by Ron Lealos
It was a photo taken in the jungle. Five men standing in front of a banyan tree as wide as one of the ancient Peugeots that whined and coughed in the streets. The print was almost identical to the one that now rested on Nguyen’s stiffening body downstairs. It felt as if the picture were the second snapped by the photographer to make sure at least one came out right. All the soldiers were heavily armed, and the snapshot had to have been taken somewhere around 1970. Three bodies were at the men’s feet. Young girls. Corpses mutilated and the remaining clothes torn filthy rags. Three purebred Vietnamese.
One of the soldiers was holding a girl’s head up by the hair and smiling. The grinning NVA was Le Dian Phu, a recently murdered politburo member. Besides Phu, I only recognized a young Nguyen. But I could guess who at least one of the other men in the picture was. A few days ago, I’d been to his house too. The .22 slug that passed through his skull hadn’t been as tidy as the one that killed Nguyen, rendering the man’s face unrecognizable. Tran Huy Phong, the second politburo official to be shot in the back of the head. We now had a dead Nguyen, Phu, and Phong, all with toy cobras and this photo on their chests, ears amputated, and .22 bullets in their scrambled brains. That meant two to go if the killer was aiming for a clean sweep. I put the picture in my vest pocket and went down to the first floor, wondering if I really cared whether these murderous, ruling-class thieves had been executed by someone who probably deserved some peace. I patted the photo and walked out of the muggy, ghost-filled room.
Downstairs, in the small dining room open to the veranda, Dr. Ngo was crouched over Nguyen’s body. Phan stood above him, the cell phone in his hand, entirely focused on the chirping SpongeBob calls.
“Put that away, Phan,” Dr. Ngo said. “It sounds like a cricket fight. And you know gambling is now illegal.”
Bent over the way he was made Ngo’s hunchback even more pronounced. Standing, he was shriveled and barely half the size of Phan. The one attempt he’d made to disguise his ugliness was to grease his longish hair so tight it sat on his head like he’d drenched his locks with a quart of congealed motor oil. It didn’t help. Once anyone moved on from remarking about his gelatinous coif, they gasped in pure dread at his face. It was as if one of the street waifs who begged and played in the sewers had found a pan of dough and stuck wads together in an approximation of a human. Nothing was related to the next, just globs of pitted flesh.
A source had once told me Ngo had been in a Central Highland tunnel, crawling toward an underground field hospital, when a running dog Yankee-rolled a grenade on top of him. Not able to turn in the tight dirt space, he was trying to swat it away when the charge exploded. What was left behind was a series of clumped scars that barely resembled a person—and certainly not a highly educated and experienced physician with a hook for a left hand. He was shaking his vile head from side to side and making “tsk, tsk” sounds as he examined the carcass.
“This reminds me of that old joke,” Ngo said, staring closely at the entry wound in the back of the dead Nguyen’s skull. “Why does an esteemed member of the politburo have a hole in the end of his penis?” Ngo didn’t bother to look up or wait for a response. He continued to examine the bloody gash. “So he can get oxygen to his brain, comrades.” Ngo moved his good hand toward the corpse’s mouth, trying to force the teeth open.
“This old one used another method to breathe. A bullet. He seems to have gotten lots of air inside.”
He chuckled at his own macabre, nonsensical joke. By now, being in his seventh decade, the demons that haunted him were beyond what even I could imagine. “Too bad he swallowed his tongue or he might be able to tell us who shot him.” He chuckled again, knowing full well I wouldn’t inform on his heresies and Phan was paying little attention, under the spell of SpongeBob.
Ngo tried to stand, and I stepped forward, attempting to steady him by holding his arm. He always looked as if he were about to fall over from the weight of the hump glued to his back that seemed to weigh ten kilos, pushing him toward the earth. He hated it when anyone touched him.
“Du ma,” Ngo hissed. Motherfucker. “Leave me alone.” He pushed my arm away, nearly ending up sprawled across the hardwood floor as he struggled to get to a standing buckled posture. I didn’t let go until he was on his feet.
