by Peter Colt
“In Chinatown in Boston, I was able to sell more of the gold. We bought the restaurant and finally I felt like we could just live. I felt that we could breathe. We could raise the children. We would never be hungry or scared again. I still had three of the gold bars left. Finally, I felt safe. Even when Colonel Tran came in looking for his contributions, I felt safe. He didn’t recognize me. I was just another peasant to him.” Nguyen told his story with the easy flow of a natural storyteller. He also seemed to get lost in the past. He smiled to himself, flush with the success of saving his family again. I wondered how often he thought of that sweet memory.
“Then what happened to change all of that?”
It was almost cruel breaking his reverie, dragging him from the success of a father providing for his family. The problem with me is that I have to know. I am driven to know what happened. That drive makes me a shitty person but a good detective.
“Hieu. Hieu happened. He came to America. At first, it was good. We reunited. He was a journalist again, was with his wife and family. Then he started to hate the Committee. Started to write about them. One night, we were drinking cognac, from this very bottle, and I was drunk. I told him we have it good here. I told him not to, as you Americans say, rock the boat. We are alive here. We can raise our families here. I told him I would help him. I told him about the gold. I felt bad for him. He had suffered through so much.”
“What did he do?” I felt that internal flush of victory, hubris. My theory had been right. I had been right.
“He grew angry, then suddenly stopped. He told me he wasn’t angry with me. He was angry at the Committee. They should have used the gold to help Vietnamese refugees. You must understand, Round Eye, . . . there was much suffering, the boat people and the upheaval caused by war. Hieu was right. I didn’t see him for days; then he was shot dead. I was so sad. To have survived the war, to have survived the communists, to come here and find your family again, to have a chance to be happy . . . then to be killed.”
“You knew it was Colonel Tran?”
“Yes. Colonel Tran wanted me to help him with the Committee. He knew I had been a frogman, but I told him I wanted to put the war behind me. He would come in and complain about Hieu. Also, I had seen his gun. The same caliber, he carried it all the time. A small version of your Colt .45.”
“When did Pham contact you?”
“He called me. He was angry, very, very angry. Hieu had been to see him, and he had told him about my taking the gold. Pham truly believed that we were going to lead the counterrevolution.”
“He drove up here to see you?”
“Yes. He was angry. He wanted to meet. He wanted to confront me in person. He came here and we had a very loud fight. We almost fought each other, but we are not young anymore. He left . . . so angry at me.”
“Then you called him at his hotel.” Nguyen snapped out of his reverie, and his eyes focused on my face.
“Yes.” Almost a whisper.
“You agreed to meet. Maybe you told him you would turn the gold over or maybe you said you wanted to explain it to him. You had to see him before he talked to Colonel Tran.”
“Yes.”
“You knew that he would tell Colonel Tran, and Colonel Tran would want the gold and the man who killed his nephew.”
“Yes.”
“You set up a meeting in Chinatown. He would take his car and you would take him to the gold.”
“Yes.” Nguyen was a man who was deflating.
“The knife, a Fairbairn-Sykes Commando knife. Was it in a rolled-up newspaper or blade hidden in your sleeve?”
“It was in a newspaper. The sleeve is too slow; the knife can get caught up.”
“You stabbed him in the subclavian artery, between the collarbone and the neck. Just like the OSS taught and we taught our friends in the LLDB and the RVN SEALs.”
“Yes, he was a staff officer, with soft hands, clean hands. It was quick. The knife was in my hand, then a push, a little resistance, and I pulled the blade out. He was dead. He never saw it coming, and he felt very little pain.” He was trying to convince himself more than me.
“What about his wife? Do you think she feels any pain?”
“You know, Round Eye, . . . I don’t care.” He had moved so slowly, so subtly that I didn’t notice the revolver pointed at my midsection. It was a Smith & Wesson Model 10, a snub nose that held six, and his finger was on the trigger. The barrel was short, and the cylinder was stubby, wider by one bullet than my own revolver on my hip. “I don’t care, because I have to think of my family. I have to ensure they are safe, that they can grow up. That is the only important thing. You understand that?”
