Club Saigon

by Marty Grossman

  “Sorry, Captain, I wasn’t paying attention. What did you say?”

  “The doctor, Jerry. It wasn’t Doctor Phun. Who was he?” They both looked up at the monitor as the bed was wheeled into the elevator.

  “I don’t know, Cap. He came in about the same time you did, so I wasn’t watching closely. Had a mask on and I Looked like an ordinary doctor to me.” But even as he said it, Jerry started to remember: Wasn’t Willy Beal walking around here in a doctor’s outfit yesterday? Shit!

  “I guess I should have told you, Doctor Phun is the only authorized physician allowed in to see Colonel Ho. We’d better check this out.” As they got up to leave, the familiar figure of Gunner McConnell came into view. He had entered the corridor from the back stairway.

  They watched as he first went into the room, then quickly came back out. They heard him talk to the officer at the door. “Where is the Colonel?”

  The officer replied, “He left with another doctor. The doc said they were going to the OR to do a surgical procedure.”

  “What did this other doctor look like?”

  “Average, I guess. Just another doctor. He wore a surgical mask and hospital clothes. I don’t know what he looked like. They went that way,” he said pointing toward the elevators.

  “You fucking idiot,” Gunner shouted. He then bent close to the ear of the officer and appeared to be whispering in his ear. Then he ran down the hall, at a rapid clipped gait, heading toward the elevator bank.

  “We’d better find out what’s going on,” Davis said. “Get in your wheelchair, Jerry. I’ll push, that way we don’t blow our cover.” They rushed out into the hall just in time to see the elevator door swallow up Gunner.

  Captain Davis paused just outside room 410 and thought about asking the cop for directions, but thought better of it, saying only, “You are a fucking idiot.” The cop didn’t respond. Captain Davis stopped in front of the nurse’s station and addressed a rough-looking RN. “What is the status of Mr. Ho, nurse?”

  She looked at the officers briefly as they both flashed they’re badges. “Oh, I see, you’re the police.” She turned and looked at her console. “His equipment is being calibrated by a technician just now.”

  “How long has that been going on?” I said.

  “Actually, for quite some time. I probably should go check on him.”

  “Don’t bother,” I said. “Which way to the operating rooms?”

  “Why,” she paused, thinking, then pointed toward the elevators, “they’re all in the basement, floor number one, but,” she looked at her watch, “you can’t go down there just now. There are several operations going on.”

  Captain Davis put the wheelchair in gear and pushed hard as they raced toward the elevators. He turned hard left at the elevator doors, almost throwing Jerry onto the highly-polished tile floor. The lights above the elevator doors indicated that both elevators were in use. They waited, poised to jump in the first available cab that stopped at the fourth floor. They watched and waited. The lights never moved off the indicator that showed the elevators to both be in the basement.

  “Shit,” Jerry said. “Forget the fucking chair, Cap. He’s got both elevators stopped in the basement. Let’s run for the stairwell.”

  Jerry jumped out of the chair and started to run back past rooms 409 and 410 to where the stairwell was located. The officer on the door of room 410 was back asleep. It was odd with all the noise they were making in the corridor. Jerry stopped as they ran past and checked him. He took him by the shoulders and shook him hard. “Wake up, you fucking idiot,” Jerry shouted. He slumped forward into Jerry’s arms. A small trickle of blood came from his left ear, running onto the front of Jerry’s hospital greens. “Gunner, Cap. That fucking Gunner put an ice pick in his ear.”

  “Nurse, call Rampart and get Detective Sergeant Fitzsimmons up here ASAP. Tell him that Captain Davis and Detective Andrews need backup. Have him meet us in the OR wing on the first floor.”

  The RN looked flustered as she saw the door cop roll off Jerry and onto the polished floor. She held her hand over her mouth trying to stifle a scream. Captain Davis ran back to the nurse’s station and grabbed her by the shoulders. “I said, get us some backup, nurse. You got that or do I have to spell it out for you?”

  “I’ve got it, Captain. Call Fitzsimmons and get back-up down to the OR floor.”

  “Very good. And, don’t touch anything in this corridor or in rooms 409 and 410. I consider this a crime scene. Understand?”