“Yes, grandfather,” I said. “But I never knew my mother. She died when the French came into her village. I think they believed she was a Viet Minh cadre leader. From what I know, she was a rice ball eater, like everyone else in the family. Most likely she didn’t know a rifle from a fishing pole.”
“Do I look like I give a shit, Captain?” Ngo asked, now standing. “Your mother was a whore and the French dined on her bowl many times.”
Phan seemed to find this hilarious. He understood words like “whore,” “rice,” and “shit,” since they had few letters in them. Beyond that, his head was made of rotting chicken lungs. I turned the anger disturbing my spirit toward him, regretting the words as soon as they left my lips.
“When eating, chew well,” I said to Phan, who was now unwrapping a Chupa Chups mango candy and popping it into his mouth. “When being stupid, know you are the maggot on the pig’s ass.” It was simple enough to hurt his feelings. It was like tormenting a retarded three-year-old.
Somewhere I’d read you couldn’t say “retard” anymore in the supposedly civilized western countries. It was politically and societally incorrect. Not so in the socialist republic where I live. We aren’t nearly as delicate as the blue-eyed heathens with the pasty milk skin. At least that’s what I’d learned in the re-education camp. Besides, the Vietnamese had made an industry of teaching the nuances of what is politically acceptable. Poor students often don’t survive.
“Now look what you’ve done, gizzard lips,” Ngo said to me, nodding his revolting head toward Phan. “I think that’s a tear in his eye.” Ngo started to make a noise that might have passed for a laugh if it didn’t sound more like an infant having an asthma attack. “Or it could be what’s left of his brain leaking out like the last drop of sesame oil from the dumpling.”
That night, I would have to light an extra joss stick for my sins. I was tiring of all the insults and apologized to Buddha under my breath. “For current slanderous thoughts, words, and actions, let me no longer want to have them for anyone.” It was time to become more enlightened and less cruel, especially to those who were less fortunate than I. I turned to Phan, bowing to him like he was the master incarnate.
“Me cua ban da co benh giang mai va cha cua ban song trong am dao cua co,” I said to Phan. Roughly translated, it meant “your mother had syphilis, and your father lived in her vagina.” Before I could say another word, I remembered the guidance of my Lord. I would have to find a starving beggar on the street and treat him or her to a meal of chao tom, prawn paste on sugarcane, in order to atone for my sins.
Too late. Phan began to tremble. Within seconds, he left the room, scuttling outside into the traffic noise and smell of ten thousand rotting cabbages. I looked at Ngo, watching while the mush balls on his face morphed into something he must have thought resembled a grin. It didn’t. It was more like a batch of baguettes that hadn’t risen and were stuck to the pan.
“Well done, comrade,” Ngo said. “Now we can talk without that dan tu cu recording every word to take back to TC2 for disassembly. And our hanging.” Ngo had called Phan a “dickhead” and was happy Phan was now gone so he couldn’t make a tape of our conversation for dissection by the Mandarins back at General Department No. 2 of Military Intelligence, the agency that lived only to spy on the citizens of this worker’s heaven. A discussion with those dragons would lead to our dangling from the meat hooks at Chi Hoa Prison. I smiled back and bowed to Ngo’s great wisdom.
“I found this upstairs,” I said, handing him the jungle picture of the five men with their dead trophies at their feet. “It was in a scrapbook and is nearly the same as the one on his chest.” I nodded toward the stiff.
Ngo took the photo i
n his good hand and held the snapshot close to his face. I would have liked to say he studied it closely, grimacing at the picture of barbarity in front of his eyes. But who could tell? His face was white molten lava that had cooled and hardened to approximate a face. He glanced back and forth between the two photos.
“Chung nao tat nay,” Ngo said. These leopards can’t change their spots. “Someone altered their lives for them. Then someone ended it. Do you think it might have something to do with the ears?” He gave the picture back to me.
“Of course, uncle,” I said.
“Tai sao?” Ngo asked. Why?
“I think the three dead ones served in the NVA together with the two others who might still be alive.”
“Go on. Your detective skills are quite astounding.”
“Someone else has a copy of this picture or another nearly like it. At least, the murderer is aware of their association.”
