No Good to Cry Page 2

  “Christ, no, Jimmy, that man looks at me like he wants to kill me.”

  Jimmy had dismissed that. “You got an imagination, Rick boy.”

  “No, he’s hateful.”

  Talking with Jimmy on the phone, I’d been ready to do battle over his newfound friendship with the old veteran, but backed off. “No,” I’d told him, “I got things to do.”

  I’d lied. I had nothing to do. Jog around town, maybe go for a swim at the Farmington College pool, prepare a lesson for the one-night-a-week class I taught there in Criminology. Perhaps review a fraud case I’d been wrestling with. Dawdle the afternoon away. No, eating a sandwich while the mean-spirited Ralph glared at me across the table was not a good idea.

  “C’mon, Rick.” Jimmy had urged.

  “No.”

  Ralph Gervase, dead now from a mugging. Ralph Gervase, recently moved to Hartford from a great-niece’s home in White Plains, New York. Without options—I believed the man hadn’t a friend in the world—he’d moved into a boardinghouse filled with old veterans, restless wanderers across America, casualties of a war that ended decades in the past. Ralph ended up in Hartford because he had a distant cousin in the same rooming house, another ailing veteran who died the day after Ralph moved in with his battered cardboard suitcase, a plastic ShopRite bag containing a six-pack, and the work dungarees he wore day in, day out. A small, wiry man, his bullet head with cloudy eyes always a little too red, he strutted around like a bantam rooster, his voice a mosquito whine, always standing too near so that you recoiled at his rancid tobacco odor.

  Jimmy and Ralph had bumped into each other on the sidewalk outside our office. Jimmy was headed for cigarettes at a Quik-Mart. Ralph, so Jimmy confided, had just shoplifted a pack of Camels from the convenience store and nearly collided with him. They’d known each other in Vietnam for a couple of months near the end of the war, but had never gotten along. “A weasel,” Jimmy confessed to me. “No one trusted him. We all thought he’d buy lunch with friendly fire one day.”

  “He sounds delightful,” I’d said at the time.

  Jimmy smirked. “Christ, how you talk.”

  He didn’t like Ralph, a crusty drunk even less politically correct than Jimmy himself, though Jimmy’s biases were couched in an engaging humanity that somehow gave him a pass. But he held a confused loyalty about old Nam veterans, especially the ones he’d served with. Which was why he hung out—“Not often but just enough”—with the old-timer.

  After that first encounter Jimmy insisted Ralph meet me. A big mistake, immediately evident. Ralph harbored ugly attitudes carried from his younger days in the jungles of Nam. The stink and horror of the underground tunnels of Cu Chi. So here, unexpectedly, he found himself sitting across from the dreaded yellow peril—yellowish peril, perhaps—a forty-year-old man in a Brooks Brothers suit merrily chomping on a salty potato chip and downing a salt-free margarita at Moe’s Southwest Grill. Jimmy hadn’t told his old army buddy that his younger partner in solving routine insurance fraud in the Insurance Capital of the World was that curious product of the troubled war that continued to define Ralph’s dead-end life.

  “Jimmy ain’t told me you was a gook.”

  “Pleased to meet you, too.” I’d offered my hand. He refused to take it.

  I’d stared into his rough, leathery face. He constantly tapped a breast pocket where he kept a pack of cigarettes, as though any situation that bothered him called for a necessary light. He’d glanced out of the window and I expected him to hurry out, slip a cigarette out of the pack, and snap on the Bic lighter he’d been playing with since he sat down at the table.

  He avoided eye contact. “You’re one of them boys, you know, who…” He glanced at Jimmy. “Like white blood or something.”

  “Bui doi,” I’d helped him along. “One of the dust boys. My father was an American soldier…” My voice trailed off. “A story you’ve heard before.”

  Squinting at me, suddenly amused, he’d snickered, “I probably dropped a few squawking babies like you along the way. Half-breeds. Rest and relaxation from the Cong, as you’d say. There was one taxi girl, in fact, love-you-all-night whore who…”

  Jimmy shot out his arm, grabbed Ralph’s shoulder. His voice shook. “Ralph, I don’t think Rick needs to hear about your days in Nam.”