  “Yes! Yes, I understand. Consider it done, Captain.”

  Davis headed for the stairwell with Jerry in tow. Jerry was glad that at least they were going downstairs. Four flights running upstairs would have killed a couple of older cops like them. They took the stairs three at a time until they finally got to the basement. They stopped at the double doors and peered through the clear Plexiglas into the corridor. A sign on the opposite wall said OPERATING ROOMS 1–4, with an arrow pointing to the left. A sign underneath it said OPERATING ROOMS 5–8, AUTOPSY, with an arrow pointing to the right.

  “Which way, Cap?”

  “I’ll go left and check out ORs one through four, Jerry, you go right and check out five through eight. Any sign of them, let out a shout.”

  They both moved into the corridor turning in opposite directions and proceeded to move with extreme stealth and caution.

  FORTY

  The autopsy room was just like he expected it to be, as quiet as a grave. Three rows of stainless steel tables with gutters on the outside and a central drain emptying into the concrete floor. The back wall had two rows of five each cold storage cabinets that slid out of the wall, and an enclosed viewing room with a video monitor.

  Willy snapped on the light switch located in the corridor, then rolled his gurney through the double doors. The walls were painted a cheery light pink, in contrast with the room’s purpose. Dr. William Baines Beal rolled the gurney up to a table in the back corner of the room and set the wheel brakes. He had covered Vinh Ho’s face with a sheet for transporting him to the OR. He changed his mind when he found that all the ORs were in use, and besides, this was a much more appropriate place for the procedure he intended to perform.

  Doctor Beal pulled the sheet back, revealing a fragile, aging body. Vinh was gripping his chest. He was not moving, except for his frightened cataract-stigmatized eyes. Fear showed in what was left of his pupils. A tear fell from the sides of both eyes, rolled down his high-cheekboned face, and onto the sheet. Willy removed the stethoscope from around his neck, put the earpieces into his ears, and placed it on Vinh Ho’s chest. “Ah yes,” he said with bravado, “I still hear a faint but audible heartbeat.”

  Colonel Ho reached up with his scrawny hand and weakly touched Willy’s arm. Please don’t hurt me, his eyes silently said to the man standing over him.

  Dr. William Baines Beal pulled his arm back quickly. “Don’t touch the doctor, Colonel. I need to keep the field sterile to perform the procedure.” He removed the towel covering his serology tray. Vinh’s eyes grew wide as he glimpsed the six-inch knife, its curved steel blade, glinting in the high-resolution lighting of the morgue.

  Doctor Beal grabbed the sheet and unceremoniously rolled Vinh Ho from the gurney onto the stainless-steel table. Next, Willy took the roll of gauze from the tray and tied the old man’s hands and feet to the cold steel table. A naked Vinh Ho shivered uncontrollably on the frigid metal slab. He was more frightened than he had ever been before, helplessly tied, with a maniac doctor standing over him. He thought of offering him money to let him go, but he knew it would do no good. He was weak, unable to even struggle against his bonds. His chest pounded. Another heart seizure came slowly upon him, just like the one that happened when he first saw the newspaper article earlier that morning. As he felt his life ebbing away, his mind retreated like the outgoing tide to another time, another place.

  He was so young then. The prodigy of a military family. The epitome of Vietnamese manhood. He stood p
roudly, the leader of an ARVN regiment. A much-decorated colonel leading an Army of iconoclast, mundane soldiers. He inspired the uninspired and became like a god to them. But then, like all his predecessors and successors, he became corrupt. All the good intentions he had in his youth soon changed and corruption and immorality ran his Army.

  He knew that the Americans had plenty of money and they would be the instrument of his family’s ascent out of poverty. He learned to supply the GIs’ needs. He supplied their lust for women, drugs, alcohol, and all the deviant things that made them forget where they were and why they were fighting. What the governments of Vietnam and the United States didn’t know was that Colonel Vinh Ho also supplied the North Vietnamese government with what they most needed. Intelligence. Intelligence gathered from American soldiers enjoying the spoils of war . . . spoils he helped to provide. He successfully straddled that barbwire fence until he was airlifted from the American Embassy grounds in 1975, along with his family, a few Americans, their dependents, and many wealthy Vietnamese.

