by Ron Lealos
“Shit,” he said, “you boys are always good for comic relief, something sorely lacking here.”
Dead. Dead. Dead. I wanted to kill this mutant runt more than riding the Freedom Bird out of Da Nang. I was taking orders from a stunted psychopath. Not even the crispy black skin of a napalmed baby made me want to puke more than this mutant. I closed my eyes so tight I thought they might weld permanently shut.
“Hey, Morgan,” Comer barked. I opened my eyes. “Don’t get bucked off your horse now. At least I taught you cowpokes skills you can use for the rest of yur life. You know, if the little lady rides in someone else’s saddle, you can silently kill her with your bare hands in less than five seconds. Ten different ways. Or is it twelve?” He held his hand in front of his face and began counting on his fingers. “One, jugular. Two, eardrum. Three … oh shit, who cares? That’s enough to grease even a Mormon’s herd.”
Early in my tour of ’Nam, Comer held a class that combined use of the garrote and interrogation. He didn’t need a dummy. Comer had a suspected VC officer who hadn’t been forthcoming with the address of his bunker complex. He demonstrated the right amount of tension needed to sever each finger, then a hand, while an ARVN translator laughed and told us “Charlie lose tongue.” Comer unbuttoned the VC’s fly and wrapped the wire around the prisoner’s cock and balls. Within seconds, everyone in the camp heard that the bunker was two klicks south, beside a burned-out water well. Comer had compassion and left the VC his privates. But he did show us how too much force led to a messy decapitation, warning us that a head falling on the ground made an unacceptable thud.
One thing I had learned. How to control my breathing and heartbeat. Lots of practice in trenches and dark rooms. It took all my willpower to slow down. And not imbed the Gerber in Comer’s eye.
“Enough, Comer,” I said. “No more questions. No more jokes. You’ve got ten seconds and then I’m outa here. You’re gonna have to use that Colt to stop me.” I sat up and swung my legs off the cot.
Comer tapped his hat down on his head.
“There’s a bird leaving for Da Nang at 1900 hours. From there, you’re booked on a flight to Bangkok and the pleasures of Pat Pong. Don’t come back here. Report to me in Saigon in a week. They’ve got some hot chili cooking for us. They don’t want to use local talent. Get cleaned up and wear your civvies. Adios, muchacho.” Comer tipped his hat and walked out the door. Within minutes, his Huey was cycling and he was gone.
The Phoenix program headquarters were in an old French mansion in the palm trees on To Do Street, near MACV, Military Assistance Command Vietnam, and a few blocks from the American embassy. I rode a cyclo to the building, winding through streets that smelled of rotting fruit, burning shit, gas fumes, sweat, and flowers. My driver looked like any of a hundred of my victims, except he had only one arm. A buddha on a chain swung from the frame that held the plastic roof over the passenger seat. Stickers covered the sides. Most of the signs read COCA-COLA, but one said VISIT LA JOLLA. SURFER’S PARADISE.
Consistent with the spook state of mind, no guards were in sight when the cyclo stopped in the courtyard. Of course, they were everywhere, but it took time and effort I didn’t care to use to spot them. No sentry at the door. If anyone uninvited tried to enter, a shitstorm would hit. The shutters were open, and white-laced curtains covered the windows. Orange rust stains from overflowing gutters streaked the cream-colored stucco.
I gave the driver 20 p and walked up the five steps and across the porch that fronted the mansion. One step through the door and I was greeted by “Welcome to the ranch, Morgan,” from Comer. “Step into my corral.” I missed the tail who must have called ahead. Today, Comer wore the Levi’s and snakeskin boots, but had ditched the Stetson and cowboy shirt in favor of a short-sleeve top. Must have been the head spooks didn’t like his act.
The floor was hardwood, and Comer’s boots clapped as we walked down the hall toward the back. Ceiling fans kept the humid air moving. All the windows were open, but most of the doors lining the hall were closed. I didn’t see another spook before we entered the last door on the right. Molar sat in a wicker chair next to the gunmetal-gray desk. He looked up from a folder he was reading. I thought the necklace made of VC teeth must be stashed in his pocket alongside his set of mini-pliers. Like Comer, he was in more acceptable clothing today. The Hawaiian motif was replaced by khaki pants and white shirt. He still didn’t wear socks.
