The Only Good Lawyer - Jeremiah Healy (24 page)

Chapter 12

 
I WALKED BACK up State Street to Tremont.

 
Inside the entrance of my office building, I
chose the stairs instead of the elevator to help clear my head.
Coming down the second-floor hall, though, I still must have been a
little dazed from Nancy, because my key was almost in the lock before
I noticed my door was already ajar.

I pushed it halfway open.

"About time, Mr. Private Eye," said an
accented voice from behind my desk.

A slim man sat in my chair, his feet in cowboy boots
and resting on the secretarial pull-tray. He had a clean-shaven face,
with sallow skin and blurry Asian features, as though the angles of
eye sockets and cheekbones had been arrested in early development.
His hair was black, combed back along his head in a moussed wave. He
wore a double-breasted jacket with lapels wide enough to challenge a
zoot suit, just a yellow T-shirt underneath. The eyes were somewhere
between blue and green, focusing on me the way a lizard does watching
a bug it hasn't yet decided is worth the effort. His right hand held
some of my opened mail up to the light from the window behind him.

Staying on the corridor side of the threshold—and
relieved not to see my photo album with the twenties tucked in it—I
said, "Anything interesting come for me today?"

"Just bills." He fanned himself with them.
"You ought to pay these, man, you don't want a bad credit report
on your ass."

A little more Boston flavor in his voice with more
words in the air.

He laid the papers on my desk. "What's the
matter, you don't want to come in your own office?"

“
Not until I see who's behind my door."

A small smile, the tip of his tongue just peeking out
between the lips. "Oscar?"

I heard shoes shushing on my carpet, and another man
came into view, backing up toward my desk with his hands behind his
spine like a soldier moving at parade rest. Oscar was only about
five—ten, but well over two hundred, his shoulders and bent arms
seriously straining a single-breasted, camel-hair sports coat that
probably measured a size fifty-four to start with. His skin tone went
a shade lighter than mocha, the hair harder to judge since it was
shaved like a recruit's in boot camp. I thought Oscar's nose had been
broken twice to the right and thrice to the left, though the sloping
eyes above the broad cheeks blazed in a way that made me seriously
doubt he'd even noticed the pain involved. His ears were barely
bigger than the buttons on his coat, the right one cauliflowered.

I said, "If he's Oscar Huong, that would make
you Nguyen Trinh."

A broader smile from the man behind the desk. "Call
me 'Nugey,' everybody else does."

"Let me guess. The first time you got busted,
the booking officer didn't know which was your family name and which
was your given name."

"That's pretty good, Mr. Private Eye." He
looked to his friend. "Oscar's momma, now, she give him a real
American name, easy to spot over here. Mine, she more . . .
traditional. But I use 'Mr. Trinh' now, anyway. Gonna be in America,
you gotta adapt to the culture, huh?"

Trinh stood up, at almost six feet a little taller
than he appeared sitting down. His hand made a Macarena motion toward
my desk chair. "Make yourself comfortable."

As I moved into the office, Huong backed up farther,
keeping himself between me and his boss. We all then did a slow-mo
minuet, rotating so that I ended up at my desk chair and they one
each behind my client chairs. Trinh and I sat down, but Huong
remained standing.

I looked at them. "How badly did you hurt my
door?"

A shrug from Trinh. "We didn't have no tools. I
figured, man's in business, he gonna have his office open, you know?"

"So, Oscar put his shoulder to it."

"Didn't have to," said Huong, speaking for
the first time. Not exactly easy listening, either. His voice sounded
as though whoever rearranged the nose had gone after the throat, too.
Then he brought his hands out from behind his back, raising them as
he said, "These were good enough."

Usually when you look at hands, they seem in rough
proportion to the rest of the body. But Huong's were huge, and there
were bumps and callouses on the knuckles in places you don't usually
see them.

I said, "Okinawan karate?"

Huong just grinned at me.

Nguyen Trinh said, "Oscar, he learn lots of shit
back when we juvies in DYS. You do the bare-knuckle push-ups on those
hard floors, man, you get like him, too. Don't nobody mess with us,
they see Oscar's hands."

"How about before Oscar's hands got like that?"

Any humor faded from the sallow face. Trinh said,
“You were over there, right?"

"Vietnam'?"

"No. Waikiki fucking Beach."

I tried to relax in my chair. "You do some
research on me?"

Trinh almost smiled again. "Don't have to, Mr.
Private Eye. You got the look. I was five years old when my momma put
me on that plane. But I remember the look."

"What plane?"

Trinh seemed a little surprised, but he said, "The
do-gooders, they called it 'Operation Babylift'. Back in
'seventy-five, just when the Commies was coming over the walls. The
do-gooders, they figured the Cong gonna kill us, cause we got the
American devil-blood inside. Color of my eyes, color of Oscar's skin.
So we get loaded on these planes—didn't have seats or nothing, just
mattresses and that net stuff, hold down cargo. And that's all we
was, too, cargo they sending to the place our poppas come from. Only
thing is, we land in Boston, and guess what? Ain't no poppas waiting
at the gate with cameras and teddy bears. Lots of the kids, they was
just babies, but Oscar and me, we old enough to see what's going on,
know what's happening to us."

"And what did happen?"

Trinh swallowed, kind of hard. "We ain't cute
like the little babies, everybody want to adopt. We don't got no
English, either, except a couple words our mommas remember. Oscar and
me, we get put in this orphan place, and then foster homes, but there
was nobody really wanted us. Even in school, man, you sit down for
lunch, all of a sudden you hear this noise. You don't got much
English, first time you don't know what it is. Then you do. All the
kids at your lunch table, they saying it under their breath, chanting
like they monks or some shit."

