No Good to Cry (13 page)

Judd Snow smiled as he rushed across the room, hand extended. Dressed in a white polo shirt, white linen pants over white deck shoes, a white cardigan sweater across his back and the sleeves tied in front, he looked like a Hollywood wannabe from Leonardo DeCaprio's vision of
The Great Gatsby
—or an upscale Good Humor man who couldn't find his truck.

“Hey, Rick,” he began, affecting a casual familiarity.

“Judd.”

“We have to make this fast, I'm afraid. My father's probably pulling the car up as we speak.”

He toppled into one of the deep chairs, sat back, an angelic smile on his lips. He waited.

“Frankie Croix,” I said, and watched his face close up.

“Yeah, I know that. Hazel told me you were working to save that scumbag from the electric chair.”

“Well, that's a real extreme fate for him, no?”

The smile disappeared. “It should be.”

A good-looking young man, I thought, strapping, his long legs stretched out in front of him, one knee rocking back and forth to a rhythm only he heard. An athlete's grace, cool, confident, a body toned perhaps by that tennis court he just left. A square jaw, like a roaring twenties Leyendecker model, high cheekbones, deep blue eyes set far apart so that he seemed a little dim, though the wariness in his eyes suggested otherwise. A lock of bushy straw-blond hair was allowed to drift haphazardly over his forehead, but the haircut looked expensive and designed for a millennial stockbroker or a baby boomer millionaire. He was a young man who never questioned his own place in the scheme of things.

“You look like you were born to be a member of this club.”

His eyes flashed, surprised. “That goes without saying.”

“That's exactly the remark I expected you to make.”

He didn't know how to answer me, a quizzical smile on his lips.

I switched gears quickly. “What do you think about Simon Tran and Frankie Croix attacking Ralph Gervase?”

He watched me closely. “Well, I wasn't surprised, if that's what you mean, but I don't really think about it. I don't
care
.”

“Simon is the brother of your girlfriend.”

“Yeah, and a kid I don't know. One I barely saw.”

“But you don't want a member of your girlfriend's family up on charges, right?”

He was getting irritated. “I told you—I don't
care
. Hazel tells me he's a goofy kid, and I don't know that creep Frankie”—a big smile—”other than as someone whose face met my fist. A criminal who ruined a good part of my day.”

“That's what I want to find out about.”

“But why?” He squinted his eyes, looked over to the three men who were quiet now. “I mean, that stupid scene had nothing to do with—
killing
someone.”

“Yes, I know that. But if I'm to prove Simon innocent, I've got to understand his buddy, Frankie. The fact that he tangled with you suggests, well, a short fuse, a propensity for violence…”

“Listen to you,” he broke in, amused. “‘A propensity for violence.'
CSI: Farmington. Special Idiots Unit
. An HBO After School Special.” He laughed at his own humor. “Look, Rick. I caught the creep making goo-goo eyes at my girl, and that's taboo big-time. A few words and the dirt bag rushed me, surprised me. So, yes, he's given to hair-trigger anger. I'm not, although I had to defend myself. It happened so fast—bang bang. He hits, I hit. The mall cop frowned on it. The fucking nightmare ended with both of us arrested. Arrested, Rick. Me—minding my own business. Thank God my father got it hushed up, although that also meant that creep got off with a slap on his wrist.”

“That's it?”

His voice rose. “Do I think he killed that man? It wouldn't surprise me. But, as I said, I don't care.” He pointed a finger at me. “Christ, I had to hear Hazel babbling on when her brother was first arrested—sent away. Knocking people over on the street? The
Courant
had a field day with that. Lucky no names—underage and all that. But Hazel's dad went ape-shit.”

“You followed the case?”

“Hazel felt the need to bore me.”

“A hearing in juvenile court?”

“Whatever.”

“When you had that fight, he says you stole a video game and some weed.”

A wide grin. “To the victor goes the spoils.”

“Still and all…”

“If you're here for a character reference for Frankie, you've come to the wrong place.” Suddenly his face turned dark, his eyes narrowed. “He's a piece of white trash from a Hartford project.”

“So your parents were bothered?” I asked.

