Club Saigon

by Marty Grossman

  Jerry followed Xuan through another clearing, then into the thick jungle with trees that obscured the sky. It was under this cover that a village unfolded before his eyes. There were at least fifty houses, all constructed of bamboo and palm fronds. Women and children walked around doing the normal chores of indigenous peoples. Drawing water from a nearby stream that ran through the heart of the village, washing clothes, smoking meats on bamboo trellises. It reminded him of any one of the hundreds of villages he’d encountered during his tours in Vietnam. “Kind of takes you back to the good old days, doesn’t it, Jack?” came a voice from behind him.

  “Sure does, Gunner. I don’t know how you can keep from shooting all these guys. They’re wearing the same black pajamas the VC wore. It’s freaking me out!”

  “Just something you have to get used to, Jack. These people are my friends . . . They have been for years. They’re my new family and I’d go to the wall for them. Look, business calls. I’ll see you later and fill you in on our travel plans.”

  Jerry walked up the crude wooden stairs and into the house. He found an empty cot and laid his field gear down on the floor next to the narrow bunk. He sat down on the thin mattress, took off his boots, and stretched out. He looked up at the thatched fronds that made up the combination roof and ceiling. It had begun to rain. The steady downpour tapped on the thatched roof like a cow pissing on a flat rock. He soon was lulled into a superficial sleep. His eyes were closed but his mind remained active. He wondered, just before dropping off into the brink of oblivion, what was transpiring with Gunner. He wondered whether he knew who Jerry really was and had lured him here to kill him. He felt his collar. He mumbled imperceptibly. “If you’re out there, Frank, please get your ass in here and take me home.”

  What was it that Gunner said just before he dropped him off here? They were his new family and he’d go to the wall for them. TO THE WALL. That used to be the team motto. Each team member got a new Zippo lighter when he came on site. On one side of the lighter was inscribed “TO THE WALL.” The other side read “BAC A NOUC.”

  Bac a Nouc was the Vietnamese expletive for the four-letter “F” word. That’s what all the Vietnamese whores used to say when they were propositioning GIs on the street. “TO THE WALL” was a bit harder to explain.

  When he was a “cherry,” Nelson Rotun told him, in one of his more lucid moments, that “TO THE WALL” was first suggested as a team motto by one of Rotun’s predecessors. It seemed that one night the camp had come under siege. That was not an unusual event. Their camp was regularly mortared about four times a week. Everyone on the team had an assignment during a siege. Whenever they were under siege, they were required to go to an assigned place. One of the guys, who would remain unnamed, had the assignment of forward observer. That position meant he had to be located on the front wall of our compound with a handheld radio. It was rumored that the F.O. had been drinking real hard that day and was in no shape for anything except sleeping. He stumbled up and onto the front wall that surrounded the camp just as enemy flares illuminated the Americans’ position. The story goes that he looked up at the rockets’ red glare, got dizzy from all the booze he’d drank, lost his balance and fell off the wall. The problems were that it was a ten-foot drop to the ground, and more importantly, the ground surrounding the wall contained a mine field. When he went off, the call went out to the camp. “To the Wall.” Everyone in camp at the time went to the wall to see what happened. Nobody ever told Jerry who the trooper was that became famous as the originator of the team motto, but Jerry noticed Nelson Rotun didn’t like to talk about it much. He also noticed that he walked with a distinct limp.

  Jerry felt him before he saw him. The barrel of the AK-47 was pointed at his chest. It pushed into Jerry’s breastbone again. He came fully awake, but he was startled at having an assault rifle pointed at him. Gunner is on to me, he thought. He brought me out here to kill me. He needed to keep his poker face on. Be nonchalant, don’t overreact, he told himself. He pushed himself up on one elbow and checked his watch. He’d been asleep for three hours. He swung his feet over the side of the bunk and brushed aside the AK’s muzzle. “Time to leave already?”

