“Gosh, you weren’t supposed to be in on that one.”
“I was. What were you doing there, Burke?”
Parsons shook his head, stared down at his boots. “I was only tryin’ to get it wet, Chuck. Same as you. I have to admit one thing, and I ain’t ashamed of it, mostly—I love poontang. I took one look at her at the fights that night and I just had to have her. I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m really not. And I’m still working on the bitch, too. Cristobel’s the hardest piece of ass in the world to get. Last night I took her some flowers and sweet-talked her a little. I tried to kiss her up, but she didn’t like that a bit. She had some rape trouble up to Long Beach, is all I can figure. Gun shy.” For a moment Parsons looked at him with the exasperated good humor of a kid caught with a Playboy. “Hell, Chuck, you don’t own that girl, but I’ll lay off Crissy if she means that much to you. I got plenty other fields to plow. So far as her watching you, that just never occurred to me. Maybe it should have. Truth is, I don’t trust anybody enough for that kind of work. Especially some bimbo I don’t even know.”
“Do what you want, Burke.”
“Say no more. I can see I stepped out of line a bit with her. Hey, get over here and check out my critters. You’ll really like these, and I caught most of them myself.”
Frye stood before a huge glass cage. It was almost twenty feet long, six high and deep, with a eucalyptus branch lying in the middle. Half the floor space was a pond. The other half was all reptile, coiled upon itself like a rubber telephone pole, head resting, tongue easing in and out for leisurely whiffs of the atmosphere. The eyes were pale green, big as quarters, with elliptical pupils like a cat’s. The scales along its jaw looked like tile.
“Eunectes murinus,” said Burke. “Anaconda. He’s pushing twenty-six feet long and tips the scales about two-eighty.”
“What do you feed him?”
“You don’t want to know. Could eat a small man, though, if his shoulders weren’t too broad. Or a woman, easy. Probably eat your average Vietnamese real quick like and still have room for dessert.”
Frye looked at Parsons, who was studying the snake with a detached admiration. The animal began to move now, sliding against the glass with no visible means of locomotion. Frye felt the muscles in his back go cold.
“So what’s your next move, Chuck, far as Elite Management goes?”
“I’m not really sure. Any ideas?”
Parsons laughed. “I like you, Chuck. You’re the kinda fella’d drive a car salesman bugshit ‘cause you’d never make an offer ‘til you got one from him first. Now, if I were you, what I do about Elite would depend on what I’d done already.”
“I haven’t told anyone,” he lied. “If that’s what you’re thinking. Not Benny. Not Pop. Nobody.”
Parsons nodded along. “Now we’re getting somewhere, Chuck. It’s good you’ve kept this to yourself. That’s good for starters. See, it’s important in a situation like this that I stay mobile. I hate getting pinned down. What I find in this life is a whole bunch of snake pits that truly aren’t worth sticking your hand into, ‘less you like getting bit. Every now and then you find some sorry fella who does, but that ain’t you, Chuck. If I were you, I’d take a no-harm, no-foul outlook. I’d let things alone. I’d forget any quirks you might have noticed about the way another man does his business.” Burke led him past the anaconda’s cage to a stack of three smaller terrariums. “Top cage is Gaboon viper, longest fangs in the world, up to an inch and a half each. Middle one is black mamba, fastest snake in the world and the meanest. Believe me. Bottom is a good ol’ western diamondback, and that sucker weighs almost twenty-five pounds. Caught him myself, right outside El Paso. I used some snakes in the war when I questioned prisoners. Cong hated them. Couple of times, things got out of hand. Poor Charlie, he hated to see me comin’ with a duffel bag and a putting iron. Putting iron makes a good snake-stick. Anyhow, you can get a feel for those snake dens of life I was talking about.”
Frye bent down for a look at the rattler. It was big around as a softball, with a head like a slice of pie, and dark diamonds on a desert-bleached background.
Burke went to the next cage, smiled, and pointed. “That there is commonly held to be the baddest serpent of the land. King cobra, Chuck, ophiophagus hannah. They get to eighteen, twenty feet, but Charlotte here is only but twelve. Forty-thousand folks a year die of snakebite, and Charlotte’s kind do their share of it. They’re not aggressive, really—kind of lazy in fact. They’re like me. You get ’em riled up, though, and look out! Here, I’ll introduce you proper.”
