Little Saigon

by T. Jefferson Parker

  “When I got back out, Debbie was still there. She was grinning like an idiot. My heart was doing back-flips. Then I looked outside and the next set was lining up. Biggest of the day so far. We had to paddle like hell just to make it over the lead wave. Then two more. I looked across from me and watched the other guys paddling too—they looked like an army of ants riding sticks. Deb got outside faster. The next thing I knew she was dropping in on the cleanup wave. It was just too goddamned big. She stroked a couple of times. She looked at me, like, watch this.

  “It lifted her up and she tried to stand, but she was going too fast and she pitched. It had her. It drove her down. She just kept falling, but she wasn’t free of the thing, she was imbedded in it, this little girl in a black wetsuit stuck in the curl, trapped like a fly in amber. The board spiraled down after her. I sat there and waited. When you look at a big wave from the back, all you see are these big muscles of water bearing down, then you hear the boom, then you feel the world tremble, then you see the whitewater shooting up like a geyser. I kept waiting for it to bring her up. Five seconds? Ten? I don’t know. What I do know is I was there in the middle of it, diving down with my eyes open and not seeing a thing except a green swirl everywhere I looked. Then coming up and screaming for help. Back down again. Then up. Then a bunch of guys diving down too, and lifeguards, and a few minutes later the rescue boat roaring up and almost capsizing when the next set hit.”

  Frye closed his eyes and saw it all again, clearly as the morning it had happened. He could feel the burn of the saltwater, the ache in this throat as he screamed and went down again, the cold sludge of sand under his fingertips as he clawed along the unyielding, treasure-less bottom.

  “They found her twenty minutes later, wrapped around the last piling of the pier.”

  They lay still. Frye listened to the cars below. He could hear Denise’s stereo throbbing away down the hill. The curtains floated with the breeze.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Chuck.”

  “Maybe, Maybe not. But I was the last one with a chance to do something, and I didn’t take it. I could have stopped her before she left home. I could have taken her board. I could have just chased her down and dragged her in. There were a million little things that might have prevented what happened. It never got said that way, but that’s what mom and pop thought too. I could see it in their faces. After it happened, nothing was quite the same.”

  “You’ve never talked about it.”

  “Tried to a couple of times. Didn’t want to grovel.”

  “That’s not groveling, it’s wrestling. You have to wrestle it until you pin it down and it leaves you alone. Is that why the water gets to you now? The dizzy spells you told me about?”

  “I don’t know. I thought it started when I banged my head a few months ago. I thought it was that, but the doctor says I’m fine. Now, under the water, or in a cave or tunnel. Even in my bed sometimes, when the covers are pulled up too tight—I just can’t handle it.”

  “Sometimes, it just takes a long while to heal. Believe me.”

  “I believe you.”

  “I love you, Chuck Frye. I want to spend some time with you. Get under that skin of yours.”

  He looked at her, touched her face, looked into her dark brown eyes. “Those words sound good to me.”

  She led him to the bedroom and shut the door.

  They were dozing when the phone rang. It was Shelly from Elite Management, who had stopped by the office to get a couple of “rilly good joints” she’d left in her desk. As she had driven away, Rollie Dean Mack had driven in. “He didn’t see me, so I thought I’d call you. You still, like, wanna see him?”

  Frye considered. “Sure I do. What kind of car does he drive?”

  “Black Jaguar. Totally rad.”

  “Totally. Thanks, Shelly.”

  Cristobel pulled the blanket up, and snuggled close. “Who was that?”

  Frye explained. Cristobel seemed to shrink away a little. “Something wrong?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Want to come with me?”

  She checked her watch, then looked at Frye for a long moment. “I should go. I’ve got an early shift at the towers tomorrow.”

  “Suit yourself. You okay, Cris?”

  She dressed quickly, slung her purse over her shoulder, and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Can’t you just get a job somewhere else? Quit screwing with this Mack character?”

  “I liked my job. I liked the Ledger. And everybody else wants five years experience. I got one and a half. Besides, there’s something strange going on at Elite. I’d like to know what. I could use another set of eyes and ears.”