  Ralph narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, we come back home, goddamn heroes we think, and no one gives a shit about the war—or us. A forgotten war, dammit. Like we was doing something mean and rotten to them godless people. America turned its back on us. Who the hell remembers?”

  “Well, I guess that’s why I’m here in America,” I’d said quietly.

  He’d snarled, “And just why is that?”

  “To help you remember.”

  Chapter Two

  Gracie and I met Liz as she was signing in at Hartford Hospital. Catching my eye, she nodded toward Gracie, and I understood her worry. She gave me a peck on my cheek and then embraced Gracie, who started to sob.

  “It’s all right, Gracie,” she whispered. “Jimmy’s fine. He’ll make it.”

  Gracie glanced at me. “Old people die in hospitals.”

  Liz squeezed her hand. “The cranky ones like Jimmy live forever.”

  That made Gracie smile.

  Liz had come directly from work. Dressed in a snug cranberry-colored suit, a simple white scarf draped around her neck, a white silk blouse, she looked the part: the serious criminal psychologist on staff at the Farmington Police Department. A gorgeous woman at forty with her gym-workout figure, she’d lost some of the alluring softness in her face, those large midnight black eyes too stark against her alabaster skin. Still, a damned beautiful woman. She caught me looking at her, something I often did whenever I started to sentimentalize the brief marriage we had, and the look she returned was a familiar if comical one: Behave yourself.

  But now, watching me, she leaned in, touched the sleeve of my jacket.

  “Are you doing all right, Rick? Yes?”

  The identical words she’d used years ago when the two of us lived in a Riverside Avenue walk-up in Manhattan and I’d return from my job as a beat cop in Chelsea. Weary, I’d slink into the apartment where I’d find her tucked into a corner of the old sofa, a textbook cradled to her chest, books strewn across the floor. Yellow-pad notes for her master’s thesis on Karen Horney scattered around her feet. “Are you doing all right? Yes?” Concern in her voice, a mixture of fear and wonder that she had a husband who carried a gun and sometimes shot at people. Worse, bad guys shot at the man she loved. I would lean in to kiss her.

  My response was always the same. “Compared to what?”

  Which always made her laugh. Made us laugh.

  Now, her lips near my neck, she whispered, “Okay?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so.” She glanced at Gracie. “But it’s going to be all right.”

  “Liz the optimist.”

  She smiled. “Rick the eternal pessimist.”

  Gracie was frowning at both of us. “You two talk at each other like you’re an old married couple.”

  I gave Gracie a quick hug, staring at Liz over Gracie’s shoulder. “We’ll always be an old married couple.”

  Liz, in a matter-of-fact voice, said, “Rick forgets that I keep the divorce papers in plain sight.”

  Walking ahead, Gracie pressed the button of the elevator and ignored us.

  The fifth-floor reception nurse indicated a room down on the right. “The cops are still in there.” She peered down the hallway. “Like Times Square at New Year’s in here today.” A young woman, perhaps late twenties, her eyes drifted from me to Liz and finally rested on Gracie, whose flamboyant cloak looked out of place in the stark setting. “I don’t think they’re expecting a crowd.”

  Gracie smiled an unfriendly smile at her, clearing her throat, but I tucked my hand unde
r her elbow and maneuvered her down the corridor. As we neared Room 515, the door suddenly opened and a uniformed cop stepped out, trailed by a man in a baggy suit who was berating him. “You ain’t got the brains you were born with, Reilly.” He got louder. “Your mama drop you on that pinhead of yours?” The young cop flushed as he faced us, which caused the man to glance our way. His eyes got wide and smoky.

  “Shit. He’s back. I knew it would happen.”

  Solemnly, I half-bowed at the rumpled man. “Detective Ardolino.”

  “In the flesh.” He poked the young officer. “Don’t just stand there. Get moving.” The detective arched his back and turned back to me. “And, I suppose, a lot more of it than you remember, Rick Van Lam.” He thumped his protruding belly, the faded blue dress shirt looking ready to burst some helpless buttons. A sliver of white flesh peeked through.

  It had been more than a year since I’d see the homicide detective, the two of us reluctantly working together to solve the murder of Vietnamese twin sisters. A cop who had little patience with others stepping into his territory, he’d never returned my calls after the Hartford PD stamped finis on that file.

