Twenty-Four

With its peaked roof, demure gray exterior, beige trim, and carefully manicured landscaping, the building on Route 20 in Sudbury could have been a bank, a doctor’s office, a small museum, or a McMansion. Instead, it was a Chinese restaurant called Lotus Blossom. The restaurant had tossed away any attempt at looking Chinese and had, instead, fit itself into the suburban homogeneity that surrounded it. Uncle Walt insisted upon eating here.

Uncle Walt wanted to sample Lotus Blossom’s lunch buffet. I had gone with the white rice, buffet sushi, stir-fried vegetables, pot stickers, and my guilty pleasure, a piece of General Gau’s chicken. Walt had loaded up on egg rolls, chicken wings, fried wontons, and crab rangoon. If it was fried, gooey, or crispy, it was on Walt’s plate.

Uncle Walt stuck his fork into a crab rangoon, squirting white goo onto the dish. He held up the fried pocket, dripping ooze.

“You gotta try this!” said Uncle Walt.

“No. I’m good,” I said.

“You’re missing out.”

“You want any sushi?”

“Is it cooked?” asked Walt.

“No. It’s sushi.”

“Get back to me when it’s cooked.” He popped the rangoon into his mouth and went after an egg roll.

“How do you stay so thin, eating like that?”

“I only eat this stuff on special occasions, like when you call me twice in the same week. We haven’t talked in years and suddenly you’re out here all the time. What’s up?”

“Cathy Byrd was murdered yesterday, and they think my mother did it.” I watched Walt for any reaction to her name. There was none.

Walt said, “Who?”

“Cathy Byrd. JT’s mother and my father’s second wife.”

“Second wife? What the hell are you talking about?”

I told Walt about the house, the murder, and the pictures—all the pictures of my father enjoying a happy life with his other family.

Walt said, “Holy shit.”

“Yeah.”

“He never told me about any of this.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“What’s that supposed to mean? Of course I’m sure. Do you think I’d forget him shacking up with some hot little number out in Pittsfield? Do you think I’d forget about a second kid? As far as I knew, you were John’s only kid, and he was kind of stuck with your mother.”

“Stuck with my mother? What does that mean?”

“Come on, Tucker. I mean, you lived with them. Could you call that a happy marriage?”

“How would I have known?”

“I mean, with all due respect to your mother, she had problems. She was unstable. He was always tiptoeing around, trying not to set off the land mines.”

The food on my plate looked like a pile of dead fish on white rice. I wasn’t eating that. I poked at a piece of salmon with my chopstick.

“If things were so bad, why didn’t Dad divorce her?”

“He just didn’t believe in it. He figured that he had made his bed and that he could lie in it. Plus, I think he was afraid of the Rizzos.”

“Well, that can’t be true,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because he asked my uncle to lend him the money to buy the house for Cathy.”

Walt bit into the egg roll in his hand. Flecks of shredded vegetable fell out of the egg roll onto his plate. He chewed and then washed the fried mass down with a chug of his Budweiser. “He asked Frank Rizzo for a loan? Was he crazy?”

“Why would he be crazy?”

“Because the Rizzos are in the Mafia, Tucker. Didn’t you know that?”

I pushed my plate away. “No. Apparently, I was the only one who didn’t know it.”

“That’s because you never paid attention to your family. The Rizzos are crazy bastards.”

It was time for my gambit. “Then why did you borrow from them?”

Walt reddened. “What did you say?”

“Sal said that you owe him money,” I said.

Walt pushed his plate aside and pointed his fork at me. “That’s bullshit. I don’t owe Sal anything.”

“That’s not what he says.”

“Tucker, I love you like a nephew, but we’re done here. This is all none of your business. Just back off.”

“I can’t back off. They think my mother killed Cathy Byrd.”

“She probably did. Your mother is a lunatic.”

I was standing and our beers had tipped across the table. My fist was balled. I pointed at Uncle Walt.

“You shut up!”

“Will you sit down, for Christ’s sake? You’re making a scene,” said Walt.

I leaned on the table. “You fucking take that back.”

“Sit down!”

The restaurant was silent. Even the buffet line had stopped moving. The lunchtime crowd stared at me. I stared back. A guy in a business suit broke eye contact with me. Two women who had been talking went back to their conversation. A serving spoon clinked at the buffet table. I sat and the restaurant slipped back into motion.

Walt said, “Look. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that about your mother.”

I drank my water. “So you don’t owe Sal money.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. It’s none of your business. You mind telling me what you’re trying to accomplish?”

“I’m trying to figure out what’s going on.”

“Why?”

“Because I know my mother didn’t kill Cathy Byrd, and I’m going to prove it.”

That was what I said, but as I paid for lunch and Walt and I walked to our cars, I reflected upon the real reason. Two days ago I’d had a clear picture of how the world worked and who I was. I was Aloysius Tucker, the only son of John and Angelina Tucker. I had family in the North End—loud and Italian, but just a normal family. I was a widower, but I was getting on with my life. I was inching toward having a girlfriend.

Suddenly, all that was gone. I was Aloysius Tucker, the older son of John Tucker, who had another family with another wife and another son. A wife and a son he seemed to prefer to my mother and me.

These new people, these other people, had been murdered, and my mother and I had been dragged into it. My father had set wheels in motion that threatened to crush us. He had set up a mythical world that had shattered and left me without a foundation. I couldn’t live without a foundation. I wouldn’t stop digging until I knew exactly where I stood and what I was standing upon. I refused to live the rest of my life as a puzzle piece looking for a place to fit.