Authors: Jaden Terrell
“Khanh,” I said. “He didn’t mean we shouldn’t try.”
“Please,” she said, her voice small. “Not talk now.”
I drove a silent grid through downtown, then midtown, around the bypass and onto I-65. Traffic pressed in around us, slowed us to a creep. The silence was a palpable pressure, as if the cab of the truck were a submerging submarine. After a while, I parked in front of an upscale nouveau southern restaurant called Urban Grub. Fish pit, oyster bar, outdoor patio with brick fireplaces. The bar tops were glossy and textured, made from oyster shells and recycled beer and wine bottles. The ambience said rustic funk.
Too upbeat for our moods, but maybe that was the point.
“Lunch,” I said. “And don’t say you’re not hungry.
I’m
hungry.”
Khanh frowned. “Look expensive.”
“My treat.”
“You think poor sister from Vietnam must need charity?”
“I think poor sister from Vietnam should save her money for medicine.”
She bit her lower lip, looked down at her lap. “Expensive place, take long time. Cheap food, finish quick.”
I knew what she was thinking. What if we took an hour for lunch, and then when we found Tuyet, we found we were an hour too late? The if-onlys would kill you.
I said, “This isn’t gonna be a sprint. Whether we eat here or hit the drive-through at McDonald’s, finding Tuyet is going to take time. Besides, I’ve got a lot of questions. This is as good a place as any for you to answer them.”
Our server, an aspiring actress with café au lait skin and a smile that could have dazzled a sea urchin, brought two waters and handed us each a menu, casting discreet glances at Khanh’s scars. Taking my cue from Khanh, I pretended not to notice. I ordered the wood-oven trout and the berry and butternut salad. Khanh hesitated a moment, then followed suit.
When the server had gone, I said, “Tell me everything you know about this guy who bought your daughter’s plane ticket.”
“I never see.”
“You know he was Amerasian.”
“Mother tell.”
“What else did your mother tell you?”
“Tuyet say he very handsome. He rich American.”
“She called him Mat Troi. Last name first, right? That would make him Mr. Mat?”
She thought about it. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Vietnam name very complicated. Last name first, but last name family name. Nobody use. Mat maybe middle name, Troi first name. Or maybe some other middle name, Mat Troi both first name. Be Mr. Troi or Mr. Mat Troi. Maybe.”
“Mister and the first name? Is that how it would be on his passport?”
“Maybe. But Tuyet say American. Maybe have American last name. No way to know.”
“So all we have is Mat. Tell me that’s not a common name.”
“Plenty name Mat,” she said.
“Here too.” I shook my head. “An Amerasian with a common name. And it could have been Matt, short for Matthew. Matt Troy. Did she say where she met him?”
“Friend of friend, she say.” She blinked hard. Looked skyward. “Probably bar.”
If she’d known the name of the bar, and if the bar had been in town, I’d have gone there and shown Tuyet’s picture around. But she didn’t, and it wasn’t. I said, “I guess we’re stuck with the Mexican stripper.”
“You not very respect.”
“She doesn’t want to be called a stripper, maybe she shouldn’t be one.”
“You stupid man,” she said. “Think everything simple.”
I bit back a retort as the server brought our food and refills on our water and Khanh’s coffee. When she’d gone, Khanh took a deep breath and said, “Not mean that. Just feel . . .” She made a helpless gesture. “Want hit everything.”
“I wouldn’t mind punching a wall myself,” I said. “But let’s both restrain ourselves.”
She jabbed at a dried cranberry. “I try.”
I tested the trout with the edge of my fork. Flaky inside, crisp and golden outside. “So, this Mr. Mat Troi bought Tuyet a ticket to the United States. Round trip?”
It was how I’d do it, if I were Mat. A round trip ticket would have reassured her.
“One way,” Khanh said. “She get money for ticket back from you father.”
“Assuming she found him.”
“She not so good at think ahead.”
“Tell me about her,” I said. “Everything you can think of.”
She stared into her coffee cup. “This help find her?”
“I don’t know what will help find her.”
“She beautiful. Smart. Stubborn. She like pretty thing. Always want more.” She touched the jade monkey at her throat. “She buy necklace, one me, one my mother. Save money long time.”
