Mekong Delta Blues

by Phil Swann

  Clegg looked at me. I knew what he wanted me to do, but I wasn’t exactly interested in jumping into the fray. After a prolonged stare, I gave in. “Colonel, have you seen any nonmilitary people around here?” I asked.

  “You mean civilians?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “No.”

  “So, no one by the name of Wilson or Cavendish?”

  “No.”

  “Or, anyone who might be, say…Chinese?”

  “Chinese!” Pennington roared. He looked at Clegg. “Is he serious?”

  Clegg answered, “He is. So, no civilians, Chinese or otherwise?”

  “Negatory.”

  Clegg nodded.

  “Look, fellas,” Pennington said, “this might be a ridiculous assignment, but I take my job seriously. No unauthorized personnel come or go on this base without me knowing about it. The only people out of uniform who’ve been on these grounds since I’ve been here are you two, and the fellas who brought the woman in last night. Other than that, strictly military.”

  Clegg asked, “Those men, how many were there?”

  “Two.”

  “D.O.D?”

  “That’s what their credentials said. I thought they were your men.”

  Clegg looked over at me. “Go on, Trip. Ask him.”

  “Really?” I replied.

  “Ask him,” Clegg repeated.

  I sighed hard enough to make sure everyone in the room knew I didn’t want to ask what I was about to ask. “Colonel,” I said, then swallowing hard, “have you ever heard anyone around here use the term Israel?”

  “Like the country?”

  “Yes, sir. Or, the promised land?”

  “No. Why?” he ordered, more than asked.

  “Well, there’s a rumor going around…I mean, a rumor going around certain circles in Las Vegas. That this place is a place, where some people, might be able to purchase…heroin.”

  I braced myself. I was expecting the man’s head to explode, right before he blew mine off. But that’s not what happened.

  Colonel Pennington calmly got up, went back behind his desk, and sat down. After a second or two, he spoke. He was surprisingly composed. “Peter, I’ve got three months left in this man’s army.”

  “You’re retiring?” Clegg replied.

  “I am. It’s been a privilege, but it’s time to hang up my holster. I’d like to think I’ve done a good job.”

  “You have, Buck,” Clegg said. “The best of jobs.”

  “Thank you. It’s been quite a career. Not all good, but certainly more good than bad. I haven’t always done right, but I’ve never knowingly done wrong, or intentionally done anything to disgrace this uniform.”

  “Of course, you haven’t,” I chimed in, not sure why.

  He continued, “Gentlemen, I don’t know where you’re getting your information, but it’s wrong. No one under my command is peddling dope. And I’d appreciate it, Trip, if you’d not go around spreading that rumor. Good Lord, Peter, you know the army. Just a whisper of such a thing could…well, you know what it could do.”

  “Buck,” Clegg replied, “something smells to high-heaven. That’s why I’m here. Come on, you’ve been around this business since before the last ice age, I can’t believe you’re not smelling it too.”

  Pennington didn’t respond.

  “Am I right, Buck?” Clegg pressed.

  “I got three months, Pete. Three months, and I’m done with all of this. I can spend the rest of my days spoiling my grandbabies, and making up for lost time with Barb. Just three months. Do you understand that?”

  “I do,” Clegg replied.

  There was prolonged silence. I stared at Clegg. Clegg stared at Pennington. Pennington stared into space.

  Finally, and without warning, the colonel pounded the desk so hard I thought he had put his fist through it. “Of course, something smells!” he roared. “Lord, it’s reeked from nearly the minute I got my orders to come out to this hell hole. Peter, I’ve yelled about this to those penguin butt pencil-pushers at the Pentagon until I’m blue in the face. You know what they tell me? ‘Thank you, we’ll take your concerns under advisement.’ We all know what that means in the Army speak, don’t we? ‘Shut-up, do your job, or else.’ It’s unbelievable! I’m a good soldier. I know how to follow orders. But if those pretty-boy ivy league yahoos think they can send me out to no man’s land without so much as a hint to what I’m doing here, and then expect me not to ask questions, well, they’re stupider than they look. Who the hell do they think they’re dealing with? There are days I have half a mind to fly back to D.C., take their staplers, carbon paper, and under advisements, and stick it all up their collective out boxes.”

