“You might think you’re a moral giant, Lucia, but to me you’re just a whore. If I don’t get what I want out of you I’ll have your ass in jail before this night’s over.”
“You might get a good case, but I’d get a better judge. I’ve got three intelligence agencies and two cabinet members behind me. I’m subpoena-proof. So why not be smart? Let the men come home. Forget what happened. Take what you want, while you’ve got hands to grab with. Grow up. You’ve got the goods to be like your father is, or like I am. You’ve got what it takes.” She faced him, hands on her hips, one long leg revealed by the slit in the robe. She smiled. “Do you?”
For a moment, Frye was actually tempted. “Paul DeCord will want to talk to Burke soon. What time is he due here?”
“He’s due now. He’ll take us out to the airport. Why?”
“There are some things I need from him. I’m going to get them one way or another.”
“Going to kill him too?”
“If I have to.” He looked down on Lucia’s underlings, waiting outside the cottage. Idealists, he thought. Humanitarians. Suckers.
“You’re as dangerous as the rest of them, Chuck. In your own way.”
Frye studied her lovely face. He looked at the king-sized bed, the two night stands and reading lamps, the pair of cowboy boots on the floor by the far side. “How long have you and Burke been sleeping together?”
Lucia sat down. She looked at him with superiority, but the tears rolled down her face anyway. She wiped them away with her robe sleeve. “The first time, we were twelve.”
“Why?”
“Then, just because it felt so good, and he was so beautiful. Later, because it was just our little thing. It’s like being a vampire. You just don’t go back to the regular world.” She looked at him, a hint of invitation in her eyes. She slid out of the robe, turned her back to him, bent her perfect ass his way, and worked on a pair of panty hose. Next a wool skirt, a blouse, black pumps, a suitcoat. She checked her watch, then locked her suitcase.
“What’s in all this for you, Lucia?”
“I’m going to ease right into the district congressional seat when it comes up vacant next time, that’s what’s in it for me. After the first POWs come home, I’m going to be front-page everything. Cover of Time, Life, you name it. My recognition factor will be off the charts, so I’m going to use it.”
“Isn’t all that Texas oil money enough for you?”
“We only spent a year there. No oil money at all. Burke copped the cowboy talk and look because it gave him a part to play. He was as solid an actor as DeNiro, believe me. When he joined up in ‘sixty-eight, military intelligence got him for a couple of years. Later, the CIA bought his contract.”
She gave Frye a distant look, wiped a tear off her cheek. “I was really torn up when he left for Vietnam. I started learning the language so I might be a little closer to what he was doing. I loved him in every way a woman can love a man. We’re not really bad folks, Chuck. We’re just … different.”
Frye said nothing. All he could think about was Bennett.
Lucia zipped shut an overnight case, then gave Frye a sad look. “Know something? A big reason I did all this is because it was my way of doing something good. You need to do something decent once in a while, when you do what I did with my brother. I think we’re born with certain souls, same as we’re born with certain eyes and ears. So I just tried to stack up some good acts to balance out mine. Deep inside, I have the soul of a mudshark. God, you wouldn’t believe how cold it can get.”
Frye looked out to the cottage as a white Lincoln rolled up and parked. Paul DeCord hustled out, opened the trunk, then headed for a side door.
Frye walked her down, his shotgun in one hand, a clump of Lucia’s black hair in the other. He made her carry the two briefcases of booty. She cracked the door and DeCord squeezed through. Frye intercepted him by the collar of his tennis shirt and rammed the muzzle into his throat. “You’re under arrest,” he said.
He pushed DeCord ahead of him and kept the gun on both of them as he marched them back to the living room. He made them sit next to each other on the couch.
DeCord rubbed his throat, darkly eyeing Frye. “Where’s Burke?”
“I shot him, so your clean-up committee is out of action. Now, it’s Uncle Sam versus the people, and I’m the people.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to live. And I want Li to live.”