Burke pulled a pin from the cage top and swung it open. He tapped on the glass with the backs of his fingers and said something to the snake. Then he reached in and took her by the middle, hefting a coil up and dipping in his other hand to get more. The more he pulled and lifted, the longer the snake seemed to get. Then he stepped back, twelve feet of cobra sliding around his body as if it were a tree, its head free, tongue darting. “Charlotte,” he said, “meet Chuck Frye.” Burke grinned from behind a looping, pale green curl.
“Defanged?”
“Nope. She’s loaded, just like my guns. But she’s friendly. Here, like to hold her?”
“No thanks.”
“Don’t be shy, Chuck. Don’t want to hurt her feelings now, do ya?”
Burke gathered the animal, its head still waving free through the air, and arranged her over Frye’s shoulders. Frye felt his legs go heavy and his ears start to ring. The snake was cool, and he could feel the muscles inside it, precise, mechanical, effortlessly bunching and sliding over his own. He supported the last three feet of her with his left arm. Charlotte cranked her blunt, heavy head to him and looked him straight in the face.
“Now, Chuck, if Charlotte here were to zap you right in the snout, where she’s aiming, you’d scream, untangle her, run up the stairs, and croak before you hit the patio.”
The snake pointed her tongue at Frye, wiggled it, took it back.
A freight train roared through Frye’s brain. He felt the sweat rolling down his back and sides.
I’m not going to show it, he thought. I’m not going to give Burke one bit of satisfaction in this.
When he looked at Parsons, it pleased him that what he felt strongest now was not fear, though he felt that too, but rather a clear, uncomplicated rage. It felt good inside him, somehow familiar, somehow new.
“I’m glad to know that, Burke.”
“It’s a neurotoxic venom—stops your heart and just about every other moving part you got. Turns your nervous system to soup. Over in Asia, an elephant steps on a big cobra, gets nipped, and falls over dead a minute later. That’s power, Chuck. Over in the ‘Nam now, I’d use vipers on account of their poison works slower and burns a helluva lot more. Eats up your flesh, muscles, the works. Man, I got some interrogation results with my little bag of snakes. And the same putter I’d play nine holes with in the mornings, too!”
Charlotte’s head moved away, and Frye eased his hand under it for support. She reeled back and he saw the eyes coming at him, scales getting bigger, tongue out. On his shoulder, her head was light and cool and the scales slid against his neck like leather buttons.
“You couldn’t do that with a pit viper, Chuck, on account of they sense the heat and zap it. Charlotte here’s a more primitive model. She’s slower too. Fast movement, though, she don’t like one bit. That’ll set her off, and she’ll get mad as all get out and zap whatever she can hit.”
“Guess at this point, it would be me.”
Burke stepped forward with an opaque grin and tapped her head. He tapped it again.
The head rose, took on a certain fierce alert, and tracked Burke’s hand as it moved away. Frye could feel his chest hitting cotton.
“Anyway, Chuck, the main reason I want to see you is just to say I can help you on the job. Now for my askin’ price—I just want you to lay off snooping around my business at all hours of the goddamned night and basically stay the fuck out of
my life. You forget about Rollie Dean. You got a problem with the way I make a living, that’s too bad. I don’t believe for one second you haven’t squawked to Bennett or that blond airhead I’m trying to bang. I can understand that. What I’m asking is you just lay off and leave me and my sister alone and let the law take care of the law. I don’t ask twice, Chuck. I got a good thing going and I ain’t about to let you mess it up. What the hell good would it do? You just go back to work instead of paying so much attention to other people’s business, and the world’ll keep spinning like it’s supposed to. Am I being clear on this here proposal?”
“Pretty damned.”
“Think I’m asking too much?”
“Your timing is odd.”
“How do you feel?”
“Tarzanesque.”
Parsons waved his hand before Charlotte again, then studied Frye. “That’s my best and final, Chuck. I think it’s a good offer, a fair trade. Frankly, though, I can’t figure you out. You’re an unknown quantity, and that makes me and Charlotte a bit nervous. You’re no idiot though, so I think you can see I’m being fair here.”