“Hello, Morgan,” Molar said. “Good to see you again.” He winked.
The lies were already starting. My job was to do what they ordered and stay alive long enough to kill them both before I rode the Boeing back to McCord. That would be tough, since they were probably about to give me just enough intel to make their target dead, and me along with him.
Comer moved around me and sat behind the desk.
“Grab a seat, Morgan,” he said, pointing to another chair in the corner.
There were no books. No pin-ups. No paintings. Nothing on the walls. Just a desk stacked with files and a black phone with no dial. An open window was behind Comer, and a hint of breeze blew through the curtain. I slid the chair in front of the desk and sat.
“How was Pat Pong?” Comer asked. “Did you catch Tai’s act at Pussy Heaven? She does amazing tricks with those Ping-Pong balls.”
Sweat. At least in the bush, you didn’t have to put up with air heavy in exhaust fumes and rotting garbage that settled on every surface including your skin. I wiped the back of my hand across my brow.
“Tell me what you want me to do,” I said. “I saw your cowboy show before, and it doesn’t deserve an encore. You can skip that and playing the gracious host too.”
Molar laughed. Comer didn’t.
“You heard of Air Marshall Ky?” Comer asked. “The vice president of this here democracy?”
“Yes,” I said. “I read Stars and Stripes.”
“After publicly urging us to nuke the North, now Ky’s saying that we’re only here to defend our interests. Those don’t coincide with Vietnam’s and our presence should be greatly reduced. I wish he were in the murder book. But he’s not the problem. It’s his son. Jimmy Ky. He heads the local version of the mafia in South Vietnam.”
Let me count. Maybe six sentences without any cowpoke jargon. The brass must of tired of it and ordered Comer to quit. And now Ky was the topic, as if he left my mind for a millisecond over the hours in Bangkok. But Comer couldn’t know it. Cowboy knowing was a myth as false as the Domino Theory.
“Surprise. You mean there’s crime in Shangri-La?” I asked.
“Now this is just rumor, Morgan. But, yes, I think there is.” Smiles all around. A little male bonding. Good for the soul. I wanted to jump across the desk and drive his nose into his brain with the heal of my palm.
“It seems Jimmy,” Comer said, “an old friend of Phoenix, has been siphoning off money meant for the Golden Triangle. Now, that’s not so bad. We’re making a fair profit already. Enough to buy a share in Evergreen Cargo to transport the goods. And pay your salary.” Comer lifted a file from the top of the stack. “But, now he’s buying up arms and ammo stolen from bases all over ’Nam. Stockpiling them somewhere we want to know. He’s gone so far as to have his boys ambush convoys. Try to blame it on Charlie. Gotta think he’s in cahoots with the NVA too.” He handed me the file. “Take a look. That’s all the intel we have on his movements. First, we want a location for the goods. Then we want him to disappear. Forever. But make it look like it was VC work. Don’t want to piss off the vice president.”
I took the file but didn’t open it.
“Why me?” I asked.
“Because you’re the best,” Comer said, looking toward Molar. “Except him. But Jimmy knows Molar, and it would be tough for Molar to get close.”
Saigon wasn’t my turf, but I had been here often enough on “special detail” to know the sights. Before the arrival of five hundred thousand Americans into Vietnam, the city was considered “the Paris of the East,” with th
e Song Sai Gon River substituting for the Seine. Now Saigon had become the whore of Asia. Guns, dope, watches, jewels, little girls or boys—anything—could be bought on the crowded sweaty streets. Sex. Especially sex. At every glance, sex blasted at grunts in from the boonies and the lucky soldiers stationed in the city. Dancers wearing only sequined G-strings and halter tops beckoned from the open doors of the thousands of bars. Vietnamese men passed out little cards, written in English, touting the “clean hostesses” inside. But Saigon had developed its own incurable strain of clap, Heinz 57, that left thousands of American cocks with a drip like a faucet missing a gasket. I opened the file.
