Little Saigon

by T. Jefferson Parker

  And most of all, perhaps, he could imagine the looks of disappointment on Bennett’s and Edison’s faces when they found out that he’d helped Eddie Vo get away.

  The really fun part, he thought is when I tell Bennett that his tape is gone.

  He paid, veered off the stool, and headed back outside. Snap out of it, he told himself, melancholy is the nurse of frenzy. You tried. If you don’t make mistakes it means you’re not doing anything.

  He walked south now, past C’est La Vie and Georgia’s Bistro to the Hotel Laguna, where he stopped to contemplate—with a thrill beyond delirium—the dog sitting dutifully beside a bench. The red scarf looked freshly arranged, John Waynesque.

  Cristobel Something or Other. Eureka.

  She wasn’t in the bar or on the patio. He marched through the dining room, horrifying the maître d’, nearly taking out a two-top, apologizing profusely and promising a free bottle of wine, seeing her nowhere. He made a quick pass through the women’s restroom, calling her name. Someone screamed. The hotel security chief intercepted him forthwith, threatening police. “You can do that in Manhattan,” Frye protested. “I read Bright Lights, Big City. “

  “Then move to Manhattan, creep.”

  The man was still glaring at him, arms crossed, as Frye headed for the door. At the desk he secured a pen and a sheet of hotel stationery. Sitting on the bench outside, he wrote: “Apologies for a bad opening line. Things get better from here. Charles Edison Frye requests the honor of an introduction.” He added his phone number, then approached the dog. Dogs had always loved him, which he felt reflected poorly on his character.

  “Hey, mutt,” he said. The dog’s tail thumped on the sidewalk as a police siren ascended in the distance. The dog smelled his hand and the folded note. When Frye intertwined the paper with the bandana, the dog licked his arm. The cop car was nearing now, drawing a bead on him, of that much he was certain. The security man regarded him with malice from the doorway. “This animal belongs to my long-lost cousin,” Frye explained. “Until tonight, we believed her dead.”

  Someone he didn’t recognize hooted at him from a car, the war cry of the Southern California surfer, loud enough to match the fast-approaching siren. The thought occurred to Frye that he had just disturbed the peace, that he would fail any sobriety test, that he had a morals rap pending, that he had just spent far too long in jail, that he was, in short, poorly positioned to deal with our criminal justice system again.

  He bolted around a corner, down a sidestreet, and into an alley. The Cyclone waited at the far end, 390 cc’s of freedom. He sprinted for it, dove in and was about to start the engine when the dog hurled in after him, barking its fool head off. It licked him with zeal, note still locked around its scarf. Frye started up, easing from alley to street in time to meet the cop car speeding his way. He nodded officiously—pursue the criminal element, gentlemen, you have my total support—barely making a yellow light at the signal, then turning south, and gunning the Mercury down Coast Highway toward Linda’s house. It was a short blast to Bluebird Canyon, his heart pounding far too hard, the dog ricocheting from back seat to front then back again, shrieking with delight. He punched the car up the steep incline.

  The city fell away below. Then they were high in the hills, rich with the narcotic aroma of eucalyptus, heavy sea air, the faint scent of brush from the canyons to the east.

  Linda’s house was a big shady affair off of Temple Hills. Frye pulled up near a huge bougainvillea aflame with purple bracts that shifted in the darkness. In a vague technical sense, he considered this to be their tree: they had made love under it in a sleeping bag one summer night that now seemed ages ago, and the purple discs had stuck to her back and her hair. Odd, he thought, that when she left the cave-house she moved here, right behind our tree. Was it a declaration of independence, or nostalgia?

  In the upstairs bedroom a light shone, and for a moment he saw her behind the curtains. With a burst of optimism he commanded the dog to stay, then jumped out of the car, crunched across the leaf-strewn yard, hurdled a low white fence and hailed her from below the window. “Linda! It’s Charles here! Chuck Frye, inventor of the MegaSkate, joy to millions of skateboarders across the world!”

  The curtain parted.

  “Linda’s not here, Chuck. She moved out three weeks ago, just like I told you last week and the week before that.”

