‘God,’ Cody said. He wiped his face, and the age lines painted on it by his wife came off on his hand, leaving behind the true furrows of age and hard times. He stared out the window for a very long time. Neither Pai nor Hatcher said anything.
Finally Cody said, ‘Funny, isn’t it, how things you thought were important suddenly become — insignificant. All my life I had to toe die mark. Being Buffalo Bill’s son wasn’t easy. I couldn’t fail at anything —, He stopped for a moment, then shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘that’s not fair, I didn’t allow myself to fail at anything. It was in my head. I mean in my head the finger was always pointing at me from the time I was a kid. It wasn’t that he said anything to me. He didn’t push me, he didn’t have to, he was always there like a — like the giant in the woods you’re scared of when you’re a kid. When I decided to go to Annapolis instead of the Point, it almost killed him. Shit, he went berserk. Here I was just trying to do something on my own, but, Christ, it was the ultimate insult to him. He ordered me to go to the Point, and when I refused he tried to get my appointment to Annapolis withdrawn. But it was too late.’
Hatcher remembered that night when Cody had torn up his room in a drunken rage because he was alone at Christmas.
‘Hell,’ Hatcher whispered, ‘that was twenty-five years ago.’
‘Twenty, fifty, no difference, lie never forgot it. And he never let me forget it. That decision to go Navy clouded our relationship from then on. Maybe it still clouds it.’
‘Doesn’t much matter anymore,’ Hatcher said.
‘It does to me,’ Cody said in a faraway voice.
Cody continued to look out die window, shaking his head, clinging to Pai.
‘Look, Polo, I can’t say anything for Sloan, and I don’t know what the hell Porter’s motives were,’ said Hatcher. ‘Your father doesn’t give a tinker’s damn what happened or what you’re doing. He’s dying, for God’s sake, he wants to say good-bye. My job is to set up a meeting somewhere safe so you can see each other once more.’
‘What irony,’ said Cody. ‘As Prophett would say, two warriors facing each other across the river and no way to say good-bye.’
‘His abstract poetry eludes me,’ Hatcher snapped with a touch of irritation.
‘Don’t you get it?’ said Cody. ‘As far as the world is concerned, we’re all dead. In Prophett’s metaphor, we all crossed over the river. We can’t go home because there’s no home to go to. And some of us couldn’t go home if we wanted to. You know about Riker and Gallagher?’
‘I know they were both in big trouble when they disappeared. I assume Prophett can’t go back because he’s a hopeless junkie, you can tell by looking at him. Wonderboy — he’s learned to live with his face. But you, Corkscrew, Potter, Max Early —‘
‘It all started back before Nam. Hell, my dad and the admiral arranged my marriage like a couple of feudal kings arranging a wedding for the good of the realm. It was like living in a strait-jacket, my wife and I were barely civil. The old man was over here. So I volunteered for the Black Ponies.’
‘In the end it all came down on Cody,’ Pai quietly interrupted him. ‘He had volunteered for the Black Ponies so nobody could say he was looking for an easy time of it. The losses were like snakes in his head, I could see it every day.’
‘It wasn’t just me,’ Cody said with a touch of bitterness. ‘It was the mission. It’s always the fucking mission. You set out to do what you have to do regardless of the cost. But then you begin to wonder.
Hell, is the mission right or wrong? You probably don’t understand that, Hatch.’
‘More than you might think,’ Hatcher said.
‘The final irony is I became one of the losses. That morning I had picked up a letter for John Rossiter, my gunner. But I forgot to give it to him. I never carried any ID — shit, I knew if I went down and they knew who I was, who my father was, then school was out. So all I had was that letter and Rossiter burning to a crisp, the whole jungle afire behind me. I saw that chopper coming in and I thought, God, I’m gonna get out of this. Then suddenly it turned around and just — flew away.
‘Then the bullets started hitting around me, the fire was all over — so I threw away my dog tags. Next thing I knew, I had my hands up and they were frisking me and they found that letter and all of a sudden I was Gunner’s Mate John Rossiter.
‘Riker was the first to recognize me. But he kept mum, they all decided to keep mum. But I figured the least I could do was act like the ranking officer.’
‘He tried negotiating with Taisung,’ Namteen said. ‘To get medicine for Wonderboy and morphine for Johnny and keep Max out of the hole so he would not go crazy.’
