“How long you been using, Willy?”
“I just use to get me over the rough spots, Jerry, so don’t go preaching at me.”
“Preaching’s not my job, Willy, helping my friends is. Who’s your source?”
“Shit, Jerry, what are you going to do, bust my supplier? I thought you said you were my friend?”
“I am your friend, Willy. I don’t want to see you get hurt anymore just because you didn’t get a college deferment in the sixties. Who’s your supplier?”
Willy looked up from the table and caught Jerry’s eyes for the briefest of moments. In that moment, Jerry saw his fear. Willy Beal, ex-soldier of fortune, one of Uncle Sam’s finest, was scared Jerry was going to cut off his source of drugs.
“Where’d you get the smack, Willy?”
“I got it from a guy in Little Saigon. That’s all I’m going to tell you, Jerry, that’s all you need to know.”
Jerry thought it was a good time to take the pressure off Willy, so he pulled the packet of photos from his inside jacket pocket. “Let’s change the subject then, Willy, and talk about something more pleasant. Here are the photos I told you about. Do you recognize the guy in these pictures?”
Willy took the packet Jerry handed him and brought the photos up to within a few inches of his nose, and looked carefully before saying anything. “You know, the light back here really sucks. I can’t be sure, but if I’m right, you know him too.”
The thought had occurred to Jerry several times, but, try as he had, he just couldn’t make the connection. He looked at Willy to ascertain whether it was the drugs talking. He seemed perfectly lucid, though. His eyes had cleared and seemed to be back to normal, and Jerry knew he wasn’t drunk. “Are you going to play games with me or just tell me what you think, Willy?”
“You really don’t have a clue, do you?”
“Clues are what I deal in, Willy, but in this case, you’re absolutely right. I don’t have a clue, enlighten me.”
“You really don’t remember, do you? I mean, here you are, one of L.A.’s finest, and here I am, one of L.A.’s lowest, you haven’t a clue, and my mind is as clear as glass, a telescope looking into my memory and supplying you with the clue you could need to solve your case.”
Jerry looked at Willy again, figuring the booze withdrawal and drugs had kicked in together, causing him to actually sound normal again. Despite his early mishap with the map, time and repeated misfortune had later hardened Willy into one of the more intelligent team members. Jerry had forgotten that after seeing Willy in his present condition. Things changed. People changed. Jerry would have to remember that and try to think of Willy in a more favorable light in the future. This was the same guy I counted on to cover my backside when we were over the pond together. He’s had a major setback and just needs my help, he thought.
“This is beginning to sound like Twenty Questions, Willy . . . Like I said, enlighten me.”
Willy took a picture out that showed the tall man leaning on the limo with his large hands on top of the car. “This is the photo that jogged my memory,” he said, pointing to the picture he had laid out under the overhead light in the center of the table. “You still don’t recognize him, do you?”
“Please, Willy, enough with the games. If I recognized him, I would say so.”
“Think back, Jerry. 1967, west of Kwang Tri Provence in the A Shau Valley, northwest of Hue. The team was sent in there to open a clear corridor so the Marines that were on an operation in the valley had a way out if they decided to make a hasty exit. You, me, and Preacher were on the eastern flank. Gunner, Blaster, Blackjack Baker, and Lt. Collins were covering the eastern flank. Boy, we laid down a heavy killing field on that operation. You starting to remember some of the details yet, Jerry?”
How could he forget? That operation was with him for many years after his tour of duty. It featured regularly in his flashbacks and nightmares. They had infiltrated the A Shau Valley by parachute on a dark moonless night. Preacher had said to him, “How many night jumps have you done, Jerry?”
Jerry looked him square in his camouflaged eyes and said, “All my jumps have been night jumps.”
“No shit,” he said in all seriousness.
“Yeah, all my jumps have been night jumps, that’s because it is unnatural to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. Whenever I jump, my eyes are shut tight. All my jumps have been night jumps, even the jumps I made at Ft. Benning, the jumps we took to earn our jump wings.”