Burke stepped forward again and fanned his hand in front of Charlotte’s face. She reared, wavered, held still. Then she spread her hood—two phantasmagoric flaps rising from her neck, scales spreading against translucent skin, a milky white light showing through between the rows. Frye felt her weight shifting as she swayed. His arm was getting tired. A drop of sweat burned into his eye. Charlotte’s head pivoted as Burke moved to the side, then behind Frye. She swayed, seemed to focus on Frye’s mouth. She was two feet away. Her tail dug into his crotch.
“We got an understanding now, Chuck?”
“We do.”
“I knew you’d do business. You’re sensible after all. Rollie Dean you’re just gonna forget about, right?”
“That’s right.”
“No word to anybody?”
“Not one.”
“There are a number of points being made in this conversation, Chuck, and it’s important that you grasp them. The bottom line is, you mess with me, and you’re betting a dollar to make a dime. It just plain ain’t worth it.”
Burke reappeared in the corner of his vision. Frye sensed a flash of movement and felt the snake’s body tighten around his own. Parsons stood back, Charlotte’s head in his hand now. He was laughing. “Like winding up a garden hose, Chuck!”
Burke stepped back, hauling the snake with him. Frye could feel her tail dragging across his pants, then up his belly as Burke pulled her off.
A moment later he was stuffing the last of the light green body back into the cage, still holding her head in his right fist. “Charlotte don’t like going back in, so I gotta hold her like this. Actually, I don’t trust the bitch. Every inch a woman, isn’t she?”
“Not like any I know.”
“You haven’t been around enough.” Burke snapped the cage top shut, looked at Frye, and wiped a hand across Frye’s forehead. He looked at his fingertips. “Not bad, Chuck. Not any more than I’d have sweated. I hope you don’t interpret any of that as a threat. There’s a million ways to get things done in this world.”
Frye felt his pulse evening, the numb fear draining from his legs. But still, what he felt most was this new anger, non-negotiable, uncluttered. “You only need one, if it works.”
Parsons laughed, walking toward the stairs. “Amen to that, young man. You want to know something weird? That kind of shit does absolutely nothing to me. Nothing. To me, there’s nothing inside when it comes to violence, except it’s a tool. It’s like clipping your nails. That, basically, is where I stand.”
“I see.”
They walked up the stairs, Parsons first. The library door swung open automatically, its motor groaning. Frye easily imagined yanking Burke down the stairs, letting him fall, and strangling him at the bottom. He laughed to himself. That, basically, is where I stand.
“What you grinnin’ at, Chuck?”
“Thanks for the tour. Sensible household pets are hard to find.”
“You ought to be here at feeding time, Chuck. It’s just like hell, and you get to watch. Gonna stick around a while?”
“I’ve got a freedom rally to catch.”
“Oh, that thing. Hope someone shows.”
CHAPTER 27
SAIGON PLAZA WAS SWELLING WITH Vietnamese when Frye arrived just before sunset. He couldn’t believe it. Banners and flags flapped in the breeze, booths lined the perimeter of the roped-off parking lot, streams of dark heads flowed in from the streets. Three patrol cars waited near the plaza entrance. Two more had come into the lot.
He joined the flow of bodies moving in. The entrance ticket cost five dollars and said FREE VIETNAM in English, with Vietnamese writing on the other side. A cop frisked him on his way through. Frye could smell food cooking—a spicy aroma that immediately made him hungry. Squeezing through a temporary archway that served as the official portal, he looked up to see a huge poster of Li’s face, her eyes focused, it seemed, on the setting sun.
Massive reproductions of Thach’s ruined face hung beside those of Li, with DEATH TO THACH emblazoned below in red.
