Little Saigon

by T. Jefferson Parker

  Li told him what had happened in the last six days—being taken underground at the Dream Reader, coming up blindfolded somewhere else, a two-hour ride in the trunk of a car with ropes and a gag cutting into her flesh, then the endless days of Thach’s interrogation, the dirt and thirst in the closet where they kept her.

  “Why didn’t you recognize him until tonight?”

  “I never really saw him,” she said. “He was always in partial darkness, or wearing sunglasses. The light was painful to his eyes. It was so strange. He began by questioning me about the resistance positions, but he didn’t really seem to care. He gave up so easily. At the time I thought I was wearing him down, but now I know that Kim would be supplying him with all this information soon. So he talked of Saigon and An Cat, and prodded me into memories. He was very curious about Lam and Bennett and me. He wanted to know every detail of the meetings. Most of all, he wanted to know how I felt about the two men. Who I loved more, and why, and how I came to my decision to go to Bennett. More than once, I wondered if this man could be Lam. But it seemed impossible. For days I sat there on the stool in the dark, remembering.”

  Li squeezed his hand and looked up with her dull eyes. “I acted as I believed, Chuck. And if Bennett told me a lie to kill my love of Lam, then it was a lie that I believed even before he spoke it.”

  Then Li hugged herself and bowed over. She began to sway gently. Frye watched the tears hit the black cotton of her pants. From across the living room, Edison and Hyla looked in through the French doors.

  Frye took a long shower, then sat with his mother and father and Li for a while. No one said anything. An hour later, he walked out to the dock. The night was cool now and a thin fog hovered over the water. The house lights across the bay shone through, magnified, dulled. Hyla’s keening issued from the bedroom.

  He could feel his brother inside himself, tangible, actual. He could remember it all perfectly, every look and every word that Bennett had given him. I can feel you, Benny, he thought, I can almost see you. Like right there, just fifty yards off the dock here when we caught that blue shark and tried to stuff it with newspaper. When we made those wings out of wood and Mom’s dress and you tried them out from the roof and broke your ankles. The way you looked when you were mad, eyes all big and the pupils little and, you fucker, you’d heave me down and stuff sand in my mouth or hit me in the stomach so hard I’d gasp for breath while you laughed and gasped along with me. The way you’d get even madder if any other kid but you tried to do that to me. I remember the way you looked in that Little League uniform, the way you got the socks to stay up and look like the pros, the way you batted like Yasztremski. The way you pitched the playoff game with your left arm in a cast and still got a three-hitter against Orange. I remember the way you looked for the proms, with those stupid sideburns halfway down to your chin. I remember the way you rode that big old board in storm surf and got your picture in Surfer magazine. I remember the way you went and fought. They didn’t even have to draft you. I remember the way you stood up for me at my wedding, even though you didn’t have much left to stand on. I see now that you lost more than your legs over there, you lost part of your heart too, and that’s the wound that wouldn’t heal, that’s what was hardest to live without. I can see how you tried. And I see now the way you never gave up trying to make it all mean something, the way you just plain wouldn’t stop until there was nothing left, and that’s what it came down to, brother, nothing left of you at all.

  He tried to gather his thoughts, piece together the collusion that had sent Bennett alone to his death. Surely, thought Frye, Burns sat on the information. As surely as Toibin and Michelsen were called off at the eleventh hour. The Feds are probably up in Mojave right now, clearing out the bodies, tidying up the scene. They’ll leave a Vietnamese or two, drum up some identification for them, and make it look like a ransom drop gone wrong. Thach’s body will disappear forever. And they’ll sit hard on me and Li to keep our mouths shut. How hard?

  Five minutes later, the white belly of a chopper lowered from the darkness to the helipad. Frye watched Special Agent Wiggins and Senator Lansdale duck the blades and hurry toward the house. Not long after that, the two men, with Li in tow, headed for the cottage. Wiggins broke away and headed toward Frye.

  He stood on the dock, just a few feet away. “We’re awfully sorry about Bennett,” he said.

  “I’ll bet you are.”

  “Chuck, we’d like to talk to you now. First you alone, then Li, then the two of you together. It’s very important.”

