Club Saigon

by Marty Grossman

  He used the back-door key he had stolen to let himself into the kitchen. He found his broom closet door in the dark and entered. It was time to prepare himself for his final mission.

  Gunner knew that his days left in L.A. numbered just one. Tomorrow he would begin his world tour of wealth.

  He let himself into the club and went straight up to his room. Jimmy Tranh had been left at the hospital to make arrangements and Nguyen had been left inside the front door to discourage any patrons. Nguyen had hung a sign in the front window written in Vietnamese. It notified passersby and patrons alike that Colonel Ho had died, and the restaurant would remain closed for the next week in honor of the old gentleman.

  Gunner had used his credit card to arrange for first class air transportation on Quantas Airlines to Australia. He would have to wait until morning to use the codes the old man had provided and transfer large quantities of money from the Asian and American banks into an account he maintained at the Bank of Sydney. He laid back and tried to sleep, but his head was pounding. He felt another migraine coming on, so he got up and went into the bathroom to choke down a pain reliever. Percodan was his drug of choice. He took the plastic vial of tablets out of his shaving kit and drank two down with a glass of bourbon whiskey. The alcohol enhanced the effect of the drug, and soon he knew his headache would go away.

  Gunner laid his head back down as he began to swim in the pool of the drug’s opioid effect. He thought about what he had seen at the hospital. He thought about the fact that he had some unfinished business with his old pal Willy Beal. He was mad as hell at Beal for sending him those fucking postcards. He took the cards out of his pocket, where he’d kept them since arriving in L.A. He fanned them out like a hand of poker.

  “Who gives a fuck,” he shouted, sailing the handful of cards out across the room. “Who gives a rat’s ass about Preacher or Willy or any of my former buddies on the fucking “A” Team. Who gives a rat’s ass about any of those assholes? Anyone stupid enough to blow themselves up doesn’t deserve a second thought.” Gunner fell back on his pillow and stared at the ceiling.

  He was asleep now after his tirade, and the dreams came to him like they had for over twenty years. Bad dreams. Nightmares. They were the kind of dreams that would have made a less resolute man commit suicide, but Gunner was an animal. A jungle beast. A preservationist of the first order. He thrived and he survived in spite of his memories.

  He was glad he’d taken his headache medicine. When his headaches were worst, that was when the voices came. How he hated them, the voices. Always telling him what to do. He fought them, but they usually won. He was in deep REM sleep now. He heard the voices deep inside, but they were overshadowed by the nightmares. Tonight, as he had a thousand times before, he saw his six teammates. He watched as a pair of hands, his hands, locked the bunker door and set the shaped charge on the outside. He began to sweat, tossing and turning, as he attached a push-pull device to the charge and stretched it across the door opening.

  He remembered that was the first time he’d really been driven by the voices. He helplessly watched as someone inside tried to get out of the bunker door that he had quietly nailed shut. The wood door, which was straining against its frame, finally began to open. The wire tensed, then stretched, as the pounding on the door got more intense. Just before the door was smashed off its hinges, the wire pulled a small pin that triggered the device. The sound of the explosion was deafening in the confined corridor in front of the commo bunker. The noxious smoke and gas from the explosion were enough to choke a horse. The stench of the dead and the dying could make even the strongest stomach turn.

  Gunner sat up quickly and puked a stream of bile over the side of the bed. He was drenched in his own sweat. The inner voices kept calling him a “pussy” and finally told him to go back to sleep, which he did. His inner self wanted him to dream some more. His inner self liked reliving the war, and other similarly disgusting events in Gunner’s life, but Gunner would have rather gotten a good night’s sleep. His nightly insomnia was a result of PTSD and his fear of nightmares driven by the voices. He was a sick puppy, but all the money he was going to get in the morning gave him some degree of comfort. That amount of money could make a man forget a lot of things, including his past. He dozed off again and was soon loudly snoring.

  Jerry drove around the block twice, noticing the sign in the window of the Club Saigon. It was obvious to him that the Vietnamese scrawl told patrons of Colonel Ho’s passing and that the restaurant was closed. He slowly passed the sign indicating the entrance to Baker’s Alley. He cut his headlights and made a sharp left into the alley. It was pitch black, and it took several seconds for his eyes to adjust to the lack of light.

