Maybe she thinks it’s funny.
Maybe she saw it, thought I was cute, cut it out.
Maybe it’s Jim’s, not hers.
The hospital operator gave him visitors’ hours. He hung up.
He was curious. He picked up Cristobel’s address book and turned to F. No Frye. Nothing under C. He tried Z instead. There it was, CF, followed by his number. His address was under it.
She was still sleeping. Dunce regarded him blankly.
Does she have the MegaShop number too?
Under the Ms was no MegaShop number, but a regulation business card that said Mai Ngo Thanh Tong—Saigon Plaza.
He closed the book.
Cristobel was still asleep. He went in, pulled the pillow out from under her head and stood there. “What’s that picture of me doing on your fridge?”
She swam back from dreamland. “Picture?”
“The ape deal. And how come you’ve got my number in your book? We just met on Monday morning, didn’t we? A coincidence, right? Accident.”
She frowned, backed against the head stand, pulled the bedspread over her. “Jesus, Chuck.”
“Jesus, nothing. What gives?”
She looked at him hard, then down at the bed. When she looked back up, he could see the anger in her face. “You fuck me once, you think you own me?”
“I don’t want to own you. I want to know what you’re doing with my stats when we met three days ago.”
She shook her head, a bitter smile forming at the corners of her mouth. “Why don’t you just leave?”
“Not until I get some answers from you.”
“Wanna hit me? Maybe I’ll talk faster.”
“No chance of that.”
“What do you think, Chuck? That I wanted to seduce you? That I had it all planned ahead of time? Where to find you? What your number is? Where to find your house so I can bring flowers and a card?”
“Tell me the truth.”
“I just did.”
She looked down again, bit her lip. Frye watched a tear roll down her face. She wiped it away with the sheet. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“For what?”
“For this.” She looked at him, then out the window. She swallowed hard. “Well, that’s it. You can go now.”
“I’m listening.”
“What do you want? A confession?”
“Sure.”
“You’re an arrogant bastard, aren’t you?”
“I never looked at it that way. I just want to know what’s going on. And what about that Saigon Plaza number?”
“Okay, you deserve that much. I… I did plan it. I wanted it. I’ve had that picture for months. I got your number and kept it in my book for a long time. I made it a point to be at Rockpile that morning. It wasn’t the first time I was there.” She wiped her face again. “I’d seen you there a hundred times. I watched you from my window first, then I got a pair of binoculars. You were a man, but you were far away and I could see you when I wanted. I could control you. You couldn’t get too close. And believe me, that’s a nice option after being … put upon. I could see you and have the distance, too.” Cristobel sighed and looked at him. He couldn’t quite believe this was happening. “Look in the closet, Chuck.”
Frye slid open the door. A brand new MegaBoard rested inside, never used. The price tag was still on it. “I was hoping you’d be there when I went in. I did see you there a few times. Guess you didn’t notice. Those rolled-up things down by my shoes—they’re posters of you. And that Saigon Plaza number, that’s the fabric store where I buy my silk.”
“Oh.” Frye felt as stupid now as he’d ever felt in his life.
“I actually couldn’t wait for some excuse to come over to your house. I had it pictured as being sinful and full of … I don’t know. I heard it was a cave. When I moved to this place after the … after what happened, I started hearing about you. I saw you in a contest down at Brooks. I knew you were married so I didn’t do anything. I cut out the picture of you because—it was a picture of you.” She sobbed, looking away. “I thought I’d taken everything down. I forgot that Mystery Maid thing. I’m just a stupid fucking little girl. You can go now, Chuck. I just wanted you, and now I guess I’ve had you. Once isn’t quite enough, but it was still pretty sweet, wasn’t it?”
Frye sat on the bed. Then he rolled over and took her in his arms. She was crying now, and he could feel the warm tears running down his neck. “I’m awful sorry.”
“Go, please.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“So am I, Chuck. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”
“Can we forget about this?”