  Frye stood up and tried to walk past him. Wiggins caught his arm. “I can put you under protective arrest, if I have to.”

  “Please don’t.” Frye turned and hit Wiggins as hard as he could, an uppercut just under the sternum. The punch started down in his toes. He was amazed how far his fist went in. The special agent huffed and his hands flew out, beating like the wings of a landing bird as he fell backward into the water.

  Frye went to the cottage, peered through a window and saw Lansdale explaining something to Li, his hands out for emphasis, an imploring look on his face. She glanced up at Frye, and he was sure she was about to break down.

  Back in the main house, he found Edison lurking near a window, trying to see into the cottage. He looked at Frye forlornly.

  “They’re hurting Li, Pop. Why don’t you throw them off your property? Or at least sit in so you can hear the lies they’ll want her to tell about your son.”

  Edison hesitated, then breathed deeply, slammed open the door, and marched across the lawn toward his cottage. The dogs started yapping. Wiggins slogged to intercept him, but Edison just bellowed and walked past. Frye had never loved his father so much in all his life.

  The cave-house was dark and empty.

  Your money is filthy to me … I demanded it satisfy my allies in this campaign.

  Frye thought: What I have to do now is deal with the final mover and shaker. He’ll come for the ransom cash. Thach didn’t want it, but he tried to collect it for his partner. Now I’ve got it, safe in the cave beside a box of Christmas ornaments. And anyone who would orchestrate all this will certainly come for the payoff. Why didn’t I know that it was Dien, all along? The connections here, and in Vietnam. The greed. The tape of DeCord. The showpiece shooting at the Wind, to move suspicion from him. The millions of dollars he leeched from his believers, so he could sink them into the Laguna Paradiso. Organizing the terror of his own city, to drum up more resistance, raise more money. And the final scam: Help Thach kidnap Li, then cash out. When his money isn’t at the airstrip, he’ll know something went wrong. When he finds out I’m alive, he’ll come.

  It doesn’t matter, he thought. I’ll be ready.

  Frye checked the time on the wall clock, then put a blank tape into his cassette recorder and slid it under a newspaper on the coffee table. He checked the clip in the .45 that Bennett had given him, jacked a round into the chamber, and flicked off the safety. Carefully, he placed it under the couch cushion, handle out.

  He got his old shotgun from under the bed, took it outside and sawed off most of the barrel with a hacksaw he used to cut out surfboards. He removed the plug, pushed one round into the ejection port, then four more into the magazine. He took it back to the cave and placed it in the box of Christmas stuff. The two suitcases sat behind the box.

  He wandered. He checked his Grow-Bug: it was up to five inches now. He made coffee, took a cup back to the sofa, sat down, and waited.

  It was one of those nights when you hear everything, whether you want to or not: the electricity buzzing in the power lines outside, the individual swish of each car on the road below, the ticking of the clock that you never once heard tick in the five years it’s been there. He breathed deeply but it didn’t do any good.

  I’m safer here than anywhere else, he thought. Except the island, and I won’t have them coming onto the island for the money. I’m on my own ground. There’s no time to bring Donnell here, and Pop needs Arb
uckle. Minh, if I could even trust him, would be out of jurisdiction. And I wouldn’t believe the Feds if they said hello.

  Why not stay with the Laguna cops, let Dien come and go, and find no one here and his ransom money gone? I’ll tell you why, because I’m past the point of being a good citizen. Was never cut out for it anyway, Because it’s time and evidence and lawyers and courts and plea bargains and reduced sentences and early paroles and what I truly feel the need for here is some tangible satisfaction.

  He was sitting on the couch with a fresh cup when he heard the car coming up his driveway, saw the headlights slide against the walls, then die. Outside, an engine shut off, a door opened and closed. Exactly twenty-three minutes from the time I got here, he saw: he must have been waiting on the Canyon Road. Was it Wiggins who tipped him, or “Burns”? Does it matter? With a shaking hand he found the tape recorder and switched it on. He rearranged the newspapers. He touched the handle of the .45, concealed well within the cushion of the couch. Footsteps. A knock.

  “Door’s open.”

