I was hoping to see my truck parked on the main and only drag of the old mining community or at the school just over the hill, but the only vehicle I saw was the turquoise and white Ford that belonged to the Dunnigan brothers.
I stopped the truck and tried to decide if I should continue to the school or head down and see what was up with Den and James. I decided to check on the brothers and turned the wheel.
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I pulled up alongside their truck and got out. Virgil opened the passenger-side door and stood in the middle of the street as I looked inside the pickup.
The rifle rack was empty. Otherwise, everything seemed normal, and the keys were dangling from the ignition. I felt the hood, and the warmth from the engine was still there, but could see no signs of my truck, the brothers, Tuyen, or the missing girl.
It didn’t make sense—the Dunnigans, but no Tuyen?
It was obvious that Virgil was reading my mind as he circled around and joined me. “You check the school, and I’ll stay here.”
I thought about it and then looked up and down the deserted street. “Virgil, I can’t . . .”
“You must find the girl.”
“They’re liable to shoot you.”
He opened the driver-side door and pushed me into the Suburban before I could voice any further objections. He stood there looking down at me and smiled as he shut the door. He rested his giant hand on the knife at his belt. “I have been shot before.”
Tan Son Nhut, Vietnam: 1968
I lay there on the floor of the personnel carrier and thought that it sure hurt a lot to be dead. I stared up through the open hatchway and watched the sickly lemon color of the sky as the sun fought to bring more heat to the Southeast Asian morning. I could hear helicopter support coming in from Tan Son Nhut and watched as the Huey gunships shot in and through the sky above.
The 9 mm slug had taken part of the clavicle and a lot of meat with it, and it was all I could do to stay aware and watch as Baranski 26 4 CR A I
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climbed through the opening of the APC. He continued to point the Walther at my face. My head was lodged against the bulkhead and the driver’s station, with my left arm pinned behind me. I made a futile kick at him as he stood over me.
The CID man watched the helicopters fly overhead. “Re-gas, bypass, and haul ass. That’d be the Troop D gunships, and I’d say that means the end of Charlie’s little Tet surprise.” Baranski propped a foot up on the seat and studied me with an indifferent look on his face.
“Damn, you can’t hit shit with these homemade silencers.”
I choked out a response, figuring the more time I took, the more of a chance there was that somebody would show up. “You hit me.”
“Yeah, but I was aiming between your eyes.” He laughed. “You should have stayed at BHQ, dumb ass; it would have been a lot safer there.”
I grimaced as another stab from my shoulder caught my breath in my throat. “So, it was your operation?”
He pulled the pack of Camels from his shirt pocket and bumped one, placing it between his lips. “It became mine.” He redeposited the pack and pulled out the Zippo and lit up. “It was kind of a rag-tag operation, but it held promise.” He inhaled deeply and looked down at me again. “I’m pulling in almost a hundred thousand dollars a month, and I was going to cut you in, but you were so fucking gung-ho.”
“Hoang was your partner?”
He sniffed and cleared his throat before taking another long drag on the cigarette. “Yeah, and he’s going to be hard to replace. The satchels were a hell of an operation; I could get anything— hashish, opium. . . . Whatever anyone wanted, I could get it, and even better, I could get it out and back to the land of the great PX. I’ll have to get another pilot for this route, but that really shouldn’t be that much of a problem.” He studied me and laughed. “All the trouble started when that stupid bitch decided to tell you about the deal. Do you believe A N
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that? All this because of some fucking putain.” He took another drag and considered me. “We can talk as long as you want, ’cause there’s nobody coming. Charlie Troop is over at the Ville shooting prisoners right now.” His eyes were uncaring, and he palmed the 9 mm as he spoke. “You see, Mr. Marine Investigator, nobody gives a shit.”
I tried to readjust my position, but wedged in the walkway there wasn’t anywhere to go. “What about Mendoza?”
“The beaner? What about him?”
It hurt just to breathe, but I had to keep talking. “Was he in on it?”
“Nah, I had him pretty much trained to look the other way. The only thing was I figured he’d get suspicious if I fragged you.” He pulled the cigarette from his mouth and spit out a piece of tobacco from his tongue. “He was pretty torn up from the wreck, so I just walked over and put one in the back of his head. Put him out of my misery. Kind of like I’m going to do to you. I’m glad that I didn’t kill you the first time. It’s nice that I get to see you, see your expression when I shoot you in the face.” The Walther came back up and leveled at my eyes. “Look at me, not a scratch. You know, they say that George Washington was like that; Patton, too; there’d be a battle with bullets zipping around all over the place and they’d never get touched.” He smiled again, and I watched as his finger tightened on the trigger. “Like them, I guess I’m just fucking lucky that way.”
The blast of the gun sounded like two, and the blood sprayed everywhere.
I lay there for a moment thinking that I shouldn’t be thinking.
