There's Nothing to Be Afraid Of

by Marcia Muller

  She frowned, clearly annoyed. “Does Jimmy look like he’s sick?”

  “Well, no, but so many of the city’s homeless people are either alcoholics or on drugs.”

  “Jimmy’s neither. The man’s a little cracked, but he lives right. Was raised that way.”

  “What way?”

  “Christian. He once told me he was brought up in a good Catholic orphanage, plus lived in three foster homes. He knows better than to abuse his body like so many of them do.”

  And he also knew what it was to want a home, desperately. I felt a stab of sympathy for Jimmy Milligan.

  Mary went on, “Jimmy makes sure to eat good—he’s partial to fish and chips, when he has the money. And when he’s got a home, he fixes it up nice.”

  “Where does he live now? I heard he got turned out of the last place.”

  “He’s always getting turned out. And what’s all this nosiness about Jimmy anyway?”

  “It’s part of my job.”

  Mary drew her lips into a stern line. “Your job? Your job is to find the lunatic who’s been bothering us. Don’t you try to put that on Jimmy. He’s a good man, in spite of his oddness.” She turned toward her apartment, then said, “Is there anything else, Miss McCone?”

  “Just one thing. Last night I left a paper sack next to the Christmas tree. Have you seen it?”

  “A sack?” She looked over at the tree.

  “From Safeway. It had a sheet inside, an olive-green sheet.”

  An odd expression passed over her face, and then she said, “There was nothing here when the police finally left last night. If that sack was there, I would have seen it.”

  I watched her for a moment, then said, “Thanks,” and moved toward the elevator. Behind me, I heard her apartment door slam.

  I wasn’t certain whether Mary was telling me the truth or not, but I was willing to bet she knew something about that sheet.

  CHAPTER TEN

  It was quiet in the hall outside the Vangs’ apartment. No babies cried, no radios or TVs played. I looked at my watch and realized it was close to noon; probably the family was all working at their restaurant.

  I knocked anyway, and waited. The door opened, and Duc Vang looked out. His face, under the odd brushy haircut, was haggard and he seemed older the he had the day before. I noticed that his clothing—baggy blue pants and a loose smock—was more like that of the grocer, Hung Tran, than that of the other young Vietnamese men I’d seen on the streets. In attire, as in retention of his Vietnamese name, Duc seemed to prefer the old ways.

  “No one is here but me,” he said. “They are at the restaurant.”

  “Actually, you’re the one I want to talk to.”

  He nodded politely, displaying no surprise, and ushered me inside, indicating I should sit on the couch. He then perched on the arm at the opposite end and waited for me to speak.

  “Duc,” I said, “I’m very sorry about your friend Hoa Dinh.”

  He inclined his head slightly.

  “The police,” I went on, “are doing everything they can to find his killer. And since I’m here to find out who is causing the disturbances in this building, I can try to help them.”

  “Do you think this is one and the same person?”

  “Possibly.”

  “I see.”

  “What can you tell me about your friend, Duc?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You and Hoa were good friends, isn’t that true? Best friends?”

  He hesitated. “Yes.”

  “How long had you known Hoa?”

  “Since a year ago, when he came to this building.”

  “He was a good bit younger than you.”

  “Only five years. And he had had many terrible experiences. He was an adult.”

  “Terrible experiences getting out of Vietnam?”

  “Both there and in this country.”

  “What kinds of things happened to him here?”

  “The kind we all share. I cannot explain it.”

  I let it go for the moment. “Hoa was going to school, studying electronics?”

  “Yes.”

  Do you also go to school?”

  “Not now. I work in the restaurant. My father wants me to attend college someday, but I am not sure I wish to.”

  “Why not?”

  He shifted uncomfortably on the arm of the couch. “I do not see what your questions about me have to do with Hoa.”

  “I’m trying to get an idea of what Hoa’s life was like. Sometimes the best way to do that is to ask about the lives of his close friends.”