While I ate, Khanh told me how Tuyet had draped silk scarves over lamps to brighten their one-room home and how she’d sold her grandmother’s favorite earrings for money to buy a new dress, then saved her money for the next six weeks to buy them back.
Khanh said, “She bar girl. I tell her no need dance in bar. Mother and I own coffee shop, make enough for food, clothes. And Mother . . . she call spirit sometime. People pay, talk to ancestor. Or husband maybe. Get advice. Plenty money get by, before Mother sick.”
I tried to imagine the woman in the photo Frank had shown me sitting across a table, telling fortunes—reading palms, or maybe tea leaves. “Your mother is a psychic?”
“She spirit caller.”
“Spirit caller. Right. Why didn’t Tuyet listen when you tried to talk her out of working at the bar?”
“She think rich American man come take her away. Always she pray for rich American boyfriend.”
“Prayers the Devil answers,” I said.
She cocked her head, quirked an eyebrow.
“It’s an Appalachian saying. Like a monkey’s paw. You get what you asked for, but in a bad way. Like you pray for a thousand dollars, but then your husband dies in an accident and the insurance payout is a thousand dollars.” I pushed my plate away. Nothing left but a couple of lettuce leaves and a few flakes of fish. “Okay, let’s go talk to some more folks. If you’re finished.”
Khanh laid her silverware neatly across her still-f plate. “I finish.”
Tuyet
H
e made love as if they were in a hotel bed in Ho Chi Minh City and not in a walled compound where she’d been beaten, raped, and starved for days on end. Lying on his side, gazing at her across the pillows, he ran the tips of his fingers across her cheek, swept a few strands of hair away from her face.
She smiled to hide the churning in her stomach and forced the tension from her body, deep breaths in and out, forced her limbs into a post-coital lassitude she didn’t feel. Might not ever feel again.
“So beautiful,” he said in Vietnamese. “Remember that day in the park?”
A tiny nod. They had strolled through the gardens hand in hand, then made love behind a topiary tiger. “You bought me quail eggs in rice paper. Then we walked on the Thu Thiem Bridge. We dropped petals into the water.”
He had been another man then. A better man. She could still feel the warmth of his lips against hers, the way his gaze softened when he looked into her face. Surely, it had not all been a lie.
Not all.
She said, “I thought we were happy. I thought I made you happy.”
“You did.” He ran a thumb across her lips. “You used to shine.”
“I shine for you. Only for you.”
She drew in a long breath and summoned images of her mother, her grandmother, the sweet drink her mother made from heart leaves and sugar, even the little monkey she had doted on as a child. Everyone and everything she’d ever loved. She opened her heart to them and poured that love out through her eyes. As if it were for him, for him alone.
It was beyond belief that she should feel these things for him, after all he’d done, after all he’d allowed to be done to her. Beyond belief that she would want to be his woman. But she did want it, more than anything, because to be his was not to be theirs. To be his was to be safe from the man with the manticore tattoo.
“You think you’re special?” He propped himself up on one elbow, studying her face. “Is that it?”
“I want to be your woman,” she said softly. “That’s all. You said I made you happy. Why should you share with strangers? With
him?
”
He rolled onto his back, covered his eyes with his forearm. “You have to be punished. You know that. Karlo is waiting.”
Her breath caught, but her voice, when she spoke, was strong. “I know. But after.”
She laid a gentle hand on his chest. No lower. If she reached beneath the sheets, he would know she was trying to control him.
“If you live,” he said at last. There was something in his voice, a sadness that chilled her bones and froze the smile on her face. “If you live, then maybe.”
14
T
here was a missed call from Beatrice on my cell phone. I called her back from the Silverado, and she answered in a voice as warm and sweet as fresh-baked blackberry cobbler. “Got something for you, darlin’. How do you want it?”
“Can you fax it to my office?”
“It’ll be there in five. Just don’t forget about the meatloaf.”
We stopped at the office to pick up the fax. Seven pages, small print. It would take days to get through it. I faxed a copy to Jay’s home computer so he and Eric could narrow the field and pass the likely prospects on to me.
The new-message light on the answering machine was flashing. While Khanh stood in the doorway shifting from foot to foot, I punched the
Play
button. A man’s thin voice stammered a story about a cheating spouse. I could have used the money, but the resignation on Khanh’s face made me hesitate.