  Clegg let go a smile.

  “It’s not funny,” Pennington barked, his face as red as a Ferrari.

  “Sorry,” Clegg replied. “It’s just, there’s the Buck Pennington I know. You had me worried for a minute.”

  Pennington tried not to smile, but I did catch a slight grin. “So, you got any idea what the hell’s going on?”

  Clegg relaxed back into his chair. “I think someone is running a shadow op that’s so far off the books it’s illegible.”

  “Any idea who?”

  “Nope.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “Nope.”

  “Any idea what the op is?”

  “Nope.”

  Pennington rubbed his forehead. “Comforting.”

  Clegg went on, “Buck, you’d have to be the president of the United States to have a higher security clearance than I do, and I didn’t know about this place—and neither did a lot of other people who should’ve known. I was running an operation on a Triad crime family that the directors of four separate agencies not only signed off on but were enthusiastic about. Then, suddenly, Charlie Wu, the head of that family, is murdered, and his wife is picked up by the D.O.D and brought out here. Why is the D.O.D interested in a Triad crime family? And how did they know the old man was murdered? And why the hell wasn’t I informed Mrs. Wu was suspected of espionage? No one, including you, seems to be able to tell me anything, not because it’s classified, but because nobody truly knows anything. Somebody is up to some clandestine shenanigans that don’t come close to being kosher, and I mean to find out who, and why.”

  Pennington picked up his unlit cigar and put it between his teeth. “And the heroin angle?”

  “Only a rumor,” Clegg answered, glancing at me. “There might be nothing to it, but I thought you should know the rumor was out there.”

  Pennington nodded. “Thanks. Okay, I’m sold. What do you need from me?”

  “I’m not sure…just yet.”

  “Who else knows about this?”

  “No one.”

  “Then who’s on our team?”

  “You’re looking at our team.”

  His cigar wilted in his mouth. “Are you telling me I’m putting my career in the hands of you and your little trumpet player buddy here?”

  Clegg smiled. “He’s a really good trumpet player if that helps.”

  Pennington shook his head.

  “Not a word about of this to anybody, Buck. Not even to your officers.”

  Pennington nodded. “Anything else?”

  Clegg looked at his watch and stood up. “We should go see your guest.”

  Pennington opened his desk drawer and took out a half inch blue folder with a red band around it. The word CLASSIFIED was stamped on the outside of it. He handed it to Clegg. “I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to see this, but since I’m already looking at a court-martial, what the hay.”

  “What is it?”

  “What they got on the lady. This whole operation might be a joke, Peter, but the evidence against her is pretty hard to dismiss. It’s summed-upped nicely on page one.”

  “I’ve seen that before,” I announced.

  Both men looked at me.

  “That…whatever it is, I’ve seen it before. At Wu’s house, Johnny w
as holding it when he asked Cavendish if he was sure about the money in the account in Geneva. That’s the folder Johnny had.”

  “Are you sure, Trip?” Clegg asked.

  “Positive.”

  “When did you get this, Buck?”

  “This morning. The agents gave it to me when they delivered the woman. I was supposed to give it to whoever showed up to take Mrs. Wu away. Who’s Cavendish? That’s the second time you’ve mentioned him.”

  Clegg didn’t answer him. He removed the red band from around the folder and began reading. After a minute, he closed it, replaced the red band, and then handed it to me. “Look after this, will you, Trip?”

  “What do you want me to do with it?” I asked, taking the folder.

  “Just look after it. Come on, let’s go see Mrs. Wu.”

  We followed Pennington out of the trailer and around to the front of the bank. The colonel’s soldiers might have been coming up short, but the blistering, late-afternoon desert sun was more than doing its duty. We crossed the dusty road and headed toward a building with the word JAIL above its door. But just like how Clegg and I weren’t led into the bank, we didn’t go into the jail either. We followed Pennington down the road until we came to a dilapidated building that appeared to be held together by hope.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “The hospital,” Pennington answered.

