Maybe that was when I accepted that I’d have to give up on Suzy and on everything that tied me to her. A heavy finality fell over me, heavier than what I felt that night I hit her, like I could no longer remember her or any part of our marriage correctly — like a stone door had closed on the last ten years of my life.
A soft knock came at the door. It opened, and Victor appeared, carrying my duffel bag and a small paper sack. Junior gestured for him to come in and close the door.
Victor didn’t make eye contact until he was standing above me. If he was upset with me for disobeying him, I couldn’t tell. He set everything on the coffee table, including my car keys.
Junior said, “That is food. Take it with you. It’s nearly daylight now. I have no idea how long it will take the authorities to identify my father’s body and then contact me. I’m fairly confident, though, that you will not want to be here when that happens.”
The door opened again and this time it was the giant Menen dez, his face as expressionless as it had been five months before. I felt a strange tenderness at the sight of him ducking under the doorframe. He must have carried me last night. I wondered if behind that inscrutable face he ever thought about the things he was ordered to do or the people he did them to, if it mattered to him that he had to take one body and not the other.
Victor started for the door, but Junior said, “Not yet. Mr. Robert, before you make your departure, I need to take care of some unresolved issues. One is this.”
He opened a desk drawer and pulled out Suzy’s red journal. He held it open, turning the pages delicately.
“Very many years ago,” he said, “when I first knew Miss Hong, I asked her what she was writing in this book, and she replied that she was writing letters to someone who would never read them. I didn’t quite understand that at the time, but I took it very seriously. I still do. You took this from my father’s house five months ago. I would say you stole it from him, but it wasn’t his. Nor is it mine or yours. That’s the way it should remain.”
He ripped out a handful of pages, then tossed the journal into the metal trashcan by the desk. He took the lighter on the desk and lit the pages in his hand, watching the flames grow into a torch before also dropping it into the trashcan. He peered darkly at me as curls of smoke began rising and that sweet burning smell filled the room. All the while I thought about running over and saving the journal, but it was like Junior already knew that I wouldn’t, that the fight in me had already been exhausted.
“I’ve been sitting here watching you asleep on that couch,” he said, “asking myself why I let you live. My only answer is that letting you die would gain me nothing. I learned that from my father. Don’t do something if you have nothing to gain from it.”
Smoke was drifting all over the office, past Victor and Menen dez and out the doorway. We all remained silent amid the soft crackling and the swirling haze, watching Junior as he watched the fire. After a minute more, he picked up the pitcher of water and emptied it into the trash can. Then he set the pitcher down on the desk with a loud thud that startled Victor.
Calmly, I said, “You had no right. It wasn’t yours to destroy.”
“Yes, that is true. But I’m doing you a favor one last time, Mr. Robert. I’m saving you from futility. It’s like my father always said about poker. Even if all the cards are shown, the story is still incomplete. It’ll always be incomplete. Live with it.”
“You’re punishing me. That’s what you’re doing.”
“Yes, that is true too. But you’re not alone.”
He turned now to Victor and stared at him as if waiting for him to speak first. I would always remember Victor’s immediate glance at Menendez, who was blocking the entire doorway. His face, its blank intensity, betrayed too much. Junior was probably only a few years his senior, but for the moment he seemed decades older.
“Victor, I want you to answer me honestly. Did you help Miss Hong steal my father’s money?”
I expected Victor to acknowledge me now in some way, but he was too dumbstruck to do anything but stare back at his interrogator.
“I don’t care about the money,” Junior told him. “I don’t care about anything else you did. All I want to know is whether you helped her betray my father.”
Victor let the silence swell a moment more before replying, “Yes. I did help her.” He started to say something in Vietnamese, but Junior held up his hand.
“No, no. Speak English so that Mr. Robert will understand.”
The look Victor finally gave me was not angry or uncertain or even fearful. It was oddly conspiratorial, like he and I had planned this very moment. “She was afraid for her life,” he said, “so she asked me for help. I felt a duty to help her.”
“And your duty to my father? To me?”
“She was afraid. She had no one else. I couldn’t say no.”
Junior considered that for a moment, then walked around the desk. “That doesn’t make sense to me. You can always say no. You have a tongue, don’t you?”
They were a foot apart now. Victor opened his mouth to reply, but Junior struck him with a vicious upward blow, a palm heel to the chin that flung his head back and sent him stumbling into Menendez’s chest.
I leaped to my feet, and the sudden movement made me light-headed. I managed to say, “Wait, goddamn it!”
No one paid me any attention.
Victor was bent over, grimacing and cupping his mouth like it was swollen inside. He had bitten his tongue badly. I could already see blood on his lips and his fingers. From behind him, Menendez had both hands on his shoulders like he was either consoling him or propping him up. Then he gently nudged him forward toward Junior.
“What were you going to say?” Junior asked.
Gently, affectionately it seemed, he pulled Victor’s hand away from his mouth and lifted his chin with a finger to inspect the damage. Then he put his other hand on Victor’s shoulder, as if coming in for a hug, but in one swift motion slipped behind him and wrapped his arm tightly around his throat as the other hand gripped the back of his head.
Victor came alive and grasped at Junior’s forearm to break the chokehold, lifting him off the ground for a second before backing him into the bookshelf and knocking books onto the floor. But Junior was glued to him, his hold as tight as a vise. Victor was tucking in his chin and managed to reach behind his head to grab Junior’s sleeve, and that’s when Junior kneed him brutally in the ribs, which made him gasp. From there the chokehold was unbreakable. His face reddened, his eyes started rolling back, and moments later his body went limp, crumpling to the floor.
I made a move toward him, but Junior threw up his hand and pointed at me like he was brandishing a dagger. He was standing over Victor’s prone body, his rolled-up sleeve kissed with blood. I was startled by the sight of him so unrecognizably disheveled and out of breath, flushed with anger as Menendez loomed behind him like his gargoyled shadow.
He nudged Victor’s head with his shoe, then nudged it again much harder.
Victor shuddered suddenly, and I heard the violent insuck of breath as his back rose like a tide. He was gasping and coughing into the floor, holding on to his side as he also grabbed at his throat, his legs writhing slowly like he was in the midst of a troubling dream.
I don’t know if it was relief or guilt or the throbbing in my own head, but I sank back down onto the couch.
Junior took a deep breath. He stepped over Victor and returned to the desk. I saw him open the drawer again and this time pull out a switchblade, the same one he had used on me. He set it on the desk.