Jimmy Ky was the child of power. And now diplomacy. In a country with no more rule of law, his climb to the top of the local crime syndicate was simple. Helped by his dad, the general, and the long association with Chinese Tongs in the Vietnamese underworld, Ky had murdered his way to mob chieftain. Now, he was the don of the South Vietnamese mafia. He took over from the French Union Corse gang after LBJ mandated the buildup of US forces. Nor did it hurt to have an army to fight the battles for you. ARVN troops were used whenever a few more M16s were needed. Or a tank. His entourage included street killers, dope dealers, bomb experts, pimps, military officers, and politicians. One of Ky’s specialties was controlling the market for marijuana joints, rolled in his factories and disguised perfectly as cigarettes, cellophane seal, tax stamp, and all. They were dipped in opium and could be bought at every bar and street vendor. He had been an ally of Phoenix and the CIA, cooperating in assassination and extortion. His sins were ignored as long as he was the house pet. This unwritten agreement was well-known throughout Saigon and gave Ky even more fearsome power. I wasn’t as interested in his background as how I could kill him. I flipped to a page marked TOP SECRET.
Ky lived in a well-guarded mansion just down Tu Do. He didn’t have to drive far to meet his masters. Most of his time was spent in offices above the Sporting Bar, also on Tu Do and in the middle of the busiest commercial section of Saigon. The Sporting Bar was the hangout for Green Berets and LURPs. The location of Ky’s headquarters beneath a Special Forces retreat was another indication of his entanglement with US objectives, whatever those might be. I memorized the little information inside the folder, embedding the picture of Ky in my mind, and looked at Comer.
“I’ll need Luong,” I said.
Comer was picking phantom dirt from behind his fingernails with a gold-handled knife and inspecting the nonexistent results.
“Can’t see where that would help, Morgan,” Comer said. “He’s a Yard, and they don’t get along well in the city. They’re hill people, more at home boiling the brains of their enemies in cooking pots.” He looked at Molar for support. Molar nodded.
“I won’t be able to do this alone,” I said. “You know that.”
“Molar here can help,” Comer said, pointing the knife.
Sure, when Ky was entering a dreamland that he would never escape, I’d join him at the hand of Molar.
“I have to know when I give an order, it’ll be obeyed,” I said. “Don’t think Molar would listen to his own mother, let alone me. With Luong, I don’t have to say a word. Just a look and he knows. There’s something magic about the Yards, especially when it comes to killing flatland Vietnamese.”
The Montagnards had inhabited the Central Highland mountains for thousands of years. And the Vietnamese from the lowlands had been trying to exterminate them for just as long. The Yards had joined the French and now the Americans to help revenge the atrocities that had taken place at the hands of their whiter neighbors.
The sound of Jesse Colin Young singing “Come on, people, now, let’s get together …” drifted through the open window from Armed Forces Radio playing in a nearby office. Comer dropped the knife into the right-hand desk drawer.
“The Yards are demon worshippers,” Comer said. “Molar only kneels at the altar of pussy. That’s more Christian.” Comer nearly slapped himself on the back with his humor. “Can’t trust any a’ these goddamn gooks anyways.”
“But I can trust a ghoul who wears a necklace made of his victims’ teeth?” I asked.
I wondered if business meetings all around the world were being held with this amount of fun, all parties concerned armed to the teeth with knives, pliers, pistols, and garrotes, violent death only a smile away.
Molar was proud of his necklace. He took the teeth out of his pocket and fondled them like they were a prayer mala.
“You know what would complete the set, Morgan?” Molar asked. He held up the necklace and pointed to an empty space. “You.”
One on one, I believed I could take this guy, but Comer surely had the girly little Derringer under his sleeve. I would be dead by the time the Gerber went through Molar’s neck and the tip reached the other side. I turned back to Comer.
“Luong could sneak through the window behind you and you wouldn’t even notice,” I said. “It doesn’t matter how many men Ky has guarding him. If I tell Luong to kill him, Ky should be designing the burial urn for his ashes. Are you going to bring him in or not?”
Comer’s eyes and sharp nose reminded me of the rats that made their home in the bunkers back at base camp. When the artillery started, the monsters would dash through the clay, looking for any escape, running over our bodies like we weren’t there. They were bigger than dachshunds and a million times nastier. If the rats were hungry, or the monsoons drove them earthward, no toe was safe. On the other hand, an infected rat bite was a free ticket back to The World.
The chair squeaked as Comer leaned back and clasped his fingers behind his head.
“Whoever you want,” Comer said. “If little ole Molar here intimidates you, I can’t help that, son. Just finish the job. Remember, we want to know where the munitions are first. After that, you and Luong can party on Ky’s balls for all I care.”