  “No. But good luck.”

  The black Jaguar was out front, parked beside a long white Cadillac. The lights of Elite Management were on. Frye sat for a moment in his car, composing his story to Mack: I saw it as a dive, but I might have been wrong. I gave your fighters better coverage than anybody else did. Let’s forget the piece on the welterweight. You reinstate your ads, and I’ll get my job back.

  What I might not ask, just yet, is why Lucia Parsons has the keys to your suite at the Sherrington, or why you never come to work.

  He climbed the stairs and went to the door. He could hear a voice inside, drawling away. Something about it was familiar. He stopped his fist just short of knocking, then moved to a side window. The blinds were cracked open just enough to see inside.

  The lobby was empty. But through the open door he could see Burke Parsons, phone to his ear. Behind him sat General Dien, arms crossed.

  But no Rollie Dean Mack.

  Parsons hung up. The phone rang a second later. He answered, checked his watch, slammed down the phone, and stood. “Come on, General.”

  Frye flew down the stairs as fast and as lightly as he could. He realized he’d parked three cars away from the Jaguar.

  He dodged around a corner and ran along the first-level suites. He pressed into a dark doorway, flattening against it as best he could.

  Parsons and Dien moved quickly toward the lot. The General stopped beside Frye’s car and said something. Burke got into the Jaguar and started it up. His voice echoed across the lot. “Come on, Dien. We don’t have all fuckin’ night, now do we?”

  The general shuffled toward his Caddy. Frye watched the Jag back up, straighten, then bounce from the Elite Management parking lot onto Palisade. Dien’s car followed.

  Parsons, he thought. Of course you know Mack. Of course Lucia has a key to his suite at the Sherrington. Of course you could ask Mack a favor. You are Mack.

  Frye sat in his living room for a few minutes, wondering why Burke Parsons had gotten him fired. No matter which way he turned it, he couldn’t make sense of it.

  The phone rang just after one A.M. Detective John Minh sounded exhausted. “I’ve been here since eight this morning,” he said. “Did you hear about the banners?”

  “What banners?”

  “Draped all around Saigon Plaza sometime last night. They said ‘Thach Watches,’ ‘Thach Knows,’ ‘Thach Sees.’ I got there at nine and there must have been two hundred refugees milling around the plaza, staring at the things. By noon the place was deserted. Nobody but FBI. They got those banners down very quickly. No one’s going out. Everybody thinks they’ve seen some old ghost from the war now. I’ve got a stack of reported sightings a foot high—Viet Cong murderers, Dac Cong torturers, traitors of every description. Everybody’s carrying a gun. Just after dark, an old Vietnamese shot someone trying to get into his house. It was his son, who’d forgotten his key. An hour after that I found the Dark Men and Ground Zero patrolling their neighborhoods on foot. More guns on them than you could count. Tonight around ten, Loc tried to get into Dien’s house. Dien’s guards found him inside the fence and shot him down. They said he fired first. It’s crazy up here. Now listen, Frye, I shouldn’t have taken the time to look into this rape thing, but I got the answers you need. I checked with the police in Long Beach, Los Angeles, San Ped
ro, Wilmington, Seal Beach and Portuguese Bend. L.A. county sheriffs, too. Nobody named Cristobel Strauss was raped up there. Not in the last ten years, anyway.”

  Frye’s felt his heart accelerating. “Oh.”

  “Maybe she’s a little crazy, Chuck.”

  “Maybe. Thanks.”

  He called Cristobel but the line was busy.

  He went back out to the Cyclone.

  The blue apartments were dark and the traffic on Coast Highway was thin. Frye parked in front of the bookstore and wondered just what he was going to say. The truth of it was, he didn’t have any idea.

  The house lights were dim. Frye looked through the window and saw nothing. Then, two silhouettes materialized on her deck that overlooked the water. He moved to the railing and peered around the corner. They stood on the deck, the water sparkling black behind them.

  One was Cristobel, and the other was Burke.