  “I thought you were going to retire.”

  He glared. “So you remember that? Well, the wife nixed that idea. The idea of me being home all day long was just too much pleasure to bear.” He chuckled to himself.

  “A lucky woman.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “I’m glad one of us thinks so, Lam. I should be lying on a white beach in Porto Gordo at this moment. Instead I’m tucking a body into the back of a van headed to the morgue.”

  I stepped toward the closed door. “Anyway…”

  “Anyway, I figured we’d meet again. Once I learned that Gadowicz”—he jerked his head back toward Jimmy’s room—“is your partner in crime.”

  “Crime-solving.”

  “Every PI I’ve ever met is a criminal at heart.”

  “Bless you, Detective.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  True, Ardolino had packed on a few pounds since I’d last seen him, but the dumpy suit looked the same, if shabbier. A blot of reddish-purple covered an elbow, as though he’d dipped it into blood splatter. Poorly shaved with three resistant strands of hair now silvery gray combed across his blotchy scalp, Ardolino seemed a homeless derelict—and probably an incompetent one. I knew better. I’d learned the man’s mettle. Appearance had nothing to do with his incisive, dogged mind. When the man chose to employ it, he had few rivals.

  “Good to see you.” I smiled again.

  “Yeah, yeah.” He looked at Liz, a lopsided grin animating his face. “And who are you?”

  Liz had been watching him closely, amused. “Liz Sanburn. I’m a friend of Jimmy.” She stuck out her hand. He held onto it too long.

  “But who are you?”

  She waited a second, and I knew what she’d say. “I’m Rick’s ex-wife from his Manhattan days.”

  Ardolino raised his eyebrows as he shot me a glance. He squeezed her hand tightly, his eyes twinkling. “A fool, obviously.” He shook his head mischievously. “Any man that puts an ‘ex’ before a gal that looks like this gotta be a damned fool.”

  “I’ve been telling Rick that for years.” She pulled her hand away.

  Gracie cleared her throat. “I’m here, too.”

  Ardolino’s eyes swept down Gracie’s opera cape, ready to hurl a barb her way. But then, a phony smile emerged. “Are you somebody’s mother?”

  Gracie drew in her lips. I expected her to let loose a stream of delicious fishwife invective. Instead, she turned away, dismissing him.

  “This is Gracie Patroni,” I told him. “A good friend.”

  “You three…” Ardolino paused. “Lam, where’s your Batman-and-Robin sidekick? That youngster who tagged after you like you had the recipe for cheddar biscuits at Red Lobster.”

  I smiled. “Hank Nguyen.”

  “Yeah, that smart-aleck boy.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t call him a boy, Detective. He’s at the Connecticut State Police Academy, finishing up his studies. He’ll be a state trooper within weeks, sworn in…”

  My cell phone chirped. Startled by the buzz, Gracie jumped as I dug into my pocket.

  I pointed it at Ardolino. “Speak of the devil. A text from him.” I read: Local news mentions Jimmy. Stuck here. Call me. I looked at Liz. “Hank is worried.”

  “Call him after we see Jimmy.”

  Ardolino took a step away, but I held up my hand.

  “Detective, how is Jimmy? What can you tell us? Is he awake?”

  He put on his serious face as he took out a pad from his breast pocket. “Well, you heard it on the news, right?”

  “Fill us in. We don’t have any details.”

  Ardolino looked toward the closed door as it opened and a nurse walked out, stopping as she came up against the bunch of us clustered outside Jimmy’s room. She skirted past us, though Ardolino called after her, “He’s got visitors, sister.”

  She looked back over her shoulder. “He’s sleeping.” A wry grin. “And I’m no blood relative of yours.”

  Ardolino frowned at her back. “Well, he’s been out of it all afternoon. How am I supposed to do my job, lady?” She kept walking. He leaned into me. “Actually he was awake for five minutes and told me some of the story.” A low rumble. “All right, gang. Here’s what we know.” He glanced down at the pad in his hand. “Your buddy Gadowicz and this other guy named”—he looked down again—“Ralph Gervase left the Burger King on Farmington, home of fine dining, headed up the avenue, when two low-lifes come running up from behind. Both heads covered in hoodies, the disguise of choice these days. They rushed the old guys, and one shoved Ralph, who I gather was an ornery old drunk. Looks like Ralph was pissed—pardon my language—but maybe slugged one of the muggers. Surprised, said mugger punched Ralph on the side of the head, a blow that made him topple over, hitting his head on an iron fence post. When cops arrived, he was already dead.”

