The girls spoke next to no English but the woman who brought the beer did so Tyler asked her to sit down and join them. She said her name was Annie and when Tyler complimented her on her English she told them that she had worked in bars when the Americans had been in Vietnam.
“Bad day for Saigon when Americans go,” she said. “Communists kill my husband, take my son to work in fields.” She shrugged. “I still here, still run bar. Now Americans come back.” She said she was forty-three years old but she looked a lot older; her upper lip was lined and she had deep grooves either side of her mouth and folds of skin around her chin that settled over the string of cheap pearls she wore. Her smile was too eager and her eyes kept flicking from man to man to check that they were happy and that they weren’t making a move to go. When Carmody got to his feet to go to the toilet she mistook it for a sign that he wanted to go and she reached to grab his hand and pull him back.
“Was this bar here during the war?” Lehman asked her.
“No. The communists closed down all the old bars. Took away the girls. Took away the managers. Took away everybody to re-education camps.”
“What about you, Annie?”
She grimaced. “I had a friend, an NVA officer. He took care of me.”
“Where are we?” asked Lewis. “What part of town?”
“This Dong Khoi Street,” she said. “Before NVA come it was Tu Do Street. The French call it Rue Catinat.”
“Tu Do?” said Lehman. “Christ, that was where all the bars were. It was the hottest street in Saigon. There were more fights here than in the jungle.”
“And probably a higher body count,” said Tyler, sipping his beer from the bottle.
“It’s changed, all right,” said Lehman. He walked to the entrance of the bar and looked up and down the street. So far as he could see the Hot Bar was the only such drinking establishment in the street. Last time he’d been in this road he couldn’t move for pimps offering him their sisters and girls offering him their virginity. There wasn’t a vice or drug or perversion that wasn’t available in Tu Do, at a price. The place had been packed with Jeeps and soldiers, war-weary grunts with wild eyes and hair-trigger tempers on their first R&R and Saigon-based military with crisp fatigues and new boots. Now it looked like every other road in Saigon, run-down and decaying. The garbage had gone, though. There were always piles of it during the war because the government couldn’t match the salaries paid by the American bases so they never had enough workers to carry it away. There was no anti-blast tape on any of the windows either. And the beggars had gone. The street used to be packed with widows and disabled ex-ARVN soldiers asking for handouts and gangs of child pick-pockets. Maybe the changes weren’t so bad after all, he mused. Annie appeared at his shoulder, fearful that he was about to leave.
“You sit,” said Annie. “You sit, I get you nice girl.”
Lehman turned to her and smiled, saddened by her over-eagerness to please. “Annie, it’s okay, I’m not going anywhere. Relax.”
She nodded too quickly and held him by the arm until he sat down again. The girls noticed his Mickey Mouse watch and giggled.
Carmody came back from the toilet and sat down again. The girl next to him, a teenager with her hair in two long braids tied with blue ribbons, leant over and whispered to her friend sitting on the other side of Carmody and the two of them burst into a fit of giggles, covering their mouths with their hands.
“What are they laughing at?” Carmody asked Annie.
“She wonder how you go to the toilet,” she said.
“Because of my claw?”
Annie nodded. “You not angry?” she asked anxiously.
“No, I’m not angry,” said Carmody, putting down his beer. He held his claw in front of the girl with pigtails and her eyes widened, not sure how to react. Annie spoke to her in rapid Vietnamese and the girl smiled and reached out to touch the stainless steel. Carmody twisted it out of her grasp and ran the cold metal softly down her cheek and then along her neck and down to her blouse. The smile froze on her face as the claw traced a line along her collar and then slowly scraped across the material and moved down between her small, firm breasts. All conversation had stopped, and everyone was looking at Carmody. The claw reached the first button on her blouse and he made a small flicking movement that popped it open. He pushed the claw against her skin and drew it down, parting the material and revealing a white lace bra. When the claw encountered the second button he popped it as easily as he had the first and moved down to the third, but before he reached it he looked over at Annie and grinned. “That’s how I do it,” he said, and cackled.
Annie laughed and the girls joined in, but the girl with the pigtails kept her eyes on the claw and her laugh had a nervous edge to it.
Carmody ran the claw along the line of her jaw and she flinched. He turned to Annie. “Tell her that’s not all I can do with it,” he said.