That gave him pause. Absently he ran his hand down the front of his polo short. “For your information, my mother left my father—and me—a decade ago, moved to one of the plains states where no one with any sense goes, and that's the end of it.” For a second his face tightened. “My mother ran off with a scumbag car salesman, and she never looked back. I'm there waiting for someone to make my lunch. I'm still fuckin' waiting.” A confused grin. “My father sits on bags of money and thinks he's younger than me. An embarrassing second childhood. Maybe I mean—second adolescence. I've had a hundred almost-stepmoms, each one with the conversation skills of a vacuum cleaner filled with dust. So…that's my biography. Happy? My father wasn't happy heading to a police station with a two-hundred-dollar-an-hour ambulance chaser at his side. One cop even knew my dad. But he couldn't let the heir apparent languish behind bars.”

“Have you seen Frankie since?”

That perplexed him. “Why should I?” Then, his face even darker, a vein in his neck throbbing. “But I'll tell you one thing, Rick, my friend. He crosses paths with me and looks at me the wrong way, well, there's gonna be fireworks. I'll go George Zimmerman on his sorry-ass head.”

I leaned forward, watched his mobile face shift, the anger growing. “Sounds to me like you also have anger issues.”

His jaw went slack as he contemplated me quietly. “Anger issues? Christ, does everyone your age talk like they're auditioning for Dr. Phil's afternoon housewifey TV interrogation?”

“You're a smart-aleck.”

He grinned. “It took you this long to pick up on that?”

He stood up, smoothed the front of his polo shirt again as though he'd managed to wrinkle the fabric by standing, and nodded at me. “My father is out front. Unlike me, he doesn't put up with the kind of bullshit you seem to be paid to do.” With that, he strode out of the room, though he glanced back. “I don't think you can sit there all day if you're not a member.” A sly grin. “Even Walmart-loving nouveau-riche Avon has its standards.”

I followed him outside, headed to my car that, it turned out, was parked near that red Audi, the top down. Judd sauntered toward it, a cavalier stroll that made the man behind the wheel frown. As I passed by, I looked into the driver's seat, and the man fingered the sunglasses that covered his eyes.

Judd, beaming, paused by the passenger door, and announced in a loud voice, “My father, Rick. I know he looks like the playboy of the Western world in those Italian sunglasses, but he's just the simple man who gave me life on this planet.”

The man removed the sunglasses and leaned across the seat. “Judd told me you were meeting him. Rick Van Lam?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Foster Snow.”

We shook hands. He sat back, one arm thrown casually over the back of his seat, his head turned upward. Yes, a playboy, I considered, according to his son, with his longish slicked-back hair glistening from some gel best used on a car engine. The loud Ed Hardy summer shirt picked up the shrill red of the convertible. Here was a man trying to look younger than his son. Oddly Judd, with his oh-you-kid country-club mien, seemed the elder of the two. Foster wore a bemused expression, as though I'd uttered some
bon mot
he found delightful. I didn't like him. First impression, an instinct. From the look on his son's face, I surmised that his handsome progeny didn't either. I bet they spent their leisure hours at war. There was only room for one Romeo in a flaming red Audi convertible.

Judd jumped into the passenger seat, not opening the door but leaping over it like an action hero on TV, an acrobatic feat that was accompanied by a huge clownish grin.

Foster started the motor, revved the engine. A hot rodder. For some reason he laughed out loud.

Judd's eyes glowed. “Oh, by the way, tell Liz I said hello.”

That caught me by surprise. “What?”

“Remember me to the woman who dumped you.”

“Judd, no.” His father pointed a finger at him, but was clearly pleased.

“Don't bother Liz anymore.” My voice was scratchy. Echoes of Liz insisting she'd handle her own life. I didn't care. I could—well, defend the woman who dumped me.

Judd's head jerked back as his father shifted into gear and the car began to slide away.

“No one tells me what to do.”

Chapter Thirteen

Hank left me a voicemail. “Michael.” A pause. “Did you find it strange that Frankie mentioned Simon going to his brother's apartment at Trinity?” Another pause. “What do you think? You're the investigator here. Maybe you should…investigate. It's a clue, Sherlock. Call me.”