“I’ll try, if you will.”
“Jesus. You saved my life. What I’d really like is to make love to you now.”
She moved closer to him and touched his face with her hands. “Yes, please.”
CHAPTER 21
TWO FEDERAL MARSHALS WERE STANDING outside Tuy Nha’s hospital room as Frye walked up. One checked his name off a list while the other studied his driver’s license as if it were a rare manuscript. They rummaged through the gifts he’d brought.
Frye found Nha staring out a window, past a cart piled with flowers and cards. The room was small and white, and the smell of carnations floated on a clinical underlayer of hospital air. A television was suspended on the wall across from her bed. The picture on the screen was a soap opera; the sound was off.
She lay, propped with pillows, a blank notepad on her lap, a pen in her hand. She turned a face so pale and drained of life to Frye he wondered if she were dying. “Chuck,” she said in a whisper.
He kissed her cheek, sat, and took her weightless hand in his. “Nha.”
“It was very strange, Chuck. My thoughts came through my fingers, and I wrote your name. Then, your name came into my mouth and I spoke again. It hurt.”
“I’m honored you asked for me.”
A smile suggested itself, mostly in her eyes. “When I look out at night and see the stars, I think of him. Did you ever think how far away they are, the stars?”
“We’re all in the same sky, Nha.”
“So far to get there.”
“There’s no hurry. Here.” Frye gave her the package he’d hastily wrapped in the cave-house.
Nha’s fingers picked at the thing, failed. Frye opened it for her, placing the box beside her. She pulled out a silver wave necklace, taking the pendant in her palm and letting the chain dangle through her frail fingers. “It has magical powers,” he said.
“Really?”
“No. I just thought you’d like it. I designed it. They were popular a few years back, when I was. The first one I ever made I sent to my brother when he was in Vietnam. It was supposed to protect him and remind him of home.”
“Did it?”
“He gave it away, to tell the truth.”
She smiled. He helped her put it on. She fiddled with it, smoothing her hospital smock to give it a good place to lie. “Do you think it’s possible to do a brain transplant, Chuck? I’m sure it is dangerous but I would volunteer. Think, Chuck. Not a single memory. I would choose the brain of … let’s see … a cow. Dull and warm and concerned with grass and calves.”
“I’d like you better if you stayed a woman.”
“But think, to be empty. Where your past is only an hour long, and your future is a concept you are ignorant of. Will you ask Dr. Levin if he’ll make me a cow?”
Frye smiled at her, inwardly shocked at the deadness in her eyes, the way she moved so slowly, the way her body seemed to withdraw from its spirit as he watched. “No, Nha. He’s going to leave you a person. If you were a cow, the necklace wouldn’t fit.”
“I can always rely on you for logic, Chuck.”
“Here, I brought you these, too.” He set a folder of some of his articles on her bed. Attached to each were his notes on the subject, interview stuff, notes to himself before writing. “I thought while you had some time you could read th
e preliminaries, then see the way they went into the articles. Maybe give you some idea of how you get a bunch of information on something, then whack it down to a size you can work with. For your writing, you know. The articles aren’t especially good—in fact I got fired for one of them—but you can see the process.”
She actually smiled this time, white teeth and pink lips. “You’re putting me to work already, Chuck.”
“I don’t want you getting into trouble here. Idle hands, and all that.”
“Well, I haven’t been a complete vegetable. Here is for you.” She gave him a folded sheet of yellow paper. He could see the imprint of her writing on it, the long delicate script. “You can read it now if you like to.”
One new star appeared last night
High in the heaven, seen
Only by eyes that knew its light
Here, where once he walked
Beneath that sky unknowing
It was soon to be his home.
And as I watched,
Its tiny fingers spread to touch others
Through darkness thicker
Than a midnight snow,
And together made a chain
Of light untouchable to me below.
“It’s beautiful. It’s perfect.”