‘And food, just food,’ Cody said. ‘I became the camp negotiator, the pimp. The fuckee. If Prophett needed heroin, I sold a piece of myself for heroin. If Wonderboy needed medicine, another piece for medicine. Another piece to keep Max out of the hole so he wouldn’t go stark raving mad. I was Taisung’s slave.’
‘The trouble was, I really didn’t have anything to trade for,’ Cody said. ‘And then . .
‘And then?’ Hatcher repeated.
‘And then Pai came to us,’ Cody said.
Unsure whether Cody was alive or dead, Pai had set out to find him. She knew only to go northwest and northwest she went. In Vietnam she was Vietnamese. In Cambodia, she was Cambodian. In Laos, she became Laotian. Wherever the was, she smiled and talked and listened. She worked when she had to for food and then moved on. She waded through the rice paddies, dodged the Khmer Rouge, slept in trees to avoid wild animals, almost died twice with fever.
She kept going, crossed the Annimitique, found the remains of one camp the telltale holes dug in the ground, the remnants of bamboo cell doors — devoured by vines and ground crawlers. The skeletons. She moved on, encouraged and discouraged at the same time.
And then one day she heard the voices — the unmistakable profanity of GIs — and she crept through the jungle grass and saw the camp and that night she crept up to the holes in the ground they called cells and softly caned his name as she crept from one to the other and finally she heard Cody’s unbelieving voice answer, ‘Pai?’ and she lay across the crisscrossed bamboo doors, reached down and felt his hand take hers.
‘Oh, Cody,’ she whispered through her tears, ‘at last I have found you.’
It had taken her six months to get to the Huie-kui.
‘Oh, Cody, at last I have found you,’ Cody repeated her words. ‘God, I can’t tell you how I felt at that moment’
He stopped and swallowed hard and then said, ‘And finally. . . I had something to offer Taisung.’
He whispered as if he feared the words would turn to ashes in his mouth, and they hung in the air along with all their terrible implications.
‘It was my choice,’ Pai said in her soft voice. ‘I wanted most to keep Cody alive, to keep them all alive. No one asked me to do what I did.’
‘And I didn’t stop her,’ said Cody, turning and staring straight at Hatcher, and the expression on his face said all that needed to be said about what living had cost him and the woman he loved.
‘We stayed alive, most of us anyway. Jaimie Solomon was eaten up with cancer. He got back to the States. Joe Binder died in the camp, and Sammy Franklin died of malnutrition before Pai ever found us.’
‘Jaimie Solomon?’ Hatcher said, remembering the note that had been left on the Wall.
‘The main thing is, Pai kept us there,’ said Cody. ‘Taisung didn’t send us to Hanoi. We honestly believed that if we went to Hanoi it was all over.’
‘I seduced Taisung,’ Pai said, staring at Hatcher’s feet. ‘I went downriver and brought him liquor, cigarettes, everything he needed to make life easy for him. Then I brought him China White.’
‘That was my idea,’ said Cody. ‘Hook the son of a bitch. Once he was hooked he’d do anything to get a fix. Johnny Prophett had the connection and Pai was free to move around.’
‘First, a little for
the nose,’ said Pai. ‘Then the needle.’
‘Then we had the son of a bitch,’ said Cody.
Earp appeared in the doorway drinking a beer.
‘Everything okay?’ he said.
‘Come on in,’ Cody answered. Earp entered the small room and leaned against the wall.
‘Jaimie left you a note,’ said Hatcher.
‘A note? Where?’
‘At the Wall in Washington, the Vietnam memorial. He thanked you for Thai Horse. Now I know what he meant. He was talking about the Thai Horse that led the fallen warriors to heaven.’
‘That’s right. It was Pai who led us out of that hellhole into Bangkok,’ Cody said. ‘That’s why Johnny called her Thai Horse.’
‘The war had been over almost a year, and Taisung was still holding them,’ Earp said. ‘That’s where I came into it. Hanoi was on to Taisung. He was going to run for it and leave us there with a handful of guards. They probably would have killed us. But Pai offered a trade-out. She’d set up an escape and he could come out with the boys. I was living in Bangkok and helped set up the escape route and the boats.’