My father had failed her. Hell, life had failed her. Not wanting to be one more letdown on a long list of letdowns, I suppressed a sigh and called back to refer him to another agency.
Khanh gave me a tentative smile. “You good man. What now? Make more plan?”
“I don’t know enough to make a plan,” I said. “All I know to do is cast a wide net and hope we catch something.”
I stopped at the ATM and took out three hundred dollars in twenties. Then, with Khanh at my heels, I spent the afternoon questioning hookers, pimps, and self-styled businessmen on the wrong side of the law. Some I’d met when I was in vice, and some I’d cultivated after I went private.
The message I left was always the same:
An Amerasian guy and the man in this picture kidnapped the girl in this other picture. Help us find her, and we’ll make it worth your while.
It was another cool, wet week, and we spent the better part of it dripping our way from one informant to the next. I bought Khanh an umbrella, and when the rain slanted in from the sides, found her a plastic poncho. Titans blue, with the team logo on the front. I exchanged my father’s leather jacket for an Australian stockman’s duster and a waterproof Outback hat with a broad brim. We made two more visits to the ATM, spreading around a chunk of my diminishing savings, twenty dollars at a time.
No one knew the man with the manticore tattoo. Their denials were sincere. No shifting gazes, no nervous tics. He might have been a manticore himself, more myth than man.
I asked about Helix too, with better luck. He had a reputation as a player, strictly minor league until about six months ago, when he’d stashed two high-end call girls in an uptown penthouse. He still kept his third-string girls in a cheap rent-by-the-month hotel, but he’d refurbished an old boarding house in East Nashville for his second string, each room decorated to facilitate a different fantasy. He was making a play for the high rollers, and if they wanted an Asian woman, he would either have one in his stable or find a way to come up with one.
It sounded promising, but if he had a partner, Amerasian or otherwise, either no one knew, or no one was willing to talk about it.
On Tuesday afternoon, the rain subsided into a fine mist that silvered Khanh’s hair in the light. As we climbed into the truck to warm up and dry out, she wiped the rain out of her eyes and said, “Why not go Helix house, see if Tuyet there?”
“It’s on the list.” I punched the heater on. “But right now nothing points to him. Nothing concrete.”
“Wish we check anyway. Make sure.”
“After we find the guy with the tattoo. The manticore. I want some leverage before I talk to Helix.”
“Bird in hand,” she said, tilting the vent up to warm her face. “Father say that too.”
I nodded, though I wasn’t sure which was the bird—the one we knew was involved but couldn’t find, or the one we could find but had no evidence against.
There were two more bombings that week, both meth houses, and by Thursday,
For Justice
T-shirts and bumper stickers had begun to crop up around town. A letter to the editor in the
Tennessean
called the bomber an American hero, filling a void left by an impotent law enforcement system. A guy selling shirts on lower broad waved one at us as we passed. It said:
Justice: It’s a Blast!
Another showed a bald man in white holding a burning stick of dynamite:
Mr. Clean—Keeping Nashville free from scum.
While Khanh and I worked our way through the city’s seediest pawn shops and strip clubs, Jay and Eric pinned posters on community bulletin boards across the city. Then they made their way down Beatrice’s DMV list, searching without luck for our Good Samaritan.
By Friday, Khanh and I had run out of things to say to each other. My feet hurt, and I wanted a hot shower and dry clothes. I wanted to find the tattooed man, too, but wanting something didn’t mean you got it. As my mother used to say,
People in Hell want ice water
.
“One more place,” I said, pulling into the parking lot of a dingy pink shoebox bar with peeling paint and a neon sign gone dim on one side. Khanh followed me to the front door, and when I opened it, a cloud of cigarette smoke rolled out into the wet night like a spume of volcanic ash. “I know a hooker used to work out of here, street name Amber. She used to get around, keep her ears open. If she’s not here, we’ll call it a day.”
But she was, sitting alone at a table near the front door, where customers would see her when they came in and again when they left. She looked older than I remembered. Bottle-blonde hair, still damp from the rain. Heavy makeup that didn’t quite hide the sores on her hollow cheeks. Thick eyeliner, false lashes, flame red lipstick over blistered lips. She wore a red suede miniskirt and a black lace blouse with a red bra underneath. Black heels and white lace stockings held up by garters. One leg swung up and down beneath the table, dissipating nervous energy.