The American Pearl

by Peter Gilboy

  “I’m Jodee,” Towers says and starts to blush.

  She takes out a match and lights the table candle. Then she licks her pink-smeared lips in a failed attempt to be sensuous. “You buy me outside,” she suddenly blurts. “We go away. Only sixty American dolla’.” She glances up at the mama-san, who is watching.

  I feign disappointment. “Sorry,” I say. “We have a meeting.”

  She puts her cheek against my shirt. “Fifty dolla’.”

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “You buy us tea? Only four dolla’. Make mama-san happy.”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “And what you drink…”

  “Quintyn.”

  “Yeah. What you drink?”

  “You still have 33?”

  “Still have.”

  “Then how about a 33 Beer for my friend and a shot of Old Crow for me?”

  She signals to the bar, then turns to me again. “You got cigarettes?”

  “Don’t smoke. Sorry.”

  The girl in the blue U.S. Army T-shirt turns and kneels on the seat next to Towers and reaches for a pack of cigarettes on the next table. I note Towers’s expression as her white shorts ride up exposing a generous portion of her bottom. Towers seems nervously mesmerized. He looks back to me.

  “Was this Nam too, sir?” he whispers.

  “It’s every war, Jodee. Even after the war, I guess. Except this war might not be over yet. We’ve still got business.”

  The fat mama-san arrives at the table with a tray and a beaming smile. “Long time no see,” she says vaguely as she puts a shot in front of me. She gives Towers the 33 Beer, then places small cups of hot water in front of the girls. “You Saigon before?” she asks.

  “Long time ago,” I say.

  “You back now, see girls?”

  “Just showing my friend Saigon.”

  “Girls make good time. Very young. You like very much. Buy very cheap. One day thirty dolla’. You take two, maybe three, go long time, come back tomorrow.”

  “I’ll let you know,” I say politely.

  “You tell me, I make special,” she continues. “Twenty-fi’ dolla’.”

  “I said, I’ll be sure to let you know,” I tell her and watch as she moves away from the table.

  “What’s your name?” I ask the Check It Out girl.

  “Linda. You like name?”

  “No, I mean, what’s your Vietnamese name?” I ask.

  “Phuong,” she says sourly. “But not good name.”

  I look across to the other girls. “What’re your names?”

  The girl in the blue U.S. Army T-shirt looks at me with startled eyes. “I Cathy,” she says slowly. She points to the girl in the flowing ao dai. “And that Diana. But she no speak English.”

  The girl in the ao dai nods.

  Towers seems tongue-tied.

  I ask Cathy, “How old are you?”

  “I nineteen,” she answers. “I allowed to work here. No problem.”

  “How old are you really.”

  She glances toward the mama-san, then back to me. “Sixteen,” she whispers. “I sixteen.”

  “How long have you worked here?”

  “I new,” she says, her voice shaking. “First time cherry. You go with me?” Embarrassed, she hides her face and slides down in her seat.

  “It’s okay,” I say softly. “How long, really?”

  “Two year now. American come back.”

  “Do you see a lot of Americans?”

  “Many. Russian go away. American come back.”

  “Is that good?”

  “For sure. Russian have no money. I have baby. One year now. It tough.”

  I take a breath but don’t need to pursue it. I look across the table to the girl in the ao dai. She smiles at me, then turns to Towers and places her hand in his lap, massaging high up on his thigh as she turns to the mama-san for approval. Towers watches her hand in frozen fascination. Embarrassed, he pushes her hand away.

  The fat mama-san returns. She points to my shot glass. “You no like?”

  “I don’t drink,” I tell her. “It just helps me think is all.”

  She holds up a small cloth sack. She sets it on the table. “I sell to you. One hundred dolla’. Then you take.”

  I’m perplexed at first, but she opens the sack and pours out what looks like a dozen teeth.

  “They American. They MIA. Now you go find,” the mama-san says. “Take them home. One hundred dolla’ American.”

  “What do you think, Jodee?” I ask Towers.

  Towers seems relieved to have the focus away from the girls. He composes himself as he reaches for one of the teeth. He examines it closely. Then another. “They’re human teeth,” he finally says, then shakes his head. “But not American.”

