She stared at him, still and silent.
Minh smiled. “I’ve heard rumors of a tunnel, but no one could ever find an entrance. This is quite impressive, Chuck.”
“That was the truth I was telling, about small, dark places, Detective. If I start to freak, I’m coming up.”
“You’ve got the light. You first.”
Frye considered the Dream Reader. “What about her?”
Minh snapped something at the woman. She talked rapidly until he cut her off. “She says she’d have told me sooner, but she was afraid of the gangs. She’ll stay right where she is,” said Minh.
Frye shoved the flashlight into his belt, then lowered himself down one rung at a time—nine in all—until he found himself stooping in a small earthen room. It was cool and damp, and the ceiling was too low for his head. His first instinct was to scramble back up and get the hell out of this place. He breathed deeply—a loamy, ancient smell, like the cave-house’s, but stronger—and tried to slow his galloping heart. Above him the round shaft of light diminished, and he could see the Dream Reader’s thick face gazing down before she shut the door. It was totally black inside. He held a hand in front of his face and saw nothing.
He could hear Minh breathing beside him.
Using the flashlight now, he saw that two tunnels led off in opposite directions, right toward Bolsa and left toward the inner part of Saigon Plaza. He looked at Minh, who shook his head. He went left.
The tunnel went straight for nearly fifty feet, then bent to the right. It was impossible to judge, but Frye had the feeling that he was moving deeper. With the walls close around him, he could feel the first quivers of panic spreading up his back, that feeling of being trapped, of never getting out, of losing direction. He stopped, turned off the light, and closed his eyes. Breathe deeply. Control.
“Are you still alive, Frye?”
“Yeah.”
With his flashlight on again he went fifty feet to where the tunnel opened into another small room. A camping lantern hung from one wall. He found a pack of matches on top of it, worked the pump a few times, and lit the wick. The room coalesced in a soft orange glow. A sleeping bag lay on the earth, neatly flattened. He pulled it open. Inside, pheasants flew across a background of red flannel. “It’s Eddie’s,” he said. “I saw it in his room. When he was sneaking through the plaza, he had a bag with him. He’d gone home to get something to sleep on.”
Beside it was a white sack with a half-eaten hamburger inside. Frye held it and felt a truly unpleasant coolness settle on his nerves. Next to the sack sat a white bowl filled with what looked like used napkins. Minh smelled them.
On the other side of the sleeping bag was a candle in a small brass dish. The wax had melted into a pool, now hardened. Frye reached out to touch it, but Minh’s hand clamped over his. Propped up against the dish was a thin gold earring. Minh reached out with a handkerchief and picked it up. “It looks like the one I found in his house. He brought her here first. It explains the earth on her clothes.”
“You don’t want to hear this, Minh, but Eddie Vo never brought her here at all.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because he wouldn’t. That’s all.”
“Then who did, Frye?”
“I don’t know.”
A small stack of Vietnamese magazines and newspapers sat beside the candle. Sacks from fast-food restaurants were piled next to one wall: several days’ worth of rations. Leaning beside them was a short, sawed-off shotgun. The barrel was rusted, the old wooden stock dark and beaten. The box of .20-gauge ammunition that sat beside it was brand-new. Frye examined the red plastic cylinders—high base, expensive. Next to that, another lantern and a can of fuel.
A trickle of sweat started at his neck and dribbled all the way down his back.
Something rumbled overhead; the floor vibrated. Cars, he thought—cars in Saigon Plaza. He could feel his pulse rising, a fresh wash of sweat break over his scalp. He checked his watch: ten minutes down. The lantern mantles glowed brightly, charging the room with clean, white light. Frye turned down the gas.
The tunnel continued, a neat hole in the far wall. He put the flashlight in his belt and unhooked the lantern. Thirty steps later the tunnel emptied into a concrete passageway with a dark sluggish stream moving slowly along the bottom. Spikes of old re-bar sprouted from the side walls, leaving brown stains and skewed shadows in the lamplight. From the darkness in either direction came liquescent echoes, intermittent splashes. Mud slid and shifted under his heels. He looked back and held up the lantern to see his footprints refilling with ooze.