Annie spoke to the girl and she nodded but didn’t smile.
“How much to go with her?” Carmody asked.
“She very young girl,” Annie said. “She not been here very long. Other girls better. Better in bed. I think you be more happy if you choose them.” She pointed at a thin girl with long straight hair who sat opposite Carmody. “She very good girl. Very clean.”
“I believe you, mamasan, but I want this pretty little thing.” He put the claw on the girl’s bare leg and moved it up her thigh, dragging the skirt with it. She tried to push it down and whimpered, tears welling up in her soft brown eyes.
Annie looked at Tyler as if appealing for help. “Go easy, Larry,” he said quietly.
Carmody held Tyler’s gaze for a second or two and then nodded. He withdrew the claw and picked up a red and white pack of Marlboro cigarettes. He opened it with the claw, took out a cigarette, put it in between his thin lips and then, still using the claw, took a gunmetal Zippo lighter from the pocket of his cut-off jeans. He spun it around in the grip of the claw, snapping it open and flicking a flame into life. He lit the cigarette, put the lighter back on the table and then used the claw to hold the cigarette while he blew a plume of smoke up towards a slowly revolving ceiling fan. Annie clapped and the rest of the girls joined in the applause. Carmody went on to show them how he could use the claw as a bottle-opener and they all clapped again. Lehman noticed that at the first available opportunity Annie motioned the girl with pigtails to go into the back room where she stayed until the Americans had left.
A moped drove by, its engine buzzing like a dying insect, then its brakes squealed and there was the crunch of a badly timed gear change and it came back and stopped by the kerb. There were two men on the moped. The driver stayed at the kerb while the passenger, a young Vietnamese guy in his late teens or early twenties, dismounted and walked into the bar. He was wearing a black T-shirt, jeans and light brown cowboy boots and had slicked-back hair that glistened redly under the lights. He had a used car salesman’s easy smile and the swagger of a pimp with a stable of eager whores. Annie said something to him but he waved her away with a grin and walked over to the Americans.
“Hi, you guys Americans?” he asked.
“Maybe. Who wants to know?” said Carmody.
“Hey, no sweat,” said the man. “My name’s Ricky. I was just wondering if you guys wanted to do a little business.”
“What sort of business?” asked Lewis suspiciously.
“Currency,” he said, brushing his oiled hair back behind his ears in a gesture that was almost feminine. “I’ll give you a better rate than you’ll get in the hotels. What hotel are you staying at?”
“The Floating,” said Carmody, lifting his beer with his claw and keeping it raised until he was sure that Ricky had seen it. Then he drank and used the sleeve of his other arm to wipe away the foam from his upper lip, watching Ricky all the time.
Ricky raised his eyes and looked at the ceiling. “Hey, I guarantee that I can do you a better deal than you got there. They’re pirates, real pirates. How many dong
do they give you to the dollar?”
Carmody was going to answer but a crafty look flashed across his face. It was so transparent that both Lehman and Lewis noticed it and they began laughing. Carmody glared at them. “What are you offering?” he asked Ricky, and took another drink.
Ricky looked at the faces of the men around the table as if hoping they would offer some hint but five pairs of cold eyes looked back. He pulled a face and ran his hands through his hair again. “I’ll give you 6,000.”
That was considerably better than the rate offered by the hotel, but Carmody wasn’t satisfied. “Eight,” he said.
“Eight thousand dong for one US dollar!” exclaimed Ricky, his hands on his hips like a flamenco dancer. “You are crazy!”
“Yeah, and you’re a black marketeer,” answered Carmody.
Ricky’s lips tightened as if he’d just tasted something very sour. “How much you want to change?” he asked.
Carmody unzipped the money pouch he carried around his waist. Because the Trading with the Enemy Act forbade the use of American credit cards in Vietnam, all the Americans had to carry lots of cash around. They’d found that many places accepted US currency quite happily, but always gave a lousy exchange. They always got a better deal if they paid in the local money, the dong, but as there were several thousand dong for one US dollar and as the biggest Vietnamese banknote was just 5,000 dong, it usually meant carrying a wad of currency around about the size of a house brick. Carmody’s pouch was fairly light so nobody was surprised when he looked up and said he wanted to change 250 dollars.