  The mama-san frowns. “How you know that?” she demands.

  He holds up one of the teeth. “It’s an incisor, no fillings, diseased at the gum line, all the way through the tooth, it seems. Probably due to lack of protein. Protein isn’t a problem for Americans.” He looks to me.

  “That’s what I was going to say,” I tell him.

  “If an American soldier had a tooth like this,” Towers tells the mama-san, “the Army would’ve fixed it or had it pulled.”

  He holds up another tooth. “This molar is ground down. You wouldn’t see this in the States.”

  “Maybe a very elderly Vietnamese?” I suggest.

  Towers concentrates a moment then shakes his head. “Sand and grit in the food will wear a tooth down like this. It could be from a younger person too.”

  I look back at the mama-san. “Sorry, we’re not interested.”

  She frowns. “Okay, but you take girls out,” she insists.

  “We’ll see.”

  The mama-san leaves, and I turn to the Check It Out girl. “You don’t need that much makeup,” I tell her.

  Before she can answer, the nasal singing stops and the song changes. From the corner of my eye I see someone brush through the beads at the doorway. I don’t need to look over.

  The mama-san calls out to the newcomer, “More girls they come back. You wait.”

  Towers leans toward me. “It’s another American,” he says.

  “No ear?” I ask.

  “How did you know, sir?”

  “Wild guess.” I turn to the Check It Out girl beside me. “Why don’t you all go over and bring him here,” I say. “We’ve got a meeting. Alone.”

  She motions to the other girls and they obediently slide out of the booth and go to the door to greet the man.

  “I don’t understand,” Towers says.

  “I don’t either,” I say. “But we’re about to find out.”

  54

  LAS VEGAS BAR

  JANUARY 20, 2006

  THE STAR STILL HASN’T moved. Everything is the same. Except that they’re coming now. I know it. I feel it. Eddie feels it too. He glances over at me. His eyes are watering, but they are fierce on me. His hand is shaking, and I reach over and steady it. His crooked teeth glint; the stench of his pants as he whispers in my ear. Don’t let them take me, Quintyn. He looks at me intensely. Do you understand? I nod. No matter what. Don’t let them take me. But I can’t promise that. He grabs me then. Tears are reflecting from his eyes. Promise! he says. I nod. Say it! I promise, I tell him. His whole body is shaking now. No matter what, Eddie says again. Don’t let them take me. We have a deal, man.

  No need for me to look up as he approaches. Smith pulls out a chair at the end of the booth and settles in. “Mind if I sit down.”

  “I’d say it’s a free country,” I tell him, “but it isn’t.”

  “This is Roy Smith,” I tell Towers. “He used to have two ears.” The girls titter. Towers extends a hand to him, but I wave it down.

  Smith is wearing a tan shirt with front pockets and dark pants. Military boots. There’s a bulge at his ankle. He’s carrying. He leans back and lights a cigarette. “You going to see the Viet Cong tunne
ls at Cu Chi, Ames? They’re quite an attraction, I hear.”

  “We actually have different plans.”

  “Maybe you should see the new American hospital at My Lai,” he continues. “You remember what happened at My Lai, Ames?”

  Careful. Careful, Quintyn.

  I turn to Towers. “Three hundred innocent civilians,” I tell him, “were slaughtered there by one of our own platoons.”

  A smirk slides across Smith’s face. “War is hell,” he says.

  “What do you want?”

  “To remind you that bad things happen in Vietnam.”

  I look toward the mama-san at the bar. “More teas for the girls,” I call out.

  “The girls better beat it,” Smith says. “We have business.”

  “He means you have to leave,” I tell them. “But come back later. This won’t take long.”

  The three girls pretend to pout like children, then slide out of the booth. The girl in the U.S. Army T-shirt climbs partway over Towers, then pauses as she straddles him, grinding her hips and planting a kiss on each cheek; all the while she watches the mama-san for approval. “We can go boom-boom,” she says, just loud enough for the mama-san to hear. Towers rubs at his face. He shakes his head, and she slides the rest of the way over him.

  “A little young for you, aren’t they?” Smith says, giving each of them a once-over. “But not for me. I’ll have two of them later. After our meeting. We got a right, you know.”

