No Good to Cry (14 page)

“But your mother. You call her.”

“Because she's helpless. And because she feels guilty because she didn't protect her kids from”—his eyes danced wickedly—“school.”

“But you're here”—I waved my hand around the room—“here at Trinity getting ready for a comfortable professional life. Because of your father and mother.”

“How trite you are, Rick Van Lam. Real Fresh-Off-the-Boat thinking on your part. Do you think that I'm
that
superficial? I don't want to be around my father but not because he's a grease monkey who wants the best for his kids.”

“But that's what it sounds like.”

He sat back, smug, his head tilted up. “I haven't told you the missing part of the Tran puzzle. Yes, he pushed us—continues to push Hazel and Wilson. And even Simon. And he's made them so helpless they follow the orders of any Nazi they meet. Frankie Trailer Park or—or Judd the Crud. But I realized that Pop had changed when he actually got what he wanted. When that wall was filled with trophies and merit badges and imprimatur from the Governor of Connecticut—when the world bestowed gold dust on his progeny, well, he…changed.”

“Meaning?”

A long, deliberate pause, deadly. “Simple. Real simple. He got
jealous
of us. His own kids. I realized that one day by the look on his face when I was feted in the
Hartford
Courant
. My face next to a fat Rotarian handing me a scholarship. The world loved his high-achieving kids, and it left him behind. He got”—for the first time Michael's voice quivered and his hands shook—“jealous. We had something he could never have. That was the day I realized a whole part of him resented us. That was the day I ran away from home. Do you see why I let Simon crawl into a fetal position on my sofa?” He actually pointed to the sofa I sat on. “He needs me. And that's so—unfortunate.”

Chapter Fourteen

The door to Gracie's apartment was open, the TV blaring. Inside, sitting on the sofa, his injured leg up on the coffee table, one arm cradling the remote control, Jimmy kept his eyes glued to the set. Behind him stood Hank, his phone gripped in his right hand, a look of utter wonder on his face. As I sat down next to Jimmy who was grunting at me without looking over, I started to say, “Jimmy, I need…” His free hand flew into my face.

“Quiet, dammit.” He pointed at the TV and mumbled, “That damned fool, Jesse.”

He was watching
Days of Our Lives
.

Last week when I'd stopped in, he'd been positioned in that same spot, his leg suspended, and the minute Gracie left the room he'd whispered to me, “Can you believe this shit?”

“What?”

“Look. All these pretty people yelling at each other and then locking eyes as if someone told them the world was coming to an end. Baloney, all of it.”

Gracie had heard him because his stage whisper was loud enough to drown out the TV. “Jimmy,” she'd explained, “these are people in the thralls of an emotional…”

“Yeah, yeah, crisis. We had this talk, you and me.”

“When I was a Rockette in Manhattan”—Jimmy's eyebrows had shot up and his eyes popped—“I was offered a walk-on part in
All My Children
, but my dance life was more important.” She'd pointed to the TV. “I could have been a soap opera star.” She'd dramatically thrown back her head and her bonnet of white curls shifted. Her hand patted them in a deliberate stage move, as though she were being watched from the balcony.

At the time Jimmy had caught my eye, a look suggesting there was no guiding light strong enough to lead Gracie anywhere. Or—enough days in anyone's life.

They'd bickered back and forth. The War to End All Wars—Liz's description of Gracie and Jimmy's wonderful tit-for-tat exchanges, an old married couple's sniping that skirted the edge of meanness—or kindness, in fact—but ended with Gracie rushing into the kitchen to take the pan of walnut brownies out of the oven because she knew Jimmy didn't like them too chewy.

Now, a week later, he'd gone over to the dark side—to Hank's horror, if I could judge by the look on his face. If Gracie allowed afternoon time dedicated to her “shows,” as she termed them, hell or high water, Jimmy, the reluctant captive who'd graduated from his bed to the living room, suddenly was entranced by the lives of the folks at Salem University Hospital. “Look, look, check out that creep. People don't got sense these days, Rick.”

“You're telling me,” I answered.

He pointed a finger at me. “What are you trying to say?” He never took his eyes off the TV. “You know better.”

Then we smiled at each other. Jimmy was on the mend.

Hank scurried into the kitchen to help Gracie carry out a tray of coffee and cookies.

“Gracie,” he said, grinning, “you've turned into a real girl scout with all these cookies.”

From the sofa Jimmy made a grunting sound.