After several minutes of bartering they agreed on two million dong and Ricky went out of the bar to confer with the moped driver. The driver kicked the moped into life and drove off in a cloud of grey smoke while Ricky waited at the roadside. Five minutes later he was back with a small plastic bag which he handed to Ricky. He kept the moped engine turning over with occasional blips on the accelerator as Ricky brought the bag inside and motioned to Carmody to go with him to a table at the back of the bar.
Carmody sat down and placed five fifty dollar bills on the table and laid his claw on top of them. Ricky swung the plastic bag on the table and took out stacks of notes. They were all 5,000 dong notes in piles of nine with the tenth folded around them. Two million dong meant forty piles, and Ricky slowly counted them out. He took one of the piles at random and spread the notes out to show that they were all 5,000 dong bills. He chose another and did the same, and another. Carmody nodded and lifted his claw from the American bills and began scooping the Vietnamese money back into the bag.
“Maybe we’ll do business again, Ricky,” he said.
Ricky laughed, pocketed the bills and stood up. He froze when Tyler’s hand clapped him on the shoulder. “Wait just a minute, Ricky,” said Tyler quietly. He pushed down, hard, and Ricky’s legs buckled. He crashed back on to the stool, protesting loudly.
“Hey, man, what’s your problem?”
“Dan, keep an eye on his chauffeur, will you?”
“Sure thing,” said Lehman. He got to his feet and went over to the entrance of the bar where he leaned against the wall as if he had nothing more on his mind than a breath of fresh air. The moped driver looked at him and Dan raised his bottle of beer in friendly salute.
Ricky continued to protest but Tyler’s grip was like steel and he remained on the stool. “Larry, why don’t you slide those bills back out of the bag and have another look at them?”
Carmody picked the bag up by its bottom and spilled the dong on to the table. He picked up one of the small piles and examined them. “They’re okay,” he said.
“Try another.”
Carmody looked at a second pile. It too was made up of ten 5,000 dong notes.
“Another,” said Tyler quietly.
Carmody pushed the piles around with his claw and then took a third wad of notes. “This one’s cool …” he stopped mid-sentence and glared at Ricky. “You cheating fucking slope!” he hissed. “You stinking fucking cheating bastard!”
“What’s up?” asked Lewis, walking over to the table with his beer in his hand.
Carmody held up a handful of bills. The one on the top and the bottom and the one that had been folded around it were 5,000 dong bills, but the rest were five dong notes. “This fucking gook was trying to con me,” he said, and threw the notes in Ricky’s face.
“Count them, Larry,” said Tyler. “Let’s just see how much the little fuck was trying to stick you for.”
Carmody went methodically through the untidy stack of banknotes, putting the ones which were all 5,000 dong bills on one side, the ones containing five dong on the other. The genuine bills accounted for less than a third of the total.
“Well, Larry, I reckon that young Ricky here was trying to get your 250 dollars for about one million dong, give or take a few. About half the rate he promised you.”
“Bastard!” shouted Carmody. “Give me my fucking money back you slant-eyed little shit.”
Ricky made as if to slip his hand into his back pocket but at the last minute he thrust it instead under the table and pulled a black-handled knife out from one of his boots. He pushed Tyler away and held the knife out in front of him, the other outstretched for balance. He shuffled away from the table so that his back was against the wall. Lehman heard the commotion and looked quickly over his shoulder.
“Everything’s just fine, Dan,” said Tyler calmly. “Just keep your eyes on Tonto there. We’ll handle the Lone Ranger.”
Ricky waved the knife under Tyler’s nose and made short, sharp jabs at his face, but the American didn’t flinch.
“Let me have him, Joel,” hissed Carmody, stepping around the table. Ricky kept the knife moving between the two men, bending forward at the waist as if preparing to spring.
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, Larry,” said Tyler, keeping his eyes on Ricky. “He looks as if he knows how to handle that knife.”
“Yeah, well I’m not exactly defenceless,” answered Carmody. “I can look after myself.”
“No offence meant, Larry,” said Tyler, stepping away from the Vietnamese. Tyler motioned to Lewis and Horvitz to move back.