I'd already wondered about that offhand remark, one that bothered Simon. Why the secret? From Hazel's remarks I'd concluded that Michael, the oldest child, had little to do with the young boy—or his family. Perhaps that was wrong.

He answered the phone on the second ring, not a pleasant “Hello” but “What?” with a comical inflection, as if he'd been expecting a call from a close friend and this was his way of being funny.

I chuckled. “What indeed?”

A hesitant bit of
tsk
ing. “Sorry. Yes?”

Still no hello, replaced now with impatience.

I identified myself, and he startled me by breaking in. “I was expecting your call.”

“You were?” I was tempted to offer a variation of his “What?” But I didn't.

“My mother phoned to say you were helping the family out. The Simon nonsense and all.”

“Nonsense?”

A strained laugh. “Have you met that little boy? He's a goofy kid. There's no way he'd assault—God forbid—kill someone. Impossible.”

“He did accost folks, Michael. It got him four months in juvie.”

“Oh,
that
. Foolish—but not murder.”

“It happens in the best of families.”

I meant that as a joke but he took me seriously. “If you're looking for the best of families, you had better pass by the royal house of Tran.”

“I'm calling because I learned that Simon stops in to see you.”

He didn't wait until I finished, his voice sharp. “Yes, that's true.”

“Can I talk to you about Simon? I want to…”

He finished for me, making my remarks into a question. “Clear his name by interrogating the members of the family? I imagine princess Hazel had a lot to say about me.”

“Can we…”

He made a resigned clicking noise and then seemed to cover the mouthpiece of the phone. I could hear a mumbled remark to someone in the room with him. Just as he came back on the line, I heard a girl's giggle.

His tone was serious. “I'm on spring break this week. Can you find your way through derelict Hartford?”

“My GPS knows the way to carry the sleigh.”

“Then you better come now. Maybe an hour. I have things to do.”

Click. The call ended.

His apartment was on the second floor of a beige-brick apartment complex of four floors, probably six apartments on each floor. A worn, dusty building on a small plot of land. Loud salsa music blared from a first-floor apartment, and a ragtag bunch of boys, maybe ten or eleven years old, bounced through the lobby, stopping to stare at me before they scurried out the front door. I pressed the intercom button next to the embossed name behind a glass panel: TRAN MICHAEL 3A. When the elevator door opened, two college students with backpacks stumbled out, a young man and a young woman, arms wrapped around each other.

A threadbare carpet in the hallway, peeling flowered wallpaper, but when Michael opened the door and bowed me in, I was surprised by the rooms: glistening glass-and-chrome coffee table covered with neatly stacked art books. A thick tome on top. I read the title.
Helen Frankenthaler: The Late Paintings.
A hard-polished walnut bookcase stretching across one wall, the lines of books arranged neatly, their bindings evened out. Gleaming black marble end tables, a black leather sofa so stark it seemed something appropriated from a New Age funeral parlor. A neat freak's domain, I told myself. Everything in its place. The magazines and newspapers on the coffee table were spread out with perhaps three inches of space between each issue, and, sitting down at his invitation, I noticed that they were ordered in the right sequence: December, then January, then February, then March. The precise, calculated life of Michael Tran.

From speakers high on bookshelves the sound of soft music, almost not there. I strained to listen. Maroon 5.

He saw me looking at the anal-compulsive spread of the
New Yorker
.

He smiled. “Don't touch anything. I'll get upset.”

“I wasn't planning on it.”

“I like an ordered life, but I can see by your look that you consider me…well, compulsive.”

“That's exactly what I was thinking.”

“Would you like something to drink?”

I shook my head. No. He was sipping pink lemonade from a tall glass.

“Are you sure?”

I nodded again.

There was a sudden movement behind me as a kitchen door swung open. A young woman walked softly into the room, her feet bare, a slender, red-headed woman in white painter's pants that never worried a can of paint. A rose-colored peasant blouse. A pretty girl with pale skin, hazel eyes, and faint rose polish on her long nails. I noticed because she quietly waved a hand in greeting, a fluttery gesture that seemed to exhaust her. She toppled into a red leather side chair, curled her legs beneath her, and then wrapped her hands around her knees. She was smiling at me.

