by Vu Tran
“And if she doesn’t come?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. For now, start with the hotel room.”
The brothers approached me, my cue to embark on the job I’d been given.
When I stood, Junior gestured at me with yet another unlit cigarette between his fingers. “My father would not want me telling you this, but you should know that it was Miss Hong who pleaded for you. In fact, she promised him that if he left you alone, she would never leave him. She swore her life on it. For you. That is the only reason my father’s men didn’t come to your doorstep months ago.”
He lit the cigarette, turned from me, and expelled a profound cloud of smoke into the morning air.
He had spent our first meeting convincing me that I had no business being with Suzy. This time I was the only person who could save her.
That feeling rose in me again, though now I understood what it was, why it distressed me so. The job I’d been given was to be my punishment.
5
THE ENTRANCE TO THE CORONADO HOTEL was canopied by a blanket of lights so brilliant, even at noon, that I imagined it singeing my hair. Two valet attendants, bow ties choking their necks, stood glumly below the raised lance of a giant bronze conquistador who welcomed guests. Like the other casinos downtown, the Coronado revealed its age during the day, with its big-bulbed signs flashing sixties glamour, its flat crusty walls a world away from the mirrored splendor on the Strip.
When the brothers dropped me off, the kid handed me my duffel bag of clothes through the car window along with my credit card and my badge, which he pulled out of his own pocket. “Don’t lose yourself, Mr. Officer,” he said. “We’ll find you.” He winked at me as the tinted window swallowed up his face. Slowly, their hearse of a Lexus rolled down the street.
I walked at once to the parking garage where my Chrysler, as promised, stood pristinely in lot 4B. I checked the undercarriage and could find nothing suspicious. To my surprise, the door was unlocked. Inside, my Glock lay where I’d left it in the glove compartment, and my backup five-shot was still nestled comfortably in its holster beneath the driver’s seat. Except for the seat having been adjusted for its recent driver, everything else seemed normal. I pocketed the Glock after checking the clip.
At the registration desk, I waited in line behind an overweight family besieged by luggage and cigarette smoke, the two parents puffing away as their three snickering sons took turns punching each other in the arm. Twenty minutes later I reached the desk, which stood before a mural of the two resident shows, some white-haired comedian I vaguely knew and a magic act involving a python and exotic birds. The girl gave me my room, reserved under my full name, and the credit card the brothers had returned to me matched their records. When I asked whether a Hong Thi Pham or a Suzy Ruen had checked in, she claimed she couldn’t divulge that information, so I asked for directions to their gift shop. It took me another fifteen minutes to find the shop, the clerk’s directions as helpful as a compass in a maze. For about thirty bucks, I bought an obscenely expensive pack of cigarettes, a razor and shaving cream, and some ibuprofen.
“Don’t be taking that with alcohol, baby,” the small black lady behind the counter said with an admonishing smile. “Bad for the tummy.”
I must have looked as worn-out as I felt.
My room was on the twelfth floor and looked clean and inoffensive: a queen bed, a private desk and loveseat, framed prints of Old World maps and Spanish galleons, maroon velvet drapes that covered an entire wall like a theater curtain. There were other stabs at luxury, like the gilt mirror above the bed and the glass doorknobs, but flop down on the stiff mattress and sniff the vague odor of bleach and cigarettes and you knew how many stars the hotel was.
A door connected my room to Suzy’s. It seemed fantastical to me, a portal into another world. I tried the knob. It was locked. I knocked several times and heard nothing but the heater blowing in my room.
Next thing I did was place the Glock in the drawer of the nightstand, right on top of the Bible. I went to the notepad on the desk. Suzy, I wrote, I’m next door in room 1213. I’m here to help you. Please let me. Robert.
I stepped out into the hallway and slid the paper under her door. For a moment, I wondered if it was possible she had forgotten my handwriting.
In the bathroom, the harsh fluorescent lights emitted heat. I shaved, showered, and changed into a pair of jeans and a white button-down shirt that I’d only ever worn to church with Suzy.