  Jerry remembered the night they investigated the Johnny Hong murder. Hong was killed farther down the alley at the bottom of the concrete stairs. There was a lightbulb missing then and, from the lack of light, Jerry was sure it was still missing. He killed the engine and sat silently in the car. He wondered if Willy was further back in the alley watching him or wasn’t even here at all. He reached up and switched his dome lamp to the off position so it wouldn’t light when he opened his car door. He checked his .357 service revolver, making sure he had some spare ammo in his coat pocket. He truly hoped he wouldn’t have to use it tonight. He snapped it back into his shoulder holster and, satisfied he was ready, got out of the car. He eased the car door closed, still wondering if he’d been spotted.

  He hated working in the dark. He’d been on several night recon missions over in Nam and never got used to it. He’d always felt like someone out there was watching him. It gave him what his younger brother used to call the heebie-jeebies. It made his flesh crawl and the hair on his body stand at attention. That’s the way he felt now as he slowly walked to the end of the alley where a large dumpster was. He thought he heard some noise coming from the back of the alley when he first got out of his car. He didn’t want to, but he knew he had to search the area to make sure Willy wasn’t hiding in the shadows of the alley or the trash bin. He wished he could use a flashlight, but that was out of the question. It would only bring attention to him.

  He walked softly, crouching low with his service revolver at the ready. He thought he heard something rustling in the dumpster. Could be that Willy had gotten back on the muscatel and had gone to sleep in there. There were a lot of could-bes, but he had to stop thinking about them. He had to put them out of his mind or he’d really lose it. God, how he hated working in the dark.

  He moved around the large trash container, checking the shadows around the outside. He found nothing. He heard a rustling from inside the dumpster. He was sure of it. He worked his way around the front and dared to look over the rim. As he did, his eyes met another pair of eyes staring straight into his. He was paralyzed with fear. His life passed before his eyes in an instant. His gun was at the ready, but his finger was frozen on the trigger. He stared, and unflinchingly, the eyes continued to stare back at him. He wanted to identify himself as a police officer but his vocal cords were frozen like yesterday’s TV dinner. He waited for the owner of the eyes to make a move, but those eyes just kept staring him down. He was in a Mexican standoff with a yellow-eyed suspect. He looked hard, then relaxed as the situation came into perspective. His mind had been working overtime. He had drawn down on an alley cat rummaging for food.

  He was relieved, so relieved that he stepped behind the dumpster and took a piss. He worried about all the noise he’d made, but was thankful he hadn’t fired his weapon, which would have aroused the current occupants of the restaurant. He stared at the back of the Club Saigon, remembering the brutal death of the dishwasher, Johnny Hong. How many Vietnamese had died in or near Little Saigon, since that night in the alley? A rhetorical question. Six, counting Colonel Ho. The answers to all his fears and questions were inside the building just in front of him, and of that, he was certain. He stayed in the darkest shadows and walked to the back door of the club, hoping that he hadn’t alerted a
nyone to his presence.

  The message that greeted Captain Henry Davis when he got back to the stationhouse was brief but to the point. It was a copy of a recent radio dispatch from Detective Jerry Andrews. SUSPECTS IN THE SLASHER CASE MAY BE HOLED UP IN THE CLUB SAIGON. I AM INVESTIGATING BUT MAY NEED THE CAVALRY. FROM THIS POINT ON I WILL MAINTAIN RADIO SILENCE. IF STAFF AVAILABLE, REQUEST COVERT BACKUP.

  “Fitzsimmons, get your ass in here,” Davis shouted into the squad room through his open office door.

  Fitz ran from his desk and stood in front of Davis. “What is it, Cap?”

  “The slasher case is heating up. I want you to contact SWAT, Sergeant Madison’s squad, and have them in the briefing room in ten minutes.”

  Fitz looked puzzled. “What’s going down, Captain?”

  “Tell Madison that we have an assignment for his team. Covert backup. That’s all!”