“It must be the Chinese part that makes you so inspired.”
“Leaving the toy cobra and picture and taking the ears have significance to the killer and are a message of sorts.”
“Please continue. I can barely breathe being in the presence of such genius.”
“The murders are related to actions that occurred during the American invasion.”
“Our leaders should award you the Civil Actions Medal First Class for your powers of deduction.”
“Now, someone who was involved with that US aggression is seeking vengeance.”
“Your radiant skills have been unappreciated by your department and you are truly worthy of promotion.”
“As you know, esteemed cousin, that will only happen for the half of me that is Vietnamese. I wonder which half that is?”
“It’s not the half below your waist. The girly-men on Pham Ngu Lao Street say that part is as useless as your mother’s dry hole.”
It took a while for Ngo to arrive at the true way he felt. That meant something I’d said had some tiny bit of value or the abuse would have started sooner. We were within a decade of the same age, but this game was as old as the years I’d known the troll. I bowed low and respectfully to Ngo.
“Thank you, revered elder, for the sincere compliments to both me and my mother,” I said. “She will be pleased the two of us have finally achieved your acceptance and love.”
“Con di me may buoi,” Ngo barked. Your mother sucks goat dick. “Hearing chickens fart is as likely as my ‘acceptance and love’ for either of you shit eaters.”
“Admired brother,” I said, bowing again, “we now have three murdered government officials in our current case load. Respectfully, do you think we can stop the name calling and try to find the avenging ghost who has appeared from the past?”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Ngo said. “I’m not finished, you anal wart. Until I am, the entire politburo can drown in their own pus.”
This made me laugh. Vietnamese were not used to having themselves and their entire family verbally assaulted in public by nearly anyone passing with a mouth, especially friends and relatives. Openly degrading others didn’t include government personnel or anyone in an official position, least of all members of the national assembly, known by the common people as the Politburo. Few Sai Gon inhabitants, other than Ngo and me, would dare call our leaders “pus buckets” even when alone. For me, it was the one way I could battle the socialist machine.
The fan above our heads was motionless. I could barely restrain myself from flipping the switch on the teak doorjamb that would make the blades slowly cut through the heavy air like a dull butcher knife through a victim’s ear. For now, I couldn’t show any weakness or Ngo would belittle me until I was as shell-shocked as I would be standing under a B-52 Archangel raid. He was a feral species and smelled fear through the holes in his face where a nose should be.
Ngo rarely attacked my looks. They were so average he could not refrain from calling me com, boiled rice, the most common and innocent name for a five-and-a-half-foot-tall Sai Gon resident with mixed blood. Not much distinguished me as either Vietnamese or Chinese. I had black hair and skin more yellow than my fellow citizens. The exception to the blandness was the uptick in the corners of my eyes, giving away the poison in my genes. I was neither fat nor thin, tending more toward the skinny description, but with enough banh tieu jellied doughnuts in my belly to make me seem fit. I dressed as if I were normal, while feeling alien. I had no idea if I would be accepted on the streets of Beijing. I doubted it.
We’d been informed of the crime early enough that the stench of rotting flesh had yet to reach the unbearable coat-the-nose-with-Eagle-Brand-menthol peak. Still, the smell was nearly as strong as the skinned and gutted dogs hanging in the meat market stalls in Ban Thanh Market that were covered by flies and waiting selection by one of the local four-star-restaurant chefs. Why serve the meat of a cow when much cheaper canine steak could be fried up, layered in onions, and dished to the unsuspecting? Again, another example of our national discourse. Below me, the fly count on Nguyen was about equal to that of any gutted mongrel for sale in the shops. I hoped Ngo would eventually tire of the game, realizing there could be more joy in finding a murderer than vilifying me. I brushed one of the tiny airborne bloodsuckers off my face and waited for the next onslaught from Ngo.