It was then that he saw the man, maybe fifty feet away, crouched too, looking at Frye with a shocked, feral face.
“Halt! Police!” Minh pushed down on Frye’s shoulder with one hand and aimed his revolver with the other.
The man never looked back. He just turned, loped down the tunnel into the darkness and disappeared.
Minh charged ahead. Frye stood there, listening to the splattering from the detective’s shoes. Finally he commanded his heavy legs to move, the echoes of Minh’s footsteps still sounding in his ears.
When he caught up with him a moment later, Minh was standing in the mud, gun at his side. “Gone,” he said. “Like all the rest of them. Stay close, Frye.”
“Don’t worry.”
A hundred yards down, the river narrowed and disappeared through a grate. The concrete walls and ceiling tapered to almost nothing. Frye could hear the constant rush of the water, spilling over to wherever it went. He stopped a few yards short, unable to go any further without wading. Holding up the lantern, he could see that the grating was stuffed with captured debris—branches, a dripping black tumbleweed, a car tire, something that looked like a patio chair. The end of the line, he thought, for everything.
He held up the lantern again, looking for a connection, a way in or a way out, but all he saw was solid concrete, an aging drain system doing its thankless subterranean job.
“What do you think, Frye?”
“There’s got to be a way. Another trapdoor maybe, or a ladder. Something.”
“Lead on. Your luck is good so far.”
Frye turned and headed back out, still hugging the cool wall. Minh sloshed behind him. Frye tapped with his knuckles, about waist-height as he went, hoping. “Must be on the other wall.”
Landing on a pile of trash that formed a small island in the middle, he made the other side in two jumps and worked his way back down the wall, tapping, lantern held high and casting its bright glow against the stained and pitted concrete.
His fingers found the trapdoor before his eyes did; it was hidden that well. But it gave a hollow thud when he hit it, and a bit of concrete dust fell from the plywood that had been cut to fit the opening, then smeared with cement to look like the rest of the wall. He pried it with a car key. It scraped toward him, then fell, dangling from the hole by a piece of rope.
Looking up the steeply angled, narrow tunnel, Frye shuddered. He pointed to the smudges the man had left.
“I’ll go first now,” said Minh.
Frye stood for a moment, eyes closed again, trying for confidence, or at least composure. He checked his watch: twenty minutes down. With a deep breath he gave Minh the lantern, then followed him inside.
Knees, elbows, concrete cold on the belly, not even enough room to raise his head all the way. Halfway in, he decided this was a big mistake. The lantern flickered and hissed ahead of him. Minh cursed.
Then Frye began to scramble, his elbows burning and his knees aching, but the harder he tried, the tighter things got. He finally had to just stop everything and listen to his own breathing for a moment and feel the precise thudding of his heart against the tunnel floor and try his best to think about something else. He thought of Cristobel, stark-raving nude, beckoning him. His face was hot against the cement. I hate this place, he thought, never again down here, never again. He inched forward, one calibrated movement at a time, putting his fa
ith in the infinitesimal degrees of progress. He could see Minh, thirty feet ahead. The detective was on his back, pressing up with his arms. Something gave; his arms straightened. Frye heard a cover slide away.
Minh worked his arms and shoulders through the opening. He slipped through; Frye followed.
It smelled worse than anything he’d smelled in his life, unimaginably foul. When Minh settled the lantern on flat ground, the glow fell on rounded shapes that scurried into shadows and vanished. A high buzzing filled the air around him, a sense of motion in the upper reaches of the cavern. He choked down the urge to vomit and pulled the rest of his body into the chamber.
It was bigger than either of the first two rooms, with a high ceiling that glittered, Frye saw as he raised the lantern, with the shifting bodies of flies. A rat waddled before him and he kicked it. The rodent seemed to melt into a corner, tail disappearing, snakelike. The walls were earth, supported by a makeshift network of uneven beams laced with rope. Scrap lumber, he thought, tied instead of nailed, so no one would hear the construction from above. Three lanterns hung from the ropes. A cooler stood in one corner. He stepped over, stirring the flies overhead, and opened it. A couple of soft drinks floated in a few inches of water.
