Putting Lipstick on a Pig

by Michael Bowen

  Ky paused, her face impassive.

  “It is a very long story,” she said at last.

  “I have all the time you’re willing to spare,” Melissa said. “Whatever is going on, it affects Sue, as well as my husband and me, and maybe even you.”

  After a reflective look at Melissa, Ky swallowed the last of her coffee. She took a green Bic lighter from a pocket in her skirt and picked up her purse.

  “Do you smoke?”

  “No, but it won’t bother me if you do.”

  “It will bother plenty of other people if I do it here,” Ky said, standing up. “I live two blocks away. Come along.”

  As soon as they were outside, and without breaking stride, Ky extracted a Virginia Slim from a pack in her purse, parked the cigarette in one corner of her lips, lit it in a brusque, no-nonsense way, and blew smoke out around it before removing it from her mouth.

  “I start smoking when I am fourteen,” she said in a mildly apologetic tone. “The GIs pay us with packs of Marlboros and Winstons. Southern boys mostly, at first. Later on from all over, but southern to start. Not what you think. I mean they pay us for drinks and even rooms and just to talk, you know? The other too, yes, but I never do that. At PX they can get cigarettes fifteen cents a pack—much cheaper than we buy them anywhere in Saigon.”

  “Americans are so sheltered,” Melissa mused aloud. “I can scarcely imagine what it was like growing up in the middle of a war.”

  “A terrible time in many, many ways, of course,” Ky said. “But you know what? If an angel came down from heaven this very minute and told me I could live the rest of my life in one time and place, God forgive me, I would pick Saigon in the summer of 1967. I wouldn’t have to be sixteen and thin as an arrow again. Fifty-five and fat would be okay by me. Just to be back there, in that city, when it was my city, with all the excitement and all the color and all the smells and everything that was special about it, even the danger, at a time when we could still hope—that’s all I would ask. Well, here we are.”

  Melissa followed Ky up three concrete steps to the tiny porch of a two-story clapboard house. Ky led Melissa down a short hallway to the kitchen. Finishing her cigarette and grinding it out in a much-used ashtray on the counter nearest the door, she struck a kitchen match and lit one of the burners on an ancient white enamel stove. As soon as she had a steady flame going, she put a kettle over the burner. Then she took a china teapot from the dish-drainer near the sink and fit a small mesh tea strainer over its top.

  “When did you leave South Vietnam?” Melissa asked as Ky spooned Oolong tea onto the strainer.

  “About six months before it stopped being South Vietnam,” Ky said with a trace of bitterness. She took two small cups out of the cupboard, each without handles and featuring a gold dragon enameled on a midnight blue background.

  “Saigon to Milwaukee must have been a very difficult change for you.”

  “Sure,” Ky said matter of factly. “My son is, what, less than three. We get to Milwaukee. Many people here are warm and open, but factory jobs are leaving the city. Workers feel threatened. Resentment very deep. Vietnamese men at that time, when we first get here, the young workers call them ‘slopes.’ Like GIs call the VC. Later, when my Don is maybe sixteen, seventeen, some whites call him ‘timber nigger.’”

  “What?” Melissa asked in astonishment.

  “They thought he was Indian.” Ky offered a mordant smile. “Native American. ‘Timber nigger’ was even worse than ‘slope.’”

  A shrill peep escaped from the kettle. Ky turned the burner off, grabbed the kettle’s handle with a potholder, and poured scalding water through the strainer into the teapot. Removing the strainer, she left the tea to steep while she dumped the sodden grains in the trash.

  “I am going the long way around to answer your question about Mr. Hayes,” Ky said then. “Don is one tough kid.”

  “Yeah, I picked that up.”

  “Oh, he is much mellower now. Back then he fights a lot. One time there is very bad trouble. One of the whites hurt pretty bad, maybe going to die. I am not sure where to turn. Vance Hayes helps us. He gets everything pretty much worked out. And he helps us out now and then after that.”

  Ky poured tea from the pot into each of the cups. She brought the cups over to the kitchen table and set one in front of Melissa.