Ricky grinned when he saw that he was being given the opportunity to fight one on one and he focused all his attention on Carmody, who eased himself into a fighting crouch, his claw forward. He made small circling movements with it as he made soft, animal-like grunting noises. Ricky moved away from the wall in shuffling steps, swishing the knife left and right at stomach level. Carmody sniffed and jabbed with his claw and then spat into Ricky’s face, a shower of saliva that sent the Vietnamese’s hand automatically up to protect himself. Carmody stepped forward and kicked Ricky between the legs, sending him smashing into the wall. Carmody kept moving forward and brought his arm down with enough force to plunge the points of his claw deep into Ricky’s hand. Ricky screamed and the knife clattered to the ground. Carmody swung him around and pulled his arm up behind his back, blood streaming from where it was still impaled by the claw. Tears were streaming down Ricky’s face and he was shrieking with pain. Carmody wrenched the injured hand up higher and then rammed his knee into the back of Ricky’s leg so that the Vietnamese almost collapsed. With his good hand Carmody grabbed Ricky’s hair and began to pound his face into the wooden panels of the wall until they all heard cartilage crunch and the man’s screams stopped. Only then did Carmody let go of his hair and let him slump to the ground. He had to bend with the fall because his claw had become entangled in the bones and tendons of Ricky’s hand and he knelt down to twist it out of the torn flesh. He stood up and took a paper napkin from one of the tables and used it to wipe the blood from his claw, then screwed it up and threw it to one side.
He grinned at Tyler and walked to the entrance of the bar to stand by Lehman. The man on the moped stared at Ricky’s limp body, then gunned the engine into life and sped off, his feet dragging on the road as he fought to control the bucking handlebars.
Ricky groaned. Carmody walked back over to him and pulled the US dollars out of the man’s back pocket, then kicked him in the ribs.
“That’s enough, Larry,” said Tyler. “We don’t want a dead gook on our hands. Not now.”
Carmody nodded and left Ricky alone. “Whatever you say, Colonel.” He picked up the carrier bag and scooped the dong back into it.
Lehman turned to look at the two men. He was no longer surprised at the ease with which Tyler controlled the actions of the group.
“I think we’d better all saddle up and move on out,” Tyler said and the vets headed for the door where their cyclo riders were already climbing into their saddles.
“Hey, GIs, what do we do with him?” Annie called after them.
They ignored her and swung themselves into the cyclos.
“Where shall we go, Joel?” asked Lewis.
“Gentlemen, how about a race?” suggested Tyler.
“A race?” repeated Carmody.
Tyler turned to speak to the five cyclo drivers. “Do you all speak English?” He was greeted with five smiling, nodding faces. “Right then.” He took out his wallet and removed a twenty dollar note. He waved it in the air. “We want to go from here to the Rex Hotel, then along Le Loi Boulevard to the statue of Tran Nguyen Hai, down Pho Duc Chinh Street and along Ben Chuong Duong Street and then to the Floating Hotel.”
He looked across at the rest of the vets. “I reckon that’s the best part of a mile.”
He turned back to the drivers. “We’ll only be paying one fare, and that’s this twenty dollar bill. The winner gets it all. Okay?”
The men all nodded eagerly. It was more than they normally earned in a month.
“Are you ready? Get set. Go!” Tyler shouted, and fell back in his seat as his driver accelerated. The drivers pounded their legs around and around, bending low as they pushed their rusty cyclos along the roads, steering with one hand and ringing their bells with the other to warn cyclists they were coming through. They varied in age from late twenties to early fifties but all were fit and all appeared to want to win the prize. By the time they reached the Rex Hotel they were all perspiring heavily and the pace had slowed with Lehman slightly in the lead, followed by Tyler, Horvitz and Lewis virtually neck and neck. Carmody was last and he was rocking backwards and forwards trying to get more momentum and to encourage his driver, the youngest of the group. Lehman leant over and waved his fist at Carmody as they rounded the corner into Le Loi Boulevard watched by curious pedestrians who wondered what the crazy Americans were up to. Lewis and Horvitz were yelling at their drivers to increase the pace and they rose up out of their saddles to get greater leverage on the pedals. Lehman’s driver kept looking over his shoulder to see if they were gaining.
The Vets (Stephen Leather Thrillers) Page 14