track.
“Yo, dude,” the Asian man said. He was about twenty and very thin. “You need a cab?” A large orchid was tattooed on his left forearm. It was a Taiwanese gang tattoo, Coffin knew. In Baltimore, the Purple Orchids had been at war with the Tiger Boys for a time, the bodies of young Asian men popping up all over the city. In the end, the two gangs had nearly wiped each other out.
“No thanks,” Coffin said. “I’ll walk.” He felt something hard nudge into his lower ribs.
“Get in the van, motherfucker,” a voice said. The voice sounded like it was coming out of a tin can.
Coffin half-turned, saw no one. The hard thing prodded him low in the ribs again.
“I said get in the van, or I shoot your motherfuckin’ lungs out.”
Coffin looked down. A Chinese midget was poking him with a very large pistol. The midget was barely four feet tall. He scowled at Coffin. Coffin climbed into the van. The midget climbed in after him, followed by another young Asian man of normal size. The van’s passenger door slid shut.
Chapter 13
Tommy McCurry’s wife was named Alecia. She was the second palest human being Lola had ever met, after Cecil Duckworth. She was like a woman from a Flemish painting: Her hair was pale, her eyebrows were pale, the faint down on her upper lip was pale, even her lashes were pale. Her skin was so pale it seemed transparent, a faint mapping of veins underneath. Her eyes were very pale gray; her lips were pale, too, colored only with a thin smudge of pale pink gloss. She wore a pale blue jumper and a pale yellow blouse. The couch was pale beige. A pale wedge of sunlight fell on the pale green rug.
“I knew he was seeing someone,” Mrs. McCurry said, dabbing a tear with a wilted Kleenex. “What could I do? Divorce him? I’ve got five kids. I haven’t had a job since 1993, for God’s sake.”
The McCurrys lived in a modest saltbox near the high school, on Mozart Avenue. The house had three small bedrooms and a single bath the size of a closet. Lola had a hard time imagining what it must be like when all five McCurry children were home from school. She scratched her ear with her pen cap. “So you did nothing, then?”
“What I did,” said Alecia McCurry, “is I kept my mouth shut. I hoped it wasn’t serious. I had twins. Then I got de
pressed and went on Prozac.”
Lola tried not to stare at the pointed tip of Alecia McCurry’s nose, which wiggled slightly as she talked. “How did you find out?” Lola said.
Alecia McCurry rolled her eyes. “God. It was obvious. Every Wednesday night he’d say he was going out to the Old Colony Tap for a few beers with the boys—his big night out. A few hours later he’d come back smelling like he’d just gotten out of the shower. Have you ever been in the Old Colony Tap?”
“A few times,” Lola said. “To break up fights.”
“Well then, you know what it smells like in there.” Alecia McCurry’s lower lip quivered; then she shook her head, her short, pale hair bobbing around her face. “When you get married, you never think you’ll end up praying for your husband to come home smelling like cigarettes, stale beer, and urinal mints—but every Wednesday night, that’s what I did.”
Lola patted her hand. “This must be very hard for you,” she said. “This whole business.”
Alecia McCurry straightened her back and breathed in through her nose. “I’ll live,” she said. “The rage is kind of keeping me going right now. How dare he drag us into this, you know?”
“Did you know who he was sleeping with?” Lola said.
Tommy McCurry’s wife nodded her pale head. “I followed him a few times when he left the house. If the sitter showed up in time, I’d get in my car and follow him with the lights off. I’d park down on 6A below her house. Sometimes I could see them through that big front window, all foreshortened because I was looking almost straight up at them. I’d sit down there as long as I could take it, then I’d go have a few drinks somewhere until it was time to go home.”
“Where were you and your husband last Friday night? The night Kenji Sole was killed?”
“We were here at home, watching TV. Well, I was watching TV. The kids were in bed. Tom was in his recliner, snoring loud enough to rattle the windows. Mr. Excitement, when he’s with me.”
“What were you watching?”
Alecia McCurry ducked her head, embarrassed. “Law and Order,” she said. “I’m addicted. Doesn’t it seem like it’s always on?”
The green minivan turned down a narrow side street, passing a row of porn shops and Asian markets. The rain fell harder. The driver turned on the stereo; disco music thumped softly from the speakers, a girl’s voice singing in Cantonese.
The midget frowned and waved his gun at Coffin. It was a chrome-plated revolver with a short barrel and a bore the size of a dime. “Okay, sei gwai-lo. What you want with my girl?”
“Your girl?” Coffin said. “You mean Lang?”
The midget and the driver laughed. The other young man was wearing headphones. His eyes were closed. He seemed to have fallen asleep in his seat.
“That what she tell you her name was? Lang?” the midget said. “That’s pretty funny, dude.”
“Look,” Coffin said, a cold trickle of sweat in his left armpit. “I think we’ve got a misunderstanding here.”
“Misunderstanding?” the midget said. “You round-eye motherfuckers up in here all the time, hitting on my homegirls? Shit.” He poked Coffin in the ribs again. “Misunderstand this, motherfucker.”
“I’m a cop,” Coffin said. “Lang’s a potential witness in a homicide investigation. I had a few questions to ask her.”
“You don’t look like no cop,” the driver said over his shoulder.
“Yeah, motherfucker,” the midget said in his tin-can voice. “You a cop, let’s see some ID.”
“Fine,” Coffin said. “It’s in my inside pocket. I’m going to reach in and get it out. Don’t shoot me.”
“Do it slow, bitch. Two fingers.”
Coffin fished the ID from his inner jacket pocket and flipped it open. “Detective Coffin,” he said. “From Provincetown.”
“What the fuck, Lenny,” the driver said, looking over his shoulder again. He had a thin, droopy mustache. “Dude’s a cop.”
