No Good to Cry (7 page)

A hard, steely voice sliced into my sentence. “Well, I am.”

Hank spoke rashly. “Is that why he was sent to Long Lane for four months?”

JD waited a bit, shot Hank a contemptuous look, then turned back to me. “He's the cop, right?”

“State police,” I said. “Soon to be.”

“I heard you two might come snooping around.”

I smiled widely. “Big Nose. Big mouth.”

For the first time he gave us a genuine smile. “You got that right.”

I leaned forward. “But look, JD, we're not here to harm him. Just the opposite. I don't have any proof, but I believe his father. Who believes his son. Who, I guess, believes you are his son's alibi. The man strikes me as an on-the-level guy.”

“He's an asshole.”

“You said that already.”

“He thinks we're thugs here.” His arm shot out, moved around the room.

“Are you?” Hank asked.

“VietBoyz. A social club.”

Hank wasn't happy. “Rumor has it you extort money, traffic weed, terrorize local shopkeepers.”

JD rolled his tongue into the corner of his mouth and regarded Hank slowly. “There ain't a gun here. You can search the damn place.”

“I didn't say there was.”

“Saigon ain't a VietBoyz member.”

“Neglected to hand in the application?” asked Hank.

Again JD watched him closely. “I don't know if I like you.”

“Hank,” I prodded, “leave it alone.”

“That's right,” JD said to me. “Maybe you should educate your
boy
better.”

Hank fumed. I laid a hand on his elbow. Calm down, I nodded at him.

Something crashed in the back room, yet JD barely moved his head.

“We got company?” I asked.

“Rats,” JD snickered. “This old building attracts them.”

“Anything I should know about Simon?” I asked him.

He considered my question seriously. “No!” Then, he confided, “I got enough trouble keeping my fuckin' soldiers loyal.”

Immediately he seemed to regret his words, tightening his mouth, looking away.

“What?” From Hank.

But JD was shaking his head. “I told that loser Ardolino the boys was
here
at the time of the…assault. Here.”

“And he didn't believe you?”

“What do you think? Another asshole.”

“Am I supposed to believe you?”

“I don't care what you believe.”

Enough of this cat-and-mouse game, which he seemed to enjoy. I stood suddenly and JD, startled, rolled back in his chair, a hand nervously touching a back pocket. “Just tell Simon I gotta talk to him. Otherwise he's gonna be hauled in for a crime he didn't commit.”

“Will do.” Laconic, clipped.

Then, surprising me, JD leaned forward and thrust out his hand. A quick, nervous fist-bump. I glimpsed jagged letters on his knuckles. He stood up. “Later, dude.” He turned away, but I noticed a vein on the side of his neck—admittedly shielded by the colorful tattoo unwittingly stolen from a Kandinsky canvas—was throbbing. I'd made him nervous.

His eyes shot to the open front door. A burst of laughter, teenage boyish
ha ha ha
, high and goofy, came at us. As I turned, two young boys darted into the room, rolling against each other. But they sobered up immediately.

Saigon Tran and Frankie Croix.

“JD,” Simon yelled.

“Christ,” Frankie sputtered and looked back toward the street.

Simon's savvy look took in Hank and me. He stepped backward, colliding with Frankie who'd shuffled his feet, rattled.

“Simon,” I said in as quiet a voice as I could muster. “Your dad…”

A mistake on my part. Anger flushed his face as he swiveled away, and Frankie, leaning into his side, swore under his breath.

“I want to help,” I began. “My name is Rick Van Lam.”

But Simon was staring over my shoulder, past JD who'd taken a step closer to the boys.

“What?” I asked.

Hank nudged me. “Turn around.”

Behind JD stood three souls who'd left the back room and now positioned themselves, shoulder to shoulder, in a tight line. They'd materialized so quietly they could have been ghosts.

Di dem co ngay gap ma
. If you walk out in darkness, you can run into ghosts.

I flinched, startled by the trio. An older Vietnamese guy, perhaps mid-twenties, a ferocious scowl on his face. A barrel-chested white guy probably the same age with a red florid face and small marble eyes, an X tattooed on his forehead. And a slender Vietnamese girl who looked thirteen but was probably older. The white guy's look screamed ex-con, an icy glare made more menacing by the pale green dagger tattooed under his left eye. The Vietnamese guy was skinny, wiry, a head shorter than the white guy, with slicked-back hair that shined as though he'd shellacked it.

The two men glanced at each other, the beefy guy grunting. Both stared at me, and none too friendly.