Everyone was really laughing after Jerry told that story. Everyone except Gunner. He looked down the row of jump seats in Jerry’s direction and said, “What’s really pathetic about your story, Jerry, is it’s true. You’re nothing but a pussy in a green beret.”
Just then the red light went on and the jumpmaster yelled, “Stand in the door.” They all stood, shuffled to the back of the C-130, and checked their equipment. Then the green light came on, the jumpmaster yelled “Go, Go, Go,” and they were airborne. Just another night jump for Jerry. As he drifted downward on the warm air currents, he wished that Gunner would get his balls caught in his harness. That would serve that obnoxious son of a bitch right and would just have to do for Jerry until Gunner caught an NVA bullet between the horns.
That’s when it came to Jerry. The guy in the picture looked a lot like Gunner McConnell. “You really think it’s Gunner, Willy?”
“Give the man a cigar,” Willy shouted, obviously excited that they were on the same wavelength.
“Let me get a closer look at this picture. You know, Willy, you might be right. Same height. A little heavier, but aren’t we all. Same scar on the right side of his cheek and a big ring on his finger. That’s what you wanted me to see.”
“Yeah. If the ring is that death’s-head number he used to wear, then I’d say he’s your boy.”
“You never much cared for him, did you, Willy?”
“I don’t know anybody that did like the bastard.”
“You know I brought his body into GRU in ’68. The body in that bag was almost unrecognizable, but it had that big ring and his dog-tags that they used to ID him.”
Willy thought pensively for a moment. “He could have had another ring made.”
“If it wasn’t him in that bag, then who was it?”
“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, my friend,” said Willy. “I can’t answer that one for you.”
“It would be just like that son of a bitch to try and pull off something like this, and I think I just might know who helped him accomplish the substitution. Thanks for your help, Willy, I’ll see you soon.”
“Sounds good, Jerry, but before you do, what say you take a bath? You’re fouling up the neighborhood. My rummy friends won’t even hang out with me anymore, because some of your body odor must be rubbing off on me.”
“Yeah, it’s time to come off this surveillance and see the man on my own terms. You need anything else, Willy?”
“Yeah. I could use some change; the liquor stores down in Little Saigon won’t take my gold card anymore and this conversation has made me crave some alcohol. Hanging around with you, Jerry, is driving me to drink!”
Jerry took a twenty out of his wallet, slid it across the table, and recovered his photos as he left the bar. It was home to a nice hot shower, a shave, and eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. Tomorrow, he would see Colonel Vinh Ho and question him regarding the whereabouts of one Gunner McConnell, or whatever he called himself these days.
After just a quick overnight in Bangkok, where he’d gotten drunk and laid, Gunner boarded the twin Piper Navajo for his monthly trip into the interior. For Gunner, business always came first—after pleasure. He had spent the previous night with three bar girls he had picked up at the Mu Tai Lounge in downtown Bangkok.
His head had finally begun to clear as he sat back and relaxed. He had stopped at his post office box and picked up his mail, which he planned to read as he flew north. An envelope with an L.A. postmark jumped out at hi
m and got his undivided attention. The handwriting looked like the handwriting on the note that had asked him to send postcards to Preacher at the VA Hospital. He tore the end of the envelope open and stared at the scrawl written across the paper. “PREACHER IS DEAD. YOU’LL BE HEARING FROM ME SOON. HAVE A NICE DAY.”
Taking his attention away from the inflammatory message he had just received, Gunner stared hard at the envelope it came in. The zip code jumped out at him, offering him, for the first time, a clue to who knew he wasn’t killed in ’68. He let his seething anger simmer for a second, took a deep breath, and carefully, folding the envelope in half, placed it in his briefcase. He would continue his search when he returned to Bangkok, but now he must keep his mind on business.
