Free There's Nothing to Be Afraid Of by Marcia Muller Page A

family on the sixth floor and Duc Vang’s best friend. Hoa, Carolyn had told me, had been only ten when his family had fled Vietnam in a cargo boat with forty other people. The boat had nearly sunk and, after losing engine power, had drifted for a week on the South China Sea before help came. Hoa had then come to America by a circuitous route; had suffered fear and deprivation and uncertainty; had been shunted between two resettlement camps, where he could neither speak the language nor eat the strange, unpalatable food. In San Francisco, he had been moved in and out of three apartments, endured the rigors of English-as-a-second-language classes, and finally begun an electronics course that promised him something of a brighter future.
    He had been through all that, and then at age sixteen he’d ended up bludgeoned to death in the basement of a Tenderloin hotel.
    I left the piano and climbed to the large loft on the left-hand side, where the kitchen and eating area were. On the opposite side of the space was a smaller loft where Don slept under one of the skylights. He’d found the place in October after he’d been evicted from his apartment because his piano playing disturbed the neighbors, and it was the ideal situation for him. All the spaces in the converted warehouse were soundproofed, and even if they hadn’t been, Don’s music would not have bothered the other tenants, who came and went at odd hours, some living in the building, others merely practicing various artistic pursuits there.
    After getting myself some white wine from the refrigerator, I sat down at the oak dining table. I wanted to clear the events at the Globe Hotel from my mind; I would have liked to have drunk enough to banish the images implanted there. But that wasn’t going to happen. For one thing, there wasn’t enough wine to get really drunk; and even if there had been, no amount of alcohol was going to help me. I’d never been able to turn off my mind—either at will or with booze or tranquilizing drugs—and I knew I was in for a bad time.
    When Greg Marcus had spotted me in the lobby of the hotel over two hours earlier, he’d raised one dark-blond eyebrow and said sardonically, “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”
    I’d smiled faintly and stood up even straighter, wanting to present a controlled, professional appearance. It seemed to me that I should be getting better at handling these things, what with all the years and all the violence. But I wasn’t. I still felt sickened and I still hyperventilated, and it made me ashamed, especially when I reacted that way in front of a pro like Greg.
    As he watched my face, his eyes flickered with concern and he said, “Are you all right?”
It—as well as his earlier wisecrack—was a throwback to the time we were still together, and it gave me a displaced feeling.
    “I’m fine,” I said.
    He nodded. Subject dismissed. “Tell me what happened.” Now his tone was carefully neutral, his face expressionless. With a flash of relief, I realized he intended to treat me as if I were a stranger who had phoned in, and I was glad he’d adopted that attitude. It would make our dealings much easier.
    I introduced him to Carolyn and explained why she had hired me. I went over my arrival at the hotel and what I had encountered. In the middle of this, the Vangs returned and added to the confusion. Mary Zemanek emerged from her apartment to see what the commotion was and immediately began invoking the owner’s displeasure. Mr. Dinh, Hoa’s father, identified his son’s body, his pregnant wife standing by in stoical sorrow. She had, Carolyn said, lost two children on the flight from their homeland; while not inured to such loss, she could handle it better than most.
    Finally the questioning was over. The lab men departed, and the coroner’s personnel left with the body bag. Carolyn went upstairs with the Dinhs, saying we would reschedule our meeting with the Vangs tomorrow. Greg looked at me