  He couldn’t make out their words because of the surf rushing in below. He could see that Cristobel was sobbing. She was outlined against the ocean: face in her hands, hair spilling forward, back quivering. Parsons reached out and drew her to him. He lifted her chin with a finger and put his mouth on hers. Then a muted crack of flesh against flesh, and Burke’s head snapped. Cristobel crossed her arms, and Parsons laughed.

  The next set of waves drowned him out. Frye headed down the stairs and back to his car.

  CHAPTER 25

  JUST AFTER SUNRISE FRYE CLAMBERED Upward from a dream of dark water and headless bodies to the sound of someone moving across his living room. The old floor creaked; he could sense the weight and motion, the secretive tiptoe of the intruder.

  He slipped from the damp sheets, pulled on a robe, and took Bennett’s .45 from under the bed. Backing along the hallway, he heard something rustle in the kitchen. His heart thrashed like a sparrow in a shopping bag. He held the gun to his chest, sidled into the living room, and drew down on the woman just as she turned. The briefcase fell from her hand.

  “Jesus, Chuck!”

  “Linda.”

  “Don’t kill me. It’s just a divorce.”

  Frye lowered the weapon, hands shaking. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people.”

  “I guess not. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  He placed the .45 in the silverware drawer and slid it shut. “The pressures of modern life.”

  “Pressure was never your specialty. But why the gun?”

  “I had a break-in.” Frye felt cold, idiotic. He put on some water to boil and Linda went to the living room.

  She sat on his lacerated couch. He watched her as he mixed the instant. Same auburn hair, same quick brown eyes, same sad mouth. She had a briefcase beside her. She lit a cigarette.

  Frye sat down across from her. “You look good.”

  “Thanks, Chuck.”

  “Like New York?”

  “It’s not for everyone.” Linda balanced the case on her legs now, swung open the top and pulled out a sheaf of legal papers. “It’s preliminary stuff. I’m not asking for any material settlement.”

  “Half of nothing isn’t much.”

  “No,” she said quietly. “Anything of mine you want?”

  “It’s all still here. Take what you need.”

  “I’m settled in. It’s yours.”

  “Ken there yet?”

  “He moved out two weeks ago. Got a job with Kidder Peabody. What happened to the couch?”

  “Medflies. How’d it go in Detox Mansion?”

  “I’ll never touch that shit again, if that’s what you mean. Anton bailed on me when I checked in.”

  “I knew he would. They got him three weeks ago with half a kilo and two-hundred grand cash.”

  “I know. I saw him yesterday for a minute. He’s at it again. I got out of there pretty fast.”

  “Time for a quickie, though?”

  Linda shut the briefcase top, snapped the latches. “I could have had my lawyers send this over, Chuck. But I thought we could maybe be okay just for a few minutes. You gotta just realize how crazy it all was. Anton and I … I was in the grip.”

  “I’d have rather you paid him in cash.”

  “We didn’t have any cash.”

  The cigarette burned down in the ashtray. Frye signed the papers.

  Linda wiped a big tear away, but another formed to replace it. “Baby, we messed it up so bad.”

  “I know.”

  “It all happened so fast, and now I’m a million miles away, and I don’t know anyone but Ken, I miss you, Chuck.”

  He moved to hold her, but she stood, briefcase sliding to the floor with a thud. “No. I’m gutting this one out, I just have to cut it off clean, Chucky. In New York I’m Linda Stowe, and I got a job and a flat, and there’s nothing crazy inside me. Here, I’m just a mess of a girl.” She wiped her eyes again, futilely. She looked down at him. “I know you loved me when I was a mess of a girl, but I couldn’t keep that up. I got a life too, you know. Your idea was always to break things up just to watch the parts fly around. That white stuff got to me. You weren’t supposed to let that happen. It hits different people different ways. Just because you could take it or leave it, didn’t mean I could. Oh, hell, Chuck, we’ve been through this before. I should have let the lawyer do this.”

  Frye felt like killing himself. In the silence that followed, he knew that everything she said was true, but it was far less a comfort than either of them needed.