“Thirsty, Minh?”
“Shut up, Frye.”
He almost gagged again. He closed his eyes and concentrated against it. He finally took off his shirt and wrapped it around his face, tying it snug behind his head. A few feet from the cooler lay a stack of announcements for the Freedom Rally. Li’s hopeless face wavered in the lantern light.
“How do you get an ice chest into this hellhole, anyway?”
“I don’t know, Frye. I don’t care.”
“You ought to. It means there’s another way in here.”
He picked up the lantern again, and the flies hummed louder.
Built off of the main cavern was a smaller one. Frye held the lamp before him, cinched up the shirt around his face and ducked in. On the ground was a large canvas tarpaulin, and something underneath it was moving. His hand shook with the lantern, quivering the bright light. Something scraped beneath the tarp, then moved. Frye knelt down, took one corner of the material, then stood, peeling it away. Rats turned from their meal and peered into the light, then wobbled across the two decomposing bodies and headed for the shadows.
Frye hurled away the heavy tarp, let it drop. The bodies lay face up, strewn with lye. Rats had eaten the good parts. The ski caps they had used at the Asian Wind lay beside them, removed so the lye could do its work. Their bellies had swelled. One exposed and non-eaten hand looked like a glove filled with water.
Duc, Loc’s little brother, was still wearing his red high-tops.
Frye gave Minh the lantern and went back to the main room. The tunnels started tilting, and he braced himself against a damp wall. He couldn’t get enough air. His skin was hot, and a throbbing pressure felt as if it was about to burst his head. His eardrums roared.
Minh’s pale face looked around the corner from the other chamber. “Frye?”
What seemed important at this point was to get the hell out.
“Frye!”
The next thing he knew, the Dream Reader was helping him into her den. He lay there on his back, chest heaving, the light burning into his eyes.
She looked down on him. “No Li?”
“No Li.”
“You should listen to your dreams.”
“I tried, goddamn it.”
“The demons always win.”
A few minutes later Minh crawled up, bearing the lantern before him. Frye recognized the fear in his eyes.
The detective talked to the Dream Reader in Vietnamese. Frye gathered that some deal was being made. She protested, then nodded, then nodded again.
Minh used her phone to call Duncan. “Just come to the Dream Reader’s, I’ll explain it when you get here.”
He looked at Frye. “I’ll have questions for you, but I need answers from our friends below first. I appreciate what you’ve done. Can you keep your mouth shut for the next forty-eight hours? Tell me I don’t have to send you to jail again to make sure.”
“If you send me to jail again, I’ll get out and murder you. I promise.” Frye stood shakily.
Minh smiled. “You okay?”
“I think so. Just got kind of mixed-up.” He took one of the Dream Reader’s business cards and wrote “Cristobel Strauss” on it. He handed it to the detective and explained what had happened to her. “I want to know who did it,” Frye said. “I need to know who they are.”
Minh looked at him with new suspicion. “Why?”
“Three of them are still following her around. I’d just like to know who I’m dealing with, and I don’t want to get her upset. You can do it in one phone call to the Long Beach cops, or I can spend an hour at the courthouse. Either way, I’ll—”
“Okay, Frye. I know you well enough by now to realize you don’t give up. I’ll find out who they are.”
CHAPTER 19
THROUGH THE SCREEN DOOR, FRYE COULD SEE his brother sitting on the couch. The room was dark, but a soft light played off Bennett’s face. There was a tall glass in his hand and a bottle of gin on the table in front of him. A movie screen was set up in front of the TV. A carousel projector sat beside the gin bottle. Bennett looked up, his eyes all wrong. “It’s late. Even Michelsen and Toibin are asleep.”
Frye stepped in. “Need to use your shower.”
“What happened to you?”
Crawley appeared from the kitchen.