  This was all wrong. This was not the woman he was expecting. From somewhere back in the narrow lanes of his memory came the message that he had been here before. “I’m prepared to hang myself for you. I’ve brought a belt to do it. Right here on our tree, where we made love.”

  The face above him laughed. The curtain swung open. “Chuck, you know she’s in New York, so why do you do this? You’ve got her number, for heaven’s sake. You put the poor woman through enough. Really. You kinda give me the creeps when you’re like this, to tell you the truth.”

  Frye tried to take off his belt for the self-lynch, but he wasn’t wearing one. This is getting gothic, he thought.

  “Sleep it off, Chucky.” The curtains came back together, and Frye heard a window slide shut and lock. Glad she set me straight before something stupid happened. What are friends for? He tore a branch off the bougainvillea shrub.

  Back in the Cyclone now, Frye sped up Coast Highway, past the hills of the Laguna Paradiso, past Crystal Cove to Corona del Mar. The night was clear and the stars dense and he could see the ocean stretched like a jeweled blanket to the horizon. He parked on top of the bluff and found the marker. The grass was freshly cut. Someone had brought flowers. Hyla, probably. He set the bougainvillea branch on the granite, closed his eyes, and started a prayer he couldn’t finish. Things just kept unwinding. Everything was a blur: the moon, the city lights below, the paths among the stones. The dog wandered, apparitional. Frye wiped his eyes. He brushed the smooth granite with wet fingertips and tried his best not to remember.

  The trip back to town was a blur of steering wheel and brakes, the stink of rubber, of close calls with large objects positioned specifically to cause him death. The dog sat beside him, bandana lifting in the breeze, tipping left and right, barking with insane happiness.

  The dog followed him into the house. Frye stopped in the doorway and felt a shot of adrenaline course through him. Inside, his neighbor, Denise, was sitting on his couch, pulling at the loose foam, watching his TV, which miraculously still worked. “Hi, Chucky. I was lonesome so I let myself in. Mind?”

  “No,” someone said. “You scared me.”

  Denise giggled. “Sorry. What a beautiful dog. Is he yours?”

  “We’re brothers.”

  “That’s what this lady on Letterman says too. Look.”

  Frye regarded the lovely face of Lucia Parsons. She was speaking of governments getting us into war and the people getting us out. Letterman swallowed his gap-toothed smile and mustered a look of sincerity. “This is a grass-roots movement of people,” she said. “Our Committee is Americans working with Vietnamese. There is no direct government involvement. The governments simply can’t get the job done—look at past efforts. We’ll get our prisoners back, working with the Vietnamese people. My counterpart over there is a man named Tran Tanh—he’s a wonderfully open and generous man. He has the support of Hanoi, but he isn’t a politician. In fact, he teaches school.”

  “But are there any POWs?” Letterman asked.

  Lucia Parsons smiled. “I have some very strong evidence. It isn’t something I can make public yet, but I will. I can tell you, David, as surely as I sit here, there are American prisoners alive in Vietnam, And I can tell you we’re going to get them out. We need money, we need time, and we need the support of the American people.”

  Letterman alluded to the support of his sponsors, and the program cut to some deal on Nissan hardbodies.

  “She lives right here in Laguna, Chuck. Isn’t that neat we’ve got a national movement in our own back yard? There’s a meeting tomorrow and I’m gonna sign up. Thin
k of all the good-looking guys around if someone like her is running it.”

  “The mind reels.”

  “You look bad tonight, Chuck. How come your house is all busted up? What happened to your face? This couch here is really fucked, you know that? Salvation Army’s got a good one for seventy-five bucks, some rich lady died but it’s got cat pee all over it. I love cats, so for me that pee isn’t a negative thing at all. Want some homemade acid?”

  “God please no.”

  “You need something. Come here and lay down. I’ll give you a rub since I’m drinking your wine.”

  The dog leapt to take his place, and Denise shooed him away. Frye nosedove to the couch, then worked himself over to his back. He looked up at Denise, who from this vantage point had implausibly large nostrils. Lucia Parsons was saying that the Vietnamese government had entirely approved the basic concept of working with the American people. Denise kneaded his shoulders with strong fingers. “Poor Chuck. Linda ditches him so he drinks too much. It’s lonely at the bottom.”