Michael and I watched her languorous trek to the side chair, he with a look that suggested possession and delight. Me, however, baffled. Off-Broadway performance art in an off-campus apartment on a ramshackle side street that edged Trinity College campus.

“Cheryl.” Michael pointed at her and she nodded at me.

“Rick Van Lam.”

“I know.”

Michael sat down opposite me. “What can I do you for?”

“Simon. Your little brother. Suspected of assault resulting in the death of an old man. And, I now understand, a boy who likes to visit his older brother.”

Michael frowned. “I don't know whether he
likes
to come here. Frankly, I was surprised when he first showed up. He took the city bus and somehow found me.”

That puzzled me. “When did the visits start?”

He rolled his tongue into his cheek. “The day after that detective Ardolino dragged him in for questioning. So, yes, recently. After he got back from Long Lane. He never came here before. It scared him, I guess. Ardolino can be a bulldog.”

“So he came here?”

He glanced at Cheryl. “You seem surprised. He's not scaling Everest to get here.”

“But the emotional climb to these rooms is probably…”

He thrust his hand out, blocking my face. “Oh, Christ. Introduction to Freshman Psychology.”

I grinned. “Fair enough.” I glanced at his girlfriend who was watching me closely. “On the phone you said you didn't believe he had anything to do with the new assault. Why?”

“Simple. Because he
told
me he had nothing to do with it. Yes, he did that nonsense that got him sent to Long Lane.”

“You're excusing that?”

He rushed his words. “I didn't say that, did I? Let me talk.” Flash fire annoyance, a tinge of red in his cheeks. “Of course not, but it was a boy's stupidity. Yes, people did get hurt. A broken limb, I believe. But this last incident was a whole different ball game, no? And he told me he got scared at Long Lane—never wants to go back. Certainly not a life of crime that leads to Somers and a cell shared with a prison-muscle freak named Jim Bob.”

Again the glance at his girlfriend, who now sat with her eyes half-shut, a narcotic smile on her lips. His eyes finally stayed on her face, a twist of his head suggesting some communication between them. When he looked back at me, I detected irritation. What had they said to each other in their coded body language?

He reminded me of little Simon, I suddenly realized. Yes, little Simon was a short slip of a boy, while Michael was taller, also bone thin but lanky, his arms long and bony. And Simon, like his father, had a dark complexion, a chocolate smoothness, his black hair wiry, ragged. Michael was fair with the delicate mocha of so many Vietnamese, but similar facial structure, pronounced cheekbones, small dark eyes, rigid chin, ears a little too big. What they called Buddha ears—bigger than they should be, with elongated lobes—prized as symbols of longevity. But a wide, broad nose. Good-looking, I realized—no, more striking than good-looking. He thinks he's white, Hazel had said of her brother, dismissing him.

“I still don't understand why Simon started visiting you.”

He rubbed his palms together. “Look, Rick. When I lived at home, when I was at Kingswood-Oxford prep, little Simon followed me around. So small, cute as a button. He would walk so close to me that if I stopped suddenly he sometimes bumped into my back. It was a joke—we laughed. Then I went away.”

“National Merit Fellow at Trinity. Full scholarship.”

His eyes widened. “You do your homework.”

“I'm an investigator who knows how to Google.”

He laughed. “I don't go home anymore.”

“Hazel told me you think you're white.”

He bit his lip. “Do I look white?” His question was addressed to the white girl sitting across the room. He made a
har har har
sound, exaggerated, and then closed up.

“You're Vietnamese.”

“I'm an American college student.”

“Why don't you go home?”

Again the quick glance at Cheryl, as if checking her response to a conversation she seemed to be ignoring. “I have a new life here. A couple more years at Trinity. A political science major. An internship planned for a state legislative office in Boston. Grad work at Harvard. A life
there
.”

“You could still stop in at your folks'.”

