Spiral

back. He’d said all he could on the subject, and he knew I realized that.
    ”I’ll do my best to help you, Colonel.”
    A tear trickled down the sagging right side of his face. Thank you, Lieutenant Cuddy. For my granddaughter’s memory.”

    ”Mr. Vega said he will be back to take you to dinner tonight. He also will arrange for you to see the police tomorrow. But now, the Colonel wishes me to show you the rest of his house for... orientation purposes.”
    Duy Tranh spoke the words like a jaded tour guide. He and I were standing by ourselves in the corridor outside the ^n, the Skipper feeling he needed some rest after reliving his birthday.”
    ”Mr. Tranh, when I asked you those questions in the pool area, I wasn’t trying to single you out. Anyone investigating a homicide would focus first on the person finding the body.”
    ”Do you wish to start with a certain place in the house, or just have me take you around?”
    Tranh’s tone hadn’t changed. ”I was thinking of a given room.”
    ”Which, please?”
    ”Yours.”
    A faint twitching of the lips, almost a smug smile, as if he knew all along that’s where I’d begin. ”Come.”
    I followed him down the corridor to a staircase and up that to the second floor. He took a key from the pocket of his athletic pants and stuck it in the knob of the first door we came to.
    ”You keep your room locked?”
    ”I often have important papers of the Colonel in my suite.”
    His suite.
    As Tranh swung the door open for me, though, I saw he wasn’t kidding.
    The large room had a living area pardoned by a low bookcase, a collection of exotic knives on the longest wall. To the right of the shelves were a love seat and an armchair separated from each other by a coffee table. Off to the left, the floor-plan dog-legged right and back to create a sleeping L with a nice double window over the bed. Next to the bed was a fairly elaborate computer system occupying a hutch designed to hold all the different components. The bathroom door was ajar, two towels hanging from their rack next to a shower stall that looked big enough for a barbershop quartet.
    ”Nice digs,” I said.
    ”The Colonel is a generous man living in a large house.”
    ”Can we sit a while?”
    Tranh motioned me to the love seat. He took the arm-chair.
    I pointed at the computer. ”What do you use that for?”
    ”The usual things.”
    ”How about some details?”
    Tranh watched me for a moment. ”You do not know much about computers, do you?”
    ”Honestly? No.”
    He said, ”Then I am probably not skilled enough to explain them to you.”
    ”Mr. Tranh, let’s cut the shit and talk about what you use that computer setup for.”
    The smug smile, maybe his reward to himself for getting a rise out of me. ”Surfing the Net, crawling the Web. E-mail, data- and word-processing, spreadsheet analysis—I notice you are not taking notes. Should I go on?”
    ”What kind of work do you do for the Colonel?”
    ”On the computer?”
    Disingenuous. ”Overall.”
    ”I am his personal assistant.” Tranh began ticking his duties off raised fingers. ”I coordinate the household here. I maintain the Colonel’s checkbook. I help him in the online execution of his investment decisions. I replace physically some of the faculties he lost due to his stroke.” Tranh had reached his pinkie finger. ”And I am his confidant, because while I am not blood, I am family.”
    The Skipper had said as much downstairs. ”How did you come to know Colonel Helides?”
    ”In Vietnam. My father served as an undercover ‘operative’ for Colonel Helides in the black market. A ‘business rival' assassinated him just before the fall of Saigon to the Communists. They would have put me into a re-education Camp, but the Colonel felt he owed something to my father, and so I was brought to the United States and raised in the Colonel’s home.”
    ”This home?”
    ”Not originally,” said Tranh. ”The Colonel built here only after Mrs.... After he married his second wife, Cassandra. We moved to Florida twenty-two years ago.”
    ”So you’ve been with Colonel Helides...?”
    ”... since I was six years old. He became my surrogate father, putting me through secondary school and university.”
    ”Where?”
    ”P.M.I. and V.M.I.”
    Both military schools. ”You went into the service, then?”
    ”No.”
    I gave Tranh a chance to follow that up. When he didn’t, I said, ”How come?”
    ”I have an arrhythmic heart, Mr.