No Good to Cry (27 page)

“But to kill guys? To
hurt
them?” From Lucy, her voice trembling.

“He may not have intended to kill. Or maybe he did. The idea of inflicting real pain…well, perhaps he wanted the feel of fist against bone. It happens.”

Lucy shivered. “How sad.”

“But there's something I don't get.” Michael looked puzzled. “He had a buddy with him, no? And didn't I read that one witness thought that he was Chinese or something?”

The room felt hot, close, no windows opened to let in the brisk spring air. A cluttered room, too much furniture packed into the small space. I found myself staring at the wall of awards and commendations. A family's proud display of academic achievement. Plaques from the American Legion and the D.A.R. Too many of them.

I looked at no one but said in a loud voice
, “Ego non baptize te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diabolic.”

I waited, watching the stunned faces.

All but one, that is. One face offered a wistful smile.

Mike frowned. “What the hell you talking about?”

Michael, brow furrowed, translated. “I baptize you not in the name of the father but in the name of the devil. Latin 101. Thank you, Kingswood-Oxford.”

I hesitated a moment, nodding at him, but continued. “Hank told me about a video on YouTube uploaded by Simon and Frankie. SaigonSez.” Simon, I noticed, blinked wildly. “I watched it over and over, fascinated. Clever, really. Intriguing.”

Simon spoke up. “Yeah, it's cool. All my friends…”

“What's this?” Mike thundered.

I went on. “A celebration of Satan. A dark view of the world. Life is tough. It's no good to cry about it. Give the devil his due. We mortals end up in hell, but Satan lives forever.” I waved my hands in the air. “Sort of a quick summary of it.”

Simon was not happy with my glib summary, and looked ready to argue the point.

“I don't understand,” Lucy added.

“At first I thought the YouTube video was a confession from the boys, given that it talked of street life, souls in black hoods, practical jokes, an unforgiving world. I watched it over and over. All the time I never noticed one thing about it.” I paused, deliberated, uncertain.

“Well?” From Michael, impatient.

I lowered my voice. “Tell us about it, Wilson.”

Every eye shot to the young boy, standing by his brother but shuffling from one foot to the other. “Come on, Wilson. I saw the credits. Those rap lyrics were written by you. W. Tran.”

“So what?” From Simon, feisty. “He writes stuff.”

“No, Simon. Suddenly some things made sense. Wilson, the would-be writer, lost in his room and his books, punished by his father for not studying. Hazel had told Michael that she was afraid of something. Simon told her he had a secret, but kept it to himself.”

“A secret?” asked Mike.

“I suspect Simon suddenly realized something one day.”

Simon quaked. “No, I…”

“He put two and two together. Smart boy. I remember watching him play a video game with Wilson. A familiar storyline—the bookish nerd who overtakes the powerful evil force, becomes the hero, triumphs. Exalts. A violent game. The hero leveling foes.”

“So what?” From Michael.

“But I also remembered his love of
Moby Dick
. I checked out my copy. Captain Ahab, filled with overweening pride. ‘I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.' A baptism in the name of the devil. The lyrics on YouTube came from Melville. ‘Who ever heard that the devil was dead?' ‘I was a black and hooded head.' Ishmael, plagued with boredom and ennui, going to sea to prevent him ‘from deliberately stepping into the street and methodically knocking peoples' hats off.' Other lines.” I struggled to recall and slipped a note card from my breast pocket. “I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.' ‘It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.' A great secret. So many lines taken from
Moby Dick
. Even that line about a bloody battle in Afghanistan. Melville, over and over. And the last bit from Mark Twain, Huck Finn when he decides to give up his soul for a black man. ‘I'll go to hell.' A refrain—‘Awright I'll go to hell.'” I stopped. “Enough.”

“Still…” said Michael, faltering. “I mean…”

“Stop,” I demanded. “The first clue for me was a ten-second tape from Little Saigon, an aborted attack. Reconstructed by Hank, played in slow motion, rehearsed by friends, I was bothered by two things. One was that the attacker moved jerkily, while the other didn't, even though the video was unclear. Then I realized the attacker was limping. Judd Snow with the bum leg after the fistfight with Frankie in front of this house.”