“I found out where they first took Li. Where Eddie went. There’s a tunnel under the Dream Reader’s.”
“Jesus!”
Frye plodded to the bathroom, stripped and showered, put on some clothes that Donnell brought in. He looked at himself in the mirror. He had never looked so pale and drained in all his life. Li. Xuan. Eddie. Duc and the third gunman. The smell of death was so strong on him he got back in and showered again. He stopped when the hot water ran out.
There was a glass of ice waiting when he came back to the living room. He poured on the gin, sipped, and sat back. He told them about footprints on his floor, the mud on Li’s clothes, her song about the tunnel, his realization that she had been taken underground first. He told them of the trip down, every stink and horror still fresh in his mind. He told them he’d promised Minh to say nothing.
“Didn’t you call Wiggins?”
“I thought Minh would handle it better. He’ll tell the FBI soon enough, earn the points.”
“Me and Donnell spent the whole night at the plaza, asking people if they’d seen any new faces in town. If one gunman was an outsider, maybe more out-of-town people are involved.”
“Luck?”
“Zip. We’ll try again in the morning.”
Frye looked at the movie screen.
“I’ve been looking at some old stuff, Chuck. Absence doesn’t make the heart fonder, it just fucks it up.” Bennett drank from his gin. He looked at Frye a long while, then down. “I think about her every minute. Her face gets blurred and turns into something else. I’m trying to get a grip on it again, little brother. Pictures of me and Li. Want to see?”
Bennett had never once in twenty years showed him a candid picture from his seventeen months of war. A story here and there, a snippet, a recollection. A lot of nothing, Frye thought. Bennett slurped down more gin. He picked up the control. The projector fan eased on, and a slide rotated into place: Li and him standing outside a nightclub. She was dressed simply in a Western-style skirt and blouse. Bennett was in his dress uniform. It was night, and the club lights down the avenue were dense and bright. Bennett was smiling, his arm wrapped around her. “Saigon, March ‘seventy. I’d been in-country for seven months. I’d known Li for four.”
“You look happy.”
“Weirdest thing in the world, Chuck, to be happy in a war. Here’s some earlier shots.”
He flipped back. Shots of the 25th Infantry Headquarters at Dong Zu—
”Tropic Lightning,” said Bennett—a sprawling complex of one-story buildings and quonsets. A swimming pool. A golf course. Jeeps and grunts everywhere. Pictures of Benny and Crawley playing basketball.
Bennett stopped at a picture of a plain quonset surrounded by DO NOT ENTER signs. A guard stood out front. “Interrogation Central,” he said. “We called it Spook City. Between the CIA guys, the PSYOPS flakes and the civilian ‘reps’ who came and went, it was one weird fuckin’ place. There were cages inside, and rooms with a foot and a half of soundproofing on the walls so the screams wouldn’t get out.” Bennett’s head wobbled a little as he stared at the screen.
“What did you do there?”
“That’s where prisoners went before we shipped them south. That’s where I worked sometimes. Hell, that’s boring. Look, here’s Li. First one of her I ever took.”
The picture showed Kieu Li sitting on a stone bench in a courtyard. Frye noted the plantation mansion, lost to vines, in the background. Li had a worried look on her face, not sure how to react. Then a shot of her and Donnell. Then of her and a young Vietnamese man dressed in U.S. Army fatigues. He looked at the camera with a quiet arrogance.
“Huong Lam,” said Bennett. “The man you asked about.”
“Looks like a kid.”
“Seventeen. Same as Li.”
The next picture was of the three of them standing outside the cottage. They had their arms around each other. The jungle had practically choked the old colonial building. Frye could see a guitar propped against the wall.
Then a close-up of Li. Frye quickly saw the same things in her that Bennett must have: a simple beauty and dignity, a composure born of acceptance, a natural gentleness that emanated from her. He could see her strength, too, inseparable from her as water from a river or heat from fire. It’s what she needed to get through—he thought—the psychic national currency. Spend what you need to survive, and save what you can. Li, at least, had enough of it.
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