Return to Dust (4 page)

Hired by Goodwill Industries, set up in a small apartment in Unionville, he drifted from one menial job to the next until Farmington College hired him. But shortly after I began working there, he was fired. He chain-smoked Lucky Strikes, inside in winter, in the hallways. Warned over and over, baffled by such a law when utter lawlessness had earlier defined his life, he persisted—until he was let go.

He did handyman jobs around town. A car washer, trash man. And he was Joshua Jennings' twice-a-week yardman.

How did he connect to the story of Marta Kowalski?

“Rick, your mind is wandering.”

“I'm thinking of Willie Do.”

“I know.”

Over dessert we caught up on each other's lives. She'd been back to New York to visit her parents who were still angry she'd left the city. In the warm light of the candles her olive-toned skin looked muted, silky. She was the dark negative to Karen's sunny photograph. If I hadn't been married to her once already, I might have been tempted.

“How are you?” she asked. “I haven't seen you in a while.”

“You know, nothing much.”

She looked me full in the face. “Karen is a pretty woman.” She was watching me closely. “Not beautiful but pretty. Wouldn't you say that's the word for her?”

I thought of Karen—reedy, slender, her eyes the color of a dusty prairie flower. Yes—pretty. Not beautiful. Liz was a beautiful woman—the exquisite coal-black eyes glowing in the dark oval face.

“Yes, she's pretty.”

“She's very skinny,” she added. “All skin and bones. Don't forget—I've seen her in the sauna. Naked.”

I grinned. “Liz, your words are giving me mental pictures that…”

“Be careful,” Liz interrupted, unsmiling. “You know how you are around attractive women.”

“For God's sake, Liz.”

“I know you, Rick.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing. I know you.”

“You're the only beautiful woman I ever chased.”

Now she grinned. “And look how that ended up.”

Chapter Four

Outside, by the cars, I kissed her, thanked her again for the information. We lingered there, smiling, and she was the first to leave. It was a cool, serene fall night, the sky white with stars. After she drove away, I leaned against the car door, hesitant to go home, pulling in the collar of my fall coat. I wanted a cigarette—I'd stopped a few years back—but I always craved nicotine after dinner with a beautiful woman and French food and wine and strong, kicking coffee.

Since I had to drive home through Hartford, I decided to stop at my office to check in. I do my investigations out of my Farmington apartment—sometimes I even use my office at the college in between Criminal Justice classes taught to eager freshmen who have seen too many episodes of
True Detective
and
CSI
—but I am a partner of Gaddy Associates, Private Investigation, Inc., housed in the historic Colt Building in the south end of Hartford.

When I pulled into the parking lot, I noticed the lights were on in the sixth-floor office. Gaddy was there. Gaddy is Jimmy Gadowicz, a rough-and-tumble PI, a man in his late sixties, a man who took me in as his only associate a couple years back. His firm—our firm—did mostly insurance fraud for the likes of Aetna, Travelers, Cigna, The Hartford, you name it, in the epicenter of America's insurance. We didn't get into murder, Jimmy and I. We played it safe among the white-collar insurance execs.

I took the elevator to the sixth floor. The Colt Building is an old derelict factory building, once owned by Colt Firearms. A decrepit building, it houses cheap, partitioned rents for public TV access shows, fundamentalist religious crusades, starving artists, karate or tai kwon do classes, left-wing political action groups, and fly-by-night business ventures. A world of spirited people living off nothing.

Gaddy Associates—most folks call Jimmy by the nickname Gaddy except close friends—was a straight-arrow firm. Jimmy's a man of incredible bluster, but I've never met a man so honest—and so infuriating at times. He'd fought in Vietnam—a young manhood trial by fire—and that's why he had me around in the first place. Jimmy saw me as part of that past—his past. He's a big pile of a man, unshaven half the time, always sweating, even in winter, mopping a grainy forehead with a gray handkerchief, a man poured into extra-large sweatshirts that ride up a tremendous belly.

“What the hell you doing here?” Jimmy greeted me. The room smelled of thick cigar smoke and old tuna sandwiches and stale breath. He looked me over. “Coming here dressed like a goddamn pansy in that outfit.”

I grinned. “So much for politically correct tolerance. And just what's wrong with my clothes, Jimmy?”

“Rick, you look like a…forget it.” He shook my hand.