He waved a dismissive hand in the air. “You asked me why Simon found me. I never told him where I lived. I don't want anybody from my family visiting me. Yes, I talk to my mother because she worries and doesn't understand any of her children because she's not allowed to. I feel sorry for her. So I call her every so often. Community outreach, I call it. Charity. It's less painful than canvassing for a cure for cancer.”

“Christ, you're cynical.”

“That's not cynicism, Rick Van Lam. That's the first lesson in survival I learned.”

“So Simon found you because…”

“Because this last arrest threat is serious business, and maybe he remembered bumping into my back. He's a boy hungry for…well, a safety net.”

“And do you help him?”

“I let him sleep on my sofa. A few nights.”

“Why?”

“He's my brother.”

“His buddy Frankie?”

He shivered. “Christ, no. That two-bit street punk. Foul-mouth trash bucket. Simon brought him here once and I said—no, no, no. God no. Do I look like a halfway house for white trash? The next time Simon came alone. I'm an escape route. Underground Railroad. Three, maybe four times. As I say, it surprised me.”

“I sense you want to tell me something scandalous about your home life.”

He laughed. “Quick, you are.”

But I noticed a bead of sweat on his forehead. The tilt of his head told me he was nervous.

“Your father.” I let the two words linger in the air, explosive, accusatory.

“Quick, you are. Pop. I have a grudging respect for the man. But the pressure—the constant drive. The—pain of expectation.”

“Your father made a decent life for you kids.”

A smirk. “He did that. I told you I have a grudging respect. But we paid a price for
his
American dream.”

“His noble dream, no? A boy dumped onto the Hartford streets, a boy taken in just to get some greedy folks to America. A boy living hand to mouth. A boy…” I stopped, deliberately. “
Tran den.
The black American.”

He winced, pulled back in his chair. “I hate that.”

“I know you do.”

A low, clipped voice. “You don't think we heard it all growing up? ‘Do good in school. Be polite. Make America love you. Get all A's. Go to prep school. Go, go, go. Christ, the family religion.”

“He only wanted…”

“Stop saying that. Give me a fucking break. You must have seen that wall of awards. First prize, second prize. Spelling bees, Math competitions. Science fairs. Nutmeg Boys State. D.A.R Civic Award. Elks Club medals. A wall of fame—and, ultimately, shame. Each new addition a testimony to the wonder of the children he produced.”

“Okay, so he went overboard. Lots of Asian parents put pressure on their kids.”

“Pressure!” he bellowed. “You just don't get it, do you? Christ, we were held to the ground by the Plymouth Rock. Study, study, study. By the time I was in high school, I suffered from severe migraines, sobbing in my room when I got an A-minus on a fucking quiz. He's at my high school graduation, rushing in from the goddamn garage, a grease monkey, covered in oil and tar and…and…and he tries to hug me.”

I sat up, gob smacked. “You're ashamed of your father.”

He waited a long time. He seethed. “I told you I have a grudging…”

“Cut the crap, Michael. You're embarrassed.”

He looked away, but then watched me with an unfunny grin on his face. “On my college application I stupidly wrote he was a master mechanic. It just popped into my head. It sounded good. But he saw it—I left it out by mistake. Christ, it bothered him. But I couldn't bring myself to say…what? He changes the oil in your brand new Infiniti…I'm sorry. He kept saying he was proud of me. Proud.”

“You're blaming him for being proud?”

His two hands cradled the glass of lemonade. I thought he'd shatter it. “Let me finish, dammit. I feel sorry for little Simon because he's not gonna make it. Him and Hazel who will use her looks to wrangle a life with that scumbag from Avon Mountain, Judd the Dud. Or meek little Wilson with his eyeglasses falling off his nose, whimpering when he has to show Daddy a less-than-A grade in biology. He's not strong. You tell him to jump and he does. He's so fucked up he doesn't know that he can say no to the world. You wanna know why I let Simon sack out on my sofa? He needs a place to hide from the family. All good, good people who are doing their best to ruin his life because they don't know any better. Running the streets and flirting with some Viet Cong gangsters because they tell him he is worth something. Little Simon, the one my father coddled—his own image. But the one he demanded the most from. To become
him
.”