At my side Hank was making a whistling noise, which I couldn't interpret. The young girl, a kewpie-doll face with kohl-rimmed eyes and a slash of bright crimson on her lips, was nervously looking at JD.

“Out of here,” Simon roared. “What the fuck?”

Frankie had already turned toward the open door.

I started to say something, but it was JD who surprised me as he yelled out to the two boys. “Wait. Don't fuckin' move. You gotta…”

But he stopped as Frankie darted outside and Simon, close behind him, grabbed the door, kicked the brick away, pulled at the knob, and slammed it shut. With a crashing sound, as though he'd knocked it from the hinges.

“Shit,” JD bellowed. “The dumb kid thinks everybody is a goddamn enemy.”

I waited a heartbeat. “That's because he doesn't know who his friends are.”

Chapter Seven

Jimmy wasn't happy. Or maybe he was the happiest he'd been in years.

Released from Hartford Hospital but convalescing, his right foot in a cast, his hip bandaged, his shoulder dislocated, his skin a patchwork of bandages and gauze, he couldn't return to his tiny studio apartment. Nor could he climb a flight of stairs. He also balked at rehab—“You walk in there and you might as well sign your death certificate”—so he was compelled to accept the compromise worked out in a conference Liz organized one night at Zeke's Old Tavern, our hangout down the street from my apartment. Liz, Gracie, Hank—and me.

The reluctant conclusion: Gracie offered to house the irascible malcontent in her first-floor apartment, tucking him into her spare back bedroom, where she could baby him, coddle him, flirt with him—my conclusion, not hers—until he was able to manage on his own. Living above Gracie, I'd be able to squire Jimmy to the doctor's appointments, to physical therapy, to the all-you-can-eat buffet at Tokyo Szechuan in Plainville.

Reluctantly he agreed.

So one afternoon Hank and I delivered a grouchy Jimmy—“Ouch. Dammit. What are you moving—a piano?”—to Gracie's, and though she fussed and complained about the extra burden that was Jimmy on a good day, she glowed. Life suddenly had a delicious tick to it.

She bubbled when she saw me in the hallway, headed out. “He's simply horrible, Rick.”

I smiled. “I know.”

“Worse than you can imagine.”

“I know.”

I sat with Jimmy in his bedroom the next morning. He looked out of place under a fluffy pink blanket. His injured foot dangled near the edge of the bed as though he were contemplating an escape route. A storeroom for Gracie's years in the entertainment world, its walls were covered with black-and-white photographs from her early adolescent days as a hoofer in gin mills in lower Broadway, her brief shining moment as part of a troop that toured Korea with Bob Hope, and her fabulous years as a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall. There were photographs of Gracie in the chorus of high-kickers, but also Gracie looking winsome yet vigorously athletic in a solo shot. Personally inscribed pictures from Jack Benny, Georgie Jessel, Red Skelton, Gracie Allen. A lavish inscription from Patti Page (
“Bumping into you at the Automat made my afternoon!! Patti”
), and a host of others whose names probably meant something decades ago but now were minor footnotes in Manhattan and Broadway histories.

But Gracie had also stuffed the room with frilly curtains and chair coverings and plaster-of-Paris tchotchkes that made the small space seem a prop room for some period costume drama. Gracie was a blunt-talking, no-nonsense woman who'd fought her battles with stage-door Johnnies. She was a woman who drank Budweiser from a bottle. “The way we did it on the road.” So the Betty Boop décor, well…surprised, but delighted us.

In that cluttered room Jimmy looked like a chunk of coal tossed willy-nilly into a splashy rainbow.

“Look at this room,” he grumbled.

“It looks like Gracie.”

“Exactly.” He squinted at a pink bow stuck onto a teddy bear on the bureau. “A piñata that exploded.”

“You need a little color in your life, Jimmy.”

“What I need is to get out of here.”

“Gracie is a generous—”

“Yeah, yeah,” he interrupted. “Mother-goddamn-Teresa herself.”

Gracie and Liz, who'd been banging around in the kitchen, walked in with trays of food: fluffy scrambled eggs, bacon, and biscuits. I helped Jimmy sit up in bed—he groaned as though I were removing a vital organ—and he gobbled down his eggs before I had a chance to take a sip of coffee.

Like a moon-besotted moth near a flame, Gracie fluttered near the bed, adjusting the blanket, trying to reposition a pillow, smoothing out the rumpled blanket, while Jimmy frowned at her. But when she pulled away, shrugging her shoulders in a gesture that suggested she'd been dealing with a jackass, his eyes followed her movements. When she turned back, repeating the same aimless reshuffling of bed linens, he seemed pleased. His eyes twinkled.

