by Peter Colt
“Drink this. It will help. Nothing is broken. You will be sore, and I think your kidneys and ribs are bruised.” I took a big sip of the whiskey.
“I was hoping our first date would be more romantic.” She smiled at me a little uncertainly. I have that effect on women; they are uncertain if I am a good bet or not. Usually they err on the side of caution and I go home alone.“Oh, you must have hit your head, too. Did they say anything?”
“They told me to drop the case and to stop having Vietnamese friends.”
“Oh.” Her eyes widened comically. “So, what will you do now, Andy?”
“I am going to go to Virginia. That is the next step. I need to know who Pham was, who he worked for. There must be some clue as to what Hieu found.”
“Do you think it was important?”
“Yes, he thought whatever he found was the key to this whole thing.”
“That is very important.”
“It certainly was to Hieu.” He had died for it.
“What was he looking for?”
“I dunno. His widow said he was looking for a boat.”
“You aren’t in much shape to go to Virginia by yourself.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“I don’t think so.” She proved me wrong by helping me out of the bath and into bed. She brought me more whiskey, and I almost spit out a mouthful of it when she shimmied out of her jeans. She had fantastic legs, and her sweater didn’t come down far enough to be discreet. She slid into bed next to me. Her bare leg was smooth and impossible to ignore against my own.
“I am not in any condition to be romantic.” I wasn’t—between the bruises on my head and the whiskey I was feeling a little out of it.
“Oh, I am not worried. But there is only one bed and you are in no condition to sleep on the floor.” She was right. I wasn’t in any shape to do anything.
I concentrated on trying to finish the whiskey, all too aware of her next to me. Her fingers were tracing my old scars: the AK-47 wounds, the shrapnel marks. I shouldn’t complain. Women—I hadn’t met one who wasn’t fascinated by the scars. I hated them. She pushed and probed with her fingers; the map of my war written on my body. It left out diseases, dysentery, and the profound sense of loss I felt for my friends. Years of bad dreams, night sweats, and wondering why I lived when better men than me hadn’t. She listened, fascinated, as I answered each question she asked. The whiskey and exhaustion were better than truth serum.
“Were you drafted?” Her face, not far from mine. Uncomfortable eye contact and the smell of sex and perfume.
“No. I volunteered. My country was at war, and I wasn’t doing anything . . . anything that was making a difference.” It seemed silly trying to explain years later. I woke up one day and felt like I was wasting my life. I was on a one-way ticket to the rest of my life in Southie, in a mill or as a criminal. I had heard rumors of a whole wide, exotic, exciting world out there. Also, other kids were being made to go. Their lives, their promises, their potential weren’t any less than mine.
“You volunteered to fight in an immoral war? Was it worth it?”
My answer was more whiskey and a noncommittal grunt. How do you explain it?
“You saw a lot of combat.” Slim fingers, pushing and prodding the scar tissue on my body and my past.
“Yes.” Recon work was, ideally, boring. You got in and out undiscovered. A good team leader, known as a One-Zero, would plan it that way. Usually there was some sort of contact with the enemy, gunfire, and the tape you placed on the muzzle of your weapon to keep moisture and crud out of the barrel was shot off. When I had been a Cherry, a Greenie, watching guys come and go while I was being trained and quietly assessed, I secretly wanted to be one of those guys who came back from a mission with the tape shot off his muzzle. How I ached to be the guy on the landing pad, to have someone thrust a cold beer into my hands and pound my shoulders for coming back alive. Then it happened, and after a while, I wanted nothing more than to come home with the tape still intact.
“Did you like it? The war, the killing?” She was holding my face in her hands.
“The killing, no. No sane person likes that. The war . . . it isn’t that I liked it. It was the only place in my life that I felt I belonged. I was good at what I did. It was the only time in my life that I felt that . . . felt important. Also, for the first time in my whole life I had brothers, a family.” It had never occurred to me that what I had been desperate for as a child had been provided for me by the army, the war.
“Were you an orphan?” Her hand was lazy, turning on my chest, among the scars, burns, and hair.
