“He has to be stopped. Otherwise, he’s going to come after Sissy, after Roy, Walker, me, you. He has a plan for the future, April. We aren’t included.”
“But if he were in prison…?”
“For how long? Forget about the damage a trial would cause us. Forget that you’d be sent back to Hong Kong, what the publicity could do to Sissy and his wife, Walker’s family, Roy, and me. It might not even be possible to convict Corvin, but suppose that it is. He’d do a couple years before the system kicked him out to free up a cell. And the shit would start all over again.” I shrugged. “He’s not the sort of man to let things slide, April. He’ll come after us. And when he does, I’ll be planning the same sort of operation, but without you.”
I shook my head. “That isn’t any kind of a solution. This has to be done the hard way. It has to be done now.”
“Are you sure you aren’t just thinking of yourself? Trying to stay out of jail?”
I was surprised. “What could I be sent to jail for?”
“For the operation. For what you did in Saigon.”
“Not a chance, April. I have enough money to buy some really good lawyers. And where is the evidence against me? You think a prosecutor could subpoena anybody in Ho Chi Minh City? Hell, there isn’t even a court that would have jurisdiction over that. The only way the government could act against me now is by claiming I owe taxes, and I don’t. I paid taxes on every dime I have, and I can prove it. No, the only one who could move against me, the only one who would even want to try, is Max Corvin. And I’m going to see that he never moves against anyone again. I’m going to send that boy to hell.”
She was quiet for a few minutes, then asked, “Do you believe in that? Hell?”
“Do you?”
“My aunt raised me Catholic. Lots of Vietnamese are Catholic. So I guess I believe. I used to, anyway.”
“I used to believe, too,” I admitted. “Now, I don’t know. I’m sure there isn’t a heaven, but there might be a hell. I’ll find out, eventually. It’ll give me a chance to see my old friends.”
April ignored my little joke. “I still don’t think it’s right,” she said quietly.
“It doesn’t have to be right, April. It just has to be a little righter than the alternative.”
“And you decide?”
“If I want to come out of this alive, I have to decide.” I smiled. “Corvin would probably make the wrong choice. From my point of view.”
She apparently saw that my purpose was fixed. She dropped the subject. We got on the road again and didn’t stop until supper in Las Cruces. It’s a pleasant little town, but if I have to die in Las Cruces, I’ll forgo my last meal.
A room was available at the Executive Suites in El Paso. After we carried our bags up, I dialed the Juarez number. The old woman came on and told me, “Señor Rodgers no esta aqui.”
“Tell him to call me.” I gave her the number.
The phone woke me at midnight. Roy’s tone was sharp, impatient. “What is it now, Rainbow?”
“I’ve been to Luzon,” I told him.
“So?”
“I met Freddy. He told me about the last delivery. You shorted us.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time. Then he asked, “So? Do you care?”
“He also told me about Sissy.”
There was another long wait. Eventually I ended it. “I found him,” I said. “He’s in a place called Tierra Amarilla. We spent the night there.”
“We who?”
“April and I.”
“I see.” He didn’t sound very interested.
“Look, we’ve got to talk.”
“What about?”
“About Corvin, damn it! He has to be the one who killed Toker. He’s the only one it could have been.”
“That’s obvious. I just don’t know why.”
“Well, maybe it doesn’t matter why, Roy. You know what we have to do.”
“As long as Sissy stays in Tierra Amarilla, that isn’t necessary.”
“You know it is. Things are falling apart.”
He sighed. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll talk about it.”
“Where?”
“You remember where we met the last time?”
“Yes.”
“Ten tomorrow morning. Gringo time.”
“We’ll be there.”
“You. Come alone.”
“April’s coming. She wants to meet you.”
He hung up.
She had gotten up when he called and was sitting at the table. I told her we would meet him in the morning. She nodded. I turned off the light and lay down. She didn’t come back to bed.
“What?” I asked the dark.
“Sissy told me about my mother. We talked for a long time last night.”
“What did he say?”
“He said she knew how you felt about her.”
I stared at the ceiling I couldn’t see. I blinked several times. I was grateful for the dark. “I see. And he knew?”
“Yes.” Her voice was soft, barely a whisper. “He knew. But only later.”
“He was out of the country when I tied up with Roy,” I said. “He’d been gone for months. He didn’t come back until later. In March of ’seventy. I could see there was something wrong between Miss Phoung and Roy, but I didn’t know what it was. I just hung around as much as I could. But then Sissy came back and Roy moved out and he moved in… You say she knew how I felt?”
“Yes. She told him.”
“I didn’t think I ever had a chance with her,” I said.
“He thought you did. He said that was one of the reasons he could leave. Because he knew you would be there.”
“No.”
“He said he thought you were my father. When he had Toker find me. That was another reason he went to Toker instead of you. He thought you knew and didn’t do anything.”
“I didn’t know, April. If I had known, I would have done something. I would even have gone back.”
She moved in the dark. I heard the whisper of her legs and then the bed sank under her weight. Her hand was on my chest. “I believe you, Rainbow.” I put my hand over hers.