  To Frye’s disbelief, it was Burke Parsons who peered in, looked around, and shut the door behind him. He was tan and fit, with a white shirt open to his chest, a blue blazer and a pair of expensive jeans. “Hello, Chuck. My money was gone, and so were you, so I figured something went wrong. I thought you’d be here sooner.”

  Frye just stared at Burke. “I was with Mom and Dad.”

  Burke walked slowly toward him, hands out a little, palms up, an innocent man. “That must have been real hard.”

  “Worst day of my life, Burke.”

  Parsons stood beside the chair across from him. “You’re awfully cool right now, Chuck. Where’s the gun?”

  “No guns.”

  Burke pulled a big automatic from his coat pocket and leveled it at Frye’s chest. “Don’t mind if I have a quick look, do you?”

  “Go right ahead.”

  Parsons waved him up. Frye stood while Burke patted him down, twice. “All I can say is I’m about done with you Fryes. Not that it hasn’t been a pleasure all along. What I need from you is my ransom money and I’ll just be on my way.”

  Burke stepped back and looked at Frye. For a moment he stood there, and Frye could see that he was listening, watching, smelling, sensing. His brow furrowed. “Something’s wrong here, Chuck. I just know it.”

  Burke smiled, kept the pistol aimed at Frye while he bent over and ran his hand under the couch cushion.

  On his second pass, he brought out Bennett’s .45. “Well what do you know, Chuck.”

  Frye sat down.

  “Now, you have my money?”

  “What money?”

  Parsons studied him again, his face darkening. “Something’s still wrong, Chuck. What is it? You ask too many questions, and you ask them too fast. Do I smell a tape recorder? Isn’t that what I should expect from a reporter type?”

  He leaned over the coffee table and poked through the mess of newspapers with the tip of his gun. He smiled, flipped the papers off the machine, pushed the stop button, then the eject switch. He pocketed the tape. “You’re not exactly bright sometimes, Chuck. But I gotta hand it to you for perseverance.”

  Where’s that feeling now, Frye wondered, the one I had down in Burke’s basement when I thought I could kill him?

  All he felt was numb.

  “Chuck, what I really want out of this is my money. You do have my money, don’t you?”

  Frye nodded.

  “When Thach’s men didn’t deliver, I just knew you were the reason, Chuck. You’ve got a helluva talent for getting in my way. Of course, I can’t have you telling what happened, so I’m in a tough position here. Basically, I have to kill you, ‘less I can think of some reasonable alternative.”

  “You set this whole thing up?”

  “Me and old Thach, or Huong Lam, or whatever the fuck he called himself.”

  “Dien?”

  “Naw. Dien and me just do business. He wasn’t in on the kidnapping. Hell, he almost stopped it that night at the Wind, didn’t he?”

  “Why’d you do it?”

  Burke sat down, placed the gun on the coffee table in front of him. “Why not’s a better question. It was one of those opportunities that just fall in your lap. See, Thach and Lucia talked on one of her early trips to the ‘Nam. He told her the story of his big historic tank battle, how he got his face shot off and still saved his company. When she got to know him a little better, and he told what really happened, about Huong Lam, the whole deal. Those gooks trust my sister, Chuck, I don’t know what it is about her. Lucia told me and I thought: Bingo. I know that guy. So I got to thinking, sent word to him through Lucia, and we started communicating. He remembered me. He remembered what a dipshit I always thought Bennett was. He’d already heard Li on the Secret Radio, and he was burning to nail Bennett and his pipeline. He already had Kim in his pocket. It was slow, but over time, it got clear what we could do with a little … creativity. Thach got a little more creative than I did, though, that’s for sure. Original plan was to off your brother and Li, but Thach decided he wanted to take them back with him. I told him it wouldn’t work, but by that time I’d made up my mind to grease him anyhow. For my part, hell, it was just a way to make my ransom money and get Bennett out of Lucia’s way.”

  “Out of the way?”