“You know, I haven't baked anything in years.” Gracie fluttered about, nearly toppling the plate of cookies. “My first batch were like hockey pucks.”

Jimmy looked over. “That was obvious to me right away.”

“Yet you ate every one I gave you.” Gracie tilted her head impishly. “You
gnawed
on those cookies.”

“I'm a polite guest.” His eyes on the TV. “What am I supposed to do—starve?”

Jimmy pulled himself up in the seat, tugging at the sweatshirt that rode up his tremendous belly, adjusting his foot as he let out a disturbing “Oww.” A task punctuated by heaving and sighing and a scattershot of “goddamn” and “Christ Almighty man.”

“Hurts?” I asked him, smiling.

He frowned at me. “This is a prison here”—he shot a glance at Gracie but there was merriment in his eyes—“and even the visitors are hell.”

“I can't do this alone,” she'd whispered to me. “It's like pushing a water buffalo upstream.”

“You got an attractive warden.” Hank pointed at Gracie, who beamed.

Jimmy eyed him. “And just why are you here today, Hank?”

“Well, Rick and I are headed into Hartford.”

“When?” From Jimmy.

Hank checked his phone. “In an hour or so.”

“I ask the time and he looks at his phone. What kind of world is this?”

“What's up, Jimmy?” I asked. “You demanded I stop in.”

Jimmy turned to me. “Rick, two things. I wanted to talk to you about one of my cases. The Aetna one.”

I nodded. “I got your notes, Jimmy.”

“Great, but can you read my writing?”

“No one can,” Hank said smartly.

Jimmy beamed. “That's because your generation never learned cursive. All you know is big block letters. You're only qualified to write ransom notes.”

Hank threw back his head and laughed.

Jimmy straightened himself in the chair. “All right, Rick. But something else. The Ralph case. Some shit finally came back to me. You gotta tell Ardolino, I guess. Not that he cares to phone here.” His fiery look at Gracie suggested she'd cut the telephone wires. “I woke up his morning and I remembered something. I think it's important.”

I was reaching for a cookie when he bellowed, “Are you listening to me?”

With a mouth full of cookie, I managed, “Always.”

“Anyway, when I woke up, I could smell bacon and suddenly I was back in that Burger King on Farmington Avenue.”

“You saw something?”

He shook his head. “Naw. I
heard
something.” He turned to face me, his face tight.

“Tell me.”

I glanced at Gracie who was watching Jimmy closely.

“I mean, I was listening to Ralph yammer on and on about some nonsense. Christ, he was a bore, that man—God rest his pathetic soul. Anyway, he'd been drinking, I think—no, I know—after all, it was daylight, so his talk was a little too loud and stupid. He rambled on that I was an ass because I took Rick into the firm.” Jimmy cast a disingenuous look at me, a sliver of a smile on his face. “He wasn't as free-thinking and tolerant as I am.”

“Editorializing,” Hank mumbled, and Jimmy's look shut him up.

Jimmy reached for a cookie, nibbled on the edge, then sucked down the whole thing. Crumbs dotted his chest.

“Anyway, Ralph was making a spectacle of himself as he munched on a cheeseburger. And then he mentioned some jackasses sitting at a table behind me. I didn't pay it much attention because—well, it was Ralph talking. But I guess some kids were talking
about
him, or making fun of him, or something like that. ‘Creeps,' he called them. ‘What?' I asked and he said, ‘Punk kids. Someone should blow them away.' Nice guy, right? I didn't care. There are always kids in that Burger King, especially after school. They meet there, laugh it up, and bother people, you know.”

“But this was different?” I asked.

He shook his head vigorously. “I guess so. Ralph mumbled that one of the kids gave him the finger—or Ralph thought it was the finger. I mean, he was boozy-eyed, so the kid could just as well been counting to one or something.”

“But Ralph took offense.”

“He muttered that they were doing some nonsense on their phones or players or some gadget they got nowadays. He gave them the finger. I should have turned around, but I didn't want to make the dumb scene into a—you know, big scene. Fighting with teenage punks in a Burger King? Come on. Now I wish I had. He imitated the sounds from their gadgets:
beep beep bam bam pow pow
. Something like that. I ignored it. Who cares what young people do nowadays?” He tilted his head toward Hank. “They ain't the greatest generation.”

Hank commented, “That was World War Two, no? You were Korean War, right?” A dumb smile on his face.