“And the second?” Michael again, his voice sharp.

“The second culprit, smaller, standing apart, appearing for a second but turning into the sun. A sharp piercing light on his head.”

“Which was?”

“It took me a while but I realized that person was wearing thick eyeglasses, and the glint from the sun was what the camera picked up.”

“I don't understand this.” Mike Tran was looking at Wilson.

“Tell us, Wilson,” I said softly. “Tell us.”

The boy fidgeted, looked over his shoulder toward the hallway. He wrapped his skinny arms around his chest, and for a second I thought his look was cocksure, his eyes steely. Captain Ahab.
I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.

“Tell us,” Michael coaxed, surprisingly gentle.

I prodded him. “Judd Snow has already told us your name, Wilson.”

That startled him. In a surprisingly strong voice, he said, “He promised.”

“But why?” From his father. “You hated him. He pushed you around. He…”

“He told me I had to be quiet about it. He threatened—scared me.”

“Is that true?” I asked, suspicious.

He nodded furiously. “We went to the boys' club to teach chess. The advisor sent us, you know. I took the bus but sometimes he said—ride with him. He told me…he said, ‘You wanna get a thrill? You wanna make some excitement in your boring life?' He drove around the city like a maniac, top speed, daredevil. He told me I was a wimp. He…you gotta slap the world in the face. He didn't
like
me. I didn't
like
him. But I felt…you know…important in that car, his attention, laughing, making fun of people…walking down the street. But I didn't know he was going to hit that man from Burger King. Yeah, he was pissed off and we followed them. I mean, he just ran at the guy.”

I broke in. “But after the first time you did, Wilson. You knew what to expect. Come on.”

He looked wild-eyed. “It always surprised me. It did. He said—‘I can get away with murder.'”

“You didn't have to go.”

He looked up into my face, his glasses slipping down his nose. “I
had
to. He told me I had to.” His eyes sought his father. “I had to, Pop. He said you only live once. He used to whisper: ‘YOLO.' You only live once. Grab it. Seize the day.
Carpe diem
. You gotta feel…like the world is yours. For a minute I felt like I was on top of the world. ‘Come with me,' he said. ‘Get in the car now. I don't wanna have to hurt you.' ‘I will
hurt
you.' I mean, he
told
me.”

He kept talking until he ran out of words. He rocked back and forth on his heels.

A long silence settled in that stifling room. Lucy's eyes were stark, frightened. No one moved. The clock on the wall tick-tocked monotonously. The shape of Vietnam. Tick tock. The same clock that Grandma had in her house. One that I'd seen in so many Vietnamese restaurants. Cheap kitsch, yes, but an odd reminder that once upon a time we all lived in a tropical country, where water buffalo grazed next to the Saigon River under the shade of banyan trees…rattled by
cyclos
zipping through the narrow streets…the helicopters and the napalm and the B-52s and the VC hiding in the elephant grass…where there was a different sense of time and place…the long tropical nights filled with green bottle flies. A land of exile and longing. The geography of memory. In America everybody looks at those clocks. Every day. They took you back to New Year's. Tet. Everyone listening for the first sound after the clock struck twelve. A rooster's cluck signaled a bad harvest. A dog's yip meant good fortune.

My mind replayed some words from my childhood. The good nun telling me it was all right to hit the little black
bui doi
. The black monkey.
Khi den
. A mongrel race, she insisted. The mother a whore, the father American scum. Like you, Lam Van Viet, touching my forehead. But worse than you, if possible. Hit him. Hit him. Knock the devil out of him. Satan has branded his black soul.

No good to cry.

A bout of dizziness, my eyes blurred.

Then, an awful keening began. Mike Tran slumped against a wall and moaned like a wounded animal. The cries grew louder and louder until the only sound in that room was his unbearable sobbing.