  Looking up, Frye wondered how Denise made thirty look like sixteen. A pale little woman without fat or wrinkles, a wonderfully preserved pixie. Amazing, he thought, considering her appetite for abuse. Might drugs and relentless fornication promote age-abatement, a pickling of youth in its tracks? Worth looking into. “Who’s the squeeze this week?”

  “Week nothing, Chuck. I’ve been seeing Simon for almost a month straight. He’s a chemistry student at State, and makes this great acid. I’m tripping right now. Your face looks like wax, except for the beat-up part, and that looks like, well … something geological.”

  “What happened to Dick?”

  Denise’s fingers moved to his neck. “Went back to his wife.”

  “Billy?”

  “Turned out to be gay.”

  “It makes you think.”

  “Yeah, but not that much. Life is reflex. Want me to take you to bed?”

  Frye looked up, considering Denise for the thousandth time. She was pretty and willing, but her legion lovers implied venereal realities of the worst kind, crippling viral bummers with cures still centuries in the future.

  “No. Thanks.”

  “You really look bad, Chuck. Want some coke?” She produced a heap and held a loaded fingernail toward him. He turned away.

  “God please no.”

  Then she was off on a detailed account of today’s colonic enema, how clean you feel when it’s over, how pure and new. “I’ll give you one sometime,” she offered.

  “You certainly won’t, young lady.” Frye felt the first waves of sleep tilting over him, let out a groan.

  “You’re no fun anymore, Chuck.”

  “The trouble is, Denise, I just keep messing things up.”

  “Today’s problems are tomorrow’s jokes and yesterday’s worries. God, that’s stupid.”

  “It really is.”

  Frye shook his head, patted the dog’s. He liked how round and smooth it was. “I had one little thing to do. Keep something for a few days. That’s all I had to do. Then they come in here today while I’m gone and take it.”

  “Those little boat people?”

  Frye sat upright. Below him, the dog’s ears shot up: full alert. “Who?”

  “Those Viet Cong-style guys who came to see you. Kinda cute. One was tall with a great flat-top and the other one was short and extra skinny.”

  “Flat-top?”

  “Like a totally bitchin’ one—two inches high at least. I’d just come onto this acid when they drove up so I figured I was seeing things. They knocked and went in. Then they came out half an hour later, waved good-bye to you, and drove away. Did they tie you up or something?” Denise’s eyes glittered with excitement.

  “I wasn’t here.”

  She blushed a little, retreating. “I just figured you knew them. I mean, they turned around and said something and waved when they left. Little dark guys. Gosh, Chucky, maybe I kinda like blew it.”

  Little Dark Men.

  “What kind of car?”

  “Beats me. Just a car. The only car I know is a red Champ, ‘cause that’s what I’ve got.”

  “What time?”

  “Four maybe. Or five. Something right in there.”

  Frye lay back down. The ceiling moved on its own. So, he thought, while I was at Smith’s, the Dark Men were here bagging Bennett’s tape.

  “I knew I should have called the cops, but I can’t deal with authority when I’m high. Some came around a couple of hours ago, but I played nobody home.”

  Frye groaned.

  Long after she had left, he was still on the couch, staring at the darkness and listening to the pounding in his chest. Eddie’s garage, this afternoon. He could hear the dog roaming his house and at times see the outline of its head as it stopped by the couch to pant hot loyal dog breath into his face. Chuck, you know she’s in New York, so why do you do this?

  Lucia Parsons was gone, replaced by the dizzying effects of Letterman’s Monkey-Cam.

  He could sense Linda’s ambassador in the far corner, looking on.

  “Keep that bitch away from me,” he told the dog. “She thinks she owns the place.”

  He dreamed of Debbie, going under.

  CHAPTER 8

  AS THE SUN CAME UP, FRYE WAS SITTING cross-legged in his living room, drinking coffee, and contemplating the dry mud footprint on his floor. The Dark Men got it in the cave, he thought: but where did the gunman get his? The stitches in his head hurt. Cristobel Something or Other’s dog sat beside him, relaxed, witless. Frye named him Dunce.

