‘You were talking too much,’ she said lightly. ‘Anyway, I was interested.’
He nodded, not believing her. ‘Nothing you want to say to me?’
She hesitated. She felt an intense urge to tell him. Not by any means everything. Just a hint at some sort of past in Saigon before he came on the scene. But she knew, in parallel with the thought, that it would be immensely dangerous. He was a cop. By temperament and training he would want the whole story.
He raised his pale eyebrows towards her. ‘We talk, remember?’ he said. ‘When we have a problem, we talk.’
‘It’s work,’ she said finally. ‘Every day, so many ruined kids, so many broken people. My own people. Sometimes it gets to you.’
‘It gets to you that much,’ he said, ‘maybe it’s time to change jobs.’
‘No.’ She walked out into the hall and came back with his cap and belt. ‘Just sometimes I feel so lucky to have you. And all this.’
‘It’s no palace,’ he said. ‘It’s the Bronx.’
‘Almost Riverdale. And I’m very happy here,’ Louise said firmly.
He held her face in both hands. ‘You have a strange way of showing it, sometimes.’
‘Go to work,’ she said, forcing a smile. ‘Catch criminals. Clean up New York.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
‘I asked you to come,’ Louise said, across a corner table in the Palermo Luncheonette, ‘because I have something to tell you.’
Nan Luc waited until Mai Bassano had put two cups of coffee on the table and passed a few words with Louise. The excitement building inside her was almost suffocating. As soon as Mai had turned away she leaned forward towards Louise. ‘Before you tell me anything,’ she said to Louise, ‘I want you to know I understand what your new life means to you in America. The past is safe with me.’
‘Just listen to what I have to tell you,’ Louise said.
The chill in her tone was clearly conveyed to Nan Luc. Whatever she was about to say, Nan Luc knew, was with reluctance, under some form of duress. Or possibly even a construction, a red herring to lead her away from her father. Tense, slightly sick to her stomach, Nan Luc waited.
‘In the last days before the evacuation,’ Louise said, ‘everybody was desperate to leave Saigon. There were rumours of massacres, mass rapes, robbing and pillaging.’
‘I can believe that,’ Nan Luc said, instead it was poverty, hunger.’
‘In the spring of 1975,’ Louise said, ‘everybody used whatever money and influence they had to get a plane out.’ She paused. ‘Your mother guessed what the new world would be. She understood that a child like you, half Vietnamese, half American could only expect a life of deprivation.’
‘Did she talk about these things?’
Louise nodded. ‘We ail recognised she was not like us. She could have worked the bars for hundreds of dollars a week. But she preferred working in a field hospital. Your grandmother thought she was mad.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘Pham believed everybody who fought against the Vietcong would be sent to work camps in the north. When she realised the end was near, she asked me to choose an American to help.’
‘Choose him to do what?’
‘To stand in as your father. To take you back to America.’ Nan drew in her breath slowly. In the corner of her eye she could see Mai Bassano standing, hands on hips, behind the counter.
‘Understand what was happening. The whole city was mad with excitement, a sort of suppressed panic. From the medical unit Pham sent back money to get you to America.’
‘Then what?’
‘I had no time for anything, Nan. I was leading a double life.’
‘What sort of double life?’
‘I was a bar-girl at the Eros, for God’s sake…’
‘And your MP thought you worked at a store.’
‘Whatever. My main problem was what to do with you. I still had to find an American to take you out. I was desperate. I knew an ordinary GI wouldn’t get a pass in time, so I went to Stevenson. I offered him the five thousand dollars your mother had given me. Stevenson said why not. At the same time Ben had asked me to marry him. I raced over to Saigon Town Hall and bribed a clerk to alter your birth certificate, to put a name in the slot where the father’s name should go.’
‘There was no name before that?’ Louise shook her head. Nan Luc’s eyes blazed from her pale face. ‘And then? Then what happened?’
‘The deal was Stevenson would deliver you to someone who would be waiting in Los Angeles.’
‘Who?’
‘Nan, it’s a world ago. I had a name on a piece of paper. I barely spoke more than bar-girl English. It didn’t mean a thing to me.’
A rapid pulse was beating in Nan’s throat. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘You left Saigon…’
‘I was married and left the same day. Ben’s officer arranged everything.’ Louise pushed aside her coffee cup. ‘I’m not proud of my part in all this, Nan Luc. But the money was paid to Stevenson.’
Nan Luc reached out and gripped her wrist. ‘You expect me to believe this story?’ she said fiercely.
‘Believe it because it’s true.’
‘Where do I find him?’
‘You don’t.’ Nan stiffened. ‘Stevenson asked me to meet you. He’s prepared to pay you the five thousand dollars Pham gave him. And another five on top. He recognises that he never earned the money.’
The door swung open with a blast of cold air. A group of four or five young girls came in and clattered on high heels up to the counter. For a moment their laughter and greetings to Mai Bassano filled the long narrow room.
‘He recognises,’ Nan Luc said slowly, ‘that he never earned the money. Is that really so?’
‘Don’t be a fool, Nan Luc,’ Louise said, picking up on her tone. ‘Ten grand is a lot of money. No way you could force him to return it, and he’s doing it without being asked.’
‘I want to know where to find him, Louise. Tell me that.’
‘For Christ’s sake, ten thousand dollars he’s offering you.’
‘His address,’ Nan Luc said. ‘That’s all I want.’
Louise stood up. ‘You’re crazy, Nan Luc. I’m having nothing to do with this. You’re off your head. What other Vietnamese girl can come to New York and get offered this kind of money? Just tell me what to tell him. You take the money or not?’
‘You tell him I want to meet him.’
‘The life there makes people crazy,’ Louise said. ‘Always did. What d’you want to meet him for? He’s not your father. I see why he doesn’t want anything to do with you. He’s got a wife. Kids maybe.’
‘He’s afraid, Louise.’
‘Like me.’
‘Not like you, Louise,’ Nan Luc said quietly. ‘Do you know how my mother died?’ she asked after a moment.
‘She had nothing to live for, I guess that’s what she felt. Plenty of South Vietnamese did in those days. She killed herself.’
‘Or to put it another way,’ Nan Luc said harshly. ‘Stevenson killed her.’ Louise stared at her wildly. ‘With his pornographic movies, Stevenson killed her. This is the man you’re defending, Louise.’
‘It’s myself I’m defending,’ Louise said. ‘I don’t know what Stevenson did. I don’t want to know. It may be wicked but I don’t care anymore. He’s not your father, Nan. Put the past behind you, for God’s sake. It was full of horrors. But we survived. That’s all we have left. That’s all that matters now.’ Her voice rose desperately. ‘Leave me alone, Nan Luc. You’ve got money. I can see how you’re dressed. You’ve survived.’
‘Is that all it’s about?’
‘The past is dead, Nan. Don’t become another victim of it after all this time.’
Nan Luc nodded slowly. ‘You’re asking me to forget what he did? The answer’s no, Louise. By me it will never be forgotten. Or forgiven.’ She paused. ‘Tell him that.’