Epilogue

Jimmy returned back to his tiny apartment in Hartford's West End. Though he hobbled a bit, dragging his foot, he managed to climb the one flight to our office, settling in with a look that suggested I'd let things fall apart. He pointed out an empty Arizona Iced Tea can I'd left on the windowsill. Mayhem and disaster. Now we'd get back to the real work of the firm. When I stopped in to check on him, he'd pulled a chair up to the front window, a stubby cigar gripped in his hand, and he was nodding merrily at the Pizza Palace and Best Wings in Town, fast-food places across the street. He looked unnaturally content.

Gracie had become flustered when Jimmy packed his scant belongings and left, though he did nod his thanks to her. Later, taking her out to lunch, I watched her choke up. Jimmy surprised everyone by sending a bouquet of red roses to her, a gesture that made Gracie cry.

When he was gone one day, she whispered to me, “He was a pain in the ass but now I miss him.”

Every day as I scooted past her open front door, I'd see her sitting in an easy chair, sometimes staring into the hallway absently.

“Give him a call,” I advised.

She made a face. “In my day a lady never called a gentleman.”

“A gentleman?”

She wagged a finger at me. “Watch your mouth, young man.”

A cut-glass vase by the door displayed the roses, though they were beginning to wilt. Brown petals clustered on the table. I leaned in to smell the roses. “Nice.”

“They're mine to smell, Rick.”

I backed away.

The first morning back in the office Jimmy and I reviewed the cases I'd closed—or continued. The monotonous fraud investigations that kept our financial life afloat. But after an hour he'd fallen asleep in the chair, and I assumed his medications were kicking in. Gently I removed the cigar from the hand that rested on the arm of a chair. He stretched out, his sweatshirt rising and falling with his heavy breathing, and I noticed unfortunate hot sauce stains on the shirt. I smiled—back to normal.

Earlier that morning we'd talked of news in the morning's
Courant
. A front-page article chronicled a police raid on the Russell Street storefront, the arrest of JD and other members of the VietBoyz. Some courageous shopkeepers, fed up, had rallied and sought help—they were tired of extortion, handing over envelopes of cash to safeguard their livelihood. A few intrepid shopkeepers told stories of intimidation, threats, scare tactics. So the storefront was boarded up, though Jimmy insisted it would be business as usual within weeks. JD was released on bail—and a reporter noted he was spotted sitting in the doorway of Le Thang Barber Shop.

Maybe he was waiting for a haircut.

The other news that morning was a small item in the police-blotter column: Jonny Croix had been arrested for beating up his mother in their Frog Hollow apartment, so vicious an assault that his mother was hospitalized with a broken arm. Jonny was behind bars. The only salutary end, I told Jimmy, was that the
Courant
reporter noted that Jonny had been wrestled to the ground by his younger brother. Frankie had sustained bruises trying to rescue his mother.

“The better angels of his nature,” I told Jimmy.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Think about it.”

Jimmy puffed on his cigar. “You're not gonna start annoying me again, are you?”

“I wouldn't think of it, Jimmy.”

***

Liz and I met for dinner one night at a favorite Thai place in the south end of West Hartford. Thai One On, a name that always made me cringe, though I forgave them when I tasted the salted shrimp. She'd come straight from work, but still looked fresh and lovely. A gray tailored suit that would have looked dowdy on a less beautiful woman, a string of cultured pearls, a white silk blouse with a lace collar. “Beautiful,” I told her. “You always look beautiful.”

“Are you proposing?” she said.

I said nothing.

We talked about Wilson Tran and the shattered Tran family. Since that painful afternoon at their home, I'd not spoken to Mike or anyone else in the family. But I understood from Hank, who relayed stories from his grandmother, that the family had rallied around Wilson, hiring a lawyer, anxious as the case moved through the police and court channels.

“I'll never understand it,” I told Liz.

She sighed. “Not an unfamiliar story, Rick. Like the other Tran children, Wilson slipped easily into an obedient role, nodding weakly at authority, a pattern learned under Mike Tran's Draconian discipline. Some part of it has to do with his defiance of his father, a taskmaster, but that doesn't excuse it. The all-A student, bookish, hungry for sensation that would take him momentarily from his monotonous world of study, study, study. His father with a whip. He…well, succumbed to Judd's authority.”