  Xuan looked down at him. Jerry could tell by Xuan’s facial expression that he didn’t quite trust him, but being skeptical was probably part of the job description for the head of a security strike force. “Mr. McConnell told me to take you on a tour of this operation while he refreshes himself. After that, we will be leaving for another camp. It is located in Cambodia. Several hours by river boat.”

  Jerry got up, put on his boots and stretched, hoping that his collar transmitter was working and that the cavalry would arrive soon. The longer he was on this operation, the more scared he became. It was funny: when he was younger, and a member of the team, death never was part of his calculation for life. Now that he was older and, he thought, much wiser, his mortality was the dominant integer in that formula. Xuan handed him his rucksack. “You might as well take this. We won’t be coming back here again,” he said, with a note of finality.

  The tour of McConnell’s jungle plantation was interesting if not informative. Jerry learned from Xuan everything he’d need to know about growing opium poppies. You plant the seeds, water them, wait for the petals to fall off and voila, raw opium. Jerry could hardly wait to get back to L.A. and start his own spread. The plants needed plenty of sun, and L.A. sure had that. They needed water, which might be a problem because of the recent drought. But he remembered reading somewhere that the crackpot governor of Alaska had proposed a water pipeline from Alaska to Southern California. The world’s longest garden hose, they called it. And what with all the pollutants in the L.A. air, the smack produced would probably be number one on the dope parade.

  They walked for about an hour before Xuan led Jerry into a clearing. Gunner and thirty well-armed soldiers sat in it. They got up as Jerry and Xuan approached. Xuan went over to Gunner and they talked for a moment in private before Gunner came back to where Xuan had left him standing. “I don’t know if Xuan told you, but we have a load of product going out of here in two days, and we’ve got to get down the river to make arrangements.”

  “No, he didn’t mention that, but I saw your operation. They had just started to harvest and bundle the poppies. I figured that you were getting ready to move them.”

  “You always were a smart guy, Jerry. Your intellect hasn’t diminished one bit since the old days.”

  Fear roared into Jerry’s mind like a runaway train. For the first time on this operation, Gunner had used his real name. It wasn’t like Gunner to forget a detail like that. Jerry wished there was a way to actually call Frank, tell him what had happened, scream at him to call in the cavalry and get him the hell out of here. But there wasn’t! If his device was working at all, it only sent out a constant signal. Instead of yelling for help, it only said beep-beep-beep.

  They got in line in the column and immediately got swallowed up by the thick jungle foliage that surrounded the camp. Jerry kept listening for the sound of gunships, the cavalry. But all he heard was the shrill cries of the macaws and monkeys. The sun that had filtered down through the canopy disappeared and threw him into semi-darkness. He heard a splash and knew they were near a river. But what river? he thought.

  Frank had reached the clearing. He arrived with a detachment of Thai regulars dedicated to the eradication of drugs, who worked closely and cooperatively with the American DEA and Interpol. Frank’s long-range electronic gear was working perfectly. He didn’t expect to find Jerry at the clearing, but he did expect to find Enrique. He was still several hours from the camp and knew that the helicopters they were riding in would not be heard just yet.

  As they approached the clearing, he spotted Enrique’s chopper. Frank had tried to contact Enrique by radio but received no response. He knew that Enrique was a very careful man. That was how he had managed to stay alive so long in his chosen occupations of pilot and double agent. Frank knew that if Enrique were in dan
ger, he would find a way to warn them off, but he had not done that. Frank continued to home in on the beacon signal they had attached to Enrique’s chopper.

  It was just a few seconds until they would come into view of the clearing where Enrique was supposed to meet them. The string of choppers rose over the jungle canopy that covered the hilly countryside like a long snake following a meal. The clearing came into view. Enrique’s helicopter sat in the center of it. The rotors were not moving. Perhaps Enrique is not there, thought Frank.

  But Enrique was there. As they came in closer they saw him bending over the back seats. Frank felt better. He’s straightening up the seat belts and arranging the rear of the chopper for transport.