A stage had been built near the center of the plaza, bathed in bright lights and festooned with Vietnamese and American flags. The podium was draped with a sign in both languages: DESTROY COMMUNISM, LIBERATE VIETNAM, FREE LI. Frye studied the backdrop—three versions of Li’s face, all taken from her album covers. He could see Nguyen Hy, sharply dressed in white linen, directing some activity behind the microphone. Beside the stage stood two men in dark suits, their arms crossed. More Feds, Frye guessed. Two others lingered on the far side, another munched distractedly beside a food booth. He spotted Wiggins talking to air NBC reporter. There were rows of chairs set up on the asphalt, but not even half enough, he guessed. Already the booths were surrounded by people buying food. In one booth a bingolike game progressed, with dozens of players studying little cards with numbers on them. The barker was a short man, his stubby arm turning a wire cage filled with numbered cubes, his voice a ceaseless syllabic river.
Strange, he thought, but it’s all so quiet here. Nothing more than a low murmur, and already a couple of thousand people. Most of them wore black. Their faces revealed nothing. They looked joyless but not anguished, full of purpose but without focus, eager with impacted patience. The lights bore down and the people waited.
A young woman slipped past Frye, glancing at him, and he could see the fear—a minor tension was all she gave away—just a flicker in her eyes. The barker pulled another winner. A middle-aged man stepped forward, ticket raised. He received an envelope, then backed again into the crowd. How few of that age you see here, Frye realized: a generation decimated by the war.
He bought skewers of Vietnamese sausage on a bed of noodles, and two oddish, green blocks of gel wrapped in plastic for dessert. The Committee to Free Vietnam booth was busy. Standing outside the office, workers handed out pamphlets, pointing at the collection of Secret-War-zone photographs, taking names and numbers. One of the girls recognized Frye and waved him over.
“You like Vietnamese food?” she asked.
“Real good,” said Frye.
“All the money raised tonight goes to free Li,” she said.
Frye noted the long table set up on the sidewalk. The CFV workers were taking donations, which went directly from the outstretched hands of the Vietnamese into a gray safe. Ones, tens, twenties, a small jade necklace, pearl earrings. An old woman offered fifty cents. Then she stood there with tears running down her face and worked a ring from her finger. She handed it over. “Li Frye,” she said. “Tự do hay là chết.”
The girl looked at Frye. “She say, ‘Freedom or death.’”
She smiled faintly and pointed out a picture on the CFV display. It showed a fragment of the Secret Army, eight heavily armed men. They appeared to be in the jungle somewhere, a camp perhaps. Frye studied the intensity of their faces, wondering what chance they had. Eighteen y
ears old, he guessed, twenty? What spirit moved them into the jungle, against impossible odds, toward a martyrdom so puny it would be forgotten before their blood was dry? Maybe not, he thought: maybe all these people here would remember. That’s where Li comes in. Keeping the memory alive. The memory tender.
“Secret Army,” she said, still pointing.
“They’re so young.”
“Passion is not for the old. They are in Ben Cat, then in Bien Hoa, then in Saigon itself. No one can find them. They destroyed the bridge at Long Binh ten days ago. After that, they destroyed thirty-seven Communists near Cu Chi. Then, into the jungle, like a panther.”
“How many of them are there?”
“Many. They are feared. They sneak into Saigon to meet with the resistance. They move across the border into Kampuchea. The Khmer Rouge help them, because they hate the Vietnamese. They steal supplies and disappear.”
She looked at him placidly. “For freedom. Please give.”
Frye nodded and dug out twenty bucks. Down to twelve dollars and change, he thought: I gotta get a job. He wandered toward the stage, where Nguyen was making a sound check. Hy looked down, grinned, and pointed to a small trailer parked behind the stage.
Donnell Crawley stood outside it, arms crossed, dark glasses on. He shook Frye’s hand and almost crushed it. “He’s inside,” said Donnell. “Things are going pretty good, I think.”
“I can’t believe the turnout.”
“Didn’t surprise me. These Vietnamese got a lot of heart.”
He found Bennett sitting in the trailer, a cordless telephone on his lap. He was wearing a suit and his prosthetic legs. His crutches leaned against a small refrigerator. Frye sat down. The trailer was hot and the windows were closed.
“What did Burke Parsons say?”
“He told me to lay off or he’d sick his snake on me.”
“He pulled that shit in ‘Nam, too. I hope you agreed.”
Frye nodded.
“Good. How about Lucia? Beaming after her big moment in Washington?”
“Burke did all the talking.”
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