“Oh, Lord.” I directed my comment to Liz.

She was smiling back at me. “Young love.”

Jimmy eyed her closely. “You two still here?”

“Somebody has to be a chaperone,” I said.

“Maybe you should be out catching a murderer.”

I grinned. “This is more interesting.
Days of Our Lives. As the World Turns
.”

“I love them shows,” Gracie said.

I pulled my chair closer. “I do want to talk about what happened, Jimmy. Now that you're back to normal. Sort of. I know you were groggy after it happened, you didn't see much, but maybe if we talk about it…”

Jimmy looked impatient, nibbling on a flaky biscuit. “I told everything to that jackass Ardolino.”

“I know, but now, days later, perhaps…”

“Well, what do you want to know?”

“Tell me what happened. As you remember it.”

Jimmy pushed away his tray, which Gracie immediately retrieved and put on a table. Jimmy noisily squelched a pleased burp, then looked up at the ceiling as though running through the thoughts in his head. “Not much.”

I leaned forward. “Tell me about Ralph.”

“You didn't like him.”

“True. He didn't care for me either.”

“You was supposed to have lunch with us that day.”

“No, I wasn't. You invited me but I said no.”

“So rude, Rick. Where did you learn your manners? Anyway, Ralph had this mean hangover like he always did. He was in a bad mood. ‘What the hell's your problem?' I said to him, which set him off. He was a pain in the ass.”

“Jimmy…”

“Don't interrupt. I already said you was rude.” He smiled at Liz as though expecting her to agree with him—to provide testimony that her former husband was, indeed, a lout. “I wanted Mexican but he says Burger King. Maybe he wanted one of those paper crowns they give you.”

“Anything happen at the restaurant?” Liz asked.

“Other than indigestion?” Gracie added.

Jimmy ignored that. “Let me think. Yeah. He argued with the kid at the cash register. I don't know why. Maybe missing a pickle from his dollar-menu hamburger. I wasn't paying attention to a lot of his gabbing. I was thinking—I gotta get new friends.”

I went on. “The witness, Maria Lombardo from the pastry shop, says she thought the two of you were arguing.”

“That may be. I don't know. We argued about everything because…he didn't understand that I'm always right. All I know is that all of a sudden I heard this rushing from behind. Like Indians whooping it up.”

“Do you think someone was aiming for Ralph? Targeted?”

“Naw, I see some kid shoving Ralph, coming alongside and pushing. But Ralph ain't one to stand for that nonsense. I mean, his street instincts kicked in right away, and he hit back. The other one just stood there—like he didn't believe old people could fight back. The punk slugs Ralph. He falls into the post. I hear him groan.” A deep intake of breath. “I guess he died then.” He shivered. “Christ, Rick, all of this took just seconds.”

“Lord,” whispered Gracie.

“Did you get a look at them?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Naw. Hoods on their heads, their backs to me, the big one grappling with Ralph. I mean, it knocked me off-balance. I didn't know what the hell was happening. I panicked, stepped back, my foot tripped on the curb, and I went flying.”

“When you were hit by that car.”

“Next thing I know I'm a pile of blood and broken bones on the curb.” He waved a hand in the air. “I must have passed out. The rest is a blur.”

“A witness spotted two guys in black hoodies running up Sisson. Around the corner. One was an Asian kid. The other maybe white. That's a problem…”

Jimmy spoke over my words, “I know, I know. That fool Ardolino brought me these mug shots of those two boys fresh from Long Lane juvie. He got a bug about them boys. Same M.O., he says. What? Knocking people over? Nobody else does such crap in town? ‘The knockout game.' That's what he called it. A game? Like Scrabble for thugs?”

“There's a lot in the news about kids hitting old people in the head—for sport.”

“Yeah, so says Ardolino. ‘Take a look, Gaddy. These the boys who did it?' I tell him I didn't see them, but he keeps at me. He points to the Asian kid, and I say I don't know. Christ, pictures of those two boys—they look like confirmation pictures, little junior-high boys surprised to be facing a police photographer's camera.”

“Ardolino is convinced the boys are Frankie Croix and Simon Tran, given their track record and their recent return home from juvie.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no. I can't say.” He stared into my face. “You're involved, right? A Vietnamese kid?”

“Simon's dad believes his son wasn't involved.”

Jimmy's voice was grim. “Well, it's murder. Maybe not planned, but Ralph died.”

“He wants me on the case—to clear his boy.”