  Frank’s lead chopper landed while the others hovered like a swarm of bees assessing a new hive. He ran to Enrique’s helicopter. He was worried now. Enrique hadn’t moved when they landed, and Frank had a premonition that something was wrong with this picture. Frank ran up behind the motionless, bent-over form, and pulled Enrique back by the belt loops on his pants. A headless body fell over into the dirt. Enrique’s handless, bloodless arm fell across Frank’s jungle boots. Frank jumped back, his heart pounding hard in his chest. It was obvious that Gunner had found another one of his snitches and eliminated him. Gunner had terminated him with extreme prejudice, but not before torturing him. Both hands had been severed before he died, ensuring that Enrique Sandoval would never fly anything again, not even in Hell, where he’d probably be residing for eternity. Frank wondered how much information they had gotten from Enrique before they severed his head.

  Frank checked the rest of the chopper. When he got to the cockpit he found Enrique’s head. He felt like puking, but held back the bile that surged into his mouth. Enrique’s eyes had been gouged out. How much torture had the man endured before he died? He had never hated Gunner McConnell more than he did now. There was a piece of paper stuffed into Enrique’s mouth. Frank pulled it out and read from the bloodstained sheet. “Your snitch held out for a long time. He was fun to kill. Before he died, he gave up two names. Your ass is mine, Frank, and Jerry is in for the trip of his life. Have a nice day.”

  Frank stood by the side of the chopper, reading and rereading the note. He looked over at the head of Enrique sitting on the seat of the helicopter. The blowflies coming from the empty eye sockets sounded like a door buzzer being pushed by an IRS agent on the front door of Al Capone’s house. Frank finally lost his cookies, spitting bile and bits of undigested rice all over his boots. He knew that if he didn’t get Gunner on this trip, he would never get him. His cover was blown and he’d have to tell them at headquarters when he returned. He knew that he’d be reassigned after that information got to his bureau chief. It was now or never. He left Enrique and the chopper in the clearing and took off, following the lone signal on his radio receiver unit.

  THIRTY

  The veterans’ demonstration had turned real ugly and Willy was enjoying every minute of it. He was on the inside looking out, but it could be construed as being on the outside looking in. It was reminiscent of when he was a young boy. His mom had gotten him an aquarium for his tenth birthday. He had a variety of fish, some small, some large, some that sucked off the glass, and others that hung out on the bottom. Willy remembered how he used to endlessly watch them. The fish became all the brothers and sisters he never had. He named them. He fed them. He cleaned up after them. He controlled the amount of air they got from the air pump and the temperature of their water.

  By age eleven, he was breeding fish in his aquarium. His aquarium had become the microcosm of life on the planet. The natural order of things was revealed to him through the clear glass of his aquarium.

  For his twelfth birthday, Willy asked his mom to get him a new kind of fish. He had heard of a fish called a Cichlid. It was a tropical fish found in the freshwater streams of South America. At that time, there weren’t many books written on the habits of Cichlids, but Willy knew he wanted them. He would find out firsthand how they would adapt with his other fish and work into the underwater community. He never remembered being happier than the day his mom brought home a breeding pair of cichlids, a type known as “Oscars.” They were only about two inches long and fit in nicely with the Guppies, Mollies, and Neon Tetras he already had in the tank.

  Willy began to watch his new fish. He noticed that they were very social, always swimming together, eating together, and sleeping together. When Willy would press his face to the glass, the little oscars would come up to him and look him right in the face, their orange eyes articulating in all directions as they curiously eyed him. He later surmised it was part of their nature to be curious. They liked him . . . he was sure of that.

  Young William Beal started taking notes in a spiral binder regarding their behavior. He was captivated by his new fish, seemingly forgetting the other fish in the tank. It was his study of the Oscars that showed him the benefits of careful notetaking. He had the Oscars to thank for the notes he had taken during his surveillance of Vinh Ho.