DeCord nodded. “Why shouldn’t you?”
“Because Burke’s idea was to waste us, and you went along with it. That was the old program.”
“And you’ve got a new one.”
“I’ve got a tape of the payments you made to Hy. I’ve already made copies,” he lied. “I’ve packed them and addressed them to the networks, the attorney general, and the president. And if anything happens to me, or Li, or my family, the lawyers will get them out of the safe deposit boxes and mail them. Anything. If my father has a car accident, I’m going to blame you. If my mother gets mugged in a shopping center some night, I’m going to blame you. If Li has people following her around Little Saigon, I’ll blame you. If I wake up in a bad mood, I’m going to blame you, and the tapes go out. I never want to see your face again, DeCord. Or hers, except when she brings the prisoners home.”
DeCord glared at him, then nodded hopefully.
“The alternative is I can call the cops right now and they’ll take Lucia down for conspiracy to kidnap, murder, fraud. Your deal with Hanoi will go straight to hell.”
“Don’t let that happen, Chuck,” said DeCord. “It’s all ready. I know a lot of things have gone—”
“And I want a prisoner named Michael Strauss to be the first one off that plane, if it ever comes in. That’s what I want out of all this.”
Lucia nodded.
DeCord stood. “You’ve got your deal. I promise we’ll forget about you and what you know. I’ll have our attorneys put it in writing, and yours can approve it. I promise the U.S. government will use its power to protect you and Li under any circumstances. But those promises don’t mean a thing if we don’t bring the POWs home. Don’t send out those tapes, Chuck. Don’t write about this. Just let me and Lucia get this thing done.”
Frye stepped forward, put the shotgun barrel under Paul DeCord’s chin, and eased him back down onto the sofa. DeCord closed his eyes as Frye pressed the weapon harder against his neck. The two MIA Committee workers—an eager young man and a pretty woman who had permed her hair to look like Lucia’s—hustled into the living room from the sliding glass door. They froze, lips open and eyes wide. With the barrel of the .12 gauge, he pried DeCord’s chin toward them. Frye looked at the volunteers and Lucia, then at DeCord’s watering eyes, then down at his blood-splattered T-shirt.
“You’ve got your deal, Chuck,” DeCord slurred.
Frye pushed the weapon harder into his neck. “I’d rather have my brother.”
He stepped away, took the briefcases, and backed out of Lucia’s house into the warm Laguna night.
Frye parked along Coast Highway at Main Beach and walked along the sand to the old blue apartments. He could feel his heart breaking. Above him were sky and a fractional moon that plainly didn’t care.
Cristobel met him at the door. “I hoped you’d end up here sooner or later.”
He looked at her. She may as well have come from another planet.
When she held him her arms were good and strong, and he could feel her body shaking against his own.
“They killed him.”
“I know.”
“They killed him.”
“Chuck.”
“Don’t let go of me now.”
“No, I won’t.”
He came apart.
CHAPTER 31
A FEW DAYS LATER, EDISON CAPTAINED THE Absolute out of Newport Harbor, followed by a Coast Guard escort and a flotilla of little boats with photographers on them. Edison promptly lost them all when he got outside the warning
buoys, gunning the twin diesels to thirty knots and heading west, Frye stood next to his father as they sped to sea, the sun hot through the black wool of his suit coat. Looking back to the deck he saw Hyla and Li and Crawley: three dark figures sitting amidst the polished teak and gleaming white of the ship.
Far out, Edison cut the engines, then he and his father joined the others. Hyla read from Psalms and Matthew. Crawley added something he had written. Edison wept. Li tilted the urn, and Bennett finally mingled with the ocean he had once loved, wisps of dust consumed by a gray Pacific.
Frye sat in the cottage with his father that night. Edison poured two big snifters of brandy that neither of them touched. He began, several times, to say something, but after each start he seemed to lose interest and stared instead at the dead fireplace. Edison’s favorite dog sat at his feet. Finally he looked at his son, then around the room. “You’re in line for all this now, son. We should talk about it. Do you even want it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You said you wanted back in.”