  He stood, hovered his foot over the print and guessed a size eight. How did they know I had that tape? Bennett knew I had it. But no one else did, according to Benny. Crawley? Nguyen? Kim? No. They’re the inner circle. Is it Paul DeCord? Possibly. He’s the co-star. How would he know? A lucky guess, instinct?

  As he poured more coffee, Frye knew that the only way to redeem himself here was to find the Dark Men and get back the video. What other choice was there? He couldn’t go to Minh because the tape was supposedly a secret; he couldn’t go to Bennett because Bennett had given it to him.

  The Dark Men. I’ll find you bastards, he thought. Tonight, if it’s the last thing I do. In Little Saigon, the last place I’m supposed to be.

  You’re wrong, Benny. I can do something.

  He got Smith’s manuscript from the coffee table and sat back down. The first chapter was called “Kieu Li”, and the introduction was short and to the point.

  Kieu Li played a fascinating, if minor, role in the Vietnam-American conflict. In 1970 she was seventeen years old. She was a singer. While entertaining the Viet Cong at night—often underground in tunnels, or in other makeshift “theaters”—she gathered information. By day, she would go into the village of An Cat to her work as a seamstress. There, she would meet her “contacts,” an eighteen-year-old man named Huong Lam, and an American lieutenant. During these secret meetings, taken at great risk to herself, she would pass to them the intelligence she had gathered while among the Communists. When Kieu Li’s secret spying became dangerous, she simply failed to return to the Viet Cong one night, and fled to the American base in Dong Zu. There, she continued to work in an intelligence capacity for the South. In a fascinating ending to Li’s story, she later married the American lieutenant—Bennett Frye—and now lives in Westminster, California, where she is active in helping refugees become settled in their new home. She is a popular singer. In this excerpt from a lengthy taped narrative, Kieu Li describes how she went from being a simple peasant girl to living the perilous life of a spy.

  Frye knew the basics of this story. They had come from Li one hot summer night when they’d sat at Frye Island and fished off the dock. Li had told him about her first meeting with Bennett, her strange feelings toward him, his plan to use her as an informant. Bennett had contributed a few details. As always, he was more willing to talk about his patrols, his rooting out of the Viet Cong, his carousing at night, his fri
ends and their drinking, than about the particulars of his romance. Still, Frye noted, when Li told of their meetings and the slow love that developed, Bennett listened intently, as if hearing it for the first time.

  Kieu Li (Li Frye)

  An Cat, a village twenty miles north of Saigon, was my home. I had a hut outside the village. It was small but the thatch roof was good when the monsoons came and there was a garden in the back. I wove material on a loom that I sold in the market place and I was a seamstress. This, I traded for other goods. I played my guitar during the slow market days. My mother died in 1964 of fever and my father disappeared in the spring of 1966: I believe the Viet Cong were responsible.

  An Cat was supposed to be safe from the Viet Cong. But we all knew that was not true. No one could be trusted unless it was your family or best friend. The Viet Cong would put your head on a stake if you supported the South. Americans and ARVN would kill you if you supported the north. Trying to remain neutral was like remaining completely motionless in a stormy sea. It could not be done.

  I saw Huong Lam one morning at the market. I was playing my guitar because no one was buying. I had known him ten years before, when we attended school together. He had left the village. Since then, I had not thought of him often. He was on a bicycle and he had grown from a boy into a young man. He seemed nervous as we talked. He said he had work for me. Two days later he came back with a small bundle. Inside I found the green cotton uniform with the patches on the shirt. It needed to be mended. I knew then that he was with the Americans. He told me one evening as we walked to the road from An Cat that he was a scout.

  Huong Lam was a shy man, but very strong. I could see his courage in the set of his jaw, in the clear and unwavering gaze of his eyes. He would stand by my table in the marketplace occasionally. When there were no others around, he would become confidential. He admitted to me that for a year, he fought for the Communists. This was shocking to me, I learned that he felt betrayed by them. He feared their ruthlessness and believed that their promises were empty. He said that they were killing the Vietnam he loved.