“My father was a solider, a paratrooper. He stayed in Germany after the war as part of the occupation, because Europe fascinated him. He loved the art, the literature, the architecture, and the culture. He was from South Boston, born and raised. His world was summed up by several square blocks: the mill, the church, a library, and Fenway Park. Even bombed-out Europe with its piles of rubble was more exotic and interesting than home.
“His father came over from Ireland by way of Newfoundland. Grandpa became a citizen after he joined the army and was sent to fight the Germans during the First World War, minutes after his feet touched the docks in Boston. Grandpa came home from the trenches, and life in the mill, the block, the church . . . all of it seemed pretty good. My father didn’t much like the mills, but it was work when a lot of others didn’t have any. Then the war came, and he volunteered to jump out of airplanes. He had wanted to be a writer; write poems and stories about the things he saw. The war was his chance.
“He met my mother at a museum, or what was left of one. She was young and pretty, a teenager, really. She had blond hair and green eyes. He said she was so hungry and skinny she reminded him of a stray cat. He was twenty-eight, a sergeant, and had chocolate and cigarettes. They got married and then moved home to South Boston. He went back to the mills. Then, a few years later, I was born. Then, when I was six, my mother left. Then, it was just Dad and me.”
“Why did she leave?”
“Ah, that is one of the great mysteries of my life. Who knows? I am sure she had a good reason. Maybe she was more like Dad than he could have guessed. Anyway, I ended up in the army and Vietnam. Vietnam seemed better than life in Southie, working in the same mill as my dad, having kids and dying in the same few square blocks. The cycle of life for us. So, like my dad I ran off to war to get out of the neighborhood.” She had lit us both cigarettes, and I still had some whiskey to finish.
“Andy?”
“Yeah.” Andy Roark, intellectual conversationalist.
“We should take the train to Virginia.”
“Why the train? It will take all day.”
“Because the men who did this to you”—she accentuated her point by pushing on a bruised rib and listening to me grunt and inhale sharply—“will be looking at the airport or the bus station. They might be watching your apartment.” Her point was good.
“Why won’t they watch the train station?”
“There are two, and the T feeds into them.” She was right.
“That is pretty sharp thinking.”
“Well, no one beat me up tonight . . . well, not even you.” She giggled and smiled into her fist.
“Ha . . . don’t make me laugh. It hurts.” It reminded me of lying in bed with Leslie, talking, joking around, moments that were more intimate than lovemaking. I drifted off wondering what the rest of it would be like with Thuy.
That night, the dreams were simple. I was back in Vietnam, in the mist, on a paddy dike. It was quiet. I was alone. My team was missing. I was missing. I had the Swedish K gun with the huge silencer. I was crouched down, and when a Vietcong came running down the dike at me, I emptied the K gun into him. He kept coming and bayonetted me, again and again. Then, at the other end of the AK was Thuy, laughing at me. I woke up sweating and aching. She was curled on her side away from me, snoring softly like a cat.
Chapter 9
The next d
ay, the sun woke me up. The smell of coffee in the kitchen was welcome, and if I could have moved right away, I would have. It took a few minutes to get sore muscles to respond to the commands from my brain. I winced and got up to make my way to the bathroom. The pinkish urine in the bowl was not surprising giving the work they had done on my kidneys. I managed to brush my teeth without hurting anything, but only just.
I went into the kitchen, and my heroics were rewarded by the sight of Thuy. She had made coffee in the stovetop espresso pot that I picked up when I last had a girlfriend. I had just read Serpico and thought that it would impress her if I knew how to make espresso.
“Good morning.” I didn’t want to say anything, because she was lovely to watch. She moved around the kitchen on light feet, like a dancer. Her movements were precise and elegant.
“Andy, you are up. Good.” She smiled and pushed strands of her dark hair back behind an ear. Her smile, if the advertisers could get their hands on it, would have sold toothpaste by the ton.
“I tried to make breakfast but . . . you don’t have much?” She frowned and then shrugged.
“No, I usually don’t have breakfast here.”