“My poetry professor would say it reeks of sentiment.”
“He’s never written anything this good.”
Detective Minh’s face appeared in the doorway. Frye watched him smile, then disappear.
“He’s been here every day,” she said. “And so have the FBI. At first it was questions. Now, it just seems they are here to keep the reporters away. It was difficult to get them to let me see you, but I became emotional.”
Frye sat beside her.
She sat up straighter, fingered the pendant. “Chuck, you must help me. I need you to help.”
“Anything.”
Nha looked out the window as she spoke now. “My mother and sisters have not gone back into our house. So it is undisturbed. In the living room, there is an altar. Small and red, near the piano.”
“I remember it.”
“Inside the altar, behind the fruit, there is something I want you to take and destroy. Burn it for me. And please, do not ask me to explain.”
Frye considered, studying her pale profile against the pillow.
Nha reached for her purse beside the bed and lifted it with some effort. The key she handed him had a piece of red yarn attached. “It will open the patio door in the back yard. Please, be careful.”
Frye went through the Tuys’ side gate, around to the back of the house, and ducked under the yellow crime-scene ribbon. The late afternoon sun beat against the drawn curtains. It was hot inside, and everything looked the same as he remembered. He breathed deeply and felt dizzy.
The shrine was just where it had been, with the same fruit and incense. He knelt and pulled out an orange, an apple, a tangerine.
He whirled away and stood, hearing a sound from the kitchen.
Then the stillness descended again, the unperturbed silence of the dead.
He knelt again and felt inside the altar. Nothing. Just a small square space, rough wood, unpainted. He reached in farther and felt it there, taped to the roof of the little shrine. The masking tape rasped away and the canister fell into his palm.
Black plastic with a gray top. Inside, a strip of film negative. He held it up to the faint light. Writing of some kind, eighteen exposures in all. The print was too small to read.
He rolled the strip back into the container and slipped it into his pocket, then replaced the fruit.
For a moment he stood in Xuan’s study. He looked at the blood-soaked sofa and desk. What in the world, he wondered, could possibly be worth this?
In the good light of the cave-house, Frye studied the negatives under his magnifying glass. It was typewriting, done on an old machine, with the characters in poor alignment and the tops of the t’s and f’s missing. The typist kept dropping the cap key before completing the stroke, so the big letters hovered above the lines as if trying to float away.
The eighteen frames were of six pages that described a detailed monthly itinerary of Thach, a description and clumsy drawing of an apartment, and an aerial photograph of a military camp.
Frye read it through, twice. It seemed that Thach spent one week a month at home, and the other three at the compound. Thach is not approachable at camp. While at home, he remained inside the apartment almost all the time. He slept in a room in the west corner, bathed and shaved in a bathroom with a window looking south. Thach is not approachable during this time. The street outside is too busy. His door is always watched.
Subordinates brought food each day at four in the afternoon, and Thach prepared it himself. He ate alone. The apartment was built around a courtyard, in which he read during the day when the weather was conducive. Thach is not approachable at this time. At night, he viewed films of the war, making extensive notes on a large pad. The writer speculated that he was working on a book. Thach made from fifteen to twenty phone calls each day, none lasting for more than two minutes. Twice a week while at his apartment, he received a prostitute. She was always the same girl, delivered always by the same taxi. She would stay for two hours, then leave. The writer noted that at least one of Thach’s men was constantly posted outside the apartment door, and the others busied themselves with errands. One guard always slept there. At no time was Thach completely alone. Recommend that Thach not be approached at home.
The drive north, which Thach made early in the morning on the second Sunday of each month, was a distance just short of one hundred and fifty kilometers. One of his men would drive, while Thach sat in the passenger seat.