  “Is she sick?”

  “No, but it’s the only building where we could confine her without breaking half the articles of the Geneva Convention.”

  We walked through the door, and I was rendered nearly blind by the drastic change of light. After my eyes adjusted, I saw I was standing in a large, dimly lit rectangular room with no windows, no ceiling to speak of, and a painted white concrete floor. The only light source came from low-watt florescent fixtures perilously dangling from the ancient wood beams above us. Up and down the wall, on both sides of the room, were at least two-dozen beds, along with some make-shift shelving, and stacks of yet to be opened boxes. The biting smell of ammonia permeated the air, and I remember thinking, if this was the hospital, I could only imagine what the jail must have been like.

  A middle-aged man in a white lab coat, wire specs, and coal-black hair came out of a room off to our left. He saw us and smiled. “Colonel,” he almost sang, without offering a salute.

  Pennington smiled back. “Colonel Clegg, Lieutenant Callaway, this is Captain Lassiter, our friendly town doc. He keeps the men in the pink, and my ulcer and sciatica in check.”

  “When he remembers to take his medication,” Lassiter said back.

  The colonel mock saluted him.

  “Doctor,” Clegg said, foregoing a handshake for a nod.

  I was still holding the blue folder and chose to only offer a smile.

  “Welcome, gentlemen,” Lassiter said. “Here to inspect our first-class example of modern American military medicine?”

  “They’re here to see the woman,” Pennington said.

  “Ah, of course.”

  “Any casualties today?” Pennington asked Lassiter.

  “One head cold, a twisted ankle, and a knucklehead suffering from sunstroke. Honestly, Colonel, you have to tell these men to make sure they’re drinking enough water. We’re in the desert, for cryin’ out loud.”

  “I’ll issue another order. This time, I won’t be my usual sweet self.”

  Doctor Lassiter smiled.

  “Any trouble from the woman?” Pennington asked.

  “Quiet as a mouse,” Lassiter replied.

  “Very good. We’re going to go say howdy. Carry on, Doctor.”

  Lassiter offered a casual salute and walked away. We followed Pennington to the back of the room, where another MP stood guard in front of a white, nondescript office door.

  “Sir!” he said, as we approached.

  “At ease, soldier. Open the door.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The soldier pulled a ring of keys from his belt and unlocked the door.

  Pennington extended his arm. “After you, Pete.”

  “Sorry, Buck,” Clegg said. “This needs to be just me and Trip.”

  Pennington nodded. “Roger that. I’ll be out here if you need me.”

  Clegg and I entered the room. The door closed behind us, and I heard the lock click. Michelle Wu was sitting on a small cot in the corner. The person I’d encountered at the Wu estate was gone, and not just because her hair was a mess, her makeup was smeared, and her clothes were wrinkled. The confident, acerbic, powerful cat with claws was nowhere to be found. Now, all I saw was someone who was drained, broken, and utterly petrified.

  She looked up at us but said nothing. Then, she looked at me again. Her mind was processing my presence. Once it had, she let out a guttural growl.

  “Ton fils de pute!” she screamed, her eyes instantly filling with tears. “You used my son! How could you? He’s just a boy!”

  I thought she was going to come at me, but then I noticed one of her legs was shackled to the bed.

  “I…I’m sorry?” I stuttered.

  “Where is he? Where’s Jean-Claude?”

  “He’s with me…rather, he’s at my place…I mean…”

  “Your son is fine, Mrs. Wu,” Clegg stated like the hardened professional he was. “Don’t worry. He’s being looked after.”

  “And I’m supposed to trust you?” She hissed back. “You kidnap me from my home, bring me to this place, and I’m supposed to trust that my son is okay just because you say he is? I want to see my son? Where is he? I want to see—”

  “He’s at The Jam Jar,” I interrupted. At that point, for some reason, the words just started tumbling from my mouth. “It’s a jazz club. I live above it. It’s owned by my friends, and they’re looking after him. He came there last night on his own, Mrs. Wu. I found him this morning on my stairs. He’s worried about you, but he knows we’re seeing you and he told me to tell you that he loves you and that everything’s going to be okay. Mrs. Wu, believe me, he’s fine. He’s…” I took a breath, “well, I guess you could say he’s home.”

