Return to Dust

by Andrew Lanh

  “But the cops questioned him. I guess they had to follow up, you know, but I guess Willie got really quiet, started to tremble, you know, maybe flashbacks to…the old days, cops…and his son…”

  “His name is Toan but everyone calls him Tony….”

  “Well, his son intervened. Nothing happened.”

  “Despicable, all of it.”

  “Hank, relax. Cops doing their job.”

  “This Marta was a damn troublemaker.”

  For the first time I smiled. “She was a bit of that, I agree. A hard woman to like. A woman of strong opinions.”

  He smirked. “And yet you let her into your apartment.”

  “I liked the way the woman handled a dust cloth.”

  “And yet your apartment always looks like the back room of Goodwill.”

  “Nevertheless…”

  He hurled out his words, fierce and unfriendly. “Well, what do you want from me, Rick?”

  I watched him. So much confusion. I pointed at him. “Hank, calm down. I’m on your side, remember?”

  A thin smile. “Sorry.”

  “I know the sad story everyone knows about Vuong—Willie.” I began. “But that’s about all.”

  “It’s more than sad, Rick. It’s…it’s so raw you wake up sweating about it. That is his only story, really. A quiet man, but a brooding one, so hurt.” He hesitated. “My mother says he is just waiting to die.”

  “I don’t know anything about his family. Where does he live?”

  “They got a three-family in Unionville, by the railroad tracks. An old company house from the factory days. A little run-down, sagging porches, asphalt siding. The son and his wife live on the first floor—they own the place. They got a fifteen-year-old boy, sort of a wise guy kid, rumor has it, always picked up for things like shoplifting. Kid named Roger but everyone calls him Big Nose. Nice touch. He answers to that. Willie and his wife, Linh, live on the second.” Hank smiled. “The third floor is one of my distant cousins, a young guy named Fred, just married last year with a new baby. I mean, no one knows Willie because he stays away from folks.”

  “Does he work?”

  “Not that I know. The college let him go. Handyman jobs. I guess, well, like he cut Joshua Jennings’ lawn, that sort of thing. Lives on Social Security.”

  “So he just stays home?”

  “The funny thing is that his wife—we call her Aunt Marie—knows my grandmother, good friends from somewhere, probably back in Saigon. They see each other at New Year’s—that sort of thing. Grandma likes her a lot because she’s warm, caring, and, I guess, she put up with a life with Willie. I mean, she loves her husband.“

  “I need to talk to him.”

  Hank had been sipping his coffee but choked. “God, why?”

  “Because I have to follow up on Karen’s story.”

  Fiercely: “Willie didn’t murder Marta Kowalski.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  He sat back. “Yes, I do.” He locked eyes with mine. “Because she yelled at him for tracking mud on a floor? Jesus Christ, Rick.”

  “I know, I know. Crazy, yes. But I need to follow up on everything. Maybe Willie can tell me something about Marta’s state of mind, her attitude, what set her off.”

  “Trouble, Rick.”

  “How so?”

  A deliberate hesitation as he chose his words carefully. “He’s old-fashioned.”

  “Meaning?”

  “He won’t talk to you. He’s—well, like my father and grandfather.”

  I nodded. “You’re kidding me, no? After all this time? He won’t talk to me because I’m mixed blood. Bui doi?”

  A sheepish smile, embarrassed. “Yeah.”

  An old story, marrow deep. I’m that curious breed produced by the Vietnamese Conflict: an Amerasian, one of the so-called children of the dust, the dirty secret, the bui doi. I have no idea who my mother was, except that she was a Vietnamese woman who, in the final days of the war, carried a child by a white American soldier, also nameless and now forgotten. I was dumped off at an orphanage when I was around five. I have dim memories of my mother, whispers of stories, though sometimes I can feel her holding me tight. My real first name is Viet, but in Vietnam I was Lam Van Viet. In America, a young boy, resting in a foster home in the Bronx for a month, I was Viet Van Lam, and then I allowed myself to become Rick Van Lam. I didn’t mind—I was thirteen and I wanted to become American. I wanted to fit in.

  I still do.