“Yes. Yes, I do. I am not a threat to you or your family. I would never do anything to hurt An, Linh, or Tuan.” I wanted to tell him more, but the bells above the door tinkled and cold air rushed in. It felt like Death’s own icy finger on the back of my neck.
Chapter 25
Colonel Tran walked in, flanked by his son, still dressed as though he was the Vietnamese version of Run-DMC, and the henchman in bad clothes. The henchman held a revolver that was the twin of Nguyen’s except it was nickel plated. Vietnamese Run held a giant Italian SPAS-12 semiautomatic 12-gauge shotgun and Colonel Tran held his. 380 down at his side.
“Trung Si Roark, I was hoping that it was you. You are a very annoying man who has caused my colleagues in California a great deal of distress.” He was smiling, cocksure. He knew he was going to kill me.
“You blew up my car.” I was too tired and beat up for any good tough guy lines.
“Yes, it was a shame you weren’t in it with the girl.”
“I really liked that car.” Then I shot him with Thuy’s little Colt .25. I had snaked it out of its hiding place while he was talking. I didn’t really aim; he was standing three feet away. I just pointed and pulled the trigger, three rounds in his chest, and I walked the rounds up. One managed to hit him in the throat and three in the face. I dropped the empty gun and stepped to my left off the stool.
I heard the shotgun booming. I heard thirty-eights cracking around us. The restaurant was filled with lightning, thunder, and burnt powder. My hand found the butt of the Chief’s Special and my thumb the snap. I saw Nguyen and Bad Fashion Guy empty their revolvers at each other at tabletop distance, each like a perverted mirror image of the other, cigarettes smoking in the corners of their mouths.
Bad Fashion Guy developed a clover pattern in his chest and his face, two extra holes in it. Vietnamese Run was emptying the shotgun, which bucked in his hands, spraying buckshot around. The glasses on the bar were vaporized. Nguyen turned just as Vietnamese Run managed to get his bucking shotgun lined up with him. The blast took my friend off his feet.
I raised the revolver as I dropped into the combat crouch, legs bent at the knees, right arm extended straight out. I shot the kid between his eyes. Twice. Fuck him. Heat bathed my face and hot granules hit it. My left earlobe throbbed. Colonel Tran, Colonel fucking Tran, who had taken a magazine full of .25 ACP rounds in his torso and face, Colonel Tran who was dead except that his body refused to recognize that minor fact, fired his .380 at me.
Actually, he blew off the bottom of my left earlobe. He howled as his son died by my hand. Colonel Tran was trying to kill me, bring me with them, trying to pull me into the dark waters that I had recently escaped from. I shot him, emptying my revolver into his face. Finally, he collapsed—the fight and the life had gone out of him.
My ears were ringing, and my nose was filled with the smell of burned powder and cigarette smoke. I was the only one left standing. I went to Nguyen. I clutched his hand and tried to tell him that I would never have hurt his family. That I didn’t care about the gold, I just wanted to know what had happened. I wanted to tell him all of that and more, but my mouth refused to work. Words refused to come out, just sounds.
He wasn’t worried about his family anymore. A shotgun blast in the chest had seen to that. I told him he was my friend and brothe
r. I hoped that he and Tony and all my other dead brothers were in Valhalla getting Valkyrie pussy and drinking mead. I hoped that he was at peace. I couldn’t speak. I had survived when, yet another friend was killed, and I couldn’t even offer words of comfort.
I took the revolver out of his dead hand. I carefully, trying not to leave big fingerprints, emptied the cylinder where he had been standing. I emptied my empties into my palm. Then carefully, holding them by their rims, I slid them into the empty cylinder of his revolver. I put the revolver back in his right hand. I picked up the .25 and wiped it off and put it in Nguyen’s left hand. Hopefully, it would look like Nguyen had done all the shooting. There were a lot of rounds that had been splashed around, and cops have been known to get lazy when the answer is right in front of them. I pushed the button that opened the register drawer. I wanted them to think this was a robbery that went wrong. Somewhere in all of it, I reloaded my own revolver.
