Shallow Graves

tonight.“
    “Fine. Whenever. What else you need?“
    “I’d like to talk with your wife and your brother.“
    “Claudette and Vinnie? Why?“
    “They knew your daughter. I didn’t.“
    “You think it’ll help, okay. When?“
    “Now would be good.“
    Joseph Danucci nodded once, the developer who could be decisive. “You got it.“

- 9 -

    She was definitely the tallest Vietnamese woman I had ever seen.
    At least five and a half feet in just slippers like a ballerina, Joseph Danucci’s wife must have seemed a giant in her home country. She came into the den haltingly, taking a step before returning to the door and closing it, as though she were the guest in my home and wanted to make a good impression.
    She stopped a body length away from me. “I am Claudette Danucci. My husband say I speak with you.“
    The good eye wandered a little over me, the glass eye steady, its lid coming down only halfway as she blinked.
    “Again, Mrs. Danucci, I’m sorry about your daughter.“
    A brief nod. “You will drink?“
    I’d pitched the beer. “No. Thank you.“
    “You will sit?“
    I took the unstained chair. Danucci lowered herself into the couch as though a glass of water were balanced on her head. If Mau Tim had half her mother’s grace, I could understand her success as anything, model included.
    “Mrs. Danucci, I’m investigating the death of your daughter for an insurance company.“
    Another brief nod.
    “It would help me if you could tell me something about her.“
    She waited a moment. “I could tell you many things about her. I could tell you her first word to me when she is one year. I could tell you how many time I brush her hair when she is five year. I could tell you how there is a knife in my heart because I must think of these things to tell you them.“
    I dropped my head.
    Her voice changed. “I am ashame, Mr. Cuddy.“
    I looked back up at Claudette Danucci. A large tear glided down along her nose from the good eye, nothing from the glass one.
    “I am ashame because I embarrass the man my husband tell me will find the killer of my child.“
    “Mrs. Danucci, you have every right to be upset.“
    She turned her face, both eyes fixing on me. “You were in Vietnam ?“
    “Yes.“
    “In Vietnam , the life of a woman is her children. I can have one child only, and now she is take from me.“
    I decided to go with her. “You met your husband in Vietnam ?“
    “Yes. I was... You know what ‘tea girl’ mean?“
    “I do.“ It was slang for a bar girl who got GIs to buy her drinks, usually iced tea masquerading as liquor.
    “When my husband meet me, I am tea girl. Do you know why I am tea girl?“
    “Mrs. Danucci, you don’t—“
    “I am tea girl because I am rape by your black soldiers. I am good Catholic girl, Mr. Cuddy. I hear stories from the French time, about the Morocco black French. They rape and kill peasant girls in the village. Stories say, that not happen in the city, but it happen to me. I am too tall for Vietnam man. I think, I find America man to love me. America black soldiers find me.“
    “I’m sorry.“
    “No. I want to tell you these things. You will see. I am tea girl because my family not want me after the America black soldiers have me. I am lucky. I am pretty and I am different because I am tall. I not have to eat rats or snakes, to steal to live. I get many gift from PX. I have many America white soldiers. I get ma tuu, the marijuana, to help forget.
    “Then I meet my husband. He is different. He want to buy dinner, not drink. He bring me flowers to my apartment. He is honorable man, my husband. He walk with me in the streets. The old women say things in Vietnam words, names they have for the America invaders and women like me with them. My husband know these things, and still he walk with me.
    “One day, I find out, I am pregnant. With my daughter. The other tea girls, they say, ‘Claudette, you take this herb, it make the baby go away quick. Quick, before the America soldier see the baby inside you.’ I do not want abortion, Mr. Cuddy. I want the baby of the man I want to be my husband. You know what happen to the children of America soldier and Vietnam woman in Vietnam ?“
    I’d seen the kids wandering Saigon , though there weren’t so many of them when I was there. Stringy, sallow girls with blue eyes that didn’t slant quite right. Husky, mocha boys with broad noses and ripply hair. Ostracized, even beaten or stoned by the relatively