Rutland is Vermont’s second-largest city, which isn’t saying much, considering the entire state has just over half a million people. And unlike Brattleboro, even its most dewy-eyed enthusiasts can’t claim it hasn’t suffered at modern hands. The original downtown section has a strong and handsome turn-of-the-century appeal-a collection of stalwartly elegant old buildings reminiscent of the confident Yankee industrialism that put the town on the map in the first place. But Rutland’s fallen on hard times-a mass of railroad tracks slices through the city’s center, and a cheap, glitzy, traffic-choked business strip lining Route 7 on the hill east of downtown creates a feeling of disunity. Sticking to Route 7, a traveler could drive the entire north-south axis of town, numbed by its tasteless, endless string of malls, outlets, and fast-food joints, and never know that a few blocks to the west an entirely different city, complete with many old architectural gems, lies ignored.
It was there, nevertheless, at City Hall, on the corner of Washington and Wales, that I met with Detective Sergeant Sandy Rawlings, who’d been assigned as my official liaison. Tall and thin, with the tidy dress and immaculate manners of an over-groomed Boy Scout, he was the kind of person I had a terrible time taking at face value. Our first encounter didn’t help. He grabbed my car’s door handle just as I was about to open up from inside, and dragged me half out into the parking lot as he pulled it open. I landed, one hand on the door, the other flat on the pavement, staring at his highly polished shoes.
“I take it you’re Rawlings,” I said, struggling to get up.
“Yes, sir. I am sorry.” He made an embarrassed and ineffectual effort to help me.
“Don’t worry about it. And call me Joe. I hope you weren’t standing around waiting too long.”
He either missed or ignored the mild irony. “No, no, Lieutenant. It was a pleasure. Would you like to come upstairs?”
Given the conversation so far, I passed. “Why don’t you just take me to where Chu used to live? We can talk on the way.”
Things improved on the short trip to the city’s west side, literally located beyond the railroad tracks. Having insisted on driving, I inadvertently robbed Rawlings of what he’d no doubt onerously seen as his primary official duty. As a result, after a bit more initial discomfort, he pragmatically opted to relax and enjoy the ride, his strained good manners ceding to something a little more approachable.
He had little to tell me that I didn’t already know about Chu Nam An’s innocent encounter with the police, and his description of Rutland’s Asian population was not unlike our own. Although much smaller in size-“We don’t have one,” in his words-it was equally diffuse, ebbing and flowing according to its own private mechanisms. Whether it was the city’s depressed economic state, or the fact that it didn’t lie particularly close to any major interstate, it seemed at best a backwater for Asians-a stopover on the way to somewhere else. Or perhaps, as with Chu, I thought, an off-road holding station for someone with a job to do.
The area Rawlings directed me to-Howe Street-was shoved up against an intersection formed by the railroad tracks and West Street, also known as Business Route 4. It was one block long, worn, nondescript, residential, and abandoned in appearance. Its west side was occupied by a row of weather-beaten wooden homes facing an overgrown field and an empty, gutted, salmon-colored factory building labeled with a barely legible wooden sign announcing the Green Mountain Work Shop. Its serried ranks of shattered windows made clear that, nowadays, its only function was as a target for every rock-wielding kid in the neighborhood. Howe was a carbon copy of the street Heather Dahlin had taken me to in Hartford, and that our own Asians had chosen in Brattleboro. There was a nomadic feeling to all three of them, as if their inhabitants, regardless of race, occupation, or prospects, knew they should only carry the basics, and never completely unpack.
The building he pointed out looked a little worse off than its neighbors-stained, sagging, and covered with old scalloped asbestos shingles, half of which were cracked or missing. The windows were devoid of decorations or shades, and the yard was vacant and neglected.
“Still empty?” I asked, not bothering to kill the engine.
“Yeah. One day they were here. The next they were gone. A few worked at the local restaurants or grocery stores, but they were the exception.”
“Nice cars with out-of-state plates every once in a while?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” He looked at me, a little surprised. “I was the one your office contacted to check this Chu out. According to the neighbors I interviewed, the people who came in the flashier cars were the only ones who caused any nervousness. They usually traveled in pairs or groups, dressed in showy clothes, and had a way of strutting around that made people feel uncomfortable. Our biggest problem here is with Hispanics, so the area’s already racially tense-adding a few Asians didn’t help. Not that they did anything-they were more like cruising sharks, you know? Swimming around all the other fish. ’Course, we’re only talking eight or so people at a time, max.”
“And what about the others?” I asked.
“They kept to themselves-maybe fifteen of them at any one time, all living in that one place. We always figured it was part of a pipeline, but that’s not our jurisdiction. Like I said, we got bigger problems.”
That sounded familiar. I looked up and down the block and then checked my watch. It was getting near suppertime, and the sky just beginning to fade. “Where’s the nearest dive? Bar, dance club, whatever?”
He gave me a quizzical look and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “A few blocks down west. Why?”
“I was thinking if I drove a fancy car and strutted my stuff, I might want to unwind someplace with the boys.”
Rawlings gave me the grin of a man suddenly catching the scent of something interesting-a pure cop’s reaction and totally at odds with his tweedy appearance.
“Right,” he said slowly and appreciatively and began giving me directions.
Unfortunately, that first stop came to nothing. The owner of what turned out to be a threadbare, pleasant, neighborhood bar not only didn’t recognize the picture of Chu I was carrying with me, he didn’t think a single Asian had ever crossed his threshold.
The same held true for the next two places we visited. Rawlings shook his head as we got back into the car. “This could take a while, Lieutenant. If they didn’t frequent the local bars, then we’ve got a shitload to choose from. Rutland has no shortage of gin joints.”
“How ’bout karaoke bars?” I asked, suddenly inspired.
“Where you sing along with the music?” he asked dubiously. “Yeah, we got one of those.”
We left the west side and went up the hill to the gaudy Route 7 strip, eventually pulling into the parking lot of a building so shoddily built under its camouflage of blinking neon it looked ready to fall apart. But by this time it was almost eight o’clock, and Mort’s, as it was called, was dressed to do some serious, if low-rent, business. Inside, the light was dim and bizarre, supplied mostly by blinking Christmas lights hanging from the ceiling. The music was low and schmoozy. Unfortunately, the magic wasn’t working-the place was almost empty. The karaoke fad, it seemed, was on the skids, and I was pretty sure we were about to strike out again.
The bartender greeted us with the traditional, “What’ll it be, gents?” as we selected two stools from among the twenty-some available.
Rawlings did his tactful bit with the badge while I groped for the picture inside my jacket. “You ever cater to any Asians?” I asked in the meantime.
The bartender was an amiable-looking bald man with a close-cropped beard, as perfectly suited physically to his job as if he’d come from central casting. He kept wiping a small glass he was holding with a damp rag, just like in the movies. “Sure. They like to do that sing-along crap. Terrible singers. Buy a lot, though.”