“I'm just checking in—in case you missed me.”

He grumbled. “Sometimes you make no sense.”

“What are
you
doing here?” I asked.

Jimmy was sitting in front of an old wooden file cabinet. The drawers were pulled out. Papers were scattered across the floor. A wastepaper basket was jam-packed with torn files. He threw his hands up in the air.

“What, Jimmy?”

Silently he handed me a printout. “This came in the mail.”

A message from the owner. The decaying building—so loved by the migrant tenants—was under consideration for a sale to a firm that specialized in state-of-the-art urban studios for the young professionals.

“We're gonna have to move.”

“Not yet,” I told him.

He stopped shuffling papers. “I planned on staying in this hole-in-the-wall.”

“We'll find a place.”

“It ain't that simple.” He pointed to the file cabinets. “I don't know why I saved all this shit.”

“A goldmine of cases.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Jimmy, we'll find a place.”

He peered at me. “No,
you
will find a place. I'll just show up to say yes or no.” He watched me closely. “You're up to something, Rick.” He sat back and lit a cigar.

I nodded. “Do you remember Marta Kowalski's death?”

Jimmy spends a lot of time in Farmington, usually at my apartment or at our hangout, Zeke's Olde Tavern, so he knows the business of the small town. He also has a nose for detail. He'd remember my cleaning lady. I'd certainly talked about her death to him at the time. Now I told him about Karen and her hiring me to investigate her aunt's murder. As I was rambling on, shifting my head to avoid puffs of cloying cigar smoke that I was sure he purposely directed at me, I could see he was anxious to break in.

“Murder?” he barked when I paused. “And you took the case?”

“Yeah, I think…”

“I think you lost your mind. That necktie on too tight, Rick? The money is in fraud, not murder. Murder is messy.”

“You sound like a bumper sticker.” My eyes burned from his smoke. I got up to open a window and the chill November cold rushed in. He shivered and frowned as though the crisp air would do him in.

He put out the cigar. “Okay, tell me your thinking.”

I did, explaining what little Karen had told me, the conditions of our tentative contract, the huge retainer. He liked the amount of the check because part of that would be his, of course. Dollar signs flashed in his eyes.

“I think it's worth a shot,” I summed up. “After all, there're some unanswered questions. Maybe I can give Karen a little”—I hesitated—“closure.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I hate that goddamn word.”

“I know.”

“Yeah, then why…?”

“Useful, sometimes.”

“Christ, Almighty man.”

“I think part of our job is customer peace of mind.”

This last bit came out a little too—well, purposely unctuous. I couldn't help it because while I was talking, Jimmy had a simpering smirk on his face—a father listening to a foolish, errant son, dutifully waiting to impart wisdom to the ignorant child.

Suddenly throwing back his head, he laughed so hard he started to choke. “Shit, how you talk. Ivy League PIs.” He shook his head.

I laughed, too. Jimmy never let me get away with anything. Sometimes I didn't even know I was trying to. “You got my meaning, no?”

“You goddamn dictionary.” He was still grinning. “Motive,” he said. “Remember that word—motive.”

“I know.”

“Motive.”

“I know. You taught me that.”

“No, you don't remember sometimes. You're a babe in the woods. That's why you need me. I think it's a wild goose chase, but it's your time and it's money in my pocket. You gotta keep this firm afloat.” He tapped me on the shoulder. “I'm out of here. Home to bed.” He looked around the shabby room. “I'm gonna miss this dump.”

“Bette Davis said the…”

He broke in. “Now that was a real actress in the day.”

He grabbed his jacket and fumbled for the wooden matches he always uses to light his cigars. “See you.” Then, from over my shoulder as I sat in front of a computer screen on my desk, “Is this Karen a beauty?”

I looked up and felt my face get hot. “Yeah, she's pretty.”

There was that word again. Damn: pretty. Blond blond blond.

“Be careful.” He was grinning. “You know how you are.”

I tapped my fingers on the table. “What does that mean?”

He left without answering.

