When the light went out, Ke Son was more than halfway down the stairwell. Her heart jumped for a second as she stopped to let her eyes adjust to the absence of light. This had not been the first time that she had to walk these stairs in the dark. She would tell her employer in the morning and hope that the bulb would be replaced by tomorrow night. She held the rail tightly and her hands began to perspire. The coolness of the round, steel handrail felt good to her and served to reassure her, soundlessly, that nothing was wrong.
While the handrail told her one thing, her mind told her another. Why had the light gone out so suddenly? It hadn’t even winked once or twice like old light bulbs often do. What was that squeaking sound that she thought she heard just before the light went out? She remembered it being the kind of insignificant sound your mind might hear when listening to a subliminal tape. The kind of sound a light bulb makes when it is being removed. She stopped suddenly and listened harder. All she heard was the gasping of her own breath. Nothing to worry about now, I’ve reached the last landing, she thought. Only a few more steps to the outside door. Ke Son looked up and saw the dim outline of the light bulb. She was tempted to reach up and see if the bulb was unscrewed or really burned out. Just a few more feet and you’re out, she thought. Just tell the maintenance man in the morning.
“Here, let me help you.” The voice came out of nowhere as suddenly and frighteningly as a blast of sulfurous hot breath from the devil’s own mouth. She was held by the throat, her feet just inches off the landing. Her heart felt like it would explode in her tiny chest. She began to sweat profusely, emitting a pungent odor that signaled a pheromone release, which was picked up immediately by the flaring nostrils of her attacker. He smelled the fear and he was excited!
Ke Son listened through closed eyes and choking breath as her attacker slowly pulled her along and screwed in the bulb. The high-pitched grating sound she had thought she heard had come back to haunt her. Why didn’t she leave when she had the chance? Suddenly Ke Son’s feet felt the metal landing. The grip around her neck loosened and air rushed into her straining lungs.
As he let her down, he came to the realization that she was a girl. He had never purposely done a girl before, but he couldn’t let her go. After all, she had seen his face. He had relaxed his grip, but she wasn’t going anywhere. His large body stood on the landing, blocking her path to the door, and she was too scared to try and run up the several flights of steep stairs that would take her back into the shop.
He reached into his coat and took out his knife, flashing it in front of her face. Ke Son began to whimper, her breath got short and she began to hyperventilate. She became oxygen-starved and passed out at his feet. As she lay prone in front of him, he marveled at her simple beauty, but remembered that he had seen other men fooled by simplistic beauty.
His thoughts went back in that instant to the floor of the Ia Drang Valley. He was on a search-and-destroy patrol, two days out of Plei Me. From the outpost overlooking the valley, he had spotted some pajama-clad indigenous children, led front and back by two young females. He sent a five-man patrol down to interject the trail in the direction of their march.
As the patrol left, he’d picked the youngsters up with his field glasses. They were each carrying a small backpack. No weapons were visible. The two young girls that led the group couldn’t have been more than fifteen. They looked so young and fresh, the innocence of inviolate youth—or so he thought. That’s when he lost sight of the group. The trail twisted back into some thick foliage and swallowed them up in one swift gulp.
The next thing he heard was the sound of a firefight. Some small but distinct explosions, then deadly silence. His radio man tried to contact the patrol. No luck: only static reached his ears from the PRC-25 radio. When they finally got another patrol out, he got the word he didn’t want to hear. The five-man patrol had apparently stopped the children but hadn’t taken the proper security precautions. All five had been killed by a single shape charge that exploded from the backpack of one of the children. All their weapons and ammo had been taken, as well as the radio. The jungle had swallowed up the children and no one had the spirit left to follow them. He remembered throwing up at the sight of what was left of the patrol.
“You bitch. I won’t be fooled again.”
Ke Son had noticed the momentary lapse in his concentration, but was too terrified to move. She was still sniveling, but managed to speak. “Please don’t kill me. I’ve done nothing to harm you.” She was prostrate at his feet now and grasped his shoes.