  He felt a needle break the skin of his forearm, but what did it matter? His heart had all but given out and his body longed for rest. Only his memories kept him alive. He opened his eyes for a brief moment and saw a doctor placing a long-barreled syringe into his other arm. Something was missing, he thought. He had syringes in both arms but—the doctor wasn’t taking a blood sample and he wasn’t putting the collection tubes in the syringes. His blood was pumping out of both arms and filling the gutters of the stainless-steel table. He felt colder. Chilled to the bone. He could hear his own blood dripping into the table’s drain, one drop at a time. He closed his eyes and drifted off again.

  He had amassed a huge fortune in gold and dollars over the war years. More importantly, he had a network of trusted men working for him in Asia and America. It was not long before he had established himself as the boss of bosses in the thriving community known as Little Saigon. He used his wealth to buy loyalty and position and to ensure his family’s survival long into the twenty-first century. He was a modern-day shogun. He was proud of his accomplishments and satisfied with his methods. He had never thought about his own mortality—until now.

  He felt as cold as a corpse, which he knew he soon would be if this hideous procedure continued. He wanted to ask for a blanket but his quivering lips could not say the words. His senses were getting duller by the second. He opened his eyes but he could not see. His breath came in ragged, halting explosions. He thirsted for a drink of cool water, remembering for a brief second the stream he used to drink from in the village where he was raised. The thoughts only made him thirstier. He was so tired. He felt like he could sleep forever. But his sense of hearing never failed him. The DRIP, DRIP, DRIP of his blood was like a roaring waterfall in his ears. His head felt like it would explode from the noise. DRIP, DRIP, DRIP. His life was flowing out of his arms and he could do nothing to stop it. DRIP, DRIP, DRIP—then he fell asleep for the last time. The sleep of the dead. Eternal sleep. The same eternal sleep that anyone with survivor’s guilt craved and desired.

  The autopsy room had a side entrance that entered directly into the viewing room. That’s the door that Gunner McConnell now used. The room had bright white curtains that were kept drawn across the windows facing the autopsy tables. In rare instances, doctors used this room to instruct students in forensic pathological techniques, but today it was being used by Gunner McConnell to watch his boss’s life drip down a drain.

  He kept the light off and watched through a small crack he had opened in the curtains surrounding the hospital bed. He couldn’t let the doctor he thought he had seen him before. Gunner thought about the codes he had in his wallet, a thin smile crossing his lips. Why should he care now what happened to Colonel Ho? After all, his future needs were now assured. He watched as the doctor put the syringe blanks into Vinh Ho’s arms. He watched as his old partner fell asleep, his life’s blood pouring onto the floor a drop at a time. He didn’t feel even a twinge of remorse. After all, hadn’t he been blackmailed by the old man? Forced to live a lifestyle that he may not have chosen for himself? In his own mind, he reconciled the old man’s death. He deserves to die. He deserves to be sanctioned with extreme prejudice, he thought. I’ve hated being under that VC motherfucker’s thumb for the past twenty-odd years, now I’m watching him slowly die, and enjoying it.

  As he watched the interchange between the doctor and his boss, he continued to think about where he’d seen the doctor before. I don’t remember him from this hospital, he thought. “He’s about the same age as me, I’d guess,” he said softly while he watched the last drop of blood fall from the table’s drain. It cascaded so slowly, as if in slow motion, finally splattering into the floor drain with a resounding DRIP.

  As the doctor prepared to wrap the body back in the hospital sheet and move it to one of the sliding freezers, he chanced to look up. It was in that instant that Gunner looked deeply into the doctor’s eyes. He saw the distinctive pencil-thin scar, high on the cheekbone under his left eye. His mind took him back to a place from his long past life as a member of the “A” Team.

  It was at An Ke near the Ba River. He had been injected behind enemy lines with another member of the team. What was his name? It’s on the tip of my tongue, but I just can’t remember. Our mission was to rescue a downed helicopter pilot. The word we got was he was shot down by enemy ground fire. He was alive and had made radio contact, but the VC were moving in on his location. He was supposed to have a very important passenger on board, a general from I-Corps.