  “But Hayes didn’t just show up out of the blue, did he?”

  Melissa could have kicked herself for her impatience. Ky looked at her shrewdly. For a moment Melissa thought she was going to shut her off. Ky, though, just took a long sip of tea as the indulgent tilt of her smile subtly changed.

  “I know, I leave too many blanks,” she said. “For instance, getting out of South Vietnam is pretty good trick six months before Saigon falls. Poor young girl with a three-year old brat and no husband—how do you suppose I manage that exit?”

  “I don’t know. How?”

  Without leaving her chair, Ky reached for the ashtray, moved it from the counter to the table, and lit another cigarette. Melissa found Ky’s steady gaze through the curling smoke bracing. She thought she read a challenge there—not a warning, exactly, but an admonition: “Before you stick your nose into someone else’s business, you’d better think about whom you’ll leave behind when the last helicopter pulls you off the embassy roof.”

  “You know why I am going to tell you this story? Because you did not genuflect, because that would be a lie for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’s father was Timmy Hayes. Lieutenant Timothy Hayes, Vance Hayes’ brother. I made up the family name Duong for him to keep Lieutenant Tim out of trouble.”

  “I see.”

  “Not yet, you don’t see anything,” Ky said with an I’ve-got-twenty-years-on-you smile. “I am not Lieutenant Tim’s ‘geisha,’ his ‘mama-san.’ He want to bring me to U.S. and marry. I know, I know. How many Vietnamese girls hear that from GIs? I believe my Lieutenant Tim, though. He told me the truth.”

  “So he got you out?”

  “No. He is killed three weeks before his tour ends. I am, what, three months pregnant. Vance Hayes eventually gets us out. Takes a long time. Vance Hayes gets us here. And when Don has scrapes here and there, Vance Hayes helps out. This is what you want to know, I think?”

  “Yes,” Melissa said. “It’s exactly what I wanted to know. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you for sharing it with me.”

  “That’s okay, missy,” Ky said with a joshing little nudge.

  Relaxed, now, Ky settled back in the chair, propped her right elbow on the table, and held the cigarette in a relaxed grip about two inches from her cheekbone. Melissa caught her breath, just as Rep had looking at the aging photograph from Hayes’ files. In her mind’s eye the years and pounds and inches melted away, and she saw a happy-go-lucky Xu Ky in her teens, flirting in a Saigon sidewalk café with American soldiers. And she knew there was no way on earth this woman had let Vance Hayes or anyone else use her daughter as a sexual toy.

  The only problem with Detective Washington’s neat theory was that it was wrong.

  Chapter 24

  When Rep pulled his ringing cell phone from the Sable’s nearer cup-holder at one-thirteen on Friday afternoon, he sighed a quick prayer that the call relate to the on-site part of the IP audit he’d just finished, or to tonight’s dinner plans, or to anything except the Vance Hayes/Max Levitan mess.

  It did. Terry Hutchinson, a law school classmate, wanted Rep to recommend an Indianapolis litigator for a contract dispute that Hutchinson’s large Washington firm couldn’t be bothered with handling. Rep promised to email a couple of names and phone numbers when he got back to the office.

  “So,” Rep said then, “things can’t be too bad if you’re handing off ninety-thousand-dollar cases.”

  “Guilty as charged. I paid my dues in the public sector right out of Michigan, and now I’m shamelessly making money. Twenty-nine months on the Senat
e Judicary Committee staff, and I remember it like it was last week. That’s because last week I had root canal work.”

  “I’d forgotten about that line on your resumé. Too bad you’re not still there. I could make a cop up here happy if I could get some inside attention on that staff.”

  “Lotsa luck on that one, pal. With two Supreme Court vacancies to worry about, it’ll be awhile before anyone on Judiciary finds time for civics class stuff like citizen contact or intergovernmental cooperation.”

  They signed off and Rep drove for another ten seconds before Hutchinson’s last comment triggered the right synapse. He picked up his phone and tried to remember Detective Washington’s number. Then he put the phone back into the cup-holder. He wanted to think some implications through before he called anyone.