  “I still don’t fit in,” I said to Hank.

  “You got a home here.” He pointed out the door. “You were lost in Manhattan so you came here. This is home now. And my grandma adores you.”

  “And I adore her.”

  Slowly he whispered, “Poor Willie Do.”

  “I need to interview him, Hank. And I’d like you to come with me. I need you to set it up.”

  A sigh. “He won’t talk.” Finally, pushing his coffee cup away, he decided. “Then I gotta get Grandma on it. Call his wife. This isn’t going to be good. Willie suffered in the re-education camps. If he runs from authority—if he trembled and hid when the Farmington cops showed up—that could not be a good sign.”

  “I gotta talk to him.”

  “I’ll talk to Grandma.”

  Now I smiled. “She has magical powers.”

  He rolled his eyes. “So you say. My God, you and her mouthing all that Buddhist wisdom.”

  “Maybe you should listen to her—and me.”

  “I do listen, but…” His voice trailed off.

  “But what?”

  “What would Buddha say about Marta’s death?” he asked suddenly, a grin on his face.

  I considered the question a serious one, though I knew Hank often got a bit mocking about his roots. After all, he lives in a divided household where his imperious father is a nominal Roman Catholic while his mother is a Buddhist, and his maternal grandmother whispers Confucian precepts in his ear all the time. He’d rather listen to hip-hop dance music or whatever faddish noise is blaring off satellite radio.

  I was born a Buddhist. I believe that because the only thing I carried from the Catholic orphanage was a tattered, faded brown-covered paperback, slim as a calendar, that my mother supposedly left with me. It’s my only proof—my only family heirloom. The Sayings of Buddha. I still cherish it. In Hank’s house there is a shrine to the Virgin Mary and Jesus covered with palms from Palm Sunday Mass. But there is also a Buddhist shrine next to it, dedicated to dead relatives—you see it the minute you walk into the kitchen. Sticks of powerful incense, a bowl of blood-red oranges, joss sticks, and bright glossy icons. I always think of my mother when I see it. Sometimes I believe I see her bowing before the shrine.

  My unknown but beloved mother.

  “Earth to Rick.” Hank waved his hand in front of my face.

  “Sorry, my mind drifted.”

  “Back to that orphanage?”

  I didn’t answer, bothered by his flippancy. But then I said, “As a matter of fact, yes.” Those pithy, wonderful sayings come at me every so often. I listen to them. They warn me of danger. They humble me, level me. So now, thinking of murder, I found myself thinking of Buddha. “Always appropriate, let me tell you,” I said to Hank. “Buddha would say: ‘When you think you are at the beginning, then you are really at the end.’”

  “I’m confused.”

  “I know, but that’s all right.”

  He watched me closely. “I’m starting to think you believe Marta Kowalski was murdered.”

  The moment he spoke those words, a little mockingly, a boyish glint in his eye, I froze. Yes, I realized—some gut instinct told me there was more to the story than the sad suicide of an old depressed cleaning woman.

  Hank was shaking his head.

  I told him, “The end of the st
ory is already in my hands. Another quote: ‘You start the journey in one place and you at that moment have reached your destination.’”

  “So we have to investigate.”

  “We do.”

  “I’ll talk to Grandma.”

  “Once again we’re partners.”

  “TV Associates.” He sat back, triumphant.

  An old joke—perhaps not a joke any longer. Tan and Viet, partners. Blood brothers. The firm he envisioned down the road: TV Associates, Private Investigation. Private eyes on the world of crime and punishment. Superheroes. His dream and, I supposed, mine. Brothers born out of a country of monsoons and banyan trees, the whisper of jasmine always in the air. Tan and Viet. For a new America.

  But first—Vuong Ky Do. A diplomatic interrogation of one of the shattered souls who wanted to forget that land of monsoons and banyan trees and the scent of jasmine. What that man had burned onto his soul was the stormy South China Sea and the approaching Thai pirates with death in their hearts.