Because of the acute angle in the road twenty-one kilometers from the Saigon city limit, Thach’s vehicle must nearly stop in order to make turn. This turn is sixteen meters south of the An Loc Bridge. On the north shoulder of the road, thick underbrush and tall palms provide dense cover. Because Thach sits on the passenger side, he is exposed at this moment. When the trip is undertaken during favorable weather, the vehicle top is removed. He is exposed at kilometer twenty-one. He is approachable at this place and time. Resistance sympathy is high in this area now, both entry and escape would be possible. The road to Loc Ninh is not heavily traveled.
Frye read the material again, taking mental note of the particulars, then burned it in his sink.
Thach, he thought, with your monster’s face. Writer of books, user of whores. Recluse, traveler. Dispatcher of assassins. Target.
Frye was rinsing the ashes down his drain when someone knocked at his door. He looked through a side window to see Burke Parsons standing on his porch. Burke must have seen the blinds move: he cocked his head at Frye and waved.
Parsons thudded across Frye’s living room floor in his cowboy boots, hat in hand. “Hope you don’t mind me just bargin’ in like this, Chuck. You know, back in Texas, you got a open door policy with your friends. It’s a insult if they call you first.”
“It’s okay. I’m heading over to Mom’s and Dad’s for dinner in a while.”
“I won’t be but a minute. Reason I came is Rollie Dean Mack. I saw him after the fights that night and mentioned you. What I think is he didn’t rightly know what he was doing when he yanked that advertising from the Ledger. That’s what he acted like, anyhow. So I just told him I’d met you and what a good guy you were, and he seemed a little ashamed at blowing his stack and all. Anyway, he owed me one, so I called it in, and he said he’d be willing to start up those ads again if you’d just lay off his fighters and quit trying to interview him. I told him to just tell you himself, but he ain’t ever gonna talk to you. Says he hates reporters. So I got volunteered. Makes him feel important when someone else does his work, I think.”
Frye handed Burke a beer and sat down. “What’s he want in return?”
Burke looked at him, a little off balance, it seemed. “In return? Well, nothing he spoke of. See, Chuck, this is old
-boy network stuff. He owed me. So I just collected.”
Frye thought it over. “Is he going to talk to Billingham?”
“Said he would. So you ought to be getting a call one of these days. That’s assuming that the Ledger wants you back, Chuck.”
Frye smiled. “Thanks, Burke. Now I guess I owe you one.”
Parsons drank off half his beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his fist. “No hurt in being neighborly. Me and Lucia live down to Crescent Bay here in Laguna, just a mile or two from here. Lucia and Edison are working on that Paradiso, so I figured, why not help Chuck?”
“Lucia set for that next trip to Hanoi?”
“Been a change, Chuck. There’s some news that’s gonna make big headlines tonight. All the networks gonna carry it at seven. She talked to the President about this one. I think her travel plans are gonna change a bit now. You ought to tune in.”
“What’s the news?”
Burke smiled and spun his hat on a finger. “I don’t want to spring any leaks on this one, much as I’d like to help you out. My sister’s one hard-headed lady.”
“I get it.”
Parsons put on his hat and burped. “You know, Chuck, I worked with Bennett over in the Nam for a year, and we got to be friends. Back here in the States, we’ve still been at least acquaintances. But that sonofabitch is harder and harder to talk to these days. It’s like you can’t get nothing through to him. If you ever get the chance, could you make clear to him something that I’ve been trying to make clear for upwards of a week now?”
“What’s that?”
“That I’ll do what I can to help him, I’ve got myself. I’ve got some resources. I can get things done. I’ve told him that, but he just gets that thousand-yard stare. He don’t listen.”
“I’ll tell him.”
Parsons headed for the door. “I’m offering to help, is all. If Bennett wants, I’ll stay a million miles away. Man’s gotta have his privacy. You might just mention that to him, if you ever find him in a listening frame of mind.”
“Will do, Burke. Thanks again.”
“Let’s just wait and see if Mack comes through. Don’t believe a promise ‘til it happens.” Parsons tipped his hat. “See ya ‘round.”
Little Saigon Page 25