An hour later, driving home on I-84, scooting between two racing semis who saw my decade-old and rusting BMW as fodder for late-night, superhighway fun, I swore out loud. In the space of one hour two people—Liz and Jimmy, ex-wife and resident yenta—had warned me about beautiful—no, pretty—women getting in my way. What the hell were these people saying? Was I that shallow? Or transparent? Stupidly I remembered a young taxi girl who smoked cigarettes outside a Saigon bar as she whispered to passing soldiers—I'd watched her when I was a thirteen-year-old boy. She was pretty, too. Day in, day out—I mooned over her. Was I merely a stammering immigrant to these shores? I was in this to solve a murder. I was a professional. Murder, not mayhem or matrimony. Murder, not matchmaking. Murder. Or, frankly, was it indeed just a suicide?

Suicide, not, well—sex. Damn.

Chapter Five

I woke up bloated and tired—last night's wine leaving me headachy. I yawned, pulled myself out of bed, and showered. My muscles ached. I really needed to get back to running. I'm not out of shape but in need of muscle on my long, lanky body. The slightest beginning of a paunch because I was no longer a young man. Thirty-nine now, my last birthday—a created birthday, given me when I arrived in America, a thirteen-year-old boy who, till then, had no birthday at all, or at least none that I remembered from the orphanage.

I decided to hit the gym before my ten o'clock class. I teach two days, Tuesday and Thursday, one section of Introduction to Criminal Science and one of Investigations. While swimming laps in the pool after the workout, I was distracted, unable to focus. A horrible image overwhelmed me—Marta Kowalski dropping off that final cold stone bridge. The cleaning lady no one paid any attention to—an old woman dragging a dust cloth over my bookcases. Was it possible Karen's instincts were on target?

At that moment a wave of belief swept over me. But why would anyone kill her? And in so gruesome a fashion? Toppling onto those rocks. A neck snapped. So I stopped swimming, resting on the side of the pool, my hair in my eyes, heart pounding, the veins in my hands jutting out as I gripped the side of the pool.

Leaving the gym, I spotted Hank Nguyen headed to the parking lot with a backpack casually slung over his shoulder, a couple books cradled against his chest. Despite the morning chill, he wore his jacket unzipped, flapping in the slight breeze. Worse, he wore a pair of khaki cargo shorts. November, I thought—why do young people think they're invincible to the elements? Probably because they are. When you hit your late thirties, you realize that nature crouches on the dark horizon, getting ready to trip you.

“Hey, Hank,” I yelled, causing him to stop moving.

“Rick,” he answered. “I was gonna call you later. I had to be in town this morning. See what you're up to.”

“You're just the man I want to talk to.”

He grinned. “Ah, you need my help with some mystery.”

I paused. “Actually, I do.”

That surprised him, so he stopped moving. “Really? Tell me.”

“Time for coffee?”

He nodded. “I'm on a break from the academy. Thought I'd use the library at my old alma mater.” He pointed toward the College Union. “The coffee is not good here. They use your recipe.”

“You'll live.” I smiled. “No one has a recipe for making coffee.”

“Maybe that's the problem then. Mystery solved.”

Now twenty-three years old, Hank Nguyen had graduated with a degree in Criminal Justice from the college and was training at the Connecticut State Police Academy. He wanted to be a state trooper—the first Vietnamese-American, he claimed—and then, a few years down the road, a private investigator. Like me. We'd become close friends after a bumpy start. Pure Vietnamese—part of a big, rollicking family in East Hartford, all fleeing from Saigon in 1975 or thereabouts, drifting on hostile waters to Hong Kong—he had disliked me when he was my student, sitting in my class with a scowl on his face. I'm mixed blood, one of those pathetic lost souls celebrated in Broadway's
Miss Saigon
—to my horror—and the native Vietnamese are notorious in their dislike of such impurity. We also served as grim reminders of the deleterious American presence on that war-torn soil.

Hank and I had some angry moments, even foolishly grappled on a tennis court one afternoon—a lame physical confrontation that was more ludicrous than hurtful—and then, curiously, Hank began to trust me—and to like me. Born in America, he had been raised at home with the blustery old biases carried from Vietnam, but also a lot of love. A bright guy, and funny. Hank—his real name is Tan—became my buddy. I liked him a lot.

“So you got a case you want me to help solve?” Hank asked, walking alongside me.

“Willie Do.” I threw out the name of the man who'd supposedly skirmished with Marta Kowalski.

Hank stopped walking, his face hardening, and leaned into me. “Vuong Ky Do.”

“The one and the same.”

“Willie doesn't bother anyone, Rick.” His tone was nervous and dry. “Willie…well, hides from the world.”