  “I see.”

  This was getting nowhere. I tried another tack. “What sorts of things did you and Hoa and your other friends so together?”

  “The usual things.”

  “Did you go to movies?”

  “No.”

  “What about ballgames, or playing sports?”

  Duc’s lip curled slightly. “No. We are—were—not interested in sports.”

  “What, then?”

  “We talked. We went about the neighborhood.”

  I’d seen a video game arcade around the corner, so I said, “What about video games? Did you play those?”

  “No.” He got off the couch and went to look out the window. It opened on an alley behind the building, a brick wall with similar windows only yards away.

  “Why not? A lot of people in the neighborhood enjoy them.”

  He was silent for a moment. “Hoa and I and our friends are not like those people.”

  “In what ways?”

  There was an edge of annoyance in his voice when he said, “We do not play sports. Or video games. We do not go to movies. Or to ballgames.”

  “Why not? Are those things so bad?”

  He turned to face me. “Those things are for Americans, not for us.”

  I waited.

  “Most of my people do not understand this,” Duc finally added. “I cannot expect you to.”

  “Try to explain it to me.”

  It was as if I had broken through some reserve, one that was there simply because no one had every troubled to ask him before. Duc came toward me, hands outstretched, gesturing. “I see this all the time. My people settle in America. They look around them, and suddenly they must have.”

  “Have what?”

  “Everything.” The gestures became more expansive. “Someone else has a television. Then the newcomer must also have a television. This one has a stereo. The newcomer must have a stereo as soon as he has saved a little money. My sisters—you have seen them. The designer blue jeans, the T-shirts with stupid things written on them. Makeup. Hairdos. High heels. My parents are no better. They say we must save to move to the Sunset District. We must have a big house, and a car. They will fill the house with furniture and . . . and . . . things!” He flung his arms out wildly.

  I said gently, “Isn’t it natural that they would want to be as comfortable as they once were in Vietnam?”

  “Comfortable, yes! But they choose the worst things about America to make their own. They are so anxious to fit in here. And in order to fit in, they must erase all the differences. They just erase who we really are.”

  “And who is that?”

  “Vietnamese! We have a culture, an identity. And that is what they would throw away.”

  I thought of the Asian youths I saw driving their high-powered cars all over the city, rock-and-roll blaring from stereo tape decks. I pictured the Oriental families lined up in the catalog showroom I sometimes patronize, ordering huge quantities of merchandise that had been unheard of in their homelands. They did, at times, adopt the worst fads and fancies America has to offer.

  I said, “So what did you and Hoa and the others plan to do about this?”

  “Do?” Duc looked at me in surprise.

  “I can tell from the way you dress that you aren’t going along with the jeans and stupid T-shirts. And you tell me you don’t go to video arcades or the movies.
But what were you doing instead?”

  A strange look came over his face, and he turned back to the window. “I do not understand.”

  “I think you do. What I’m asking is my initial question—how did you and Hoa and the others spend your time?”

  He was silent.

  “You said you ‘went about the neighborhood.’ Doing what?”

  After a moment he said, “We walked. We talked. We looked at the city, at what was happening here.”

  “And?”’

  “And what?”

  “What d you think of what was happening here?”

  His voice, when he spoke, was that of a small boy’s. “We did not like it. We liked it less and less all the time. It made us want . . . ”

  “Yes?”

  “It made us want to go home, to a land that is lost to us forever.”

  I couldn’t get Duc to tell me anything more except for the names and apartment numbers of the two other young men in the hotel who had been friends with Hoa Dinh. After I copied the information down, Duc excused himself, saying he had to go to work in the family restaurant. I climbed the fire stairs to the fifth floor, where Hoa’s other friends lived, hoping to find them home, but there was no response to my knocks. Then I thought of Sallie Hyde; given her maternal attitude toward the other residents, Sallie probably knew more about what went on in this hotel than anyone else.