  As the Oscars got bigger, his other fish became withdrawn. They were unwilling and probably afraid to share tank space, and chose to hang out in the sedge grasses and under rocks at the bottom of the aquarium. It was at this point Willy theorized that life in his fish tank was indeed a reflection of life on the planet as a whole. He was so sure of his hypothesis that he wrote it in his notebook.

  Willy’s Oscars had grown to four inches in length and two in girth by this time. They were voracious eaters. One morning Willy noticed that most of the baby Guppies that proliferated in his tank, were missing. Soon, they were all gone. Then the adult Guppies went one at a time until there were none left. Willy noted in his notebook that the increase in the size of the Oscars was proportional to the decrease in mass of his Guppies. Soon the Neon Tetras were history and the Oscars got bigger yet. Next, the Mollies went and the Oscars got even bigger. Soon the only fish left in the tank were the Oscars and they had grown another inch in length and girth.

  The cycle was not yet complete. Willy noted that he had observed birth, life, and death by ingestion in his tank. He had personally experienced companionship and love. All these substantive issues that would prove his hypothesis. Then came pestilence. The Oscars created a heavy ammonia environment through decay of their biological products of ingestion. Their eyes bulged and turned a milky gray, their skin pallor glazed white. By the time Willy figured out what to do, it was too late. Both his Oscars died, and he experienced grief. He cried when he saw them floating belly up in the tank. For several days after that experience, the remorse he felt dominated his life. Then one morning he woke up knowing his hypothesis was correct. The planet was like a fish bowl. From that day forward, Willy Beal never cried over the death of anything again.

  As he looked through the pane of glass that separated him from the veterans on the sidewalk, he was reminded of his fishbowl. An older Willy now pressed his nose to the glass. The veterans were the guppies and Vinh Ho’s goons were the oscars—and the Oriental Oscars were getting hungrier the more they were baited. What was wrong with the guppies? They should know better than to come out from under the rocks that the government had given them to hide under. If this thing continued to escalate they would be eaten for sure. Willy thought for a moment then walked away from the window. It would be best for his survival if they did engage. Willy Beal smiled to himself as he walked away and into the crowded room.

  That’s the way it goes in the fishbowl, he thought with no remorse. When Willy had first seen the poster, he had begun to plan the operation against his former foe. He knew a lot of “street veterans.” That’s what he called them, anyway. They were down-and-outers, much like himself, that could not adjust to civilian life after Vietnam. They lived on the streets, drank cheap wine, and slept on park benches and in dumpsters when they could find one that wasn’t being used. Willy got the word out as soon as the poster appeared. When the candidate announced a reception, it seemed like the perfect time to organize a de
monstration. Willy had arranged the demonstration to cover his activities. He had failed to tell the “street veterans” that they represented nothing more than cannon fodder for his operation. He had failed to tell them that they were expendable, just like they had been expendable in Vietnam. If there was one precept of Communism that he agreed with, it was that “the end justifies the means.”

  Xuan stood at the edge of the river and waited. Gunner was behind Jerry. A rough dugout boat, carved from a log, stood next to the river bank.

  “Jerry.”

  The word shot through him like a thirty-caliber round. Gunner had used his real name for the second time in front of Xuan. His cover was blown and he knew it.

  “This is as far as you go with us, Jerry. Or should I refer to you as Detective Jerry Andrews, LAPD?”

  “What the fuck are you talking about, Gunner,” Jerry lied, turning to face him.

  “Don’t insult my intelligence, Jerry. I ran your prints from a glass you used at the club. George gave me the report just before we left on this adventure. It’s really too bad. I would have enjoyed partnering up with you again, just like when we were on the team together.”

  “What makes you think I’d be partners with a drug-dealing scumbag like you, Gunner?” Jerry said boldly, but with a touch of fear in his voice.

  “Because it would have beat what’s going to happen to you now.”

  Jerry heard the crack and felt the base of his skull cave in. Xuan had hit him from behind as he stood nose to nose with Gunner. His head felt like someone had driven a hot, pointed stick into his brain. His eyelids folded over, like a window shade being drawn, and night came early.