I brewed myself a pot of coffee and popped three ibuprofen before sitting down with a cigarette and everything Junior had given me.
The cash in the manila envelope was all new hundred-dollar bills, which I pocketed. The cell phone looked brand-new too, a disposable. I checked the outgoing and incoming calls and saw that the phone had not yet been used.
I looked again at the surveillance image Junior had given me. Seeing it this time, with only myself as judge, reminded me of how enraged and terrified I was that night. How entwined those two emotions could be.
I thought of Junior’s story about Suzy and the episodes she used to have with me. Sonny and I, it seemed, shared an affliction. We were in love with Suzy and afraid of her at the same time, and though I’d like to think he and I went to different places once our marriages went bad, I couldn’t help wondering where I would have gone had Suzy stayed with me a little longer. I’d arrested plenty of people over the years who had violated restraining orders, who’d hunted down ex-lovers and begged for love with threats, their fists, a gun. At that point there’s no difference between a plea and a threat, between loving someone and hurting them. At that point, love doesn’t matter.
My parents came to mind, all those years of them openly resenting each other for reasons never explained to me. My father died when I was sixteen, two years after he abandoned my mother for an identical woman: same age and height, same dark curly hair, same everything except she wasn’t my mother. When he was dying in the hospital and the cancer in his lungs had muted his once sonorous voice, I asked him why he left her, and he said that love just dies sometimes, and when it does, you can’t save it anymore than you can revive a corpse. The words rasped in his throat, but I could still hear his confidence, his certainty. He had never lost it, not for a second. I suppose I had always admired him for this trait. Everything else about him was cold and cruel.
I thought again of all the reasons Suzy had to leave me and wondered how many Sonny had given her.
One thing I was sure of: when and if I found her, delivering her was out of the question. They couldn’t possibly expect me to discover the real reasons why she left, as I surely would, and then just hand her over like a lost puppy. I suspected Junior already anticipated I’d feel this way, which unsettled me all the more. Why would he give me the chance to disobey him yet again?
Other half-formed questions flitted through my head. I dropped my cigarette in the coffee just to hear the satisfying hiss.
On the room telephone, I dialed Tommy, my old partner during my time in narcotics. He was a lieutenant now and had been working homicide for the last decade. Before I met Suzy, we used to go out drinking and I’d spend all night watching him start fights and chase ass. Nowadays he played the devoted husband and father, something he once drunkenly swore he’d never do, not even if life put a gun to his head.
“Yeah?” his dull voice muttered over the line. His idea of answering the phone was to communicate his displeasure at being called.
“Tommy. It’s me.”
“Where’ve you been hiding? You were MIA at Laura’s birthday a few weeks ago.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I still have her present, actually. I’ll give it to you next time I see you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I got a favor to ask. That call you put in for me to Vegas Metro six months back? On a Sonny Van Nguyen? I need a narrative on one of his assault charges. Incident at a casino. He threw a chair at some guy.”
“This again?”
“It’s N-G-U—”
“I know how to spell Nguyen, Bob. We live in California, for fuck’s sake.”
“Two more things. Can you run a tag for me?” I read him the plate for Suzy’s Toyota. “I’m also curious about priors on 2121 E. Warm Springs Road, 89119. Anything in the last six months.”
“Jesus, you running a federal investigation?”
“Just some questions that need answering. You still have that Vegas contact, right?”
“You know, man, if you want to play detective, just apply to be one again.”
“Look, I know you’re busy, but if you can do this asap for me, I’ll owe you forever. I’ll call you back in an hour.”
“Yeah, yeah. Get out of the house, man. Go visit an old friend. Call him for something other than a favor.”
He hung up. Peevish and sensitive as always. I hadn’t told anyone yet about Suzy moving to Vegas and remarrying. But Tommy knew something was up. He knew five months ago and either didn’t want to pry or didn’t care enough to. Probably the latter. The world is full of people who care but never quite care enough.