“Well, I hope coffee and toast will do.”
“Perfect.” Black coffee, toast, and cigarettes. I can think of worse breakfasts to share with a pretty lady. We talked about her family. They had come here before the fall of Saigon, the end of the war. Her father was a doctor and her mother a housewife. They moved to California and, with some effort, her father was able to practice again.
After breakfast, I used the telephone and arranged to have the Ghia towed to my garage. I had done some work for the owner concerning a daughter making bad life choices. He agreed to fix the tires and replace the antenna, then would park it outside my place. I offered to pick it up, but he wouldn’t hear of it. “You need a body buried; you call me. I gotta shovel.” The bad decisions had revolved around heroin and a would-be pimp. I thanked him.
The next call was to Amtrak. I listened to the schedule options and weighed the countersurveillance issues against how much extra time it would take me to move around in my current state. Also, I figured a day to travel, a day or two in Virginia, and then a day back by train. Thuy needed clothes, and we agreed to meet on the ten-o-five, which would get us into DC in the early evening. She was going to get on the train at South Station, and I would get on at Back Bay. We would meet in the club car closest to the front of the train.
I packed my faithful postman’s bag with changes of clothes, a pint of bourbon, a couple of packs of cigarettes, my shaving kit, a box of .38 hollow points, and a Spenser novel by Robert B. Parker. It was raining, so I put the trench coat on over my jean jacket, which was over a blue oxford shirt and khaki pants and good solid walking shoes from Bean’s.
In the right-hand pocket of the trench coat, I stuck a Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special, loaded with 125 grain hollow-point bullets. It was a light round but that made up for the short barrel of the snub nose. This one was blued, that deep Smith & Wesson blue, with a five-shot cylinder and an abbreviated hammer. It wasn’t a .45, but it was a lot easier on the tailoring and was well hidden. Also, I didn’t relish the thought of the Commander digging into my side for eight hours on the train, given the state of my ribs. In the left pocket of my trench coat, I put a speed loader with five bullets and another one in the front left pocket of the khakis. My Buck knife went into the front right pocket.
I locked the Commander away in the safe and put out extra food for Sir Leominster, who looked at me accusingly and meowed for a solid five minutes. I rubbed him under the chin. I locked up and made my way downstairs. The cream-colored T-bird was parked across the street. I turned left and headed toward the office. By now, they must have another car involved. I walked slowly, staying on large, open, well-traveled streets. It took an effort of will not to clutch the .38 in my pocket. I do not like getting beaten up. It brings out emotions in me that are uncomfortable: fear, anger, violent rage at those responsible. It fucks with my sense of Karmic balance.
I eventually found a T-stop and put the tokens in and caught the first train. I spent the next half hour riding the color-coded T around. Red Line to Orange Line to Green Line, flirted with the Blue Line but those days were over for me. I ended up taking the Orange Line to Back Bay. I was running away via railroad rainbow. If I was being followed, they were James Bond good. Even I was confused when I paid the Amtrak agent for the trip to DC.
She found me sitting in one of the booths of the dining car. Apparently, the phrase “club car” went out with the movie Strangers on a Train. Although the Amtrak trains looked like wingless Boeings, I still loved the train. I could ride for hours just staring out the windows, imagining all the stories, the little private dramas, happening as we whizzed by.
She was wearing the same jacket, and her giant handbag was accompanied by a sensible canvas duffel bag. I had discreetly moved the .38 into the inner pocket of the jean jacket, and the trench coat was flopped over my bag. She threw her bags on the seat and slid into the booth.
“I didn’t know if you were going to make it.” Her eyebrows knitted into a cute frown.
“I am an ace detective—it was just a matter of switching trains a lot.” For some reason I wanted to show off a little. She sat across from me. It was nice, like a date or something. We rode on the train, talking about the things you talk about on first dates. Massachusetts turned into Rhode Island, whose two stops, Providence and Kingston, passed in the blink of an eye. Then we were sliding through Connecticut. Unlike driving through Connecticut on the highway, it was nice by train.