  As Fitzsimmons did a snappy about face and exited, Davis got on the phone. “Let me speak to the chief, Mabel. It’s important.”

  FORTY-TWO

  After he entered his closet, Willy had been careful to jam the lock from the inside and stuff rags across the bottom of the door. He then pulled the light chain, marveling at all that he had accomplished right under the noses of the VC. Willy had stashed his “go to meeting” polyester suit in the bottom of his closet under some cardboard boxes. He quickly found it, holding it up and admiring it in the low light provided by the 30-watt incandescent bulb.

  He felt for the tiny slit on the back side of the right lapel of his polyester jacket. He found it easily and then proceeded to push with his thumb and forefinger until the tip of a wire appeared. He grabbed it and gave a steady tug until all eighteen inches of piano wire was removed. In the pocket of his jacket, he removed two pieces of elongated, round hardwood, each with a small hole drilled through the circumference. He attached the wire with a handle on each end, admiring his work with a critical eye. The garrote was Willy’s first weapon of choice when it came to silent killing, and he was an expert with it.

  Willy Beal turned off the light in his closet for the last time as he prepared himself to complete his final mission. He removed the rags from under the door sill and, seeing no light emanating from under it, went out into the empty kitchen. It was pitch dark except for the occasional glare of a headlight that went through the front window and reflected in the back-bar mirror like the phasers from the Starship Enterprise. Willy kept low and loose, moving silently and, as always, invisibly.

  He reached the corner of the kitchen and peered around the swinging half-doors into the main restaurant. It was dark except for the telltale glow of a cigarette coming from a table near the front entrance. He heard the heavy breathing of the VC as he sucked in on the noxious weed, then exhaled a stream of smoke into the stale air. Willy had seen this man before at the hospital. He was one of the VC in the room with Vinh Ho when Doctor Willy Beal made his rounds.

  He was a young man with a stocky build, about five foot eight, as he remembered. He was too young to have been over in Nam during the war. He must just be another Vietnamese punk.

  “Don’t underestimate your foe.” That’s what Preacher told him once, just before a field operation. This one’s for you, Preacher, he thought, as his hands tightened around the handles of his garrote.

  It had been so easy. It was late, three thirty a.m. The club had been closed up for hours and he knew it was empty. Willy had come out of his closet to get a sandwich when suddenly, like a bolt of lightning, he had had this inspiration. I’ve got my knife, which nobody missed when I stole it. He’d reached inside his shirt reassuringly and felt the smooth wood handle. I’ll bet they wouldn’t miss a piano wire either.

  Willy had been lulled to sleep on many nights by the sound of the baby grand playing in the piano bar. He liked lounge music, but seldom in the past ten years had he had the opportunity to enjoy it. How much enjoyment can you get listening to piano music while you’re getting drunk in an alley?

  There was nobody in the restaurant at that hour and it was easy. Willy just walked across the lounge in the dark to where the piano stood. He found himself a narrow-gauge lower E string and removed it. On the way back to his closet, he stopped at the bar and found two old corkscrews, not the yuppie kind, but the kind for which you actually had to screw into the cork. He took them back to his closet and, when he had time, removed the metal corkscrews, leaving him with two handles for his new weapon. It was turning out to be an interesting field exercise for Willy Beal. It was nice to have the freedom to operate and control the elements of his mission. It hadn’t always been that way for him.

  In a country as volatile as Vietnam in the late sixties, field operations had become increasingly treacherous. You never knew who to trust. Yesterday’s best friend was today’s worst enemy. Nationalism ran a close second to Communism, and life ran a not-so-close second to death. Willy Beal found himself on the brink of extinction one afternoon in the Ia Drang Valley. The choppers had let him off south of Pleiku City on a western tributary of the Mung River. It was a simple recon mission. Willy Beal and two ARVN informants were to travel by boat and recon a village that was suspected of harboring NVA soldiers on their way through the country. A simple mission. Observe and report. A couple of days traveling along a lazy river, lying on the wet jungle mat and reporting movements in the village.