  Gunner remembered that they were following an emergency locator beacon transmission when they were jumped by the VC. They ran toward the signal, which, according to their instruments, was just a hundred yards farther into the jungle. What was his name? The guy was fast. He ran through the jungle with the speed and grace of a gazelle.

  We were still being chased when we came upon the crash site. The pilot was dead, his body was protruding half through the broken windscreen, a razor-sharp shard of glass had passed through his abdomen and out his back. He must have made the radio call as he was crashing but it wouldn’t do him any good now. The general was another matter. He was alive but unconscious. Gunner ordered his teammate to set up a free fire perimeter around the chopper. It was just at dusk when they finally secured their position, but their situation was precarious at best. All the VC had to do was wait them out. Darkness fell and the VC stepped up their probes. Gunner looked his mate right in the face that night and remembered saying to him, “We’ve got to get our asses out of here tonight. If we wait until the morning, we’re dead meat.”

  Gunner remembered what his teammate said. “The general is hurt really bad. We have no radio contact anymore and we can’t carry him out by ourselves. We should stay with him until the cavalry arrives.”

  “Look, Cherry, this ain’t no John Wayne movie! We’ve got to save ourselves. I’ve been in these situations before and you can’t think about what’s moral and right. You can’t think about the other guy. You’ve got to think about your own well-being and di-di mau if necessary. In other words, I think we should get the fuck out of Dodge.”

  “You go, Sgt. McConnell; I’ll stay with the general until you send back help for us.”

  “Look, kid. I need your firepower to escape. The general here’s got to take his own chances.”

  “I won’t leave him while he’s still alive,” said the Cherry.

  Gunner remembered he had the same look at that instant as he saw in this doctor’s eyes. They must be the same, he thought. Gunner remembered pulling out his Ka-Bar knife, reaching over and slitting the general’s throat before the kid could do anything. “I guess you won’t mind leaving now, Cherry?”

  “You’re a son of a bitch,” he said, lunging for Gunner’s neck.

  Gunner grabbed him in mid-flight and threw him onto his back.

  “I’m going to let Daiwe know what you’ve done out here tonight.”

  Gunner looked him dead in the
eye, his putrid breath coming slowly and evenly. He held his knife right to the kid’s face, where he’d already scarred him before after some argument he barely remembered. “You say anything to anyone, kid, and I’ll see to it that you die a lot worse death than the general. You understand where I’m coming from?”

  Blood poured from the open wound and down onto his neck. Gunner had scared him really bad. The cherry knew that McConnell would keep his word. “I understand, Sarge. I won’t tell a soul. They were both dead when we got here.”

  “Now you’re cooking, kid. Let’s slip out of here and make our way back to our lines. If you’re real nice to me, I’ll put you in for the Purple Heart for that cut on your face.”

  “Don’t do me any favors, Sarge.”

  “Whatever you say, Willy.”

  Willy. William, Baines Beal, that’s who it was. It had come to him in that instant. He felt in his coat pocket. The tattered postcards were still there. His fingers were telling him what his mind already knew—Willy Beal had sent them. For now, he would get out of here, but he knew he would finish what he started back in Nam. He slid out the side door of the viewing room, leaving the hospital through an emergency exit. Once on the outside, he hailed a cab to take him back to the Club Saigon.

  Captain Davis crouched low, his service revolver drawn and at the ready. He stood off to the side of OR 1. He sucked in a deep breath and crashed through the double doors. “Police, freeze, hands up! Let me see your hands, suckers!”

  The OR staff was shocked. The surgeon, who had just removed a section of large intestine from his patient, threw his hands into the air.”

  Instinctively Davis saw the weapon, a scalpel, and pointed his gun at the doctor’s chest. “Drop the knife, doc.” The scalpel clattered to the floor. It hadn’t yet dawned on Davis that these people were not suspects. The surgical nurse saw the gun and dropped the stainless-steel bowl that contained the freshly severed bowel. It clattered to the floor, spilling onto Davis’ shoes. Davis looked down at his feet. The bowel was pointed toward his pants leg and looked like a spawning salmon swimming upstream. He backed up quickly.