‘We should have killed Taisung ‘when we had the chance,’ said Cody, ‘but he was too quick for us. He stole one of the boats and made a break.’
‘And you just stayed here in Bangkok?’ Hatcher said to Cody.
‘That’s right,’ Cody said. ‘During the years I was a prisoner, things happened things that could never be explained properly.’ Cody stopped ‘with a sigh, then went on, ‘When we finally escaped into Thailand in late ‘76, I found out I was officially dead. The insurance was paid, my wife had remarried. My kids had a new father. Me? I had Pai and a chance to start over. What was there to go back to, Hatch? I decided to stay dead. When we first got out I used to fantasize about sneaking back just to get a look at the kids. They were one and two when I left, still one and two in my head — they’re in high school now. Well, so much for fantasy. Hell, I don’t even have a passport.’
‘And the others?’ Hatcher asked.
‘Well, we had Gallagher, who was looking at five to ten years for grand theft, and Riker, who was facing a court-martial for striking an officer. ‘You know Johnny Prophett’s problem. He and Melinda stayed here because dope is inexpensive and accessible. That’s when Sweets and Wyatt started the Longhorn. Tombstone just kind of grew out of it.’
‘How about the rest of them? Corkscrew, Potter, Max Early?’
Earp said, ‘When we got out, Early called home to Utah. The phone was disconnected, the house was sold, his wife and two kids were long gone. What the hell did he have to go home to? Corkscrew? And ex-Detroit pimp. Bangkok was heaven compared to that. Besides, the only family he had was his brother and he was killed on that ridge. And Potter? What was his option — a scratch farm in Arkansas and a wife who serviced everybody in the state while he was gone? The irony is that we were all bonded by those years of imprisonment. Corkscrew and Early couldn’t reveal what had happened to them without jeopardizing Cody, Riker and Gallagher, so they all stayed dead.’
‘The boys on the far side of the river, as Prophett would say,’ Cody remarked.
‘So what happened? How did Taisung get back into the act?’
‘We had this kid. Kilhanney, Ted Kilhanney. That’s when all the trouble started.’
‘Taisung tried to buy us, Hatcher,’ said Pai. ‘To make mules of us.’
‘Blackmail?’ Hatcher asked..
‘Of the worst kind,’ Cody- said. ‘He threatened to expose me, Gallagher, Riker and Kilhanney unless we turned mule for him. That’s what he was doing for Fong, recruiting dope carriers. And Kilhanney was the most vulnerable.’
‘Who’s Kilhanney?’ Hatcher asked.
‘A real Greek tragedy,’ Cody answered. ‘A Catholic priest — how do they put it? — fallen from grace. Somewhere between Saigon and Bangkok, he lost his religion. He was giving some GIs last rites and the position was counterattacked. In the camp he lost what little faith he had left. When we got here, he fell in love with the wife of a Thai politician. You think we’re screwed up? He was really screwed up. He couldn’t face the World, and he was torn up with guilt. Naturally he was the most vulnerable and the first one Taisung went after.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘All Kil was supposed to do was take a plane down to Hat Yai and drive a truckload of women to the Malaysian border. He didn’t know their babies were all dead and stuffed with heroin. When the guards discovered what was going on, Kil panicked and made it up here to Max. Two days later he took the bus over to the Phu Khat beach, swam out, and didn’t come back. What was left of him floated up a week or so later.’
‘That’s when we resurrected Thai Horse,’ Earp said.
‘We made a deal to run twenty kilos of heroin to Amsterdam, and when the courier delivered it, I killed him and dumped the twenty keys in. the Chao Phraya River. Then I sent a message to Tollie Fong and Wol Pot that Thai Horse was taking over. I couldn’t do it as Murphy Cody. I couldn’t do it as an American. So — I became a Thai, Pai became a Thai. I married a Thai, killed as a Thai; as far as everyone is concerned, I am a Thai. Murphy Cody doesn’t exist anymore.’
‘And we spread the word on the street through Sy that Thai Horse was Taisung’s operation,’ said Earp.
‘Killed two birds with one stone,’ said Cody. ‘Fong lost face and put the finger on Taisung. The only edge we had was that Taisung never told Fong who we were.’
‘The whole deal was done with phone calls,’ Earp said. ‘The little creep never showed his face.’