  Chapter Six

  Vinnie joined me in the cafeteria for a late lunch. I’d spotted him after my class and asked him to join me. One of my good friends on the faculty, Vinnie is a math professor I met a few years back when we huddled together at a dreary staff meeting that went on too long—he kept nudging me to stay awake—and we became fast friends. I like his blunt manner, the way he deals with garrulous staff members, cutting through their verbiage, and sinking cynical shots at their arguments. He also relishes crime and punishment—not the novel, but the theory. He teaches geometry and pre-calculus, which I consider runic language, and, like Hank Nguyen, he has a keen interest in my lackluster, mechanical investigations. As a mathematician, he claims he can contribute a logical and geometrical approach to solutions.

  I was in the middle of mentioning Marta Kowalski—he’d known her and we’d talked of her suicide—when his wife joined us. Marcie taught American literature in the English Department, but she’s also Vinnie’s bookend. When you see one, chances are great the other will shortly appear. I stopped in mid-sentence, let her deposit her tray of tuna salad and tomato soup on the table.

  “What are you boys plotting?”

  I laughed. “Why? Do we look conspiratorial?”

  “You bet. Vinnie leaning in, expectant. You, wide-eyed with a secret to share. Two little boys without marbles.”

  “That sums it up,” I told her.

  I outlined my new case, Vinnie and Marcie leaning in now, elbows on the table. They were fun to be with, and both thought my life as a PI was fascinating. I kept telling them it wasn’t. Usually it wasn’t—that much was true.

  An unlikely couple, this long-married pair. Both a little chubby, both in their late thirties, maybe early forties, eager assistant professors, they often were mistaken for brother and sister: dark, round, with flat, melon faces, big mooncalf eyes set wide apart. They lived for weekends in New York or Boston—and for dining out. I never asked how the two met, but they differed in everything but looks. Vinnie is rock-bottom conservative, not so right wing that he’d thump a Bible or beat up a save-the-whale advocate or dump tea bags off a same-sex marriage cruise ship, but certainly sleeping with real-estate Republicans. Marcie, on the other hand, is a vocal firebrand, an unreconstructed liberal of the old order, resident feminist, part of the rag-tag Democratic mystique of left-of-center radicals born back in the Reagan era. You’d recognize her by the FREE TIBET or PRO CHOICE bumper stickers on her Volvo. How they didn’t kill each other I never knew. But they joked endlessly, often ribbing each other in ways others would see as fodder for a wild and wooly episode on TV divorce court. Whatever they did worked—they obviously loved each other to death.

  “You both knew Marta,” I said.

  “But murder?” Vinnie’s question hung in the air. “I was surprised and all—what with the suicide—but murder?”

  Marcie was shaking her head. “Now that you mention it…”

  Vinnie groaned. “Oh, God, not a conspiracy theory.”

  She punched him in the arm. “Be that as it may, I think we need to look…”

  I held up my hand, traffic cop style. “Wait, you two, wait. This is my case. Nobody’s talking murder yet. Nobody. And the only reason I’m bringing it up—even though I know I’ll regret it since you’ll both be rapping on my chamber door—is because you both are on my list of people to interview.”

  Triumphant, Vinnie said, “I’ve always wanted to be a suspect in a murder.”

  “A suspect, all right,” his wife added.

  “You got a minute to talk?” I asked. I’d already taken my laptop from my carrying case, positioned it on the table—I rarely left home without it—and ran my fingers over the keyboard. Marcie and Vinnie, seemingly startled into seriousness by the presence of the electronic age, stared at it. I detected the natural nervousness that always resulted when questioning anyone about a—well, maybe a murder. I recalled the looks from my days as a patrolman back in New York. The humor abruptly stopped as Marcie decorously folded her hands in her lap, ignoring her lunch, while Vinnie scratched his head, eyes narrowed, as though I’d asked him a perplexing question.

  I looked from one to the other. “When was the last time you saw Marta?”

  Quiet a second, they looked at each other as though waiting for the other to answer. Vinnie spoke up. “A short time before her death. Late August sometime. Just before classes started, I think. Right, Marcie?”

  She nodded. “Yes, we were really busy with school meetings but getting ready for visitors—folks coming for a party for Vinnie’s mom. We asked Marta to help us get the house ready. You know, housekeeping.”