It would be harder to ditch Molar and his team than avoid detection by Ky’s men. At least I knew the Phoenix mercenaries would be lurking in the palm trees. I couldn’t trust Molar within ten feet of me. From this point on, he was as much of an enemy as a sapper in the wire. If this was a legitimate op, Comer would never agree to using a Yard in Saigon, but Molar could now get two sets of teeth rather than one.
“Then call him in,” I said. “I’ll do some recon in the meantime. Where do you have me billeted?”
“For a valuable man like you, Morgan,” Comer said, “only the best. You’re at the Majestic. Don’t get too cozy with the army spooks and newsrats. That place has more rumors than fleas. Luong oughta be here in a day or two.”
Not even a childhood of saluting the Colonel, the reflex groomed further in ROTC and officer’s training, would make me lift my hand to my forehead. I stood, dropped the file on the desk, and walked out. No one wished me a good day.
It was hard to be a white man in the bush and be taken for anything other than what I was. But in Saigon, there were newsmen, missionaries, colonialists, expats, thrill seekers, businessmen, and soldiers in civvies to blend with. Easy to go unnoticed. I spent the rest of the day watching the entrance to Ky’s mansion. For cover, I used the back seat of a Renault taxi that I rented by the hour, staying at the end of the queue of other cabs, a block down Tu Do.
The street was a constant stream of traffic. Cars, cyclos, Honda 50s, an occasional oxcart, and pedestrians of every color fought for a place. Soldiers in from the bush were the loudest, making their drunken way from one whorehouse to the next, sometimes a b-girl on their arm. The Vietnamese women wore colorful ao dais, the hookers with slits running up their thighs and high heels clicking on the sections of sidewalk that had concrete. The men were dressed in standard-issue black or khaki trousers and white shirts, sleeves rolled up on their forearms. Palm trees lined both sides of the street, and parrots squawked in the limbs, fighting to be heard over the noise of two-cycle engines. The exhaust fumes left a blue cloud that settled on every surface. I fought the need for sleep. It had been weeks since I had caught more
than an hour or two of z’s. During the few days in Bangkok, I couldn’t drown the memory of Colleen with gallons of Jim Beam. And the days were the same as the nights. What I ached for was a pack of Jimmy Ky’s opium-laced joints. Riding the dragon always made me dream.
Visitors came and went, drivers waiting for their passengers in the turnaround inside the gate. Twice, ARVN staff cars with South Vietnamese flags flying from their antennas arrived, staying only a few minutes. The Fords that carried the officers were always escorted by jeeps loaded with sunglasses-clad, unsmiling soldiers holding M16s on full automatic. A white man in a Mercedes sedan, wearing a tan tropical suit, was inside the longest. Two Chinese women and several Vietnamese male civilians also made court appearances. A nervous man who smiled, bowed, and opened the doors greeted them all. Behind him, two men carrying AKs watched. Occasionally, I saw the curtains of one of the second-story windows being pushed aside. Sentries. Counting the greeters, the guards in the windows, the men who patrolled the gardens and the man on the roof behind the chimney, there were eight. I wouldn’t know how many were inside until I found a way in. I didn’t see Jimmy Ky.
By seven o’clock, no more cars were arriving. It was dark, and I had the driver make a circuit of Ky’s complex. Ten-foot walls topped with razor wire protected all but the front side. No problem. I hadn’t seen dogs other than the neighborhood shorthaired scabby mongrels that were everywhere in ’Nam. Dogs were more of a hassle than a challenge anyway. I told the driver to take me to the Majestic, stopping on the way to haggle with a vendor over a pack of Lucky Strikes.
The Majestic overlooked the river and the hundreds of thin boats that plied the water, the vendors selling fruit, vegetables, grenades, and fish balls. Sandbags protected the front, due to the accelerating bombing campaign of the NVA. A hotel a few blocks up Ton Duc Thang Street had been destroyed a few nights ago, resulting in the first casualty in ’Nam for the BBC. Huge ceiling fans kept the heavy air moving in the lobby. Bouquets of orchids and hyacinths sat on the counter and on tables spread around the first floor. I registered under the name “Larry Colton,” an alias that Comer always used for me when I was in Saigon.