“I want in. I don’t want the stuff.”
“Big job, running Frye Ranch.”
“I’m not the one to do it. But I’d sure like to feel I was welcome.”
“There hasn’t been a day in your life you weren’t welcome here.”
Frye thought back. “It was a good place to be, Pop.”
Edison looked at his brandy. “I know there were things I could have done differently. What I thought was best might not have been. I made some mistakes. Can you forgive me?”
“You never did anything that needs my forgiving.”
His father breathed deeply. “I know I locked you out, son. Bennett was always so easy—I’d just point him the way I thought he should go, and he’d take right off. It’s an honor when a son listens to a father. It made me feel … like what I’d done was worth something. Like I had something to offer that was good. Debbie was my only daughter, and I let her wrap me around her little finger. I loved being able to spoil her. But you, Chuck, you had your own notions. You kind of scared me. You made me doubt myself, and I’d never done that before. I blamed you for her, I admit that. Deep inside, I did. And every step you took away from what I wanted you to be, I felt like it was a step away from me. If there’s anything I should have done differently, it was to realize that my job on planet Earth wasn’t to make you into a little Edison Frye. I guess a part of me wanted a couple of sons to be just like me. Maybe I figured if you were like me, you wouldn’t see what a hard-headed unforgiving old bastard I really was.”
“That’s one of the things I loved about you, Pop. Running against you was like running against an ocean. It made me strong. I love you for it.”
Frye watched his father battle back the tears. His chin quivered, then stilled. He drank the brandy in one gulp. “Thank you for what you did, Chuck. For the Paradiso.”
“Let’s start over, Pop.”
“I’d really like to do that son.”
“Do one thing for me. Love your wife instead of somebody else. She could use some right now.”
“I know. I will. I do.”
Long after Edison had gone to bed, Frye sat up with his mother in the big house. They made a fire because neither of them could seem to get warm, and finished off the bottle of brandy. It was the first time Frye had ever seen Hyla drunk. For some reason, they kept remembering little stupid things that were funny. All of those things had happened a long time ago. The silences between their quiet laughter were longer than the laughter itself, and Frye knew that neither of them was fooling the other.
He lay in his old room the rest of the night, staring out the window.
There were official matters, though the first of them hadn’t seemed very official at all. Paul DeCord and three men in coveralls had showed up at the cave-house just after he returned from Cristobel’s. They bagged Burke’s body. They removed the blood stains from the cave with a light blue organic solution, the plastic bottle of which actually said FDA APPROVED. One of the agents noted that it was great on melted surfboard wax. They used a portable vacuum with incredible suction to remove trace evidence. They washed and waxed his hardwood floor. When everything was just as it had been, they used a small bellows-like article to apply a fresh layer of dust in the disturbed places. Frye gave him Cristobel’s gun, which DeCord assured him would be destroyed forthwith.
DeCord gave him an envelope stuffed with money and a wink too clandestine for words. “Silence,” he said.
Frye threw it back. DeCord shrugged and headed out the door. They came and went within an hour. It was magic.
Lucia, Frye found out later, had been on a CIA jet to Washington thirty minutes after he left her.
Frye collected Dien’s suitcases from the cave and drove to Bennett’s house.
Li was helping Donnell Crawley pack his things. Frye watched them, each with a pasteboard box, heading toward his old pickup truck.
Li’s smile was minor, drained, as he walked up. She hugged him and kissed his cheek.
“I’m glad you’re staying,” he said.
“Where else would I go?”
“Memories are tough.”
“No memories is worse.”
“What about the resistance?”
She looked at him a long while. “I’ll continue. It’s all I know.”
“You still want the leading role?”
She nodded, wavy black hair catching the sun. It looked almost blue. “Our fight will never end.”