He stepped gingerly back and kicked her in the face just under her right eye. She fell back against the stairs and grabbed her face. “It was you in the Ia Drang, wasn’t it?” he said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please don’t hurt me anymore.” Her voice had turned from fear to pleading as the blood from her cut face dripped onto her white blouse.
Blood excited him. He took his knife and in a few short twists of his wrist, cut the buttons from her blouse. They fell through the porous grating like so many pebbles, finally coming to rest on the cold concrete floor. He tore what was left of her blouse down her back, pinning her arms tightly to her naked sides.
“Please stop, I’ll do anything you want, just don’t kill me,” she sobbed.
“I know you’ll do anything I want, little lady,” he yelled as he pressed closer. His nostrils flared as he drew himself close to her face. He smelled the fear. She reeked of it, and his excitement was rising like a stiff dick at an office party. He pushed his body against hers, thrusting his pelvis out, and grinding it against her thighs. He felt the warmth of his semen pulsing into his pants as he continued to thrust against her.
“Please don’t kill me,” she begged again, knowing her words would not reach the creature that was attacking her.
“Tell me, little lady, how long have you worked for the Viet Cong? How many of my comrades have you and others like you killed?”
At first, he heard only the wailing sobs of his victim, then he heard the VOICES. “She is the one that ambushed your patrol in the Ia Drang. It’s time to exact her punishment: KILL HER NOW!”
The knife flashed from his waistband as he swung her limp body around and, in one swift movement, with the precision of a surgeon, cut her from right ear to left. So quick was his blade that Ke Son didn’t realize that her throat had been cut until she felt the warm fluid pouring down the front of her chest. She sobbed out, but her cry was stifled, sputtering through her blood-gorged windpipe like hot pudding bubbling on the stove. It was her turn to feel the mystery of the velvet curtain, he thought, as he wielded his blade once more, severing the right ear from Ke Son’s head.
Ke Son Nu heard the outer door close. It sounded far off, like the distant roar of a drum pushed through a hollow pipe. She reached up and grasped her neck, feeling the sticky mass oozing from the long gash. Then she realized that her fingertips were as cold as ice. I’m dying, she thought. Soon the frigid feeling moved up her arms and down her legs until her toes ached from the frosty sensation. It’s funny the way your mind works when your life is flowing away in a river of blood. She could see the end coming, and all she thought about was how cold she was and how she should have listened to her mom that morning and worn some socks. Her eyes looked upward and saw the dark curtain begin to descend. She struggled to push it back, but she had no strength left. The coldness of her body had taken away her resolve. Her life juices poured through the metal grating and dripped onto the cement floor as the curtain came down on the final act of her life.
Jerry walked into the squad room and straight into Captain Davis’ office. Davis looked up from his cluttered desk. “You look like shit, Jerry. You’ve got to find a good woman to take care of you or you won’t last out the decade. My wife Clara has a few good-looking widow friends. Should I have her set you up?”
“No thanks, Henry, if you recall, I just got rid of my last wife. When did you start pimping on the side? Captain’s pay must not b
e keeping enough shoes in your old lady’s closet?”
“You’re right about that last remark. Shit, Clara’s got more shoes than Imelda Marcos. If she put on a new pair each day, it would be 2010 before she wore the same pair again.”
“How ‘bout my surveillance team, Cap? When do I get them?”
“I’ve assigned four men to you, Jerry. Sgt. Jim Fleming and his crew. You remember Jim? You and he went to the police academy together, didn’t you?”
“Sure did, Cap. Jim’s a good man, and if his team is half as good as he is, they should get us some good results.”
“Getting Fleming’s surveillance team is the good news, Jerry. The bad news is I can only spare them for two weeks.”
“Two weeks is better than none, Henry. What say I go out with one of your old lady’s girlfriends, would that change things any?”
“It could. If you were really good, maybe I could stretch another week out of Fleming, but if you weren’t so good, and I started getting flack at home . . . ” Davis trailed off. “My wife, she heard a rumor that if it wasn’t for Rosie Palms and her five sisters, you wouldn’t have any sex life. She just wanted to do the Christian thing and save you from the evils of masturbation. How is your eyesight, by the way, have you had any bouts with temporary blindness?” Henry was choked with laughter as he barely got out the words about Jerry’s less than active social life.