“So I remember.”

“Tell me.”

I watched Hank's face closely, animated, twisting to the side but back to me, eyes bright but wary. Ever since we became friends—and especially after he made it his passion to make me a part of his family, the Sunday morning guest for familial
mi ga
, the ritualistic chicken soup—Hank defined himself as my sidekick in my investigations. Most of my endeavors involved mundane and deadly dull insurance investigations that kept me busy and paid the bills. Tedious, granted, but for Hank, with all the fire of a young man who loved mystery and crime and punishment, my wanderings were the stuff of Arthurian quest. Sir Galahad with an iPhone, a Twitter obsession, and a Mac Powerbook. Jimmy Gadowicz found him a little too eager, but tolerated him with a grandfatherly tap on the shoulder. Liz, those times we were together, found him charming, delightful. And he blushed when she smiled at him. I found him good, honest company.

As he tagged along on my fraud investigations, sitting in the car stuffing his face with doughnuts and drumming his fingers on the dashboard, turning up the radio when a Maroon 5 tune came on though I immediately lowered the volume, he had a lot to say about the world I inhabited. So many years my junior, he sometimes assumed a patronizing tone—the cocky American-born Vietnamese man who felt a need to school the always insecure immigrant boy who chose him as a friend.

We sat at a table in the back of the hall. Hank stretched out, his legs resting on the bottom rung of a cafeteria chair. He was wearing a canvas jacket, vaguely military, and a J.Crew T-shirt beneath it. In his baggy shorts and orange sneakers he seemed ready for a day of surfing at a Rhode Island beach rather than getting ready for autumn and Thanksgiving feasts. A tall gangly young man, dark as nut bread, with narrow, slanted eyes in an intense hard-angled face, all his hair cropped close to the scalp and one discreet earring, he watched me closely.

“Willie Do is a dangerous topic, Rick.”

That surprised me. I sat up. “What? For God's sake, why? I remember him from the college. He never spoke but…”

He broke in. “Everybody in the Vietnamese community sort of leaves him alone.”

“Because of…”

“What he went through. Christ, Rick. The torture, the escape.” A long pause. “But I think the brutal rape and death of his little girl ended his life. He had to
watch
that as it happened. He stopped breathing.”

I shuddered. “I can understand that.” The frozen man.

Now Hank stared into my face. “No, you don't. I don't think anyone can ever understand that. Yeah, my family…you on those Saigon streets, alone…yeah. But not like that. So you got to be careful when you bring his name into any investigation.”

I breathed in. “Which is why I was planning on calling you.”

“What could he have done?”

“Maybe nothing.” I sighed. “Probably nothing.”

“You know his story,” Hank stressed.

I nodded. Quickly I filled Hank in on Karen Corcoran's belief that her Aunt Marta had been murdered. Hank knew nothing of the suicide—though he insisted he remembered seeing Marta leaving my home one afternoon, her glare at him unfriendly, a finger wagged angrily at him for some reason—but now, hearing about Karen's hiring me, Hank got angry.

“You don't mean she says that Willie…?”

I held up my hand. “Let me tell you. Wait. You're getting hot under the collar. Marta called the cops on him, I understand. She cleaned for old Joshua Jennings, and he was the yardman on the grounds. Something happened—something stupid. Something about dirty footprints tracked inside, and she lost it, screamed at him, accused.”

He leaned into me. “But he wouldn't have fought her. The man has no fight left in him….”

“He didn't. But she claimed his look was—venomous. Dangerous. She felt threatened. So she called the cops.”

Hank's anger was growing, the reddish color rising in his cheeks. His eyes flickered. Protective of Willie, he stammered, “She…she had a hell of a nerve.”

“But the cops questioned him. I guess they had to follow up, you know, but I guess Willie got really quiet, started to tremble, you know, maybe flashbacks to…the old days, cops…and his son…”

“His name is Toan but everyone calls him Tony….”

“Well, his son intervened. Nothing happened.”

“Despicable, all of it.”

“Hank, relax. Cops doing their job.”

“This Marta was a damn troublemaker.”

For the first time I smiled. “She was a bit of that, I agree. A hard woman to like. A woman of strong opinions.”

He smirked. “And yet you let her into your apartment.”

“I liked the way the woman handled a dust cloth.”

“And yet your apartment always looks like the back room of Goodwill.”