“Tell me what happened,” she said. “Tell me about the last days, after Sissy didn’t come back and when she was pregnant. Because if Sissy thought you had a chance, then you did. He knew her. Very well. He still thought you were my father, even last night. He didn’t believe you weren’t until I told him that we were sleeping together, that we were lovers in Luzon.”
She was right. That did put a different light on it. But it took April to see it. I was too close.
“The Celestina arrived in Saigon mid-morning on July twenty-seventh,” I told her. “As soon as we docked, I headed for Tu Do Street. Miss Phoung had to be told and I had to do it, but I was afraid. I didn’t know how she’d take it.
“She was sitting on the terrace, drinking her morning coffee in the sun. There were pots full of red and yellow flowers all over the place, plants she groomed and watered every day. And when I told her that Sissy was dead, she started breaking them. I tried to hold her, to comfort her. But she called me a name and told me to get the hell away from her. She hit me and scratched my face. I let go of her and she went back to breaking the pots and cursing. She cursed Max and me and Roy and Johnny Walker. Mostly Max. Then she went into her room and lay on the bed and cried. I sat with her for hours. Just sat beside her, waiting for her to stop, in case she needed me for anything. When she cried herself out, I told her I would help her. I guess I told her I loved her. It was the wrong thing to say. Or the wrong time. I was stupid. But I couldn’t think of anything else to say to her. She told me to get out of her sight, to go away and never come back.”
April squeezed my hand. “Did you?”
“I left then. But I went back the next day. I had to know that she was all right.”
“Was she?”
“She acted as if it had never happened. She treated me just the same as she always had. There was n
o difference. But she wouldn’t talk about Sissy, and she wouldn’t let me do anything for her. She said she didn’t need anything from me.”
“Where was Roy when this happened?”
“He stayed in Manila when the Celestina sailed. I suppose he was making arrangements for the final delivery, the one he made in December. Anyway, he didn’t get back until two days after we docked. He flew in. I didn’t see him until the next day, at the house. He’d spent the night there, but he was packing his things. Miss Phoung acted very cold to him. And he was about as mad as I’ve ever seen a man. At Max, though. Not at her. He took off to see Max, and I didn’t see him again for a couple of days.”
“Did he ever move back in with my mother?”
“No. Well, yes. He moved in and out a couple of times. Mostly, she stayed in the house alone. We kept meeting there for a few months, but things were different. Walker rotated out and was discharged, and it was only Roy and Toker and me. Toker had never spent a lot of time at the house. It didn’t mean anything to him. Miss Phoung didn’t tell us to stay away, but she was never happy to see us. Then Roy took his discharge in-country, and I just didn’t go by very often. I told you about the last time I saw her.”
“The time Max was there?”
“Yes.”
“How was that? How did she treat him?”
“She ignored him. And he acted angry. Like he didn’t want to be there.”
“What did you think?”
“About Max? I still wanted to kill him. But he had something on me and I had something on him. It was a standoff.”
“I mean about why he was there.”
“I assumed she was using him. It was his men moving her out. I thought she had figured a way to get a knife into him and was twisting it a little.”
“I see.” We waited in the dark for a while. Then she asked, “About that last time. You were alone with her, weren’t you?”
“Yes. For a little while.”
“And you didn’t know she was pregnant?”
“No. I couldn’t tell.”
“And you kissed her?”
“I tried to. She told me to go.”
“And you went.” She sighed and kissed my hand, then slipped down onto the bed beside me. My hand was wet from her face. We held each other with no thought of sex until sleep came.
The next morning, we walked over the Juarez bridge. The American Bar was down the street on the left, just a few blocks from the border. It is called a bar, but it’s mostly a restaurant. There was still a suspicion I hadn’t resolved. I stopped outside the bar and told April to look at Roy carefully.
“If you recognize him, don’t say anything. Order a Bohemia beer. If you don’t recognize him, order a Carta Blanca.”
She looked puzzled, but nodded.
Roy was waiting at a table in the back. He didn’t stand when we came in. He looked at April curiously. I introduced them and we sat down. “Rainbow.” he said. “April.”
“Long time, Roy.”
He hadn’t changed much in the last seventeen years. He was a little heavier and there was a touch of gray in his close-cropped brown hair. He’d picked up a new mannerism. He rubbed his chin almost constantly. I assumed he was nervous. That was curious.
April looked at him intently during the introduction. When the waiter came over, she ordered a Carta Blanca. I had a Dos Equis. Roy was drinking gin and tonics.
He spoke to her first. “So you’re Phoung’s girl?”
She nodded and cut directly to the chase. “Are you my father?”
“No.” He didn’t act like he cared one way or the other.
“But you lived with my mother?”
“For a while,” he said, “back in ’sixty-nine. She went back to Sissy when he got back from Manila.”
“Why?”
Roy cleared his throat. “He was the only one for her, I guess. She didn’t think he’d come back. But when he did, she kicked me out and stuck to him.”
“Didn’t he care? That she had lived with you?”
“Sissy understood how things were. You can’t understand. You weren’t there.”
She shot me a quick, questioning glance.
“That’s the way things were,” I said.
“Even love?”
“Life was more important than love.”