“Real funny, Cap. The fact is that I wouldn’t fuck any of your old lady’s friends even if I used your dick. Two weeks will be fine. Put Fleming and his minions on a guy by the name of Willy Beal. I’ll be doing some undercover work of my own, doing surveillance of the Club Saigon. I’ll leave Willy’s folder on your desk before I leave tonight. They can pick up his trail at the 44 Magnum, and tell them not to bother me if I’m drinking there.”
“Will do, Jerry. Anything else I can do for you?”
“No. I’ll be spending my time on my own investigation of a guy called Colonel Vinh Ho. If I don’t miss my guess, he’s the Godfather of Little Saigon. I interviewed him this morning and I came away with nothing—nothing, that is, except the distinct feeling that I had met the man before, and that he wasn’t telling me all he knew. I think it was you that told me, Cap: never trust a guy whose eyes you can’t see.”
Captain Davis looked at Jerry with a long stare before saying, “He wore dark glasses and never took them off, did he?”
“You’ve got it, Henry. He wore the dark, wraparound kind. I couldn’t tell you what color his eyes were, or if he had any, for that matter. He also had lots of local muscle hanging around him and a chauffeured limo out front. I can honestly say with confidence that this guy wasn’t selling fortune cookies for a living.”
“Okay, Jerry, we’ll get started right away. Remember to keep this close to the vest: we haven’t found the leak yet.”
“My lips are sealed, at least ’til I get to the Magnum. I’m as parched as the Grapes of Wrath.”
“A little early to be drinking, isn’t it?”
“Don’t look at it as if I’m drinking, look at it as if I’m undercover.”
The idea came to Jerry as he sat at the 44 Mag, sipping suds and shooting down a bourbon back. The boilermakers cleared his head and helped him think coherently over the noisy din of raucous cops that filled up the Magnum each night. Jerry had already talked to Mondo, who told him that Willy B. hadn’t been in all day. Jerry remember thinking at the time, I’ll check in the morning paper and find out that there’s been another murder in Little Saigon. But then he thought, Not to worry. Sgt. Fleming’s on the job and sticking to Willy like a fly on shit.
After his fourth boilermaker, Jerry was really beginning to feel like an undercover operative. His cover was perfect. He was Jerry Andrews, middle-aged, overweight, derelict, and boy, was he starting to look the part. “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the scuzziest bum of all.”
“Yo, Jerry, you talking to yourself again?” shouted Mondo over the pandemonium that was now taking place. “Jerry, you really got to take better care of yourself. I don’t know if anyone’s told you, but you look like shit!”
Jerry looked over at Mondo, who pointed over the bar to where Lana Lovett, a local female impersonator, had thrown a lip-lock on an out-of-town salesman that had mistaken the 44 Magnum for a normal bar. Lana was sucking so hard, his platinum wig fell off in the guy’s lap, and that’s when the salesman discovered that Lana was a guy. He tried to get Lana to release him from her death grip, but couldn’t extricate himself. Mondo leaned over the bar and egged Lana on, shouting, “Suck them up, Lana, make him cum in under one minute and I’ll give you a free drink: a Cuma Libre.”
A retired desk sergeant sitting one stool over from the action leaned over and further exacerbated the stranger’s problem. “She’s good, ain’t she? I saw her suck a golf ball through a garden hose, and I saw her do it more than once.” Just then the stranger got a funny look on his face and Lana took one last long pull on his crank, and everyone was sure that Lana just got his tonsils sprayed by the salesman’s love muscle.
“Fifty seconds. I guess I owe you one, Lana,” shouted Mondo. He looked down the bar in Jerry’s direction. “How about you, amigo, ready for another?”
Jerry looked down at the spent salesman and the satisfied Lana. They were holding hands. He looked into the mirror. Henry and Mondo were both right: he looked like shit. His undercover face was now complete. He slipped off his stool and staggered out the door, heading for Little Saigon.