This leg of his trip would take him farther north into the interior of Thailand, to a camp near the convergence of the Chi and Phong Rivers on the Khorat Plateau. He would check on the latest poppy crops and arrange for the transport of the raw heroine after refining it in his jungle lab. The operation was run by a grizzled old Thai named Nam Phat, who controlled a three-hundred-man army of high mountain guerillas. It was a simple business arrangement, and as long as nobody got greedy, everyone was happy. Nam Phat provided raw product grown by the women and children of his soldiers, and Gunner provided guns and money furnished by Colonel Vinh Ho.
Dressed in his freshly pressed jungle fatigues, Gunner felt just like he did before he went out on a field operation back in the old days in Nam. The adrenalin pumped through him like gas through a garden hose. He was expected to have a timid appearance when he met Nam Phat, even though he knew he could take the old man out in a fraction of a second. None of the killing skills he had learned on the team had been wasted. He constantly honed them in his private training room to a point of mechanically disciplined adroitness. If Jaws was an eating machine, then Gunner McConnell was a killing machine. Still, he knew his place with Nam Phat. He had been instructed very carefully by Vinh Ho about the intricacies of dealing with the aging general before his first business foray into the jungle.
Thinking beyond that, several days would be spent in Cambodia, where he would meet with a more subdued group of native people on the Bolovens Plateau. These native Cambodians had lived a nomadic lifestyle in the highlands all their lives. They too were intensely loyal to their leader, a man by the name of Phu Ho. He was a direct descendant of Colonel Vinh Ho, and therefore revered the old gentleman.
The raw opium was bagged and flown from the camp of Nam Phat to the encampment of Phu Ho, where it was transported down into the Mekong River Valley to be processed into 99% heroin. The river valley of the Mekong, with its dense, broad-leafed foliage, offered sanctuary and cover to the native processing operation that had never, as far as they knew, been infiltrated by the American DEC. The white powder known as Asia Pearl was shipped down the Mekong by riverboat to Phnom Penh, where it was flown to Bangkok. You might say that Gunner and Colonel Ho had their own version of the Golden Triangle. After arrival in Bangkok, each load was inventoried and smuggled into the USA by Gunner McConnell.
It felt good to not be laid up conducting all night surveillance in the Sleazebag Hotel. Jerry was cleaned up, showered, and thinking about asking Madeline if she wanted to go to the horse races after work. He figured if she said yes, they could horse around in the boudoir that evening. That hottie would probably blanch in the face of my overwhelmingly good sense of humor. In any case, he would hold that thought until after his chat with Vinh Ho.
Jerry pulled up to the curb in the loading zone in front of the Club Saigon. A guy with large muscles and a pulsing vein in his forehead came out to the curb and, in pidgin English, ordered him away. Jerry slowly got out of his car on the street side, figuring this guy probably could emulate Bruce Lee if Jerry got within kicking distance. Reaching into his coat pocket, he removed his gold detective shield and held it up, while at the same time opening his coat a little further to reveal his Browning 9mm auto mag. “Take me to Vinh Ho, and make sure nothing happens to this car, or your ass will be grass and I’ll be the lawnmower. You understand?”
Jerry noticed that the vein in the guy’s temple got even larger when Jerry showed him his badge and his piece. The man showed Jerry into the club and pointed to the back table where a single overhead lamp illuminated the man Jerry had come to see. As Jerry approached the table, he noticed Vinh’s hired muscle move closer, to a vantage point just out of earshot. Colonel Vinh Ho had lost some hair since Jerry’d seen him last in that bar in Pleiku City.
How many years had it been since that night again, over twenty? It was quite a party he had thrown then. That was the night Gunner shot and slashed his officer and stuffed the body in the fifty-five-gallon drum in the back alley of the club.
Jerry wished he could see Vinh Ho’s eyes. A man’s eyes could tell you a lot about how he’s feeling when he’s talking with you. They could tell you if he was mad or happy, or if he knew what you were talking about, or if he was surprised by what you were saying. Jerry figured that’s why Uncle Vinh used dark glasses. The Japanese were masters at inscrutability, the Vietnamese were not. Uncle Vinh used the dark glasses to even the odds.