Frye looked at the meager possessions in Donnell’s truck: a little black-and-white TV, a radio, the bed and sheets, a bunch of potted plants, flatware, clothes.
Li looked at him. “I couldn’t express my thoughts on the boat yesterday,” she said. “But what I wanted to say was that he was the kindest man I ever knew. Even in the war, he had kindness in him. He tried to preserve it, and he knew he was losing it. When I began to know Bennett, it was like a new world I didn’t know was there. He had passion, too. Maybe too much. What he did to Lam … it was a sin that God tricked him into committing. I don’t know why. A test? I forgive him, Chuck. But he never forgave himself.”
Frye walked around to the cottage, where Donnell was packing. He helped him with some boxes, a trunk, then a dozen or so plants from the yard. Donnell placed them carefully on the truck bed, then spread some blankets to keep them from sliding around. Frye watched his big hands make the gentle arrangements.
“Going home, Donnell?”
Crawley wiped his forehead, nodded.
“Sure you don’t want to stay?”
“I never liked it here.”
“What kept you?”
Crawley considered. “Lots of people thought it was Bennett takin’ care of me because of my brains, but that wasn’t the whole story. I was lookin’ after him too. Now he’s dead and I’m going home.”
Frye carried another pot to the van and set it in. “Thanks, Donnell.”
“I couldn’t see him carrying all that on himself, Chuck. Benny was the kind of guy who thought everything was his doing.” Crawley leaned against the bumper and folded his arms across his chest. He looked at the ground. “I couldn’t let him believe that. We was all responsible. It was me actually threw Huong from that chopper. That was one of my jobs. It’s one of those things you don’t feel good about, even if it’s your country they say you’re doing it for. If I’da killed him proper, Benny’d still be here right now. We’d be drinking beers or something. I think what I can realistically do now is just forget. It’s time for me to go on to the next thing.”
The silence got long. Frye finally said the only thing he really felt was true. “You did good, Donnell.”
Crawley looked bemused. “Don’t think I’ll ever really believe that.”
“I do.”
“You weren’t there.”
“It doesn’t matter. I know.”
“Thanks anyways.” Crawley shook his hand. “You gonna write all this up and get famous?”
<
br /> “I don’t know yet. Got some offers, though.”
“Might be a good thing, since he was your brother. Anybody else just get the story all wrong. Papers don’t seem much interested anyway.”
Donnell got into the van and started it up. “I got a long drive. Take care of Li, now. Take care of yourself too. Good luck in the contest.”
“Will do.”
“Well, ‘bye, Chuck.”
The Committee to Free Vietnam headquarters was busy. Frye pulled up and parked, eyeing the group of young Vietnamese hustling about.
Tuy Nha came out, smiled, and hugged him. She had lost weight and her skin was pale. For the first time, she looks like a woman and not a girl, Frye thought. She looked at him and for a brief moment their silence said what words never could: something about Bennett and Xuan, about loss and the stars at night, about going on. There wasn’t really much that was say able. The silver wave necklace he’d given her in the hospital now shined against her breast.
“Billingham at the Ledger gave me back my job,” Frye said. “He said he owed me one, so I told him to hire you, too. Rewrite desk to start. You’d learn fast. Lousy money. Interested?”
She looked down, then up again. “I am. Thank you, Chuck.” A young man walked past them, and she smiled at him. The young man smiled back.
“I’ve got the money. Have you figured out a way to get it back to who gave it in the first place?”
She nodded. “We have a good lawyer, and time. Many people have come forward to claim what is theirs.”
They leaned against the Cyclone. “What about the network?” Frye asked.
Nha sighed. “If even one POW comes home Friday, there will be a new era. Maybe it is time to stop fighting for what we don’t have, and start building what we do have. Maybe it is time to fight harder. Is it really possible to go back? I don’t know. We never knew. It’s a time now to think.”
Frye opened the trunk, then swung open the tops of the suitcases.
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