“You know damn well I was shot at in Vietnam, Hank.” He drew his lips into a thin line. “Probably by Rick's opium-smoking uncle.”

I smiled. “Becoming Jimmy's partner was my family's revenge.”

Jimmy smirked. “It worked.”

I bowed.

Gracie spoke up. “They must have followed you and Ralph out, Jimmy. Ralph made them mad.”

“If this is true,” I went on, “the two targeted Ralph. Not so much you, but Ralph. This wasn't a random street attack.”

“Maybe.” Jimmy's brow tightened.

Gracie was getting excited. “Rick, you gotta talk to the folks at Burger King. Maybe somebody remembers the boys.”

Hank jumped in. “Ardolino probably did that.”

“Probably,” I said. “He can be a pain, but he's a bulldog. It's logical that he'd retrace Ralph's steps.”

“Anything else, Jimmy?” Hank asked.

Jimmy waited a bit, drumming his index finger on his chest. “Yeah, as a matter of fact. They were talking in a singsong voice, at least someone behind me was. Not that I could recognize a voice, mind you, but you know how you hear bits and pieces of folks' talk nearby. There was this, like…rhythm,
dud dud duh DUH
. Then again.
Duh duh duh DUH
. Like a goddamn rap song. Christ, you even hear that shit in elevators these days.
Duh duh duh DUH
.”

Hank was laughing. “So they were rapping.”

“Maybe.”

“Could it have been on their phones?” I asked.

“Who knows?” He paused. “No, Ii was a real voice because it was uneven, in and out, mixed with talking, I guess. Yeah, rap.” His eyes got wide. “How come nobody these days remembers Sinatra? Or, you know, Bing Crosby?”

Hank started to defend hip-hop culture—he mouthed the words “Kanye West”—but I signaled to him. Be quiet.

“So what do you think?” I asked Jimmy.

He smiled at Gracie. “I agree with Gracie. Ralph pissed off these street thugs, and they followed us out and jumped him.”

“But they probably never intended to have him die,” Hank said.

“Ardolino will get them,” I said.

“Tough luck for them when they get them.” Jimmy's voice got mournful. “Ralph ain't much in the scheme of things, but nobody should take away his last breath.”

Jimmy's words hung in the air, a curious valedictory. We sat there, quiet.

Then, with the implausibility of coincidence from, say,
Days of Our Lives
, my phone beeped and I saw Detective Ardolino's name on the I.D. “Speak of the devil.”

“What?” asked Hank.

“Ardolino.”

Chapter Fifteen

When Hank and I were led into his office, Detective Ardolino had both of his legs up on his desk, a paper napkin tucked under his chin, a mustard-smeared finger headed toward his mouth. “They got hot dogs in the vending machines now,” he announced as a greeting. “Pretty soon you can buy a whole goddamn turkey.”

Hank reached over to shake his hand. “Detective Ardolino.”

“Yeah, yeah.” The man sat up and wiped his mouth. He rubbed his palms with the napkin, then tossed it into a waste bin. He shook hands. “Wherever the Lone Ranger goes”—he looked at me as if I'd dragged along an errant child—“Tonto is sure to follow. Kemo sabe. Hi ho, Silver.”

“Who knows?” From Hank, a little cocky.

“What are you talking about?”

“Kemo sabe. Sort of Spanish for—Who knows?
Quien sabe?
High-school Spanish. As in—who was that masked man?”

“No child left behind,” Ardolino grumbled. “Some should be.” He shuffled in his seat. “Out of the kindness of my heart I invited you to see a surveillance video some storekeeper on Farmington Avenue decided to tell us he had.”

“Of Jimmy and Ralph?”

“No, of my wedding at the dawning of the Ice Age.”

“Sorry,” I said sheepishly.

“It's pretty lousy quality and all. And it's from a hundred yards away, more or less, but you can see a little of what happened. Since Jimmy is your partner and you were close friends”—he grinned—“with that drunk Ralph, I figured you might spot something my trained eyes missed. Probably not, but, as I say, I'm a generous guy. I share evidence.”

Hank piped in, “You know, with all our modern technology, I still can't understand why we can't get clear, vivid shots from those surveillance tapes in banks and gas stations.”

Ardolino clicked his tongue. “Christ, Hank, we get eye witnesses who were standing four feet away who can't tell you if the killer was a man or a woman.”