“Judd.” I thundered the name. “How many lives can one person ruin?”

She shook her head back and forth. “No one addressed his anger over the years. Anger at his mother for deserting them. His father for…well, being the ass he is. Hazel for leaving. This grievance, that one. Like Wilson, a stellar student, if a lout, but one who craved thrills, sensation, law-breaking. Mostly domination—if necessary by force. Fueled by stories in the press about knockout punches. Knocking his way through the world.”

“But devious. The bit with the postcard.”

Liz sipped her gin-and-tonic. “Judd planned revenge. It was sweet to him. Frankie had come to represent everything he despised—a white trash boy who challenged him. Who beat him up. Well, he'd send him back to jail.”

“Wilson hated him.”

“Maybe, but Wilson was very afraid of him,” Liz said. “Afraid to defy him. Judd knocked the boy around, we learned. He terrorized him.”

“But Wilson played along. And a part of him reveled in it—that swelling up of his chest. Pride. Captain Ahab cursing the sun. Power. Intoxicating. The exhilaration of literature translated into the stuff of everyday boyish dreams.” I thought of something he'd said to me one time. “‘Call me Will.'”

Call me Ishmael.

“What will happen to that boy?” Liz asked.

“Well, to Judd's credit, he did confess to coercing Wilson. He also said he never warned Wilson about the attacks. The one outside the Burger King with Ralph—he said Ralph angered him in the restaurant. Only when they were walking down the sidewalk and spotted Jimmy and Ralph ahead did he rush into action. He just wanted to knock him over. Not kill him.”

“But the second one? The others? Maybe some we don't know about?” Liz watched me closely.

“Yes, planned, once he hit on that scheme to get Frankie and Simon arrested again. After the first, he realized he could set the maniacal plan into motion.”

“Cruel.”

I sat back. “But he says Wilson was just there. And the videos sort of show that. And Wilson came tumbling after. Wilson turning from behind, always a few steps away. Wilson never hitting anyone.”

“But he was an accomplice,” Liz insisted. “By law.”

“And that's the problem.” I sighed heavily. “The courts have no sympathy for accomplices when someone dies. Manslaughter, whatever charge will be leveled finally against Judd.”

“But Wilson?”

“Hank tells me the D.A. is not unsympathetic to the boy, given all the circumstances. The video. Judd's confession. Counseling, probation, therapy. All options on the table. I don't know if they'll put him away. I doubt it.”

“That'll serve no purpose.”

“I agree. It's a hurting family.” I drummed my fingers on the table. “Hank said Simon is undergoing counseling. Even Mike and Lucy are involved. Michael has stepped up, a part of the family. Mike and Simon are talking. Mike is trying to understand his family.”

“Poor Mike and Lucy.” Liz's words had finality to them.

“The awful job of being a parent,” I said. “And the awful burden of Mike's childhood—that desire to escape a past.”

“And Lucy's, too,” Liz added. “Don't forget her, too.”

“Orphans in the storm.”

Liz smiled wistfully. “‘O my America, my new found land.' John Dunne.”

I shook my head. “I know, I know.” I smiled at her. “But, Liz, I think I've had enough literary quotation lately to last a lifetime.”

***

On Saturday we celebrated. Early in the afternoon Gracie met me outside her apartment where she'd been waiting, anxious. She'd had her hair done at the beauty parlor down the street, a rare occurrence for her, and I complimented her. Silvery white curls ringed her lively face. A pill-box hat with a fringe veil. A trace of peach lipstick, also unusual. I always insisted that Gracie was a glamorous woman without any makeup. The aristocratic thrust of her chin, the dark flashing eyes, the impish smile, the ballet dancer's stance. Now, dressed in a longish dress the color of spring lilacs, a polished rhinestone brooch pinned to her lapel, she looked ready for the dance.

“You stole that brooch from one of the Andrews Sisters.”

She eyed me mischievously. “It was a gift from Arthur Godfrey.”

I teased her. “You think I don't know who that is, right?”

“You don't.”

“He was vice-president under Coolidge.”