‘He was watching you, though,’ said Hatcher. ‘Up until the day Windy Porter was killed. Were you behind that?’
Cody shook his head. ‘Tollie Fong.’
A silence fell on the room for a few moments. Cody seemed out of talk. Hatcher picked it up. ‘I can guess what happened after that,’ he said. ‘Fong thought Wol Pot had double-crossed him, so the little bastard had to get out of the country. That’s when le blew the whistle on Murph.’
‘And Sloan sent you in to find me,’ said Cody.
‘Look, forget Sloan,’ Hatcher said. ‘He’s out of it. He took Porter’s body back to the States.’
‘Bad guess, soldier,’ said Earp. ‘Sloan is in Bangkok right now. In a place called the House of Dreams in Chinese Town.’
‘That’s bullshit,’ Hatcher said.
‘He’s an opium head,’ Cody said. ‘The House of Dreams is an opium house. We’ve been watching him since the Wol Pot contact. He sometimes goes there for days a time.’
‘Sloan!’
‘Want to see the place?’ said Earp. ‘It’s a Chinese junk used for moving produce into the city.’
A Chinese junk, thought Hatcher, remembering the address on Wol Pot’s passport that had been an empty pier. And his profession: produce sales.
‘I appreciate your loyalty,’ said Cody, ‘but the man is a junkie, no better or worse off than Johnny Prophett.’
‘And guess who owns the junk?’ said Earp.
‘Tollie Fong,’ Hatcher said.
‘Correct.’
‘So you think Fong is blackmailing Sloan?’ Hatcher said.
‘It makes sense. We’ve seen him go there half a dozen times. And we’ve seen him leave. We’ve got a pretty good little intelligence network, Hatcher. You think it was luck, walking into the Longhorn and tumbling on to the regulars. The only thing lucky about it was that you hired Sy. He was supposed to be following you.’
‘Don’t tell me he’s one of the regulars.’
‘He makes good tips bringing tourists to the Longhorn,’ said Cody. ‘He’s also one of the best drivers in Bangkok. He was helping out.’
‘So you knew where I was every minute,’ Hatcher said.
‘Tucked you in, got you up, said Earp. ‘Tumbling on to Wol Pot was a real stroke, though.’
‘And you were following me?’ Hatcher said to Cody.
Cody nodded. ‘We didn’t know for sure whether you
knew where Wol Pot was or not. You could have been meeting him.’
‘Why didn’t you kill me, too?’ asked Hatcher. ‘You thought about it.’
Cody nodded again. ‘You’re right. I just couldn’t do it. We decided when Max called about the tiger to get you down here and check you out.’
‘And what if you had decided I ‘was here to kill Murph?’ Hatcher asked.
‘All of us would have put a bullet in you,’ Wyatt Earp ,and emphatically.
Hatcher appeared troubled. ‘There’s something missing here,’ he said. ‘Tollie Fong never had trouble recruiting mules before. Why would he suddenly be relying on somebody like Wol Pot?’
‘He’s moving a lot of junk from the hills to Bangkok and from there to the States,’ said Earp. ‘He’s got at least a thousand keys of ninety-nine pure hidden in Bangkok right now. He needs to move it — a lot of it, and fast.’
‘And we know where it is,’ Cody said.
Hatcher shook his head slowly. ‘If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, forget it. It’s not your problem.’
‘But Fong is,’ said Riker.
‘Forget Tollie Fong,’ said Hatcher sternly. ‘The triads’ll hound you until they kill all of you. Stop now. Just let Thai Horse vanish into the ‘woodwork. Fong won’t bother you anymore.’
‘You don’t really believe that,’ said Cody.
‘Look, you say he’s involved in something big. He doesn’t have time to look for you or Thai Horse. And if you kill him, it’ll never stop. I killed Fong’s father in 1976 and he’s still after me.’
‘I say we hit him, take him out once and for all,’ said Earp. ‘Solves your problem and ours.’
Hatcher shook his head.
‘Listen to me, when I said I was done with killing I meant it. I came on this trip thinking I was performing a simple humane act. Instead I’ve had to fight practically every day to stay alive. The hell with it, no more killing. The sooner I get out of Bangkok, the better.’
He turned and walked out of the house.
‘You think he is right, Cody?’ Pai asked. ‘You think Tollie Fong will forget?’
Thai Horse Page 48