Jimmy considered my words, his head nodding. “Well, maybe a conflict of interest, no?” He scratched his head. “Your partner”—he thumped his chest—“is the victim of a brutal attack and you run off to represent the alleged criminal? Real nice, Rick.”

“I don't want an innocent boy brought up on serious charges, Jimmy.”

He sucked in his breath. “Well, me either.”

“Nothing may come of it. For one thing, I can't talk to the kid.”

Liz was watching me closely. “Rick, you're gonna get emotionally drawn into this.”

I spoke too quickly. “Spoken like a psychologist.”

An edge to her voice. “Who happens to know how you react to things.” She hesitated. “Now, I'm not saying that's a bad thing, Rick…it's part of your character.”

I smiled. “True.” I shrugged. “Sometimes.”

Jimmy was listening to her. “Liz, do you hear yourself? Rick's a big boy. You ain't got him on your couch.”

My phone jangled. “Hank.” A pause. “Save me.” Hank's voice loud and clear. “I'm outside on the sidewalk.”

In seconds he bounded into the room.

“You look alive.” Hank's first words to Jimmy. He extended his hand.

“You sound disappointed.”

Hank punched him in the shoulder, and Jimmy winced, though he winked at Liz. “Somebody arrest this cop.”

Impatient, I nudged Hank. “Okay, what did you find out?”

Hank saluted me. “Yes, sir. Task completed.” His gaze took in Liz and Gracie and finally rested on Jimmy. “Sir Lancelot's aide-de-camp here, fresh from buying a happy-go-lucky boy named Big Nose two McDonald's breakfast specials.”

Gracie was mouthing the words “Big Nose,” with wonder in her expression.

I explained. “Big Nose is a sometime visitor to the gang headquarters of VietBoyz, sort of friend of Simon a.k.a. Saigon Tran, and the one who got this ball rolling. He's Anh or Roger, but the world knows him as Big Nose because of God's cruel experiment with his facial physiognomy. Big Nose is also a happy chatterer and sixteen-year-old gossip. I asked Hank to get the dope on some characters we met at gang headquarters. Not only their leader, JD—Joey Dinh—but three souls who appeared, as if by magic, standing in a sort of police lineup.”

Hank was nodding happily, itching to talk. “Big Nose resisted but once he began talking, mouth stuffed with a sausage burger, home fries dropped unceremoniously into his lap, a pile of ketchup packets filling the table, he told me the story. Then I called his father, Willie, who filled in some of the blanks. But Big Nose also gave me the name of an ex-gang member, a guy who broke away, married, fled to Springfield. The guy knew exactly what these guys are all about. I could write a book.”

“And?”

“The Russell Street storefront is not exactly the Chamber of Commerce.”

Hank settled in, sitting on the edge of the bed. “First off, this JD is an interesting soul. He's been wandering the streets since he was a kid, petty crime, shoplifting, his own stint at Long Lane. Supposedly a white crack-addict mommy who headed west after he was born, leaving him with a boozy daddy, a guy named Henry Dinh, a notorious con artist. He lived in ramshackle tenements in the north end of Hartford, later at the Dutch Point Housing Project, and his daddy used to beat up little JD so fiercely that DCF stepped in and put the boy in foster care. It didn't take. Back with his father, he was kicked out after a bloody brawl. A year later a frozen body was found under the underpass of I-91 near the garbage heaps. Henry Dinh, dead for days. JD became a wanderer. A charismatic personality. People like him, it seems, or the rebel kids do, and he put together this band of disaffected loners. VietBoyz. Though not all are Vietnamese. Some Viet Ching—you know, Vietnamese-born Chinese. White ex-cons. The police are always pulling him in, but he's got the touch, ends up back on Russell Street.”

“The others?” I prodded.

Hank deliberated. “I described the three people we met to Big Nose and then to Huong, the guy living in Springfield, though I was so traumatized it's a wonder I remember anything.”

“So says a state cop,” Jimmy broke in.

Hank grinned. “Be nice, Jimmy. Someday I'll arrest you for speeding.”

“Hank,” I prodded.

“Okay. The Vietnamese guy is Ming Tinh. They call him Mickey. A meth addict, says Big Nose, ready to fight, sometimes found filling his pockets with candy from the CVS on Prospect, tough guy, mean, the shopkeepers give him lots of space. He comes out of New York. Viet Ching. Tattoo of BTK on his rib cage. His father was Vuong Ky Tinh. Vick, so-called. An enforcer with Born to Kill. Machine-gun happy, supposedly one of the guys who sprayed that funeral in Jersey with an assault rifle. Shot to death in a shootout with the Feds.”

Liz shivered. “Good God.”