  “Well, Hanoi sure wasn’t gonna deal for the POWs with some legless American shipping guns over, now were they? Early on, they told Lucia that one condition of release was to stop the Secret Army. That’s why she talked to Thach in the first place—because he was the counter-terrorism pro. And, of course, your pig-head brother wouldn’t stop, even when DeCord cut off his government scholarship. So I said to myself, self, you can help Thach raise some hell over here, make a big pile of money, and do your patriotic duty to get those POWs home, if you stick up Bennett and wreck his pipeline. After that, it was just a matter of planning it all out.”

  “So you used the Dark Men and framed Eddie?”

  “Sho’nuff. They’re young and violent. We knew Minh would suspect Vo, and when he ducked out of the Wind, it didn’t help the kid any. When the FBI shot him, that was great good luck. We’d planned all along to plant the evidence in his house. Perfect. All we needed from Vo was a little time to make Bennett sweat—that was one of Thach’s ideas. And, of course, to get the ransom stuff set up proper. I put on a mustache and dressed like a gigolo to do business as Lawrence.”

  Burke picked up his pistol, studied it with a philosophical air, put it back down. “Chuck, the times they are a-changin’. Uncle Sam and Hanoi’ll be in bed together before you know it—POWs out, diplomatic thaw, the same old story. That’s gonna happen soon enough, you know. But we got thousands of refugees here, burning up ‘cause they got no homeland left. We got guys like Benny who still just can’t believe the United States couldn’t win a war. We got enough free-floating residual hatred these days to start up our own hell. That’s all energy, Chuck, needing to be channeled. In just a few short months, it’ll be gone. The war will really be over. Well, I saw a chance to make a killing while the nerves were still raw, and I took it.”

  Frye could feel the rage gathering, rising up inside himself. It seemed to be coming from Burke, some psychic osmosis. Keep feeding it, he thought: it feels good. “You’d help Thach kill Bennett and Xuan and Li. You let him bomb Nguyen Hy and half a dozen innocent people. What kind of a man are you?”

  “I’m a good man, Chuck. A patriot. Of course, I’d have killed Thach before he got a chance to go back home.”

  “Why kill your partner?”

  Burke looked at Frye as if he were a fool. “To make sure the POWs get back! Uncle Sam isn’t going to deal with Hanoi while one of their colonels is running amok over here, any more than Hanoi’s going to set POWs free while Bennett was running guns. Talk about a situation that needed fixing. It was like turning loose the dogs to eat the cats, then shootin’ the dogs. And I am a patriot, Chuck. DeCord couldn’t stop the pipe
line without killing your brother, and the CIA may be low, but they’re not that low. Besides, Benny had DeCord on tape, making payments. And the FBI couldn’t find Thach without help, so Burke Parsons came to the rescue.”

  “Our government knew Thach was here?”

  “As of about two days ago. A select few knew it. At first, everyone thought Thach was quarantined in Hanoi for his political trouble. He was. Then he disappeared. Hanoi stalled a few days to figure out where he’d gone, but when Li got taken and Xuan’s head rolled, they knew damn well where he’d gone. They didn’t want that maniac on the loose. See, Hanoi’s going to collect close to two million bucks for each POW they let go. That’s one of those diplomatic conditions Lucia hasn’t discussed with the American people. Hanoi loves those dollars. So about eighteen hours ago, they let it be known that Thach was gone and probably here. I told DeCord I could find Thach faster than he could. I suppose I left him with the idea that I’d grease him fast and keep it quiet.”

  “What was in it for you?”

  “I got rid of a murderous Commie bastard for one thing. I got three hundred grand ‘operational expenses’ coming from the agency. And I closed down the Secret Army once and for all. Actually, Bennett did most of it for me. But I’m the hero, Chuck!” Burke grinned, then rotated his head quickly, seeming to assess everything in the apartment in one glance.

  “If you knew where Thach was, why didn’t DeCord just throw your ass in jail?”

  Parsons shrugged, smiled. “Because I played it cool, Chuck. I never told him I knew where Thach was. I said I’d find out what I could with my connections in Little Saigon. But mainly I just took a page from your brother’s book and blackmailed ‘em. I showed DeCord the tape of him paying Nguyen. He couldn’t touch me. Still can’t. Why should he? Thach is dead, the Secret Army’s wiped out and the POWs can come home. I’m a good guy, Chuck. I made this country a better place to live.”