When Jerry reached the table, Vinh rose to greet him, extending his hand in Jerry’s direction. “Detective, what can I do for you this fine day? Have you come to see me again about Johnny Hong? Perhaps you have some information you wish to impart to me?”
Jerry chose not to shake his hand, remembering his past, unpleasant association with him and his Army. His memory kept flashing back like a flickering light bulb, telling him he had met this son of a bitch in his past, after the Pleiku party, and something had happened at that meeting that would help him get to the bottom of his association with Gunner. He made a mental note to ease up on the sauce a little and hoped that would slow the rate of brain cell degeneration. Like a signpost along a dusty road, the message came into his brain: Don’t think so hard about it, and it will come to you. Sounded like good advice to him.
Jerry reached into his coat and removed the photos from his jacket pocket. He handed them across the table, unceremoniously dropping them in front of Vinh as he sat back down. “You recognize the man in these photos?”
Vinh Ho took the pictures in both his hands and moved them close to his face. Jerry could see the man that he thought was Gunner staring back at him through the reflection in Vinh’s dark glasses. He had to control the primal urge that kept hammering at his subconscious, telling him, “Tear those fucking sunglasses off his face so you can look the bastard in the eye and tell if he’s lying to you.”
Vinh thumbed through the entire pack of pictures and then slid them back in his direction. “Would you believe me if I told you that I didn’t know this man, Detective?”
Jerry liked to avoid answering rhetorical questions from suspected drug dealers, so he didn’t answer that question. “Do you own a black Cadillac stretch limo like the one in this picture?” He turned one of the photos in Vinh’s direction, one that showed the suspect leaning on top of a black Caddy talking to a foxy female chauffeur.
“Yes, Detective, I do own a car that looks like that.”
“Then don’t insult my intelligence by denying that the man in those pictures is an acquaintance of yours.”
“I have denied nothing, Detective.”
“You do know this man, is that correct?!” Jerry continued to prod.
“Yes, he does look like a business associate of mine by the name of,” he paused momentarily, “Mr. McCormack.”
“What kind of business are you and Mr. McCormack involved in?”
“I don’t know that it is any of your business, Detective. Am I being charged with a crime?”
“No, Mr. Ho, you are not being charged with any crime at this time.”
“Then perhaps, Detective, you are a bit premature in questioning me about business ventures that are none of your concern. Do I need to contact my lawyer and have him present, Detective?”
Jerry hated the wa
y this son of a bitch kept spitting out the word “Detective” at the end of each sentence. He was sure Vinh was doing it to piss him off, and if so, Vinh was rapidly reaching his objective. He couldn’t help thinking, If only that son of a bitch didn’t have on those glasses, if only I could get a good look at his eyes, the truth in this matter could be found there. “Does this Mr. McCormack come and visit you in L.A. very often?”
“I see him from time to time, Detective, but then again, you should know how long he’s been here. After all, you have had my business establishment under your personal surveillance for the past week.”
How the hell did he know that? Jerry thought. The answer came to him in a lightning flash of insight: the Oriental deskman at the Delta Hotel was augmenting his income by selling information. Jerry would deal with that problem the next time he was in the neighborhood, but for now, he had better stick to the questioning of Mr., alias Uncle, alias Colonel Vinh Ho. “I’ll ask you again, Colonel,” Jerry paused to check his reaction, but the dark glasses thwarted him again. “How long was Mr. McCormack in town on this particular trip?”
“It is not possible for me to tell, Detective. You see, he may have been in town for weeks and I would not know it. He is a free man and comes and goes as he pleases. The meeting you observed was scheduled over a month ago. Perhaps if you can tell me what you are investigating, I could give you some more information.”
Jerry looked at those dark lenses, reflecting his own image back in his face, and wanted to strike a blow for all his buddies that had been killed fighting Vinh’s dirty war. Jerry wanted to kick the shit out of Colonel Vinh Ho, to let him know that they were dead so he could become wealthy selling drugs, guns, broads, and disease to anyone who had the dough to buy his kind of misery.
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