  Willy was never sure just why, but from the time he left the briefing area in Pleiku, he kept humming an old tune from the American Civil War. Nervous energy will do that sometimes, and it just kept repeating over and over again in his head. “When Johnny comes marching home again, hoorah, hoorah. When Johnny comes marching home again, hoorah, hoorah. The men will cheer, the boys will shout, the ladies they will all turn out, and we’ll all feel gay when Johnny comes marching home.”

  Willy always thought, That’s the way it will be when I go home. Lots of back slapping, hero worship, and envy from those that didn’t enlist and lots of round-eye pussy for those of us that did. It would be only three years later when he found out just how wrong he was. “When Johnny comes marching home again . . . ”

  The ARVNs spent most of the first day moving the small band into a position south of the village where they could observe without being detected. They had established a perimeter, which they booby-trapped with toe-poppers and punji stakes, then sat back in their blind to observe the village. After about two hours, the two ARVNs left the blind to take a piss. Willy began to worry when he didn’t hear them return. Five minutes became ten. He checked the trail back toward the river. The boat was gone and so were the ARVNs. “When Johnny comes marching home again . . . ”

  Okay, he thought. What else is new? He never believed in the fucking Chu Hoi Program anyway. You don’t just take hardcore VC and turn them into loyal troops. Chu fucking Hoi my ass, he thought. Willy was not one to panic but he knew he had to get out of there. He wasn’t sure whether his chickenshit Chu Hoi brothers had just got nervous and left, or had gone to the village for help. In any case, his survival instincts told him to get the hell out of there now! He went back to the blind and quickly began to gather up his gear. Willy took one last look through his binoculars and noticed increased activity in the village. Motherfucking Chu Hois, he thought.

  He threw on his rucksack and started to turn around to head back toward the river. He figured that he’d rather face the bloodsucking leeches and cover his trail in the water than to try and hotfoot it across the jungle.

  His nose picked up. He could smell the strong scent of Cosmoline grease. He knew it wasn’t coming from his weapon—he had long since removed the grease from that with rifle cleaning solvents—but he knew his enemy, as oftentimes as not, would leave it on their weapons to protect them from the ever-present wetness of the jungle. Willy heard the bolt snap into place from behind as the hidden enemy chambered a round into his AK-47. He panicked for just a second. “When Johnny comes marching home again . . . ” Willy threw his rucksack to the ground, turned and fired
his AR-15 in a curved path a foot off the jungle floor. He heard the familiar “pop-pop-pop-pop” of an AK coming from his left. He turned and ran forward out the front of his blind, forgetting that they had booby-trapped the area. With razor precision, a punji stake rammed through his jungle boot and out through the top of his foot. Willy hopped a few more feet on his good foot, but soon fell over. Another punji ripped through his arm as he lay pinned to the jungle floor. As he looked up all he saw was the smiling faces of his captors, who stood over him, prodding and kicking him. As he began to lose consciousness, the familiar tune played in his ears, “When Johnny comes marching home again—Johnny, I hardly knew ya.”

  As everyone that had ever fought over there knows, there is only a small window of opportunity for escape after capture. That window is generally open only for a few hours, a couple of days at most. The first day the VC get your attention by beating the shit out of you and generally noting their disgust for Americans. It doesn’t take you long to figure out that they don’t like you, and they never heard of the Geneva Convention.

  The next day they began the interrogation. Interrogation by the VC gives new meaning to the words “cattle prod.” Anyone that has ever had a generator hooked up to their nuts knows what Willy was going to have to endure if he wasn’t repatriated soon. After the initial torture session, they would put you in a contraption called a tiger cage. The tiger cage was a three-foot square bamboo cage that the large Americans were forced to squat in while being transported to a prison site. Of course, the beatings and other sundry forms of physical and mental torture continued as they went along. Willy knew he would be displayed with full embarrassment at village after village. The villagers would be told that it was the Americans that killed their sons and raped their daughters. They would be whipped into a frenzy by the calculating VC interrogators. Then the villagers would be turned loose on the American prisoner. It wasn’t pretty. It was degrading and ugly. Willy mentally prepared himself on that first day of his captivity for what he knew would soon be his destiny. “When Johnny comes marching home again—Johnny I hardly knew ya.”