I blinked and looked up through the blood on Baranski’s face, at his lips where the cigarette continued to hang, just before he toppled over and landed on top of me. He shuddered once and then lay still.
I looked up at the one-eyed sergeant who was seated against the bulkhead and still holding the AK-47 with the thin trailing of smoke drifting from the barrel.
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His voice had a singsong quality to it, just before his single eye closed again. “I guess your fucking luck just ran out, asshole.”
There was no one at the school.
I pulled into the driveway and got out, pulling the Mag-Lite from the pocket in the door along with the handheld two-way radio. The batteries were weak in the flashlight, but it provided more illumination than the listless moon that was just rising. I listened to the soft tinging of the hardware against the flagpole and remembered the school on the Powder River that I’d attended. I walked up to the front door of the single-story, concrete-block building and saw that it was padlocked. I peered through the window and could see a couple of desks and a computer on a side table. Abandoned for summer, it looked like no one had been in the place in a couple of months.
I sighed and glanced around, hoping to see a Vietnamese girl somewhere in the high- plains night. I was disappointed.
I punched the button on the radio and looked up at the red cliffs that seemed to soak up the light of the moon. “Absaroka County Sheriff ’s Department, this is unit one. Is anybody out there?”
Static.
Damn cliffs.
I drove over the hill back to Bailey and parked the Suburban in front of the Dunnigans’ old Ford. I climbed out with the flashlight in my hand again—this time, someone was sitting in the driver’s seat. I pulled my .45 and shined the dimming fl ashlight into the cab; I recognized the profile and spoke through the open passenger-side window. “James?”<
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He turned to look at me as I trailed my sidearm below the window where he couldn’t see it. “Hey, Walt.”
I waited a second and then lowered the beam of the Mag-Lite, but he didn’t continue. “What’re you doing here, James?”
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He took a deep breath, pushed his straw hat back, and sipped from a tarnished flask. I could see the .30-30 lever-action propped up next to the door. “Oh, I was headin’ back from the bar and come lookin’ for that girl . . . the dead one.”
I studied him and then rested an elbow on the door to strike a more conversational posture. “What’s the Winchester for?”
He smiled and looked embarrassed. “This place, it kind of worries me. . . . I guess I’m gettin’ scary.”
“You mind if I take it? ”
He studied the rifl e, then me. “Sure, sure . . . nothin’ to be afraid of if you’re here.”
I carefully reached in and pulled the Winchester through the window, threw the lever a couple of times to empty it, and then shuttled it and the loose rounds onto the floorboard of the Suburban. I locked the truck and watched James, who hadn’t moved except to drink from the flask. “You find her?”
He took a breath to give himself time to think and then shook his head. “No, no, no . . .” He stared at the dash as we listened to the soft tick of the big-block cooling on my vehicle.
He extended the flask toward me, and I could smell the trademark brandy. “Care for some?”
“No thanks.” I shook my head. “James, have you seen anybody else around here? ”
He brought the flask back to his lips and took a swallow, then brought a finger up and touched the shift knob on the old truck.
“You know, most people don’t believe the things I tell ’em. . . .”
He turned his head and looked at me. “So I just stop tellin’ ’em.”
His eyes wavered a little, and I noticed he was looking past me and to the right—I turned and followed his gaze, but there was no one there. “Do you know you’re bein’ followed?”
I turned and looked again but still couldn’t see anyone. “Now?”
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“All the time.” He took another sip from the flask, and his eyes returned to the dash. “They’re with you all the time, or all the times I’ve ever seen you.” I continued to study him, but he didn’t move. “. . . Met a giant.”
It took me a second to respond. “You did?”
“Yep, real big Indian fella.”
“And where was that?”
He leaned forward and peered through the top of the windshield. I followed his gaze past the graveyard and above the rock shelf at the end of town. “Up there.”
I pushed off with the Colt still camouflaged beside my leg.
“Thanks, James.”
“That big Indian, he brought me back down here, took my keys, and told me to stay in my truck.” His look trailed up toward the union hall. “I offered him my saddle- gun, but he said he liked to work quiet.” I nodded and turned to continue up the street, where the edge of the moon was just beginning to clear the cliffs. They looked black, the way blood does in moonlight. “Hey, Walt? ”
I stopped and looked back at him through the refl ection of the vent window. “Yep?”
“Is that big Indian a friend of yours?”
I thought about it. “Yes. He is.”
He cast a glance up the street and then back to me. “Is he . . . ?”
I waited, but the drunken man who saw things that nobody else saw just continued studying me. “Is he what?”
He took another slug of the brandy and then turned to look back up the hill. “Is he dead, too?”
“I sure hope not.” I started to grin, but it wouldn’t take.
“Stay in the truck, James.”
He nodded. “I will.”
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I walked up the street with those feathers of anxiety scouring the insides of my lungs as I checked each dilapidated building.