"Chanting what?"

" 'Gook, gook, gook'. "

Huong broke in. "Or 'Nigger gook, nigger gook'."

I wished I couldn't picture it. "Kind of a jump
to doing home invasions in the suburbs."

Trinh did smile this time. "You the one doing
research on us, Mr. Private Eye."

"Some."

"Yeah, well, we didn't go right to the big
stuff, you know. We start small, pay our dues. Oscar beat up the kids
said things to us, and that got us into DYS the first time. Once we
there, we learn pretty quick what's what. You got to fight, or you
get turned out."

Meaning raped. "But—"

Huong said, "Once you a punk, them booty
bandits, they don't leave you alone."

Trinh waited till his friend was finished. "Oscar
and me, we never do that kind of shit to nobody, man. Even back then,
AIDS was everywhere, these junky kids been sharing needles 'in the
ghetto'. But nobody never turned us out, either. Thanks to Oscar."

I wanted to aim Trinh more toward what I was
investigating.

"And after that, you graduated to terrorizing
families for money."

"Hey, man, you do what you know. Secret of
success in these United States." Trinh looked around the room.
"I gotta tell you, though, I don't know where your clients come
from, you in this shitty little building with no parking out front,
that slower than shit elevator, and then a locked-up door to your
office."
 
"Tell me
something else, Nugey. You use Oscar for anything other than a human
master key?"

The tip-of-the-tongue smile. "I got my hand in
lots of things."

"Like loan-sharking."

"Helping people who need cash, can't get it from
the bank, without a mask and a gun."

"Before you went into the lending business,
though, you and Oscar both knew Woodrow Gant?"

Trinh dropped the smile. "How come you asking
around about him and us?"

"He had dinner at a restaurant you have a piece
of."

Trinh paused for a moment, glancing up at Huong
before coming back to me. "You know how come I rent to that
little shit Chan?"

"No."

Trinh released a breath. "I find out, he want to
open a restaurant. Only thing, he have one before, but he couldn't
make it go. It close, Chan owe people, even went bankrupt. So now he
want to try again, I give him a chance."

"You're a real soft touch, Nugey."

The loan shark smiled again. I decided I liked him
better serious.

He said, "That Chan, he one pure-blood
Vietnamese. We still over in Saigon, he look down on Oscar and me
like we dogshit somebody track into his house." Trinh leaned
forward, putting his hand on my desk, grinding a little with the
thumb. "So now he like this under me. Chan need my money, he got
to respect me."

"You set him up in the restaurant so he'd be in
your control."

"You got it." Trinh leaned back again. "I
even call him 'Charlie,' like the fat detective guy in the old
movies. And his woman, I call her 'Dinah,' get it?"

I thought I did. "Dinah like 'diner'."

"Right. And they got to take it because they got
to respect me."

Something was off. Huong remained stoic, but Trinh
seemed relieved and kind of pleased with himself, like he'd just put
something over on me.

"So," I said, "your owning the
restaurant building had nothing to do with Woodrow Gant eating there
the night he was killed."

"Zip, zero. Mr. Private Eye, I never even know
the lawyer-man liked Vietnamese food. He sure never mentioned it when
he was working on sending Oscar and me away."

Trinh rolled out the half-tongue smile, then checked
his watch before looking up at his friend. "Oscar, how about you
bring the car around, we get out of here?"

That seemed more off to me. Why wouldn't they want to
leave together?

Huong just nodded, though, watching me carefully as
he backed out my door, closing it behind him.

I waited for Trinh to turn back to me. "And I
thought we'd never be alone."

He smiled, but just the little one. "I don't
like to say everything in front of Oscar. Sometimes he think I'm
telling him to do stuff when I ain't."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning Oscar think you like a real threat or
something to me, to my business, he maybe just decide to take you
apart right here."

"Might be easier said than done."

Trinh looked me over, appraising something. "You
one of those exercise geeks, go to the health club, jog by the
river?"

"Every morning, and twice on Sundays."

A better smile. "Don't matter, Mr. Private Eye.
You never seen Oscar do his thing. He into that extreme-fighting
shit."

“ ‘
Extreme fighting'?"

"You know, where these two guys get in a
pit—with a fence like a schoolyard has around it?—and just beat
the shit out of each other. No gloves, no rules except the eyes and
biting."

I'd heard of it as "ultimate fighting" a
few years before. "I thought that got outlawed?"

"They trying, man. But you got to go with the
will of the people, and the people, they want to see blood. First one
was in Denver. Oscar the shortest guy climb in the pit, but he still
come out fourth."

"What's your point, Nugey?"

Trinh nodded. "My point is, I want to whack that
lawyer-man Gant, I ain't gonna have him eat at Chan's restaurant,
then shoot him on a road. We just catch him in an alley sometime,
like when he getting his car, maybe. Then I tell Oscar to beat that
Uncle Tom to death."

Trinh stood up. "Like I'm gonna have Oscar do to
you, you don't stay the fuck out of my business."

As Nguyen Trinh walked
into the corridor, I began to register why he'd have wanted Huong to
bring their car around. As soon as I heard him push the button for
the elevator, I went into my desk drawer for the old photo album.

* * *

I was already at my office door, making a mental note
to call our superintendent and get it fixed, when I heard the
elevator door close. Trinh had been right: The elevator was slow,
slow enough that I could be downstairs and hidden by the time he was
getting off and going out the main entrance. I watched him at the
curb, folding into the backseat of a green,  four-door Mercedes,
which pulled away heading south toward the theater district.

I gave it a count of five,
then slipped out the door, hailing a cab from the cover of the next
building. When the driver slewed over to me, I said into his open
window, "This is your lucky day."