It was half past noon. How many hours would I have to wait? How many was I willing to wait? I tried to imagine Suzy’s face once she saw me. I’m here to help you, I’d say and put up my hands like someone surrendering, like I’d always done at some point in our arguments. I have money saved, I’d say. We can jump in a taxi and get out of town, away from this desert, back to California and back to the ocean, and then we can go wherever you want to go and forget everything that happened here and you won’t have to say a single thing to me except yes I’ll go with you. Was this what she had wanted to hear all those years ago? Could she already be there next door, sitting in an identical room, on an identical bed, staring —as I was—at the door that separated our adjoined rooms?
I fell back on the bed, letting my head sink into the pillows.
Some faraway sound startled me awake an hour later. I jumped out of bed and went to the adjoining door and tried knocking a few more times. I put my ear to the door, as though waiting for an echo.
A glass of water cleared my head a bit, and I called Tommy back.
“Yeah, I got your info,” he said, his voice less irritable now. “No priors on the address you gave me. And no activity on the tag. Sorry if that disappoints you. That casino incident, however, is a little less boring.”
“Go ahead.”
I heard him sip some hot coffee while a baby started crying in the background. I’d caught him on his day off. He was probably still in his pajamas and sitting in his kitchen with the morning newspaper. I could see Laura sitting across from him, trying to nurse the baby.
“Looks like your guy Nguyen was playing poker downtown two years ago and got into an argument with another player at the table. White twentysomething male who tossed a hundred-dollar chip at his chest and called him a Chinaman. Very creative. Anyway, Nguyen went at the kid and tried to strangle him. Kid had fifty pounds on him but apparently didn’t fare very well. Casino security rushed in to break things up and managed to pry Nguyen off him, but he got loose and picked up a chair and flung it at the kid’s head. Knocked him out cold. Kid was fine but suffered a mild concussion, cut to the head, bruises to the neck. Your guy was held by security until Vegas Metro came and arrested him.”
“The casino blacklist him? Which one was it?”
“Let’s see . . .” I could hear him flipping through his notes. “The Coronado. I’ve been there actually. Years ago. One of those old downtown joints on Fremont Street. Ain’t no models waitressing there. And yeah, he got himself a criminal trespass. Immediate arrest if seen on the premises. That goes the same, by the way, for his son.”
“His son?”
“Yeah. A Jonathan Van Nguyen. Twenty-eight years old. Runs his daddy’s restaurants. He showed up during the melee and tangled with security. One of the reasons his father got free and was able to throw the chair. The casino didn’t press any charges on the son, but they did ban the both of them. Anyway, Nguyen Senior pled out and got two years’ probation, which actually expires in three months. I doubt he wants to make trouble any time soon. If he’s been throwing chairs at people lately, he’s probably doing it in private.”
Tommy let my silence go for a few seconds before saying, “Exciting enough for you?”
“That’s what I needed.”
“Sure that’s all you need?”
“Of course.”
“Should I be asking you anything?”
“Sounds like you already are. I’m just curious about the guy.”
“Uh-huh.” I could hear him nodding doubtfully at me. “We should have a drink at McGee’s next week. I’m off Wednesday night. You free?”
“I’ll call you. Thanks again, man. Really.”
“Bob . . . ” he said soberly. “Call me, right?”
“Of course.” I hung up.
I took a swig of cold coffee but spat it back into the cup, retching a little as I smelled the cigarette still floating there. I rinsed the cup and my mouth in the sink, then poured myself a new cup. I downed it in three gulps.
I put on my jacket and stuffed its pockets with the cell phone, the surveillance photo, and my badge, which now felt unfamiliar and useless.
In the hallway, I knocked on 1215 and waited five seconds before moving on.
The hotel was lined with mirrors: along the hallway, in the elevators, across the walls of the casino floor, which appeared much bigger and deeper than it really was. I saw myself everywhere I walked. I saw every person multiplied, refracted like a kaleidoscope of faces and bodies, a constant illusion of life so that this place never felt empty, even when it was.