“Smart mouth.”

She tucked her elbow under my arm, and we strolled out to my car.

We met Jimmy and Liz in the lobby of the State Armory on Capital Avenue. Liz and Gracie hugged, and Liz asked Gracie if she'd let her borrow the brooch at some future time.

“It was a gift from Arthur Godfrey,” I told her.

Jimmy frowned, itching to get to his seat. “I never liked that man. Especially after he fired Julius LaRosa from his show. Right on the air.”

Gracie's hand grazed Jimmy's sleeve. “Jimmy, you wore a suit.”

“I clean up real nice.”

She smiled at him.

Hank's family had saved seats a few rows from the stage, and I sat down next to Grandma. She'd been craning her neck back toward the entrance, expectant. She'd motioned me to hurry. Now she grasped my hand and squeezed it. Hank's mother, father, brother, and sisters filled the rest of the aisle, but I noticed the two rows behind us were packed with Vietnamese I'd never met. “Who are they?” I whispered to Grandma.

“Family.”

“All Vietnamese are family,” I said.

“If you knew that, then why did you ask me?” She tapped my wrist.

We watched as Governor Dannel Malloy solemnly swore in twenty-seven young recruits, a line of radiant men and women who stood, accepted congratulations, and officially became state troopers. When Hank was announced—“Hank Ky Tan Nguyen,” a mouthful—we erupted into applause. Grandma cheered. His mother wept. His father beamed. I got all choked up, and Liz, on my left, leaned into me, her hand brushing my sleeve.

“A Vietnamese state trooper,” Liz hummed, thrilled.

Hank looked smart and resplendent in his pristine uniform, and I recalled the careful attention he'd paid to it, as pointed out by Grandma. Gold and blue and gray—the line of recruits was a frieze of colorful magic. Handsome, trim, a rise of color in his cheeks, his hair clipped military style, Hank strode across the stage. I swear he hesitated a second when he heard Grandma's loud squeal, a slight twist of his head toward the audience, a hint of a smile.

Afterwards we gathered at the VFW Hall in East Hartford for a long, rousing celebration that would go on till the morning. Long tables of food, streamers suspended from the ceiling, a South Vietnam flag suspended next to an American one, a new-wave orange-haired teenaged Vietnamese DJ happily spinning Vietnamese house music on a turntable, headphones covering his ears, his head bobbing up and down. A stoned look in his eyes.

Hank walked in, and we circled him, yelled, clapped, and slapped his back. We hugged. “I just wrinkled your uniform,” I whispered.

“I do own an iron, you know.”

He'd driven over with a girl who looked a little familiar. A gorgeous girl, Vietnamese, with straight black hair and wide, midnight eyes. He'd told me he was bringing a girl because he thought he might be in love. Of course, I'd heard that before, as Hank moved like a punch-drunk Lothario through a succession of pretty girls. He was always in love—or falling out of it.

“Emily Phoung,” he told us.

She smiled but said nothing.

Then I realized how I knew her. She was the waitress at Bo Kien on Russell and Park. The one where Hank and I had spent the afternoon monitoring the storefront of the VietBoyz. The pretty girl who craved his attention, flirting, teasing. Obviously it worked.

I turned to Grandma. “Hank's new girl is pretty.”

Grandma said in a deadpan voice. “He told me she was Miss South Windsor.” She shrugged. “Imagine that.”

Gracie leaned in. “I was a Rockette a hundred years ago.”

“That recent?” From Jimmy.

Gracie winked at him.

I sat back, contented. I gazed at my friends. My family. An orphan like Mike and Lucy, I suddenly thought. Yes, one more orphan in the storm. So many of us, drifting, drifting. But as I watched everyone laughing, happy, I thanked God. My boat had found safe harbor.

Liz was watching me closely, a mysterious smile on her face. “You look so—happy.”

“I'm rowing in Eden.”

“Hey,” Hank's younger brother Vu blurted out, “That's Emily Dickinson. We just read that in school.”

Liz laughed. “All of your good lines are stolen, Rick.”

“Don't tell. They'll banish me.”