“Nevertheless…”

He hurled out his words, fierce and unfriendly. “Well, what do you want from me, Rick?”

I watched him. So much confusion. I pointed at him. “Hank, calm down. I'm on your side, remember?”

A thin smile. “Sorry.”

“I know the sad story everyone knows about Vuong—Willie.” I began. “But that's about all.”

“It's more than sad, Rick. It's…it's so raw you wake up sweating about it. That is his only story, really. A quiet man, but a brooding one, so hurt.” He hesitated. “My mother says he is just waiting to die.”

“I don't know anything about his family. Where does he live?”

“They got a three-family in Unionville, by the railroad tracks. An old company house from the factory days. A little run-down, sagging porches, asphalt siding. The son and his wife live on the first floor—they own the place. They got a fifteen-year-old boy, sort of a wise guy kid, rumor has it, always picked up for things like shoplifting. Kid named Roger but everyone calls him Big Nose. Nice touch. He answers to that. Willie and his wife, Linh, live on the second.” Hank smiled. “The third floor is one of my distant cousins, a young guy named Fred, just married last year with a new baby. I mean, no one knows Willie because he stays away from folks.”

“Does he work?”

“Not that I know. The college let him go. Handyman jobs. I guess, well, like he cut Joshua Jennings' lawn, that sort of thing. Lives on Social Security.”

“So he just stays home?”

“The funny thing is that his wife—we call her Aunt Marie—knows my grandmother, good friends from somewhere, probably back in Saigon. They see each other at New Year's—that sort of thing. Grandma likes her a lot because she's warm, caring, and, I guess, she put up with a life with Willie. I mean, she loves her husband.“

“I need to talk to him.”

Hank had been sipping his coffee but choked. “God, why?”

“Because I have to follow up on Karen's story.”

Fiercely: “Willie didn't murder Marta Kowalski.”

“You don't know that.”

He sat back. “Yes, I do.” He locked eyes with mine. “Because she yelled at him for tracking mud on a floor? Jesus Christ, Rick.”

“I know, I know. Crazy, yes. But I need to follow up on everything. Maybe Willie can tell me something about Marta's state of mind, her attitude, what set her off.”

“Trouble, Rick.”

“How so?”

A deliberate hesitation as he chose his words carefully. “He's old-fashioned.”

“Meaning?”

“He won't talk to you. He's—well, like my father and grandfather.”

I nodded. “You're kidding me, no? After all this time? He won't talk to me because I'm mixed blood.
Bui doi
?”

A sheepish smile, embarrassed. “Yeah.”

An old story, marrow deep. I'm that curious breed produced by the Vietnamese Conflict: an Amerasian, one of the so-called children of the dust, the dirty secret, the
bui doi
. I have no idea who my mother was, except that she was a Vietnamese woman who, in the final days of the war, carried a child by a white American soldier, also nameless and now forgotten. I was dumped off at an orphanage when I was around five. I have dim memories of my mother, whispers of stories, though sometimes I can feel her holding me tight. My real first name is Viet, but in Vietnam I was Lam Van Viet. In America, a young boy, resting in a foster home in the Bronx for a month, I was Viet Van Lam, and then I allowed myself to become Rick Van Lam. I didn't mind—I was thirteen and I wanted to become American. I wanted to fit in.

I still do.

“I still don't fit in,” I said to Hank.

“You got a home here.” He pointed out the door. “You were lost in Manhattan so you came here. This is home now. And my grandma adores you.”

“And I adore her.”

Slowly he whispered, “Poor Willie Do.”

“I need to interview him, Hank. And I'd like you to come with me. I need you to set it up.”

A sigh. “He won't talk.” Finally, pushing his coffee cup away, he decided. “Then I gotta get Grandma on it. Call his wife. This isn't going to be good. Willie suffered in the re-education camps. If he runs from authority—if he trembled and hid when the Farmington cops showed up—that could not be a good sign.”

“I gotta talk to him.”

“I'll talk to Grandma.”

Now I smiled. “She has magical powers.”

He rolled his eyes. “So you say. My God, you and her mouthing all that Buddhist wisdom.”

“Maybe you should listen to her—and me.”

“I do listen, but…” His voice trailed off.

“But what?”

“What would Buddha say about Marta's death?” he asked suddenly, a grin on his face.