  “And Jimmy?”

  Again he checked his notepad. “When all this was going down, Jimmy, I guess, got startled and stepped back off the curb, just as an old beat-up Honda cruised by, breakneck speed and all over the road, and clipped him. Driver is some underage Rican, the smell of weed covering him like you stuck your head into a Christmas tree. Sent Jimmy flying over the fender. Kid hits the streetlight and then sits there with his eyes closed, a dreamy look on his face when we knocked on the window. I guess he needed a nap.”

  “Jimmy’s injuries?” From Liz.

  “Hey, lots of bruises. A concussion, it seems. A fractured ankle. Bruised lungs. A full menu of this and that, like he was tossed around like a rag doll. He ain’t a spring chicken, you know. He’ll be out of commission for…”

  Gracie interrupted. “But he’s all right?”

  “He’ll live. You didn’t hear me say he was on life support, did you? But he won’t be walking around for a while, the doctors said.”

  “What else did Jimmy tell you—when he was awake for that five minutes?” I asked.

  Ardolino eyed me closely. “It may have been more than five minutes. I round off numbers for the lay public when they grill me.”

  My own words overlapped the last part of his sentence. “What did he say?”

  “He can’t remember much. Yeah, he’s mostly groggy, out of it. Christ, I wish I had the drug they feed people at this hospital because it would make my nights at home with the missus bearable. But he said there were two punks, skinny kids, hoodies. He only saw the back of one guy’s head as he pummeled the late departed Ralph.”

  “Maybe he’ll remember more tomorrow—or when he wakes up again.”

  “Yeah, that’s when they usually make up stuff for the headlines. How I acted the hero in the face of…You know the drill. Wanna see themselves on Channel 3.”

 
“Jimmy isn’t like that.” Gracie was peeved.

  Ardolino squinted at her. “Lady, everybody wants their fifteen minutes. Life ain’t exciting for most folks. They gotta make up things. That makes my job tough.”

  With that, he nodded, performed a half-bow to Gracie and gave another squeeze to Liz’s hand, tucked his notebook back into his breast pocket, and walked down the corridor.

  “Can I catch up tomorrow?” I yelled after him.

  Barely a pause in his stride. “Hey, I worked with you before, Rick Van Lam. I don’t think I got no choice in the matter. You probably still got my home phone number.”

  “I do.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  He disappeared around the corner.

  Quietly, the three of us walked into Jimmy’s room. He was asleep, a rough, wheezing hiss escaping his throat, his head twisted to the side.

  I had trouble looking at the pile of man lying in that sterile bed, the big man lost under whiteness and IV tubes. I never thought of Jimmy as an old man, though of course I knew he was. After all, he’d been an infantryman during the Vietnam War years, the harrowing days of his young manhood, a war that somehow gave him a solitary life in small efficiency apartments. A life spent holed up in an office ferreting pedestrian fraud among the insurance high rollers. A man with few friends, no close family. Until he met me, that is. Somehow he’d kept a lingering affection for the muck and grime of war-ravaged Saigon, a loyalty to a boyhood spent in nighttime sweats and fear. Bizarrely, I was that link—the partner he said he’d never take on. A young man born on those bombed-out streets he’d patrolled. In the process we’d forged a friendship that was golden.

  Not that we always got along. He was a big shock of a man in oversized Patriot jerseys and faded XL jeans that sagged at the bottom, a Red Sox baseball cap rarely absent from his head. A cigarette somewhere near his yellow-stained fingertips. We worked together, he with his scribbled notes, me with my laptop and Twitter account. He watched me with jaundiced eye, often mocking my life—“spoiled by living in New York among those people”—and finding fault with my polished loafers and J. Crew sweaters. Even my cozy apartment in Gracie’s home with its old recycled furniture and walls of books and modern art. We rarely discussed politics or religion or—well, any topic that would result in explosive streams of curses hurled my way.