  He sees my scowl.

  The corners of his eyes crinkle. “You don’t have to like me, Ames.”

  “Then we agree on something. Who do you really work for?”

  “Salvation Army, just like I told you.”

  “What about INR?”

  He snorts with disgust. “These days INR is all computers. We cast out our nets, maybe suck up to some foreign national and recruit him to get more data for our computers. We’re like you, Ames. We don’t do anything. Data in and data out, and nobody acts. I’m fucking sick of it.”

  “And Hoffman?”

  “Hoffman tapped me at INR to help him track Pavlik. Yeah, he knows about her. He’s how I got the ROWBEC info in the first place. But he’s even more incompetent than the jackasses at INR. Shutting you down right when I needed you most.”

  “I feel for you.”

  “Fuck you. I’m sick of nobody acting on the information. That’s why I’m running this through my other group.” He stares at me. “Besides, I’ve got some scores to settle over here. Just like you.”

  “I don’t have any scores.”

  “Everyone has scores.”

  I shake my head. “We’re just here as tourists.”

  “I know that. That’s why I put you up at the Majestic. Take a few days, go see some sights, check out a nightclub or two. Then go home, Ames. You hear me? Go home to your cushy job and your coffee breaks and your lady, and just forget all about this. Then we won’t have any problems.”

  “We are going to see some sights, actually. In Qui Nhon. I hear the beaches are exquisite.”

  “Then we do have a problem, Ames.”

  “We’re just going to the Wellness Center. And if we can’t find the informant you mentioned, Shirley, or if there’s no Patricia Pavlik, then we’ll go home.”

  “Simple as that, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Except you don’t know the language, Ames, and you don’t know Qui Nhon.”

  He’s right on that, Quintyn.

  “You’re a fucking blind man in the dark. You go asking a bunch of questions and you’ll get yourself killed, and the boy here too. Not to mention fucking it up for us. And for her— for Patricia Pavlik. We’re getting her out, Ames, and into the Program. Without you.”

  “What about the rest of them? The other eleven.”

  “Pavlik first. No thanks to you. We could’ve used your help with the satellites. We’ll get the others out in good time. That’s the way it works.”

  “But Pavlik could be the key to getting them all out. If I find out where she is, I can threaten to go public, bring the whole house down unless Hoffman and the rest of them get all of them out.”

  “Yeah, ask Hoffman to talk to the president about talking to the secretary of defense about mounting a rescue for someone that nobody wants found. Fat fucking chance.” He smiles wanly. “Go that route and Pavlik will be dead long before anyone can get to her.”

  “Then I’ll go to the Post. I’ll go to the Times.”

  “You know what happened to the others who went public. Corso, Barnes, and all the rest. They had their lives wrecked. And the media hardly touched it anyway. They won’t touch it now. They’re afraid to.” He shakes his head like I’m an idiot. “Best thing, Ames, is for you to go home to your satellites and your pretty little—what was her name again? Oh, yeah, Julia.”

  Don’t bite, Quintyn. Don’t!

  “Like it or not, I’m going to Qui Nhon and the Wellness Center. Just like I said.”

  Smith lights another cigarette and stares at me, calculating. We’re quiet for a time. The sing-song voices on the recordings are wearing me thin. The mama-san is eyeing us from behind the bar. The girls are waiting for her to give them the word.

  “Is he Magellan, sir?”

  “He’s Smith,” I say. “And now he’s going to tell us just how much we need him. And how helpful he can be.”

  “Look, Ames, we’re really on the same side.”

  “See?”

  “We want the same thing, don’t we? You don’t know whether you can trust me, and I don’t fucking care.” He shakes his head. “And I don’t know if that woman, Shirley, is just a crock. These dinks will say anything for money. So, yeah, I’ll get you to the informant, Ames. Today. Tonight.”

  “See, Jodee,” I say sarcastically. “He wants to help us.”

  “I don’t want you fucking this case up, is what I want, Ames. It doesn’t do anyone any good.”

  “I just want the information.”

  “We’re the big boys. I’ve even got a chopper waiting for me, just in case.”

