“The Nevada? I guess I’d had enough of my old life, I wanted to be a regular guy.”
“So you run a girlie bar in a war zone? You call that being regular?”
“It’s all relative. I got sick of some of the things I saw, some of the things I had to do. Here I was just selling drinks. I didn’t employ the girls, I just provided a venue. If you knew some of the things I’ve done in the past, you’d see how it was a step up.”
“What was the last straw?”
“I was in the Congo in 1965, and I got caught up in a fire fight, got some grenade pieces in my knee. I figured I’d pushed my luck as far as it would go.”
“Was that the only reason?”
“I also had an attack of conscience.”
She finished her drink, gave him a look he remembered only too well. It was, well, intense. He knew this was the time to leave, to plead an engagement elsewhere.
Right now.
“Want another drink?” he said.
“Sure. Why not?”
He talked about things that had been off limits before; his childhood in a tenement in the old city in Havana; watching his mother die by inches while his father drank away every penny they had on cheap rum; the promise he had made to himself that he would never be poor again, no matter what he had to do.
“You kept your promise,” she said.
“But you reach a point in your life,” he said, “when you get sick of running away from things. You want to run towards something.”
She watched him over the rim of her glass. “Like what?”
“I don’t know, I’ve caught a glimpse of it a few times but every time I put my hand out, it’s gone. It’s like trying to catch smoke.”
She traced the condensation on the bar with a long finger. “You know I thought of leaving him so many times.”
“Why don’t you?”
“In New York? Because we had a nice life and what else was there that was better? I figured my trouble was that I always wanted what I couldn’t get. You said that to me once.”
“Yeah, I always like to give advice. I’m not that good at taking it.”
“Then I met you again and I knew I could get what I wanted. If I left him.”
Reyes shook his head. ‘I don’t know that we should be talking about this right now.”
“What will you do if he doesn’t come back?”
“He’s missing, but he’s not dead. I’ll think about that if it happens.”
“I still love you, Reyes.”
Oh damn, there it was said. He looked away. He wanted her too, but not this way; she was the one shining thing in his life and if she ever ended up being his, it would have to be the right way.
“I’ve never known a man like you,” she said. “You steal cars but you won’t steal wives. You say you only care about yourself, but you paid all Inocencia’s hospital bills for years. You don’t believe in a damned thing, but you have some private set of rules stricter than a Baptist preacher.”
“That’s no reason to leave your husband for me.”
“I wouldn’t leave him because of that. I’d leave him because you’re the only man who ever made me feel alive.”
“You decide to leave him, that’s up to you. But if he comes back, I figure you should think really hard about what you just said.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve never made any woman happy longer than the morning after, and I don’t know if I could do it now, no matter how bad I want to with you. Perhaps we missed our moment, princess. Sometimes you get one shot at these things and you have to take your chances while they’re there. Maybe we missed ours.”
“I’ve just been so lonely,” she said. “He’s a good man, but if I hear him explain one more political philosophy I’ll throw myself off the Brooklyn Bridge.”
He walked her back to her hotel. It was that time of the day when the city's energy was ebbing away, wilted from the heat and dust and pollution of the day, just before the night turned the streets into a twitching mass of people and cars and neon. The frenetic sexual hum of the night.
In the square near the market refugees were settling down in doorways and on pavements while American soldiers were heading along the Tu Do, looking for drugs and girls. A black soldier sat outside one of them, shivering and crying, his friends were trying to get him back on his feet. Others made deals in dark alleyways.
He felt the agony of the world spinning around them. They were just two people who had once loved each other, he thought. Their problems don’t mean anything in the tide of things. Yet there was a part of him that figured this meant a whole lot.
When they reached the hotel, they stopped and stared at each other. He knew what was coming and didn’t think he had the strength to say no. He could not see her face in the gathering dark.
“Do you want to come up?” she whispered.
“I’ll call you at the hotel when I have news,” he said and walked away.
Chapter 20
It was early afternoon and the streets were crowded with schoolchildren in white and blue uniforms, making their way home through the crowds outside the market. Two fresh-faced ARVN soldiers sat on the green vinyl sandbags of their machine gun post, hand in hand, as was the custom with Vietnamese men.
The taxi driver stopped down a narrow lane and Reyes jumped out, a heavy cardboard box under each arm. He pushed open an old wooden gate and went inside. There was a tiny courtyard garden choked with bougainvillea and an ancient mahogany door. He knocked with his fist.
An ancient Vietnamese nun peered around the door and when she saw who it was, her face split into a toothless grin. She stood aside and motioned him to come in. She led him into a dark sitting room and hurried away down a corridor.
Two lizards watched him, pale and suspicious, from high on the wall. There was an overpowering smell of must.
He looked out of the window at the children playing in the courtyard. The city was full of kids without parents and these were the lucky ones, they had a bed and food on the table, sparse as it might be. He wondered how children still remembered to laugh even after everything they had seen.