“This is all history,” Roy said. “Let’s talk about Corvin.”
I agreed. The history was getting to me. “He killed Toker,” I said. “It had to be him.” I listed the reasons. Roy paid close attention. “The only thing I don’t understand is why it started up again now.”
“Maybe Corvin had no choice,” Roy suggested. “If April was going to hunt up her daddy, a lot of things were bound to come out. Including Corvin’s little game in the Philippines.”
“So you think he got rid of Toker to cover himself?”
Roy grimaced. “I think it would be very convenient for Corvin if we all died. As long as he couldn’t find Sissy and we didn’t stir things up, we were all safe. But April threatened to stir the pot. So Corvin took Toker out and tried for her, and he probably hoped the rest of us wouldn’t find out, or that we’d see he had no choice and ignore the situation. Our understanding had held for twenty years. I think he was hoping for another twenty. That would be as good as forever.”
“But how could he know about April?”
“There’s only one way. The phone in El Paso.”
“You think he has a tap on it?”
Roy shrugged. “How else?”
“That means Toker called you when April told him she wanted to find her father.”
He rubbed his chin. “He called me,” he admitted. “That was the first I’d heard about her. That she was in the states and living with Toker.”
“Why did he call you? Why not Sissy? He was the one who got Toker to find her.”
“What could Sissy do?” Roy asked levelly. “He was locked away in the mountains somewhere. He couldn’t do a damned thing.”
“What did he want you to do?”
“Call you,” he told me.
“I see.”
April was confused. “What did he think Rainbow could do?”
“Rainbow has talents,” Roy spoke as though I weren’t present. “That’s why I recruited him. He can deal with problems. They don’t bother him like the rest of us.”
“Easy, now,” I said.
He looked at me coldly. “You object? You deny it?”
“They bother me,” I told him.
“But you still deal with them. Toker knew that. That’s why he called me. He didn’t know how to reach you. He thought I would.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense!” April said.
I looked at her and shook my head.
“What?” Roy said. “What doesn’t make sense?”
She ignored my warning. “Why would he call you when he knew where Rainbow lived? He told me how to reach him!”
“It wasn’t the call that was important,” Roy told her. “It was pressure he wanted from me. Our boy here doesn’t work for free. But maybe you found that out for yourself?”
She looked at me. An expression of distaste grew on her face.
“So…,” she said.
“Cut the crap, Roy,” I told him. “Corvin is the problem. Not me.”
“Okay, let’s talk about Corvin.”
“He has to be taken out.”
“So take him.”
“It won’t work that way,” I said. “The only thing sure to draw him out is a chance to solve all his problems at once. If we don’t give him a shot, he’s going to stay in hiding and we’re going to spend the rest of our lives looking under the bed every night.”
“You and Walker more than me,” he said. “Sissy most of all.”
“He’s close to finding Sissy. And once Sissy goes, the rest of us are all fair game. Even you.”
He thought about it. “Okay. How?”
I described the plan Sissy and I had come up w
ith. “The only problem will be contacting him,” I said.
“There’s a better place,” he told me. “Las Colonias. My ranch. Sixty miles south of here. No federales, no nothing for miles. All the action will be contained. Anything left over can be disposed of right there.” He spent a few minutes telling me about the place.
I liked it, and it would also solve Anna’s problem. “How do we get him there?” I asked.
“Call me at the El Paso number. Tell me that you’re going to bring Sissy down. If Max has it tapped, he’ll show up. And if he shows up, we’ll know he is the one.”
“We already know it.” But I agreed.
Roy frowned at me. “Are you sure you can get Sissy?”
“He’s tired of hiding,” I said. “He’ll come.”
“Who else? Johnny?”
I shook my head. “Walker won’t play. He’s got a wife and a kid on the way.”
“It would be better if we could get him there.”
“It’s a no can do.”
Roy worked on his drink while he looked it over, examining all sides of it the way he always did. Finally, he nodded. “How many guns do we need?”
“We’ve got three,” I said. “You, me, and Sissy. Max has only two that I know of, the guys that staked out my place, but we’d better figure that he’ll pick up at least three more, and maybe twice that. He’s going to want odds.”
“I’ve got a couple of men I can trust. And Max is going to figure he has an edge. Surprise. If we set it up right, he won’t have a chance.”
“What about ordnance?”
“I’ve got plenty.”
“And the time?”
“You can’t get Sissy down before noon tomorrow. It’ll take a couple of hours to get to my place. We’ll have to get set up there. We’d better plan on the next morning for Corvin. But he might show up anytime after sundown.”
“Then we’d better get moving.” I stood. “Let’s go, April.”
Roy put his hand on her arm. “I need her with me,” he said.
She looked surprised. “Why?” she asked.
“There’s a lot to do at the ranch,” he said. “All Porter has to do is make a couple of calls and show up tomorrow afternoon. You can help me set things up while he’s doing that.”
I leaned over the table and spoke to April while staring at Roy. “He’s covering himself,” I told her. “He doesn’t want your help. He just wants to be sure I won’t leave him there to face Corvin alone. He figures I’ll have to show up if you’re with him.”
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