  “Where the hell you get a chopper from?”

  “By coincidence I’ve got an acquaintance in Qui Nhon.”

  “Nice coincidence. And you’re full of shit.”

  “Maybe I’ll even have a chance to mix it up again, Ames. Like old times. Remember Yen Bai. Remember what happened there?”

  Of course I remember, and I recoil inwardly because for an instant I’m there again, smelling Eddie’s pants and the ditch and the wet leaves. I see tracers in all directions and hear voices laughing at us in the dark.

  I shake my head clear. “Soldiering was a long time ago,” I tell him.

  “Yeah, like a hundred pounds ago,” he says dismissively. He sits back and signals to the mama-san. She comes forward with the three girls. They stand behind her as if hiding from us. “You take up space and don’t drink,” she says. “You don’t take girls. Why?” She points at my earring. “You fags?”

  “Double bourbon,” Smith tells her.

  “He’s leaving,” I say.

  Smith smiles as he leans to the side to get a better look at the Check It Out girl behind the mama-san. He contemplates her T-shirt a moment, then reaches out and twists his finger into the middle of it. He pulls the girl toward him. “I think I’d like to check this one out,” he tells the mama-san.

  Don’t let him, Quintyn.

  The mama-san laughs. “Good. Good. She good. Suck real hard.”

  Don’t let him!

  “She’s not yours,” I say, working to control myself. “You can’t check someone out like a library book.”

  “Okay, okay,” he answers with a short laugh, “then I’ll carry her out like a six-pack.”

  “She’s sixteen!”

  “That young? Well then, maybe I’ll have to get two.” He motions to the girl in the flowing ao dai. “Come over here, you pretty thing.”

  “Fifty dolla’,” the mama-san says loudly.

 
Smith reaches for some bills. He pushes them into the mama-san’s hand.

  “Then we have no deal,” I say.

  Smith is amused. “After what these people did, we got a right. We got a big right!” He thinks a moment. “Besides, I didn’t know we had a deal.”

  “If you can get us to the informant,” I tell him.

  “But you were going to do that anyway.”

  “Take it or leave it.”

  “You and the kid will need someone to keep you safe, anyway. It’s still a long shot that Pavlik is there, but if there’s good intel, then it’s my operation. And you’re gone. Are we clear on that? And you go back to your little lady. Leave everything to the big boys. We clear?”

  He releases the girl and pushes her away. “Anyways, I was just going to let this sweet thing show me the sights is all.”

  He grabs the money back from the mama-san’s hand, then contemplates the girl’s shirt again.

  “Maybe I’ll check her out some other time,” he tells the mama-san.

  55

  QUI NHON CITY

  JANUARY 20, 2006

  NOW THEY’RE FIRING ROCKETS to finish us off, Eddie and me. RPG-7 launchers. We hear a whoosh, then a crack. Then another whoosh and crack, and another, and another. Maybe a dozen in all. They hope to take us out from where they are.

  Then the rockets stop. We wait for them to come. Eddie has his rabbit’s foot in his mouth. There’s silence in the darkness, except for a light breeze in the trees above us. It’s starting to drizzle again, but the star is still right there. Then I see them. Crouching silhouettes moving forward in the dark. They’re hoping no one is left after the rockets, and that all they’ll have to do is mop up now, take our weapons and watches.

  Eddie fires first. A short burst. The recoil hops the barrel off Wilcox’s ankle. Eddie realigns it in the groove and fires again. I’m at the ready too, watching in the other direction. Then, a silhouette off to my side. I fire, and it falls. I see more silhouettes, but they’re only heads, keeping low now as they crawl toward us. Eddie continues to fire in short bursts. I hear him slide in magazine after magazine.

  The silhouetted heads are now thirty yards away and still keeping too low. I can’t waste the bullets. I have to wait. Let them get closer. Let their heads get bigger in my sights. Then one of the silhouettes rises, and I fire twice. It falls. But my rifle jams. I shake it, then whack the bolt assembly with the palm of my hand. Nothing. I pull back the charging handle and release it. Still jammed. Colome’s body is closest. Only five yards out. His rifle is tangled in his fingers. I’ll get it. I check the silhouetted heads.