  “Did you ever tell the cops who the Mystery Maid was?” she asked.

  “Nobody.”

  “Not even your folks?”

  “No.”

  “Swirk find out in that stupid contest of his?”

  “Nobody’d tell him. We had good friends.”

  She sat back down, her composure thin as makeup. “Good. If Dad knew that was my ass all over the front page, he’d disown me. He really would.”

  “Your secret’s safe.”

  “You know, Chuck, one of the things I wanted you to do was bring out the worst in me. Then when you did, I freaked. We were borderline depraved, some of the stuff we did.”

  “We had our moments.”

  She smiled through a smear of mascara and tears, a little wickedness in her, even now. Linda was always game, he thought. In the end, a little too game with her dealer, a few too many nights with the sun coming up and the blues rolling in to claim her like a cold, dark tide. In the end, we all skipped the fun and went straight to the weird. We were all just willing victims of the age. The whole spoiled, rich, gutless, fucked-up generation.

  Strange, he thought, it’s all part of another time now.

  “You ever—?”

  “No more.”

  “That’s good. You were always stronger.” Linda picked up her cigarette butt and shook her head. “I hate these things. One habit for another. Well, I’ll go now. God’s truth is I wanted to see you again. It’s going to be a while, Chuck. When this is final, Ken and I are going—”

  “I don’t want to hear about it.”

  For one terrible moment he saw Linda steering her old convertible up the driveway, her hair flying and her Wayfarers on, saw her walking up to the cave-house looking so good, smiling at Denise. Then he saw her heading down a gray cold street in New York City, crying like she was now. There just has to be a better way, he thought, to treat the people we love. “I’m glad things are working out for you. In my own weird way, I’m always gonna love you, Linda.”

  “Me too. Got another girl?”

  Frye thought of Cristobel. “Not exactly.”

  “I’m just shattered, about Li. Anything new?”

  Frye told her everything he could, which wasn’t much. No sense, he thought, getting someone else involved. He expressed confidence in the FBI and Minh, but she must have heard his insincerity.

  She wiped away a tear. “What about all the kids she brings over from the camps?”

  “I guess they’ll have to wait.”

  “Is that why they took her, to stop t
hat?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  A blade of anger flashed in Linda’s lovely, red-rimmed eyes. “They should have thought about those children. She brought more of them over here than anyone else ever did. The time she took me to LAX to pick some up, it just took my heart away, these little rugrats pouring down the ramp and she was the one they ran to. She was the one they needed when they got here. The bastards who kidnapped her should have seen those faces. They might have thought twice about ruining all that. How are the last batch doing—Trinh and Ha and that little girl with the speech problem?”

  “I think they’re all okay.”

  Linda wiped her eyes with a tissue, then tossed it into the briefcase. “Li can make it through. She’s like a nail wrapped in silk and perfume. Benny’s probably taking this like a good Marine, isn’t he?”

  “That’s Benny.”

  “That’s the Fryes. You’re all just goddamned Marines, when it comes down to the way you live your lives. Give my love to them anyway.” She stood in the doorway, the bright morning sun and the tan hills of Laguna Canyon behind her shoulder. “Good-bye, Chuck. I wish … I wish we both could have settled for a little bit more.”

  “Me too. Good-bye, Linda.”

  Just before noon the phone rang. It was Julie at the Asian Wind. She was looking for Bennett. She’d called everywhere she could think of and couldn’t find him. “He asked me to call him if General Dien did anything out of the ordinary. He has set up a meeting in my private room. He often does his business here. He has requested the room for a party of four, just one hour from now.”

  Frye hesitated a moment. “I don’t know where Benny is.”

  “I’m not sure why he wanted me to keep an eye on the general. I only told him I would let him know. I trust your brother. The general, I do not.”

  “How good is that one-way window of yours?”

  “How did you know about that?”

  “I found it when I was in the dressing room.”

  “It’s very good. The FBI installed it eight years ago, because they believed that Communist agents were using my club as a meeting place. The light fixture on the ceiling contains a listening device. They used it a few times, then quit coming in.”