  There was silence. But then, slowly, I watched the hatred in her eyes soften. She fell back on the cot as if completely defeated. She whispered, “Yes, I expect he does feel like he’s home.”

  “Trip?” Clegg asked, looking at me with a raised eyebrow.

  “Jean-Claude is the son of Jean-Paul Chevrolet,” I said, looking at Michelle Wu.

  “And he is?”

  “Was,” I answered. “Jean-Paul Chevrolet was a French jazz pianist. He was making a name for himself both in Europe and America when he suddenly died six years ago. He wasn’t a household name yet, but he’d become famous enough to have his death mentioned in Down Beat magazine. I never would have figured it out if Jean-Claude hadn’t made a point to tell me his last name wasn’t Wu, but Chevrolet—he was very adamant about it. Given his musical ability, and his affinity for jazz, it didn’t take long for me to put it together.”

  Michelle Wu smiled sadly. “Yes, he is very proud of that name.”

  “I saw your late husband play once, Mrs. Wu. I was in college, and a few of us drove up to Chicago where he was doing a show. He was very good.”

  “No,” she responded, wiping away a tear running down her cheek. “He was a genius.”

  “Yes, he was,” I agreed.

  “What happened to him?” Clegg asked me.

  “I don’t know. The article didn’t say. It just reported he’d died and left behind a wife and young son.”

  “He was stabbed,” Michelle Wu said, softly. “He was trying to break up a fight outside a club in Paris after one of his shows. He didn’t know the two men, just that one had a knife, and one didn’t. He tried to help…damn him.”

  “And that’s why you don’t want Jean-Claude playing jazz.”

  She looked at me, and then hung her head. “From the time he could walk, we knew our son was gifted. Music was going to be his life. There was no question., but after Jean-Pa
ul was killed, I swore if he was going to play music, he’d play music that would keep him away from the kind of people who took his father’s life. Now, look at us. I’m in here, and he’s living in a jazz club in Las Vegas with strangers. Fate always seems to have its own way, doesn’t it?”

  I moved closer and kneeled in front of her. “They’re not strangers any longer, Mrs. Wu. Everyone at The Jam Jar has really taken to your boy, and I think he’s taken to them too. They’re good people. When I left, the piano player was teaching him an Armstrong song—oh, sorry, I know you don’t care for—”

  She raised her hand. “I’m thankful he’s safe.”

  Clegg pulled two chairs over from the other side of the room. I sat down in one, and he took the other. I thought he would begin by asking her the simple question, did you kill your husband? He didn’t.

  “Mrs. Wu, my name is Peter Clegg. I work for the U.S. government. Do you know why you’re in here?”

  “No,” she answered. “I wish someone would tell me.”

  Clegg sighed. “I’d like to help you, Mrs. Wu, and the truth is, I might not be able to, but if you don’t level with me, then I know I won’t be able to.”

  “Mr. Clegg, I don’t know why I’m here. Tell me what I’ve done?”

  Clegg leaned in. “Mrs. Wu, Mr. Callaway is holding a dossier there that says you’ve been funding the rebel forces along the Mekong Delta. The same rebel forces fighting with the North Vietnamese against the south, and the United States. What do you have to say to that?”

  She looked at me, and then back at Clegg. “That’s ridiculous. I haven’t.”

  “The evidence is very convincing, ma’am. It shows you’ve been diverting funds from your husband’s accounts into a Swiss bank account owned by factions sympathetic to the Viet Cong.”

  “No. That’s not right.”

  “Mrs. Wu, it’s all in there, account numbers, times, dates, everything.”

  “No, that’s…that’s…not what the money’s for…it can’t be….”

  She was losing it, and Clegg knew it. He pushed harder.