  “Anything odd about her?”

  They both shook their heads vigorously. Marcie glanced first at Vinnie. “If anything, she acted the way she always did. I mean, we’d hired her before, of course—sooner or later, everyone in town hired her—but she could be…difficult.”

  “Difficult?”

  “You know—tell you what she thought, even if you didn’t ask her. If you left a letter out, she wasn’t happy until she read it.”

  Vinnie added, “A snoop.”

  “We didn’t talk much, but she seemed in a good mood. I remember it made me nervous—she actually sang as she worked.”

  “In fact,” Vinnie added, “I remember she said something about traveling. A trip planned…somewhere.”

  “No signs of depression?”

  They both shook their heads. Vinnie went on. “Far from it. Of course, this was before she learned her old friend had died.”

  Marcie broke in, “She did mention Joshua Jennings, though. Pissed off that he’d ended their friendship. But I remember now that she said something strange—he would eventually come to his senses and return to Farmington.”

  Vinnie continued, “Later on I heard she was bothered—really bothered—when Joshua Jennings died. Stunned, in fact. But I didn’t see her at all during that time.”

  “Who told you?”

  Marcie spoke up. “I did. I bumped into her friend Hattie, you know, the one she always traveled with. She told me Marta was in the dumps. I think I said I wanted to call Marta for some fall housekeeping—clear some summer stuff out—and Hattie said, well, good luck with that. Marta had slipped into a deep funk because of Joshua dying.”

  “Did Hattie say anything else?”

  “No. Hattie didn’t make too big a deal out of it. She wasn’t depressed, I can tell you. ‘You know how Marta is,’ she hissed. ‘If it ain’t a melodrama, it ain’t anything on TV.’ A week later Marta was dead.”

  I summarized their comments onto the laptop, while they watched. My fingers stopped. “Were you surprised at the suicide?”

  A long silence. Then Marcie spoke softly. “I hoped it was an accident. Frankly, I didn’t care for her—too judgmental. She refused to dust my framed letter from Obama….”
/>   “A form letter, autopen signature,” said Vinnie.

  Marcie frowned. “Whatever.” A deep sigh. “She was happy at our house. I can picture her beaming as she straightened out the rec room, getting the beds ready for our visiting nephews. I hate the idea that she chose her death.”

  “But her later funk…”

  “If she got down, it was well—normal. I was sad when I learned Joshua had died. I liked him. We all liked the old man, but he was frail, sick. He’d become a hermit at the end, cranky, determined to recapture a life he’d lived a half-century before by moving to his old college town. Old people die.”

  “I agree,” Vinnie added. “I couldn’t see her committing suicide. I always thought she just fell.”

  “The police classified it a suicide.”

  “Why would anyone murder her?” Marcie’s voice was too loud. “Really? What was there to be gained? Nothing.” She took a bite out of her salad, sat back, finished with the subject.

  Hearing a voice behind me, I swiveled and faced another young professor, Peter Canterbury, as he approached us.

  “This looks serious.” He pulled up a chair.

  He was sipping orange juice from a container, the straw bent. A lawyer—and proud of it. Peter taught government and pre-law, and was closer to Vinnie and Marcie than to me. A little too chummy, I always thought—that, and a competitive streak that wasn’t attractive. Marcie liked him—he’d been a scholarship boy who’d pushed his way up. His father was a disaffected sixties hippie, a potter and weaver who had no loyalty to the woman he’d married. A bright student, Peter earned a Wesleyan scholarship, a law degree from New England Law in Springfield.

  We’d started an off-and-on friendship some time back, both of us single and wandering, but most times we just didn’t click. He was a grasping man, and I came to see him as a game-player. A lean, hungry man, and you know what Shakespeare said about such souls. In fact, he’d played King Lear in a college production of the classic. We’d applauded him but suggested he stick to law. He wasn’t good.

  As single guys we sometimes hung out together, going to Wolf Pack hockey games in downtown Hartford. We’d drive to Foxboro for a Patriots game. That kind of thing. He dragged me once to Hooters but I balked—too much raw hunger, beer suds, and stalled pickups in the parking lot.