  Back on the fourth floor, I knocked at Sallie’s door but got no answer. Of course—yesterday had been her day off, so today she would be working at her flower stand at Union Square. It was now after one; the noon rush would have subsided by the time I got there, and it would be a good time for us to talk.

  Once downtown, I parked my car in the garage under Union Square and threaded my way across the crowded sidewalk to the curb opposite I. Magnin. Sallie’s stand was diagonally across the intersection near the rival department store, Neiman-Marcus, and I could see her—swathed in bright green today—sitting on a stool inside it.

  As I waited for the light, I glanced up at the towers of the St. Francis Hotel, where glass-enclosed elevators raced one another for the top. My eyes followed one down, and then I looked at the square itself. An old woman on a bench on the opposite side was feeding the pigeons, and great clouds of them swooped down at her feet. Well-dressed pedestrians hurried along the walks, ignoring a Salvation Army Santa who was stationed at their intersections, as well as the derelicts who lay on the grass soaking up the watery December sunlight. When the traffic cop’s whistle sounded, I started across Geary Street toward the giant sugar cube of I. Magnin.

  On the sidewalk in front of the department store a dancer in a red velvet suit—one of San Francisco’s many street performers—whirled and spun, surrounded by a circle of shoppers. Three musicians—a banjo player, guitarist, and harmonica player—accompanied the man’s graceful gyrations with a jazzed up version of “The Little Drummer Boy.” He glided along, stopped in an abrupt pirouette just inches from a fat woman in a fur coat, then pivoted. Flinging out one long leg in a giant step, he danced off, red coattails flying. I paused to watch for a moment, then crossed Stockton and went up to Sallie’s stand.

  She was pinning a Christmas corsage of red and white carnations on a tourist lady, while the woman’s male companion looked proudly on. Flashing me a gap-toothed grin, she pointed to the departing couple and said, “That’s nice. They’re on vacation and he’s doing something special for her. Makes both of them feel good.”

  “I guess that’s the point of vacation,” I said, remembering how Don had bought me a little pen-and-ink drawing of a country inn we’d stayed at in the Gold Rush country one weekend last fall. It now hung on the wall in my living room, and damned if it didn’t make both of us feel good to look at it.

  “So are you down here to do your Christmas shopping?” Sallie asked. “Or do you want to talk with me?”

  I felt a faint pang of guilt about my undone shopping, but said, “I want to talk.”

  She waved me toward a stool inside the stand, and I sat, watching as she disciplined a bucket of daisies by plucking out the wilted blooms. Her hand hovered over a tub of long-stemmed roses, then dropped wearily to her side. “It’s a terrible thing,” she said, “to die that young.”

  “Hoa Dinh.”

  “Yes. Just the day before yesterday, I was telling his mother not to be afraid. What a fool I’ve been, to think these noises and mishaps were only pranks.”

  “Who did you think was playing the pranks?”

  Before she could reply, a young man in a business suit tapped impatiently on the counter and pointed at the roses. Sallie turned to help him, selecting a bunch and wrapping them in pale green paper. After some deliberation, she chose a mauve ribbon with which to tie the conical package. When she turned back to me, her eyes were flashing.

  “Hands me a pain,” she said, “people who won’t even bother to pick out their own flowers. Probably had a fight with his wife, is taking them to her as a peace offering. Poor woman—the marriage won’t last. He doesn’t even care if her roses are fresh.”

  I smiled, realizing she probably made her work time pass more quickly by making up stories about her customers.

  Sallie sat down on a stool that was a companion of mine and reached for a portable radio that sat on the counter. She turned it up, listened, noted something on paper, and then turned it down.

  “I’m trying to win this contest,” she said. “You write down all the songs they’ve played and when they say to, you call in. If you get through and tell them the right titles in order, you win a hundred bucks.”

  It was one of the many listener games KSUN played. “You listen to that station much?”

  “All the time. The music isn’t much, but the d.j.’s are really something.”