I took a napkin off a table and held it to my earlobe. When I walked out, I was careful not to step in any blood and left out the back through the empty kitchen. My ear started to throb badly when the cold night air hit it. Feeling empty and sad, I drove back to my empty apartment. My empty life.
Chapter 26
Two nights later, I parked behind The Blue Lotus. I used my picks and rakes to let me into the kitchen. My left arm was working more or less; otherwise I would have kicked in the door. I didn’t bother with gloves, as my prints were all over the place. I went to the front, trying to ignore the smell of dried blood and the chalk outlines on the floor where my friend died.
I took the ceramic, gold-painted cat out of the shopping bag I carried. It had cost me five dollars in Chinatown. I put it on the counter. I took out the can of spray paint and sprayed gooks get out on the walls. Then I smashed the ceramic cat on the floor in front of the register and knocked over some tables. I unlocked the door and went out front. I broke the plate glass window with a rock.
I went back in and relocked the front door. I lifted the gold cat from its place on the counter, its one paw in the air in a bizarre feline high-five, onto my shoulder. I grunted. It was heavy and my left arm, while usable, was still not completely healed. I went out the back, leaving it unlocked. The cops would think that the asshole kids had left that way. The cat, much to my relief, went into the trunk of the Maverick. It was another stray cat in a world full of them.
When I got home, I put it down on my coffee table. I watched the Movie Loft with Dana Hersey. He was playing The Maltese Falcon. I looked at the cat and drank a tall whiskey. When the movie ended, I half-ass saluted the cat and said in my best Bogie, “Angel, that’s the stuff that dreams are made of.” I took my Colt .45 and went to bed. It went under the pillow, and I dreamt of yet another dead friend in my collection.
A few days later Brenda Watts called me. “Roark, no one’s blown you up yet?”
“Nope, not yet, but the night is young.” I was wary of her.
“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about an attempted robbery in Quincy? In a Chinese food restaurant, turned into some sort of gunfight? A real bloodbath.”
“I think I saw something in the Globe about that. I know the restaurant; the owner is a nice guy. I ate there a lot when I was working a case down at the shipyard.” It didn’t take a genius to see where she was going with all of this.
“Was.”
“Huh?”
“He was shot with a 12-gauge in the chest. Picked up a .38 in his side, too.”
“Jesus.”
“Yep, it looks like a bunch of Vietnamese gangsters have been shaking down local Vietnamese businesses. I guess this guy had had enough. He shot the three guys shooting at him, pretty good for a restaurant owner.” She sounded genuinely impressed. “The funny thing is, one of the gangsters had a .380 that matched an earlier murder in Quincy. A Vietnamese writer got popped. Weren’t you looking into that?”
“I guess there is no point now.” I had all the answers.
“You want to hear something funny, Roark?”
“What’s that?” I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be a knock-knock joke.
“For the second time in a week, a Colt .25 automatic showed up. Went my whole career without seeing one, and in the space of a week, you show me one and one is used to shoot a Vietnamese gangster named Tran. What do you think about that?” She hung up on me before I could answer. The case was radioactive two weeks ago and had only gotten more so.
A few days later, I was sitting at the lunch counter at the Brigham’s on Boylston Street near the Greyhound station. I was rereading the copy of The Maltese Falcon that Nguyen had given me while trying to ignore the junkie half passed out in a booth nearby. I was working my way through one of their famous coffee ice cream frappes and a cheeseburger when Keller walked in.
He wasn’t dressed for yachting this time. Instead, he was wearing a trench coat, dark trousers, a tweed jacket, and sensible shoes. He looked like an English professor, so much so that I would bet that his jacket had leather patches. Thankfully, he seemed to have left his submachine gun in San Francisco.
“Hello, Sergeant Roark.”
“Hello, Keller. What brings you to Boston?”