He led us into a nearby room where a sergeant was sitting before a bank of monitors. I told Ardolino what Jimmy had said about the scene in the Burger King—Ralph and the rapping boys, Ralph giving them the finger. “I'm assuming you interviewed folks there. The last place Jimmy and Ralph were.”

He resented my remark. “I know how to do my job, Lam.”

“All I meant…”

“I know what you meant.” He clicked his tongue again. “Thanks for sharing the story.” But his tone suggested I'd withheld crucial evidence. “And yes, of course. Some kid remembered Jimmy and Ralph, called Ralph a regular there, a drunk who complained about the pickles in the fucking burger, so people hated him, probably spit in his burger, which he deserved, maybe. Anyway, nobody remembered any kids following them out because no one paid attention to the old fools. Who the hell does? Christ, I pump gas and the blue-haired, tattoo-of-Satan girl behind the counter never even looks into my face. Hopped up on Molly, I wouldn't be surprised. Sad, but that's me—I live for courtesy and manners.” An ah-shucks look covered his face. “That's the way my motor runs.”

“Nothing then?”

He signaled to the sergeant—“You gonna sit there all day?” Then, to me, “The place was filled with kids in hoodies and baggy pants and backward baseball caps and phones ringing, everybody looking into their phones expecting tweets from the person they're sitting opposite in the restaurant. Nobody sees nothing nowadays.”

“So that's a dead-end.”

“Like I said.”

The sergeant queued up the video, the edited section running perhaps ten minutes. An impossible tape, I realized, grainy, dim, shadowy, with stick figures sauntering by, a blur of speeding cars on the street. But at one point two murky figures come into view—Jimmy and Ralph—although so far from the lens they could be any two old guys ambling down the sidewalk. But in a flash two figures rush up the sidewalk, one disappearing from the frames for a second, but then reappearing on the edge of the sidewalk. Then out of the frame. As we watched, the taller kid lurched forward, a hand raised, a blow to the head, Ralph twisting around, pushing back, the two grappling, Ralph stumbling, crashing into the iron pole.

“You really can't tell anything,” Hank commented.

“As I said,” Ardolino went on. “Just the assault.”

“But it's impossible to identify the kids.”

“As I said,” he repeated.

“But,” I noted, “you
can
tell a couple things. First of all, the aggressor is a tall boy, a head or so taller that the other, wouldn't you say? And look at the shorter kid. He's standing back to the side, then disappears. When he reappears, he's not moving at first, then he runs.”

Ardolino watched me closely. “So you're saying what?”

“I'm saying that the shorter kid didn't participate. At the end he runs away down the sidewalk, wobbling from side to side.”

“So does the attacker.”

“Maybe the other kid,” Hank jumped in, “was surprised at the attack. Maybe unplanned. Maybe he didn't know that the taller boy would do such a thing.”

Ardolino wore a slick grin. I noticed a bit of brown mustard had dried on his left cheek. Unconsciously he scratched at it, and the dried condiment flecked away. Ardolino examined his fingernail, and frowned. “Shit, the stuff that stays on me.”

Hank looked ready to comment—the corners of his mouth twisted up humorously—but I shot him a look.

Ardolino caught the look, clever detective that he was. “Flies on shit? Is that where you're going?” He wagged a finger at Hank. “Anyway, I hear you, Rick. But what I also hear is that you and your state-police-boy-scout are saying that little Simon Tran was somehow the innocent here, a bystander—that the big bad wolf is Frankie Croix.”

“I didn't say that.”

Ardolino stood up. “Of course you didn't. I can read minds. You didn't know that about me, did you? I'm a fucking Houdini.”

***

Hank and I sat upstairs in the office of Gaddy Associates. I'd been stopping in nearly every day for a while now, sometimes only for an hour or so, catching up on my own fraud cases as well as moving through Jimmy's Byzantine note-taking, covering his cases for him. For all his hieroglyphics and scribbling and dog-eared printouts, Jimmy had mastered an intricate system of work: a diamond-cut logic belied the seeming chaos of his desk. In some ways working his cases was easier than my own because my pile of search-engine data towered dangerously on my desk and in the interconnected files on my laptop, while Jimmy's investigative world was laid out with the awesome clarity of a child's ABC primer.