Somewhere in Connecticut, we put the dining car to the test. A prepackaged tuna salad sandwich for her, the kind that was cut in half and came in a triangle of plastic. Being the all-American type, I went with the cheeseburger, which was microwaved and chewy but not exactly bad. We both washed it all down with cans of Coke. We paused in New York, then New Jersey slid by, Philadelphia was a stop, Delaware and Baltimore, and then we pulled into the new Union Station in Washington, D.C.
We made our way past the neat shops and ignored their offerings. We moved past homeless, who stood in stark contrast to the shops and the people in suits. Both wanted money but some weren’t in a position to earn it, others were. We made our way out to the taxis. We found one and told the driver to take us to the Hay-Adams. It was expensive, but Thuy didn’t care. It was her money. As the cab wove a circuitous route to it, Thuy looked out the window at the city in awe.
“First time in Washington?” I asked.
“Yes, but I think I love Washington, District of Columbia.” She was smiling, and her eyes were bright.
The Hay-Adams is an impressive edifice. It screamed of a time when wood paneling and marble weren’t extravagances but expectation. Based on their commitment to wood paneling, large swaths of Virginia forest had been cleared to feed the hotel’s need. It spoke of Rockefellers and Roosevelts, the diplomacy of expensive whiskey and cigars. The driveway and entry made every girl, even Vietnamese girls from California, want to be princesses. It made me briefly wish that I was worthy of a set of army dress blues, my pile of ribbons, and a sabre. Even I wouldn’t mind a turn at being Prince Charming. A chance to show off a little.
We went through the process of checking in. The desk assured me that they could have a rental car there for us in the morning. They had maps on hand for the asking, one of the city and one of Virginia and Maryland. For what the Hay-Adams charges, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I could have ordered a hit man from the front desk. I am sure someone tried it once.
The room was a single. Thuy held my hand at the front desk and there didn’t seem to be any need to discuss our accommodations. Our room was elegant and tasteful. Wood paneling, nice art that wasn’t quite museum quality, and a four-poster bed big enough that the marines could have landed helicopters on it if it were floating at sea. The floor was wood with real Persian carpets instead of synthetic wall-to-wall. Our room ha
d a color TV in an armoire and a fireplace that I was pretty sure hadn’t seen a fire in decades. There were two antique love seats in case the overstuffed armchairs by the fire weren’t good enough. I hadn’t been in a hotel this nice, regal, or tasteful since my fateful trip to San Francisco two years ago.
We showered and never made it out for dinner. We were not tasteful nor elegant in our efforts. In the end, we were a hot sweaty mess, and the room looked like a bomb had gone off. The effect was only heightened by the smoke from our cigarettes. Room service brought food, and the mini bar provided lots of booze. If I thought that Thuy was going to go easy on me because of the beating I took, I was dead wrong. She turned out to be a woman of appetites. I was lucky there was whiskey and Anacin.
We woke up the next morning. The sun was streaming in, and if the weather couldn’t make up its mind in Boston, in Washington, D.C., it was without hesitation sunny and warm. We showered and ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant. The food was excellent, and the love of wood paneling extended to the columns in the restaurant. It made me wonder if the architect really hated trees, hated them to the point of a vendetta. Then we collected our rental car and maps and headed for Alexandria. We decided that we would try the widow first, and then go to the company that Dong had worked for.
We found the street on the map and made our way out of the city proper and into the suburban sprawl that was its extension. We made it to Alexandria after fighting Washington’s perpetual traffic. We found the house, after a few wrong turns in a series of neighborhoods that all looked the same containing houses that all looked the same. The one we wanted was at the end of a cul-de-sac.
We parked on the street and went to the door. We rang the bell, and after a few minutes, a Vietnamese lady opened the door. She was dressed in a dark pantsuit, some color that wasn’t really blue or black, and a cream-colored blouse. She had a piece of amber jewelry pinned to her lapel that had the quiet, tasteful qualities of truly expensive things. We introduced ourselves, I showed her a photostat of my license, and she invited us in.