The limo pulled up to the front of the Club Saigon, stopping just long enough for Gunner McConnell to step onto the curb before it sped off and entered the parking garage. He quickly walked out of the hazy daylight and into the restaurant, where he paused for a second, letting his eyes adjust to the dimness of the interior. He looked toward the back of the restaurant and saw the Colonel sitting at his usual table, surrounded as always by his three heavily muscled Vietnamese bodyguards.
Uncle Vinh noticed him right off, standing in the doorway, and waved him toward a seat at his table. “I trust my driver showed you a good time on your visit, Sergeant?”
“As always, Colonel. I trust you found my shipment in good condition?”
“As you say, Sergeant, it was found complete and in good condition. I had my boys burn the rental car after they extricated the goods. I have handled the details for you with the rental car company and they are satisfied. I look forward to your next visit.” Vinh Ho reached into his inner coat pocket, removed a first-class airline ticket and an envelope full of cash, and slid them across the table in front of McConnell. “You have two hours before your plane leaves from L.A. International. I hope you have a pleasant journey. I will contact you soon so we can coordinate our next business deal.”
Gunner knew that was his cue to leave. He quickly stood, courteously bowed, and took the ticket and the money from the table. “Until we next meet, Colonel. May your business prosper.”
FIFTEEN
The Delta Hotel was an old, run-down, red-brick building that sat on the corner of Front Street. It was less than a block from the entrance to the Club Saigon, and offered a perfect view, if you were lucky enough to have a room on the fifth floor and had offered a bribe to the desk man.
By now, Jerry had a two-day growth of beard on his face and smelled like a working whore who hadn’t taken a bath for a week. Jerry thought that pouring the bottle of MD 20-20 down the front of his clothes was a nice touch that added to his disguise. He rented the room for a week, paying the guy three bucks a night, two for the room, one for the location. The Vietnamese counterman looked him over once or twice, then sniffed the air like a coon hound catching the scent of a bitch in heat. He scrutinized him, giving him the Vietnamese version of the stink-eye one last time before insisting that Jerry had to pay in advance. “Room 502, top of the stairs, on the right,” he said in pidgin English.
The room was typical of the rundown, downtown flophouses. A single bed with a gray wool blanket covering an unwash
ed, cum-stained sheet, hastily thrown over a paper-thin mattress. The pillow, which had no pillowslip, had enough grease on it to run a car in the Indy 500. Jerry looked around for the bathroom, and only found a sign on the wall telling him it was down the hall to the right. He was beginning to think this undercover gig was a mistake when he walked up to the window. As he looked down from his perch on the fifth floor of the “Waldorf Flophouse Towers,” he noticed the one redeeming feature of his humble abode—he had a clear view of the front entrance to the Club Saigon. At least, it would be clear after he windexed the shit out of the scum-covered glass.
Jerry pushed the bed up against the door and plugged the keyhole with a wad of gum that he’d been chewing on, then moved his bag close to the window. The window had one of those roll-down paper shades, which he rolled down, then cut out a few holes to allow him to look down the block with his binoculars and shoot pictures with his camera without being observed.
It was about time for him to report to the squad room, but before he left his new temporary home, he took the binoculars and scanned the Club Saigon one last time. The sleek black limo pulled away, leaving the tall man standing on the curb. Jerry took his picture, using his 200–400 telephoto zoom lens. The man walked into the Club Saigon and Jerry waited. The same man came out after two more minutes. He was carrying an envelope or folder of some kind. Jerry took a close-up of the man’s face and the envelope. Just that quickly, a limo pulled up to the curb. The man got in and was gone. Even though Jerry had just taken a few snaps, he removed the film and stuffed it into his pocket. He put all his gear back in his satchel and headed for the squad room.
“Nice room,” he slurred as he walked past the deskman. “You got a bathtub in this joint?”
The deskman held his nose and tried to talk to him, finally saying, “No tub, no showwa. Two blocks down on the left—Turkish bath if you have a dolla.”
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