“Oh, there was a mess that needed to be cleaned up. One of our associated franchises went bankrupt and seems to be under new management. I was sent to help with the transition.” You had to love the CIA—in the movies they talked like spies, and in real life they talked like businessmen. “While I was here the head office asked me to make you a proposal.”
“What is that?”
“They would like you to sign a nondisclosure agreement to which you stipulate the classified nature of our franchise operation. If you do, you would be subject to federal prosecution if you disclosed anything about our franchise.”
“What is in it for me?”
“We would ensure that the new management of the local franchise wouldn’t bother you.” I wanted to tell him to fuck off, that I would scream from the roof tops, but I just didn’t care enough. Being angry at Keller took more energy than I had. The Company would always have a dirty tricks department; I wasn’t going to change that. He took the folded piece of paper out of his pocket, and I signed it. No one would believe me, and I had no proof of any of it. I wasn’t even worth killing anymore.
“Take care of yourself, Roark. Not everyone is always going to underestimate you.” He left, walking out the glass door, an anonymous man disappearing into a crowd, swallowed up by the crush of people. I sat and finished my coffee frappe. The junkie groaned in his stupor, and I had had enough of Brigham’s for one day.
The weather was warm and sunny. It wasn’t full spring yet, but it wasn’t the cold New England monsoon that is April either. I was wearing the battered trench coat that Leslie had given me years ago. Like me, it was starting to show its age and was a little frayed at the edges. I pulled it a little tighter when I stepped outside. I had the Colt Commander on my hip. For legal reasons, my Chief’s Special was in my safe deposit box at the bank in Providence, Rhode Island, next to my old Colt .32 automatic. If I kept shooting people, I was going to need a bigger safe deposit box.
I took my time walking with no purpose and no rush. I stopped to look in the windows of the nice stores on Boylston Street. I looped and doubled back. I stopped in L.J. Peretti’s and bought a couple ounces of pipe tobacco. I made my way out to Boylston Street and then to Charles Street. I went through the wrought iron gates into the Common and found my way to the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. My circuitous route left me confident that no one had followed me.
“Hello, Andy.” Linh found me sitting on the bench I had told her I would be on.
“Hello, Linh.”
“My mom thought you would be at the funeral.” Her eyes were moist, and she was dressed in heels and slacks, with a soft camel hair coat. She was wearing make-up, and it occurred to me that she wasn’t a teenager anymore. In grief, she had matured, and now the outward trappings were reflecting that
.
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t. I wanted to, but I couldn’t go.”
“Andy, Mom thinks you know something about what happened. None of this makes sense, Colonel Tran and his son trying to rob my dad and getting into a gunfight with him. Then someone broke in and vandalized the place. Andy, nothing makes sense anymore.” She sat down next to me and cried quietly into my shoulder for a few minutes. After a bit, she collected herself and sat up.
“Linh, can you tell me what your dad wrote in this book?” I handed her the copy of The Maltese Falcon. She looked at it and wrinkled her brow.
“It doesn’t make much sense. It says that you will find your Falcon by the cash register. Then he says to take care of me, Tuan, and Mom.”
He had known that trouble might be coming his way. He must have written it when Hieu started asking questions.
“Andy, what does it mean? What is this all about?”
I told her about the John Q. Adams, the flight from Saigon, and the gold. I told her a little about Nguyen, Hieu, and Pham. I left out her father’s role in their deaths. She didn’t need to know that her father had murdered men, not out of greed but to ensure that his family could have a life, a fresh start in the land of the big PX. I didn’t need to poison what he had sacrificed his life for. She didn’t need to carry the guilt for his sins, and Linh, being one of the world’s genuinely sweet people, would.
“Linh, I was there that night.”
“What night?”
“I was there when they murdered your father. I hadn’t seen him in a while and went in for a drink. While we were having it, Colonel Tran and his flunkies came in. They started shooting and we shot back. When the dust settled, I was the only one standing. Your dad was still alive. He told me with his last breath to look out for you and your family.”