  He accomplished that in eight highway miles, which was a good thing because by then he was just about out of freeway. Approaching Lake Michigan, he swung right instead of exiting left and headed for Milwaukee’s south side. On the way down, he had Sprint’s computer tell him Cold Coast’s number and patch him through to it. He asked the gruff male who answered if he could talk to the plant manager.

  “Speaking,” the voice said.

  “This is Rep Pennyworth, the lawyer who was there a while back. I’d like to speak with you face to face for about ten minutes. I need some advice.”

  “The best advice I can give you is not to bother coming down here. I’m still writing a check every month from the last time I talked to a lawyer. Far as I’m concerned, if it weren’t for people who sell heroin to school children lawyers would be the lowest form of human life.”

  “I get that a lot. But I’m trying to decide whether I should tell the detective investigating Max Levitan’s murder about something I just thought of, or whether it’s too trivial to bother him about. I’d like your input.”

  Rep didn’t hear a click. On the other hand, for about seven seconds he didn’t hear anything else either.

  “This a shakedown?”

  “The Board of Attorneys Professional Responsibility frowns on extortion. I don’t want money. I want Max Levitan’s murderer behind bars. I need ten minutes of your time.”

  Another pause, this one lasting three or four seconds.

  “Okay,” the guy said finally. “Don’t come in the building. Meet me at the flagpoles out front.”

  The guy Rep saw standing between the two flagpoles five minutes later looked exactly the same as he had the morning he had shown Rep and Sue Key into Cold Coast’s conference room. Same short-sleeved white dress shirt with the collar open, same bullet-shaped head and crewcut, same fireplug posture. The American flag, on his right as Rep approached him, was at half-staff. So was the black and white POW/MIA flag hanging limply from the pole on his left. He surprised Rep by holding out his right hand as Rep reached him.

  “Dave Pavick.” He flourished an unfiltered Camel in his left hand. “This is my excuse for being out here. So we’ve got about ten minutes.”

  “Okay,” Rep said. “When Detective Washington was questioning me about Mr. Levitan’s murder, he showed me a letter in Levitan’s file on Sue Key’s claim. The letter was from the staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee.”

  “Right, a blow-off. I remember him telling me about it. ‘We’ll get back to you.’ Right, and the check is in the mail.”

  “What I was wondering was what happened to the stuff you took out of the file before Washington found it.”

  “Whatinhell izzat ’sposed ta mean?” Pavick’s words came in an angry rush, but his tone was defensive instead of indignant.

  “The letter was a reply. But a reply to what? Mr. Levitan’s letter to the committee wasn’t in the file.”

  “No idea.” Pavick shrugged. “Maybe he phoned it in.”

  “I don’t think so,” Rep said. “I might be able to get a written answer to a phoned-in request if I spent half a morning trying to track down a staff contact through colleagues and law school classmates. But Max Levitan had complete contempt for contemporary politicians. Even if he started with a phone call he couldn’t have reached anyone beyond clerks or interns. All they would have told him is to put it in writing.”

  “Maybe so, I don’t know. What I do know is, I can’t help you.”

  “That’s too bad, because it wouldn’t be hard to get the wrong idea about this. That letter was in the Sue Key file, so Detective Washington and I assumed that Levitan had gotten in touch with the Judiciary Committee because it has jurisdiction over copyright matters. Maybe hoping for free legal advice, maybe trying to put political pressure on me.”

  “Neither one makes any sense to me.”

  “Me either,” Rep said. “But the Senate Judiciary Committee also has responsibility for reviewing federal judicial appointments. What if Levitan had written to ask for information from one of those files?”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Exactly. And if he did, why would he put the letters in Sue Key’s file? Unless there was some connection. You see, that’s why it’s such a pity that the letter he wrote has disappeared. If that letter should turn up, then we’d know. Of course, the police will find out eventually, because sooner or later Detective Washington’s questions will get to the top of some staffer’s in-box. But it would be nice to know now.”

  “Like I said, can’t help you.”