I still saw no sign of Virgil, Tuyen, or the girl. A ghost town and, except for James and me, deserted.
It was like the place was swallowing souls.
I saw a glimmer of something beside the collapsed wall of the saloon and eased myself down the wooden boardwalk far enough to see the nose of my truck. I took a breath and raised my Colt. Staying next to the crumbling wall, I slipped in behind the Bullet and saw that the doors were locked and the keys were gone.
I pulled the two-way from my belt and gave it another try.
“Unit one, anybody copy?”
Static.
I looked up past the cemetery to the union hall, at the castellated cornices and second-story outcropping that gave it the appearance of a fortress standing on the hill. The still listless moon was at a full quarter, and I could see that the sicklelike point had just cleared the cliffs.
I started the climb, keeping the .45 in front of me. I was unconcerned about the rattlesnakes since the evening was cool and they’d likely be sleeping in the crevices of the stone outcroppings off to the right, attempting to glean the last bit of the day’s warmth that was still held by the rocks.
I paused at the cemetery and laid a hand on the steel railing, looked up at the dark windows, and then peered up at the path. In the darkness it would be difficult to see if anyone had passed. The steps appeared the same but, as I tipped my hat back for a better view, I could see the door to the union hall was open. I knew that I had closed it.
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The sweat at the middle of my back had adhered my uniform shirt to my spine, and I shivered in the cooling breeze.
It was a steep climb, and I took a few deep inhales to steady my breathing. I stood at the doorway and looked down the shot-gun hall, past what used to be offices and into the gloom of the back rooms. I could see the size 13 swirls my rubber-soled ropers had left in the heavy dust from my previous visit, and there was an obvious trail where I’d gone farther into the building and then doubled back to go up the stairs to the dance hall.
Barely visible inside my boot prints were a set of well-defined, high- arched, tiny footprints exactly tracing my tracks.
I stepped into the entryway and led with the .45. She had continued up, carefully placing her bare feet inside mine.
I shifted my weight, clicked off my radio, and stared up the stairs, then climbed as quietly as I could. It was useless—I sounded like a collection of squeals and creaks, ascending.
I paused at the landing and looked at the dance hall fl oor.
The wavering moonlight cast across the flat surface and illuminated our joined tracks like pools of liquid mercury. I eased myself further up the steps and took hold of the railing at the top. The old upright piano sat on the stage, alone.
Standing room only and nobody there.
The moon suddenly decided to take an interest, and the full force of its shine spread through the bay windows at the front of the hall, through the half- glass doorway that led to the balcony beyond, and across the dance floor in a blue light of growing rectangular proportions.
I stepped up onto the floor, my eyes following the tiny footprints that had continued in mine as they crossed the room, up the three steps to the right, and across the stage.
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empty hand on the lip of the elevated area and hoisted a boot onto the edge, effectively, if not gracefully, taking the stage.
There were no more footprints. It was as if she’d walked there and then not so simply had disappeared.
The cover was open, and I could see the dust on the hammers of the keys that I hadn’t played and
a new accumulation on the ones that I had. She hadn’t touched the keys.
The bench was still under the piano. There were no fin-gerprints on it, no sign that she had sat there. I nudged it out a little bit, put the .45 next to me, and sat, half facing the dance floor. I extended a forefinger and touched an F, the off key sound almost reverent in the empty hall. I thought “Moon-glow” would be appropriate, but changed my mind, thinking that I should play “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” for Mai Kim’s great-granddaughter.
I played an octave lower than it was written in an attempt to stay within the narrow confines of the soundboard. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but after playing a few stanzas, I heard a noise to my left. I picked up the Colt and turned with it extended to see that a small trapdoor had risen about four inches at center stage.
I stopped playing, and my breathing was the only sound in the room. The door in the floor slowly and silently shut.
I noticed that the footprints leading past the trapdoor were slightly smudged; she must have retraced them and retreated exactly upon them. I lowered my sidearm to my knee, turned back toward the piano, and placed my free hand back over the keyboard, plinking the F again as a starting point. I played the melody this time with one hand, and after a few seconds, the trapdoor rose again, allowing me a view of the small fi ngers that had pushed it.
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the .45 on the bench, and allowed my left to join my right. I thought about Vietnam, and about how I’d filled the empty evenings at the Boy-Howdy Beau-Coups Good Times Lounge with Fats Waller.
Like a snake charmer, I played the song that Mai Kim must have told her daughter about and about which she must have told her daughter in turn. I played a smooth and steady version that left off with a trilling finish. I sat there, unmoving, until I couldn’t stand it any longer and turned.
She stood beside the trapdoor that was in the stage fl oor.
She was tiny, and she wore a cheap slip dress that perversely made her look even more like a child. Her black hair was long and tangled, and it covered part of her face so that I could only see one of her dark eyes. She held a laptop close to her chest.
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