No Good to Cry

No Good to Cry by Andrew Lanh Read Free Book Online

Book: No Good to Cry by Andrew Lanh Read Free Book Online
Authors: Andrew Lanh
boys—yet. That’s clear.”
    â€œBingo. But he’s convinced…”
    I broke in. “Maybe forensics will help nab the boys.”
    Hank sighed. “Simon’s father is running scared and wants to talk to—you.”
    I rubbed my eyes. “What can I do, Hank?”
    A long pause, quiet a moment. “Well, he wants you to move mountains. To prove his son innocent.”
    I hesitated. “And is this…Simon…innocent?”
    Hank waited a second. “That’s what you gotta find out.”
    â€œWhat does Simon say?”
    Hank made a tsk ing sound. “The boy refuses to talk.”
    â€œMakes my job easy then.”
    â€œI promised Big Nose you’d look into it.”
    I smiled. “You were sure I’d say yes?”
    Hank’s voice rose. “I know you. They’re Vietnamese. You imagine sins you’re always atoning for.”
    â€œAtoning for?”
    â€œAnd you got a heart.”
    â€œSo I’m supposed to meet the family? When?”
    Hank chuckled. “Well, tomorrow morning. Minh Loc Tran—everybody calls him Mike—has the day off. He’s a grease monkey. Sunday morning. They’ll give us mi ga .”
    â€œUs?”
    â€œYou don’t expect me to miss homemade chicken soup, do you?” A pause as he rustled papers near the receiver. “They live in a small Cape Cod off Campfield on Milton Street in the South End.”
    â€œTomorrow morning?”
    â€œDidn’t you hear what I said, Rick? Mi ga . Chicken soup for the Vietnamese soul.”
    ***
    The driveway of the small Cape Cod home looked like a used-car parking lot: a rusted Dodge pickup up on cinder blocks, a decade-old Honda with a smashed-in right fender, mud smeared, and an ancient black Cadillac that might have seemed cool when Gerald Ford assumed the Presidency.
    â€œGod, Hank,” I mumbled, “this looks like a salvage yard.” I pointed to a vintage Jeep, primer paint slathered on the door, parked on the muddy lawn, its rear tires imbedded in dirt.
    â€œThey got a lot of cars.” Hank did not sound happy.
    â€œAre any of them running?”
    Hank bristled. “They’re poor people, Rick.”
    I shut up.
    The house was painted a robin’s-egg blue, eye-catching, a color so brilliant the house seemed a wonderful toy lifted from a children’s fairy tale. The houses left and right—in fact, up and down the curvy street—were cookie-cutter homes, some building contractor’s unfortunate hiccough back in the 1950s, the sameness relieved only by the different color siding.
    Sitting in front, checking out the derelict cars, I sensed movement in an upper dormer window, a flash of a young face glancing out and then disappearing.
    â€œThey’re expecting us,” Hank said firmly. He jerked his head toward the house. “We just gonna sit here?”
    â€œIn a minute,” I told him. “I want you to tell me what I’m walking into—and why you’re being evasive.”
    On the way over Hank had been uncharacteristically quiet, answering mostly in monosyllables, his clipped responses unnerving me. “Did you ever meet Mike Tran?” I’d asked him.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œAnyone in the family?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œChrist, Hank, help me out here.”
    â€œGrandma knew the wife a long time ago.”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œThey tend to stay to themselves.”
    On and on, maddening, a scant biography that told me little. Hank’s face was unusually frozen, his eyes avoiding mine.
    No, he said, they rarely attended the Tet New Year’s parties at the VFW hall in East Hartford. No, he’d never seen them in Little Saigon or shopping at A Dong, a supermarket a mile away in Elmwood.
    â€œNo, no. no.”
    â€œYou’re not telling me something,” I’d insisted, and his feckless smile convinced me I was right.
    â€œIt’s not

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