“Lenny?” Coffin said.
“Yeah, so what?” the midget said. “You never heard the name Lenny before?” He set the pistol on the seat beside him and rubbed a small hand over his face. “Fuck, man. A fuckin’ cop. What I’m gonna do with a fuckin’ cop?”
“How about giving me a ride?” Coffin said. “I’m late for an appointment.”
“You serious?” Lenny said. He picked up the pistol and absent-mindedly scratched his ear with the barrel.
Coffin put his shield back in his pocket. “Why not?”
Lenny pondered for a moment, then shrugged. “Sure. Why the fuck not? Where to?”
Coffin told him the address. “There’s one other thing. A question.”
Lenny pointed the pistol at Coffin’s heart. “Shoot,” he said. Then he grinned. “Just fuckin’ wit’ you, dude.” He put the pistol in his jacket pocket. “Ask away.”
“How’d you know I was talking to Lang? She tell you? It had to have happened awfully quick after I left the noodle shop.”
Lenny waved a small hand. “No, man,” he said. “She’n’t tell me nothin’. I saw it on the camera, dude.”
“What camera?”
“The security cam. The monitor’s in the kitchen, case somebody tries to rob the place.”
“You work there?”
“Shit. Work there? Fuck no. My uncle owns the place, man. I just hang out ’cause I like the food. I’m a fuckin’ engineer.”
“Engineer?” Coffin said.
The young man with the headphones opened his eyes and looked at Coffin for the first time. “Lenny’s a senior at MIT,” he said. “Four-point-oh, baby.”
Lenny touched his head, then held out his hand. “Mens et manus, motherfucker,” he said.
Lenny and his friends dropped Coffin off at the offices of Kenji Sole’s lawyers, Torkel, Baldritch, Nash. They occupied all three floors of a beautifully restored brick town house on a quiet street near Boston Common. Coffin looked at his watch: He was five minutes late for his appointment with Sarah Baldritch. He pulled the polished oak door open and walked in.
The reception area was hushed and seemed dark, even compared to the gray late spring afternoon. The walls were finished in dark oak wainscoting below hunter green wallpaper. There was a Persian rug in reds and blues on a dark oak floor. The chairs were leather and cherry; a dark marble table held sober magazines: Forbes and Architectural Digest. The receptionist sat at an oak desk under the room’s only bright light. She wore a charcoal gray suit and black glasses with trendy rectangular frames. Her blond hair was cut short and parted on the side. There was something cool and almost artificial about her, as though she might have been made of surgical steel and whirring servos beneath a sleek vinyl skin.
Coffin felt a bit self-conscious in his chinos and flannel shirt. “Frank Coffin,” he said. “I have a meeting with Sarah Baldritch.”
“Ah,” said the receptionist, running a frosted fingernail down the open appointment book. “Here we are. Detective Coffin, from Provincetown.”
“Yes,” Coffin said.
“Ms. Baldritch is on an overseas call, Detective. She’ll be right with you. Would you like coffee or a mineral water while you wait?”
“No thanks,” Coffin said. “I’m fine.”
The receptionist smiled faintly, and Coffin imagined the bright steel mandible working beneath the pleasing contours of her face.
“If you need anything, just ask. My name’s Stephanie.”
“Nice to meet you, Stephanie,” Coffin said.
He sat in one of the dark leather chairs and picked up a copy of Architectural Digest. The cover article was about the exotic homes of extremely rich people. There were glossy photos of “infinity edge” swimming pools surrounded by rattan furniture and palm trees. The pools appeared to be suspended above bright blue oceans. None of the pictures had any people in them.
The receptionist—Stephanie—picked up her phone and spoke into it briefly before hanging up. “Mr. Coffin?” she said. “Ms. Baldritch can see you
now.” She stood. “Please follow me.”
Stephanie either had surprisingly long legs or her gray pin-striped skirt was surprisingly short. Or both, Coffin thought. She wore two-inch heels, and something in the weave of her stockings glittered slightly in the dimly lit hallway. Coffin imagined the servos purring beneath her vinyl skin. She stopped at a large oak door and knocked.
“Come in,” said a woman’s voice.
Stephanie pushed the door open and said, “Detective Coffin, Ms. Baldritch.” She waved Coffin in with her left hand. The door closed silently behind him.
“Well, Detective Coffin,” said Sarah Baldritch, rising from her desk chair and sticking out a hand. “A pleasure to meet you.”
Sarah Baldritch was the anti-Stephanie. Stephanie was tall, but Sarah Baldritch was short—barely five feet, Coffin guessed. Stephanie was slender, but Sarah Baldritch was stout. Stephanie was pretty, but Sarah Baldritch was plain in the big-nosed, small-eyed manner of human plainness. Stephanie was young; Sarah Baldritch was fifty or so. Stephanie appeared to be a robot, but Sarah Baldritch was very clearly composed of lumpy human flesh.
Coffin shook her hand. “Quite a place you’ve got here,” he said. The office walls had been papered in sage green silk. The desk was massive, carved from burl walnut. The rugs, antique Persians, had no doubt been knotted by the nimble fingers of Shi’a slave children.
“It’ll do,” Sarah Baldritch said, grinning. “Have a seat.” She opened a rosewood humidor and offered it to Coffin. “Care for a cigar?”
“No thanks,” Coffin said, settling into the buttery leather guest chair. “I only smoke cigarettes, and I can barely stand them.”
“Mind if I indulge? I just bought some great Cohibas, and I haven’t had a chance to try them yet.”
“By all means,” Coffin said.
Baldritch made a show of clipping off the end of her cigar and lighting it carefully with a small propane torch. Then she leaned back in her chair, smoke rising in blue billows over her head.
Coffin lit a cigarette in self-defense.