He thought about what it would be like to have his own children. He supposed it was too late for that now, if he’d wanted to be a family man he should have thought about it years ago. The life he had led did not lend itself to Doctor Seuss and regular mealtimes.
He was studying a dusty oil painting of the Madonna when Mother Superior walked in. She was an ancient Vietnamese with the kindest eyes he had ever seen. She wore a habit of white and pale blue with a long wooden crucifix swinging on a beaded chain around her neck.
Her teeth were dyed reddish brown from chewing betel nut. He supposed even a mother superior was allowed one vice.
Her eyes went to the boxes on the floor and she smiled. “This way,” she said.
He followed her down the cloister to her office. It was sparsely furnished, just a desk, a dusty photograph of the Pope and two hard wood chairs: one for herself and one for visitors.
He put the box on the desk and she took a letter opener from the desk drawer and cut through the tape. She sorted through the medical supplies inside, examining each item with the critical gaze of a medical professional. When she finished she nodded with approval. Then she looked in the other box and smiled. “Toys,” she said.
“For the children,” he said. “I have an aunt in Poughkeepsie sends them to me.”
“Thank you,” she said. “You are kind.”
“It’s nothing, I have people steal this stuff for me from the PX stores all the time.”
“I do not wish to hear this.”
“The Army won’t miss them, really.”
“All the same, we are very grateful. Will you sit down? I can offer you tea.”
He was surprised. All the years he had been coming here she had never invited him to drink tea with her before. She clapped her hands and one of the novices brought in a steaming pot of tea and two cups. She p
oured the fragrant green tea and left the room.
“I hear you are leaving us,” Mother Superior said.
“Who told you that?”
“I may live in a convent but I can still read the newspapers, m’sieur Garcia. The... teahouse...you owned in the Tu Do? I believe it has been consumed by the war.”
He smiled at her euphemism. “Yes, the teahouse was totally destroyed, I’m afraid. My ...hostesses...had to find employment elsewhere.”
“I am sure that was not difficult for them. But I was very sorry to hear of so much needless loss of life. I am relieved to hear that you were unharmed.”
“Thank you.”
“So will you leave Saigon now?”
“Perhaps.”
She sipped her tea, a crafty look in her eyes. “Should you decide to leave, I thought perhaps I might be able to arrange a favor for you before you go.”
“A favor?”
“Yes. I am concerned for your soul, Mister Garcia.”
He laughed, and then hurriedly gathered himself. “My soul?”
“I would like to arrange for a priest to hear your confession.”
“I don’t think that’s really necessary.”
The old nun shook her head. “On the contrary, I would think it very necessary. It would take but a moment.” He felt as if he were being lectured by his old school teacher for missing classes. “You are a good man and you have been very kind to us here for many years. You have lived a dissolute life, but I believe your soul might yet be saved.”
“Saved?” That would be beyond my expectations, beyond most people’s really.”
“Mister Garcia, what is to become of you?” She leaned her elbows on the desk and sighed. It was the same question his teacher in Havana had asked of him when she had caught him smoking with a girl in the schoolyard when he was ten years old.
“The Devil looks after his own, Mother.”
She wagged a finger at him. “You should not say such things. You invoke him and he will appear. You, Mister Garcia, need all the good grace you can get.”
He finished his tea and refused more. “I’d better be going,” he said. “By the way, that other property I dropped off to you a couple of weeks ago. You still have it?”
“Of course,” she said and pointed to a shelf in the corner of the room. It lay there, in full view, next to a wooden Statue of the Virgin Mary.
“You’re sure that’s the best place for it?” he said, trying to hide his shock.
“There are few other places I have to put it.”
“I asked you to hide it.”
“We have nothing to hide here.”
“Some place a little less obvious then?”
“Obvious to whom?”
He threw a last nervous glance at it as he went out. But he supposed she was right, who would think of looking in a convent?
She called after him: “Don’t forget, if you want a priest I can find one for you!”
He smiled and pretended he had not heard her. He could imagine his confession now; forgive me father for I have had a kindly old nun hide eight kilos of pure heroin for me in her study.
She might think his soul could be saved. Reyes had his doubts.
It wasn’t the ugliest building Reyes had ever seen but it was right up there with some of the worst. The United States Embassy in Saigon looked as if it had drawn on a German machine gun emplacement on D-Day as its inspiration. The whole facade of the Chancery was encased in a concrete carapace that was supposed to protect it from mortar and rocket fire, and there were white pillboxes at each corner of the building manned by US military police in green flak jackets and white steel helmets.
It looked more like a fortress than an embassy, but he supposed that really, that’s what it was. The compound was surrounded by a ten-foot high wall, but none of these fortifications had kept out the nineteen Viet Cong sappers who had mined it during Tet two years before and found their way inside.
Reyes took off his sunglasses and stared hard at the narrow-eyed Marine who examined his Embassy pass. He was polished and gleaming like he was about to step onto the parade ground. Two other guards checked him for weapons. A barely perceptible nod of the head and he was through. He replaced the glasses and went up the steps and into the foyer.