  “There might have been other things taken out of that file as well before it was turned over,” Rep said. “Things that, together with Levitan’s letter, might have given the police the idea that Levitan was thinking of doing a shakedown. Maybe they disappeared to protect Levitan’s reputation.”

  “No way Max did anything like that,” Pavick said hotly. “He absolutely refused to get into anything like that. You should have heard him chew out that little weasel, Dreyfus, after he got your letter. I mean he reamed him a new one. He was screaming at him.”

  “Screaming what?”

  “‘I told that sonofabitch never to ask me for anything again. You have no idea what you’re getting into. You could get yourself killed and me with you.’ That kind of thing.”

  “Pretty provocative—especially after he was killed.”

  “I told all that part to the cops. About yelling at Dreyfus, I mean. But I guess they didn’t let you in on it, huh?”

  “No, and I don’t blame them,” Rep said. “It’s none of my business. My point is that someone who thought the file would give the police the wrong impression might have scrubbed it a bit on the way from the file room to Detective Washington. Maybe Washington would think I was a pest if I took up his valuable time with these speculations. But maybe not.”

  Pavick’s mouth twisted into a frown as he stewed in angry concentration for ten long seconds. The cliché about plant managers is that they only have to be smart six times a year, but they only get to be dumb once. Rep thought that he could almost hear the man thinking.

  “Did you lock your car after you parked it over there?” Pavick asked.

  “I don’t think so.” Rep took a startled glance over his shoulder at the Sable. “Why?”

  “’Cause I saw someone messing around near it. He’s gone now, though.”

  “I’ll be more careful next time.” Rep sketched a baffled shrug.

  “Tell you what. There’s a diner right around the corner from where you parked. Go have yourself a cup of coffee. Take about fifteen minutes at it. Skip the potato pancakes, though. Those are for professionals.”

  “Right,” Rep said, nodding as understanding gradually seeped through.

  After shaking hands with Pavick, he strode away, found Paula’s Cracow Diner, and lingered over a cup of coffee that tasted like a cross between battery acid and high-viscosity grease from the Gdansk shipyards. When he’d made his leisurely way back to the Sable, he found about half an inch of paper scattered on the front passenger seat.

  The top page was Levitan’s letter to the Judiciary Committee. It asked
for copies of letters or anything else sent to the committee by Vance Hayes in the last five years.

  Hayes? For a moment Rep gazed unseeing through the windshield. Then he rifled through the rest of the pile. All Hayes. Copies of the same police report on Hayes’ death that Rep had seen. Copies of news stories about his drowning. A time-line tracking Hayes’ whereabouts during the week leading up to his plunge through the ice, with annotations to various sources, showing that Levitan had worked hard to come up with this information. Someone who didn’t know him might have accused Levitan of stalking.

  It doesn’t make sense as extortion. But it doesn’t make sense as anything else, either.

  He started the car and headed downtown. The sooner Detective Washington started worrying about this new puzzle-piece, the happier Rep would be.

  ***

  “Back before the end of the week, technically, huh?” Kuchinski asked Rep about forty-five minutes later.

  “Yeah, we wrapped things up with the client before noon.” Rep swiveled around in his chair to face Kuchinski. “My fresh-faced young associates are headed back to Indianapolis. I’m on the sixth page of a letter explaining how the client can stop leaving eighty thousand a year on the table.”

  “In that case, I have an important question for you. Do you know the first three rules of firearm safety?”

  “Sure.” Every red-blooded Midwestern male knows the first three rules of firearm safety. “One: don’t take the safety off until you have the target clearly in sight. Two: don’t put your finger on the trigger until you’re ready to fire. Three: always maintain muzzle control.”

  “By providential coincidence, those are exactly the same as the first three rules of prudent cross-examination. So we now know that you are fully qualified either to try a lawsuit or go deer hunting.”

  “I can’t do either one until I finish this letter.”

  “Plenty of time for that,” Kuchinski scoffed breezily. “Deer season doesn’t start ’til Thanksgiving week.”

  “Uh, yeah,” Rep said. “I’m not real big on hunting.”