The only good Lawyer

right?”
    “ Vietnam ?”
    “No. Waikiki fucking Beach.”
    I tried to relax in my chair. “You do some research on me?”
    Trinh almost smiled again. “Don’t have to, Mr. Private Eye. You got the look. I was five years old when my momma put me on that plane. But I remember the look.”
    “What plane?”
    Trinh seemed a little surprised, but he said, “The do-gooders, they called it ‘Operation Babylift.’ Back in ‘seventy-five, just when the Commies was coming over the walls. The do-gooders, they figured the Cong gonna kill us, cause we got the American devil-blood inside. Color of my eyes, color of Oscar’s skin. So we get loaded on these planes—didn’t have seats or nothing, just mattresses and that net stuff, hold down cargo. And that’s all we was, too, cargo they sending to the place our poppas come from. Only thing is, we land in Boston , and guess what? Ain’t no poppas waiting at the gate with cameras and teddy bears. Lots of the kids, they was just babies, but Oscar and me, we old enough to see what’s going on, know what’s happening to us.”
    “And what did happen?”
    Trinh swallowed, kind of hard. “We ain’t cute like the little babies, everybody want to adopt. We don’t got no English, either, except a couple words our mommas remember. Oscar and me, we get put in this orphan place, and then foster homes, but there was nobody really wanted us. Even in school, man, you sit down for lunch, all of a sudden you hear this noise. You don’t got much English, first time you don’t know what it is. Then you do. All the kids at your lunch table, they saying it under their breath, chanting like they monks or some shit.”
    “Chanting what?”
    “ ‘Gook, gook, gook.’ ”
    Huong broke in. “Or ‘Nigger gook, nigger gook.’ ” I wished I couldn’t picture it. “Kind of a jump to doing home invasions in the suburbs.”
    Trinh did smile this time. “You the one doing research on us, Mr. Private Eye.”
    “Some.”
    “Yeah, well, we didn’t go right to the big stuff, you know. We start small, pay our dues. Oscar beat up the kids said things to us, and that got us into DYS the first time. Once we there, we learn pretty quick what’s what. You got to fight, or you get turned out.”
    Meaning raped. “But—”
    Huong said, “Once you a punk, them booty bandits, they don’t leave you alone.”
    Trinh waited till his friend was finished. “Oscar and me, we never do that kind of shit to nobody, man. Even back then, AIDS was everywhere, these junky kids been sharing needles ‘in the ghetto.’ But nobody never turned us out, either. Thanks to Oscar.”
    I wanted to aim Trinh more toward what I was investigating. “And after that, you graduated to terrorizing families for money.”
    “Hey, man, you do what you know. Secret of success in these United States .” Trinh looked around the room. “I gotta tell you, though, I don’t know where your clients come from, you in this shitty little building with no parking out front, that slower than shit elevator, and then a locked-up door to your office.”
    “Tell me something else, Nugey. You use Oscar for anything other than a human master key?”
    The tip-of-the-tongue smile. “I got my hand in lots of things.”
    “Like loan-sharking.”
    “Helping people who need cash, can’t get it from the bank without a mask and a gun.”
    “Before you went into the lending business, though, you and Oscar both knew Woodrow Gant?” Trinh dropped the smile. “How come you asking around about him and us?”
    “He had dinner at a restaurant you have a piece of.”
    Trinh paused for a moment, glancing up at Huong before coming back to me. “You know how come I rent to that little shit Chan?”
    “No.”
    Trinh released a breath. “I find out, he want to open a restaurant. Only thing, he have one before, but he couldn’t make it go. It close, Chan owe people, even went bankrupt. So now he want to try again, I give him a chance.”
    “You’re a real soft touch, Nugey.”
    The loan shark smiled again. I decided I liked him better serious.
    He said, “That Chan, he one pure-blood Vietnamese. We still over in Saigon , he look down on Oscar and me like we dogshit somebody track into his house.” Trinh leaned forward, putting his hand on my desk, grinding a little with the thumb. “So now he like this under me. Chan need my money, he got to respect me.”
    “You set him up in the restaurant so he’d be in your control.”
    “You