A massive eagle, its wings spread and beak gaping, glowered at him from a cluster of flags in the carpeted foyer. When he announced himself, a uniformed clerk rang upstairs. Walt came down from his office to meet him.
“You’ve got news?” Reyes asked as they went up in the elevator.
“Some,” he said, “but it’s not all good.”
He waited until they were in his office until he told him the rest. First he made them coffee, topping up the paper cups with his private supplies from his desk drawer.
A thin manila folder lay on his desk and he pushed it across to Reyes. “The good news for Mrs. O’Loughlin is the Corsicans didn’t get him,” he said. “But I don’t know if his current situation is any better.”
Reyes read through the memorandum from the US Embassy in Vientiane.
“He was in Vientiane for two days,” Walt said. “From there he took a flight up to our airbase at Sam Thong courtesy of the United States government, they want to show off their hearts and minds project up there. Somehow he managed to slip away, don’t ask me how. They think he paid a local guide to take him into the mountains; perhaps he wanted to interview some of the local Hmong villagers himself. Instead he got himself captured by the Pathet Lao. They let the guide go but they’ve still got your friend.”
“Is he alive?”
“I have no idea. They may have shot him on the spot or they may keep him alive for a while. If they think he’s a spy they’ll torture him as a matter of principle and then try and use him as a hostage. When they find out he’s just a journalist, his luck will run out.”
Reyes handed him back the memorandum. Walt slipped it back inside the file.
“I thought you would think this is good news.”
“How do you figure that?” Reyes asked him.
“All you have to do is nothing and all your dreams come true. You get her back. Isn’t that what you always wanted? Just sit back and enjoy the view, fella. He’s chained to a post in the jungle fighting off bats, and you’re screwing his wife. It’s perfect.”
“You paint a pretty picture.”
“Well I practice haiku in my spare time.”
Walt sipped his coffee, but finding it not to his taste he added a little more Jack Daniels. “I wish I knew what it is about her,” he said.
“There are some things you can’t put in a report.”
“It’s damn frustrating. I’m not questioning your judgment, Reyes, certainly not when it comes to women. I’m just trying to understand.”
“You think he’s dead?”
“I think there’s no way of knowing. But I find it highly unlikely he will ever be seen or heard from again.”
“He could still be alive.”
“Possibly, but I don’t think there’s anyone in Vientiane or Washington who are that bothered that they’ll go looking for him. Let’s face it—it’s not only the Salvatore family who want him dead. The guy was making too many waves, no one in here sheds any tears for a dead hack.”
Reyes puffed out his cheeks. “What am I going to tell her?”
“If it was me I’d tell her he was dead and get on with the rest of your life. This guy is crazy, if I had a wife like that I damn sure wouldn’t go running around the jungle begging the commies to come and shoot me.”
“Still, I wonder how she’s going to take this.”
“Maybe she’ll be relieved.”
“He’s still her husband and technically he’s still alive.”
“Only if you tell her he is.”
Reyes stared at his shoes. “She says she was going to leave him anyway.”
“There’s a long way between thinking about it and doing it. Make it easy on everyone, Reyes.” He pi
cked up the folder. “I’ll put this in this file over there, you give her the bad news, hold out your handkerchief and let her fall in your arms. Problem solved, man.”
“I guess so.” He sipped his coffee, held it out for more Jack. Walt obliged. “You ever watch “Tom and Jerry,” Walt?”
“You kidding me? Love that stupid cat.”
“Whenever Tom is about to kill the mouse he has this devil cat on one shoulder telling him to do it, then he gets this angel cat on the other telling him why it’s the wrong thing.”
“Your point?”
“It’s just what you look like right now. The devil cat.” Reyes finished his coffee in one swallow, winced and stood up. “Walt, thanks for your help. I appreciate it.”
“Be smart. Go back to the Caravelle, tell her that her husband’s dead, that I showed you pictures of his body. Then fuck her brains out.”
“And then?”
“Then you get the seven keys of horse you’ve hidden God knows where and you bring it right over to me and let me find us some buyers. We build our little hideaway in Paradise and spend the rest of our lives drinking mojitos and eating lobster. What do you say?”
“I say whenever I need a moral compass I’ll come to you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You always point the wrong way, Walt, so I know if I want to do the right thing, I’d just do the opposite of what you’re telling me.”
“I will take that as a compliment to my mental fortitude.”
Reyes opened the door to leave.
“What are you going to do?” Walt said.
“I’ll keep you posted.”
Chapter 21
Reyes walked head down through the throbbing heat of the afternoon, ignoring the street kids who pestered him to buy cigarettes, cigarette lighters, heroin. They were everywhere, these kids, thousands of them roamed the streets, picking pockets, begging, hawking. The older ones rode motorcycles, snatching bags from the shoulders of westerners who hadn’t been in Saigon long enough to know better. The city was a master class in survival.
He’d been one of those kids once. Instead of snatching bags he stole cars; instead of brown sugar he had sold numbers in the bolita. He had done whatever it took to get one more step up the food chain.
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