While I worked at my desk, Hank sat by the front window, his tablet in his lap as he filled out some forms demanded by the state police. But his movements were desultory, lazy, as he leaned back on the wooden chair, two legs wobbling in the air, and quietly gazed down from the second-floor onto a busy Farmington Avenue. Handing him a cup of coffee, I noticed he'd abandoned his form and was tapping away on “Words with Friends.”

“Words with Nerds,” I joked.

“There's a disheveled and lonely gamer hidden in the basement of his parents' flat in London who resents your character attack.”

But when I stopped to pour myself a second cup, he looked up, pushed his tablet away. “Ardolino is dead set on nailing Simon and Frankie for Ralph's death.”

“Sounds like it.” Then I smiled. “That's why I'm chasing after anyone connected with the Tran family. Somebody has to tell me something I can build on.”

“What about Frankie's family?”

“I called his home, but his mother was evasive. She doesn't trust strangers.”

“Even those helping her son's case?”

“She may not see me as her son's advocate. Just Simon's.”

“But to clear one is to clear the other.”

I rustled some papers on my desk, made an entry into the computer. I pressed SAVE. “But she said I could stop in to talk to her.”

He went back to his tablet—“Christ, the state of Connecticut loves forms”—pecking away with three fingers, deleting—with a curse—then backtracking, muttering to himself. “I'd rather arrest a murderer than type a form.”

I laughed. “Hank, one day when you arrest a murderer, you'll have hundreds of forms to fill out.”

Suddenly the quiet of the office was punctuated with a thunderous rumble of motorcycles in the street. Hank leaned over the sill, frowning. “Bikers.” He looked back at me. “Three of them disturbing the peace with their modified Harleys.” The clang and sputter finally died. “One of them is yelling at a driver who pulled into a spot next to him. He's not happy.”

I walked to the window and looked down. Leather-clad bikers in helmets straddled their bikes, two of them with arms crossed, the third pumping his fist at the driver, a twenty-something who'd stepped out of his car. The biker slipped off his helmet, cradled it to his chest, and swung his head around.

Hank blurted out, “Christ, is that—Frankie Croix?”

From the second-floor angle it was difficult to get a good look, but I understood what Hank was saying. The young man, swiveling his head back and forth angrily, happened to tilt his head upwards, and he did, indeed, resemble Frankie Croix. The long bony face, the long neck with the prominent Adam's apple.

“An older brother, I guess.” I peered down into the street. “He's—what? Twenty or so?”

“Looks just like Frankie.”

“Yes, and they burn with the same fire.”

Hank looked puzzled. “Frankie has an older bother?”

“More than one, Hank.”

“How do you know that?”

I pointed to my laptop. “I do my homework.”

“You got files on everyone?”

I nodded. “It helps.” I went to my computer, tapped some keys, and brought up my file on the Croix family. “Okay. He's probably Jonny Croix, aged twenty-two, a rap sheet for a thousand petty crimes, one year in Somers, paroled. The next brother is still in jail. The oldest is married and living in Waterbury.” I waited a second. “He's a prison guard.”

“All in the family.”

“So this is Jonny.” I zeroed in on an online photo from the
Courant
during his arraignment. “He does look like his brother Frankie, with the addition of a lightning-bolt tattoo on his forehead, a zigzag scar under his puffy left eye, and the emaciated skeletal face of a chronic Meth user.”

“His buddies are yelling something to the driver now.”

I went back to the window. Both buddies remained on the Harleys, arms still crossed belligerently, both with helmets cradled to their chests.”

“I wonder who they are,” I said out loud.

“Why?”

“I dunno. Check out the one on the left. An Asian guy. Watch when he swings his head around. Chinese? Vietnamese? Maybe gang members. Maybe he occupies a parallel universe from his little brother Frankie. Maybe…”

Hank, antsy, jumped up. “I'll check.”

He bounded out of the office, and I could hear his footfall on the old wooden staircase. But as I watched the street below, the bikers revved their engines, Jonny leaped back onto his Harley, strapped on his helmet, and the three sailed back into traffic, heedless of the flow. Jonny did a U-turn, skirted close to the driver of the car who was standing on the curb, watching. Jonny gave him the finger and yelled something, and then flew off behind his buddies.

On the sidewalk Hank looked up at me and shrugged his shoulders. I waved back.

Hank turned to the driver who was already headed into the law offices that occupied our ground floor. Hank said something and the man paused. From what I could see he pointed at the annoying bikers and his mouth formed one word, evident to me from two floors away.

Assholes
.

Hank gave me the thumbs-up.