  “The reason I asked is that my boyfriend works there. Don Del Boccio.”

  Sallie’s fleshy face lit up. “Old Devastating Don? He’s your boyfriend?”

  “Yes.”

  “I listen to him all the time. He’s got a terrific sense of humor.”

  I felt a flash of pride. “He is pretty good, isn’t he?”

  “I love him. A lot of people in the neighborhood do. KSUN’s real popular in the Tenderloin, for some reason. Maybe all the giveaways games they play.”

  Now that she mentioned it, I’d noticed the distinct sounds of KSUN blaring out in a number of places down there. I’d have to report this phenomenon to Don. To Sallie, I merely, said, “I’ll tell Don you like him; he’ll be pleased. But back to the problems at the hotel—who did you think might be playing pranks?”

  She reached for a container of violets. “The boys, of course.”

  “You mean Hoa and Duc and the others in the hotel?”

  She nodded, selecting some violets and leaves.

  “Aren’t they a little old to be called boys?”

  “Yes and no.” Sallie arranged the flowers against the leaves, then deftly began fastening their stems together with wire. “In their years, they’re men. In experience of a certain type—the war, things like that—they’ve matured far beyond their age. But those boys missed their childhood. Now that they’re safe in this country, they’re having it.”

  “I didn’t meet Hoa, and I haven’t had a chance to talk with the others, but Duc strikes me as a very angry and alienated young man.”

  “That’s part of the childishness. He feels out of place here and so he rebels and refuses to fit in.” Sallie pulled a length of white ribbon off a roll and began to tie a bow.

  “He puts it on a cultural basis,” I said, “says he doesn’t want to lose his Vietnamese identity.”

  She nodded. “Of course he says that. It’s an excuse for the fact that he refuses to grow up and make a life for himself. He can make his way in this country without losing touch with his heritage—and underneath he knows it.”

  “Was Hoa the same way?”

  ‘Yes, Hoa and the rest of them. They banded together and cried on each other’s shoul
ders.”

  “What else did they do, when they weren’t feeling sorry for themselves?”

  “Not much. I’d find them sitting in the stairwell with long faces on, smoking and talking.”

  “Smoking . . .?”

  “Tobacco, not marijuana. In spite of their not wanting to grow up, they’re not bad boys. They’re confused, that’s all. Confused, like we’ve all been.”

  “So you thought they were playing pranks because they were bored and at loose ends?”

  “Yes. Boys, you know, will be boys, no matter what country they were born in.”

  “But now you don’t think they were the ones who were causing the trouble.”

  “No.” Sallie finished the corsage and held it up for me to admire, but her eyes were bleak. “No, I don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it? They’re good boys. They wouldn’t kill their friend.”

  “What if they’d gotten involved with some bad companions—”

  A tall, classically beautiful woman in a blood fur jacket came up with a bunch of white orchids. Sallie wrapped them, money changed hands, and the woman walked off, smiling down at the flowers.

  “She’s a regular,” Sallie said. “A model at Saks. Looks happier than usual today; probably she’s having her boyfriend over for a special dinner.”

  Momentarily sidetracked, I said, “Do you know she has a boyfriend?”

  Sallie looked surprised. “A woman like that? Of course she’s got a boyfriend! He’s probably some sort of business tycoon, or maybe a movie producer, going to take her to Hawaii for Christmas.”

  I smiled, amused at her inventiveness. “Anyway,” I said, “what if Hoa and the others had been keeping bad company?”

  “You mean with criminals?”

  “Yes.”

  “There aren’t any criminals living in the hotel.”

  “But outside . . . ?”

  She frowned, clearly disturbed at the notion. “I wouldn’t know about that. I try to avoid those types.”

  “Who would know?”

  “Well . . .” She fingered a curl of white ribbon hanging from one of the spools. “I suppose you could talk to Mr. Tran, the grocer on the corner. He sees pretty much everything that goes on on the street.”