Other than the smothering heat, the space where Nguyen had died was not anything close to palatial for someone in the ruling class more used to air conditioning and Waterford crystal. Of course, if he sold Chiclets and slept in a cardboard box on Le Loi Street, this would be a palace of unbelievable decadence, never before witnessed except on the ti-vi. Television. The one remarkable feature was the incredible number of orchids that covered most every flat space. Obviously, Nguyen was a connoisseur and collector. There are nearly seven hundred varieties of orchids grown in Vietnam; several are very rare. Nguyen had cultivated the rare and leafless Gastrodia theana, its salmon-pink knurled flowers on display next to an expensive Blaupunkt high-fidelity music receiver.
Ngo continued to study the dead Nguyen, spittle leaking from the corner of the slit that passed for the coroner’s mouth. At least his focus was on someone else for the moment. Ngo used his hook to turn Nguyen’s head back and forth like he was examining a durian fruit for ripeness. I relaxed and allowed my eyes to travel slowly around more of the room, trying to let my spirit fuse with the killer’s, a trick that was supposedly real in the mind of Western crime detectives in the movies and books. They were my main source for criminal investigation techniques besides intuition, a trait totally dismissed in advanced police departments. I needed a sucker to lick the way Kojak did. Not to mention his contacts in the after world.
While no faces materialized, I did recognize the quality of knickknacks that adorned Nguyen’s villa. That included several paintings that could easily pass as original Gauguins. Maybe they were. I would put no amount of audacity beyond the ruling class. My fellow countrymen had become expert forgers. Kind of like the way when passing a nightclub with live music in District One, you might swear the Beatles had re-formed and were playing for cold 333 beer. The excuse for the fake art was, as always, the barbarian Yankees, who, bent on our destruction, raped not only our women but our museums too. In order to keep evil whites from getting greedy hands on our treasures, we learned how to copy the great masters we’d collected, developing skills that existed to this day and could be seen flourishing in the Binh Tay Market stalls. If Nguyen’s were phonies, they were still worth a lot of dong, they were that exquisite.
Maybe the motive for this crime was simple burglary. Any of the trinkets left behind would feed legions of our street people for months. But that was just a silly, lazy thought. This one had been murdered because he’d killed someone whose phantom haunted the victim until he was joined in death. Displaying my proficiency at homicide inquiry and mentalism, it was simple to deduce that the toy cobra and amputated ears didn’t have anything to do with robbery. Ngo was right, I was a genius. Chuckling, the thought almost made the mo
rning’s noodle and rice broth soil my sandals. Charlie Nguyen strikes again.
Several of the hoang vu orchids made the room smell like passion fruit, but soon their flowering efforts lost the battle to the fumes from the street that came in through the louvered windows. The constant, shrill beep-beep of the cyclos and cars made it hard to talk to Ngo unless I was closer than a few feet away. I surveyed the room again, not in the least believing there was any chance I’d find a shell casing that Phan and I had already searched for. Whoever executed the three politicians and ex-Viet Cong left behind plenty of clues and another kind of road map. There was no need to tempt with spent bullets when the amputated ears, photo, and snake toys should point us in the right direction, unless I was as slow and distracted as Phan.
My mind continued to drift back to the cobra. When I was much younger, a mythical beast had crept through the paddies, cities, and villages of the south. Mothers scared and threatened their children with stories of the Gan Con Ran, the Night Snake. Bad behavior meant using his signature move. It was a silenced shot to the back of the head with a pistol. The bullet leaves wounds like the three murders I was now probing. But the Night Snake didn’t only use a .22. Often, he nearly decapitated his target with a garrote, tightening the handles on the oiled and sharpened wire firm enough to cut through the vertebrae if he yanked hard. It was whispered he named this move “The Herky Jerky,” because of the way his victims flailed in their final dance, spurting blood. The number of his victims was estimated to be in the hundreds. Back then, before the dong, we used piasters in the south. There was a one-hundred-thousand-P bounty on the Night Snake’s head. Now, I couldn’t shake the old legend, especially with the combination of a probable .22 entry wound, the snapshot, and the cobra on the chest. No one the policemen had interviewed outside had heard a shot. Secretly, I was proud of my homicide closure rate. This one seemed almost too easy, but I knew it could be my most dangerous and difficult case. Someone was guiding me. And I didn’t like it.