I wandered through the throng of afternoon gamblers, hunched over table games amid a cigarette haze, the air alive with their chatter and the melodic jangling of slot machines. Nearly every dealer I passed was Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese—just as Junior had said. I wondered how many of them had actually come from somewhere far away, and how many were right at home.
The poker room stood in a lonely corner of the casino—an open space sectioned off by a wooden rail. A few onlookers were leaning on the rail and watching the action. Only half of the eight tables were occupied at the moment, populated by college-age dudes in baseball caps and sunglasses, their white-haired elders in plaid and khakis, and the solitary middle-aged woman with her purse in her lap. The place was like some sad foodless cafeteria, fluorescent lights shining down on worn green felt and flimsy chairs, on pale faces staring hungrily at one another behind their towers of poker chips. Sonny must have spent hours on end at these tables, drinking coffee and cheap booze, stepping outside the rail every half hour for a smoke break. Hardly the high roller I had imagined.
I took a seat at the bar nearby and ordered myself a beer and lit a cigarette. For the first time since pulling up to my apartment the previous night, I felt at ease. Neither Sonny nor his son could touch me here. At least not yet. What gave me pause was that Suzy had apparently chosen this place with the same thing in mind. She must have had a very good reason for not wanting to be found, for holing up every week in the one place in town that could protect her.
The bartender served me my beer. “Got the good juice tonight, brother?” He had slicked grayish hair and a sincere Latin accent. He wore his maroon vest and bow tie as proudly as a soldier.
“Don’t gamble.”
“Smart man then.”
“Not smart. Just unlucky.”
“Everybody think they unlucky. Even lucky people say they unlucky.”
“We all complain, don’t we?”
“Not me, brother. Vegas been good to me.”
I nodded for him and his stubbornly winning smile. “Anything exciting ever happen over there?”
“The poker room? What you mean, exciting?”
“I don’t know—people getting into fights. Getting thrown out.”
He looked over at the room and shrugged, rummaging through his
Rolodex of memories with his hands on the bar. “Nah, I don’t remember nothing like that. People lose and yell at each other, yeah. Sometime they come over here and yell at me too.”
“No one ever gets caught cheating or anything?”
“Nah. Other gamblers, sure, but not poker players. I been working at casinos in Cali and Reno too. Poker players are honest, brother. They wanna win your money, not steal it. They too smart and proud for that, know what I mean?”
“I guess I’ve watched too many Westerns.”
He chuckled. “I from Columbia. People bring guns to go gamble. Here in Vegas—people cheat you, but they cheat you honestly.” He let that sink in, then patted the bar genially as he walked off to see to another customer. He was a service provider indeed. How often did desperation trudge up to his bar and beg for a drink and a dose of his ready optimism?
A tapping noise made me turn my head. Nearby, an obese guy in an oversize T-shirt sat between two slot machines, a plastic bucket of coins in his lap and a hand on each machine, tapping them like tribal drums. Every now and then, he stopped to wipe his face with a towel. I wondered if he knew it was daylight outside.
Around me, the air felt artificial. Time was artificial here too. No windows or clocks. No sense of progression outside of what you gain and what you lose. That thought made me anxious, like hours had passed without me knowing it.
I finished my drink and left a tip for the bartender and pulled out another cigarette for the long walk to the elevator.
Back in my room, I turned on the TV and stretched out on the bed with my shoes on. It was a little past two. I realized I hadn’t eaten since the highway stop at McDonald’s the night before. I muted the TV, perused the room-service menu, and reached for the phone. A woman’s voice greeted me. But I hung up on her.
A door had opened in the next room.
I grabbed an empty glass off the nightstand and rushed to put it against the adjoining door. Nothing but silence for a long time. Then a door clicked shut. Was someone arriving or leaving? I stepped out into the empty hallway. I went to put my ear against 1215.