by Chuck Logan
They roared across the bridge toward the right bank. Trin pointed to a floating restaurant. “Cafard,” he said. Their old hangout. Used to be on the shore. Now on the water. Where Broker hid in the cellar. They ran the stoplight on the other side, whipped another right onto Le Loi Street. Trin scattered bicycles and leaned on his horn. Little pops of recognition struggled in the swampy fatigue behind Broker’s eyes. Colonial gingerbread along river-front. The grassy promenade along the river. A monument to Annamite troops who served in World War I. That’s where he and Trin had hid on that rainy night twenty years ago and took their swim in the river. Now stands were set up and women were selling stuffed animals, videos, postcards.
They pulled through a gate and stopped amid the carefully tended gardens of a Colonial monstrosity. Trin smiled. “Five Le Loi. The last stop on Jimmy Tuna’s itinerary. C’mon.”
Smiling, they confirmed reservations. Broker handed over his passport and for fifty bucks, U.S., Trin got it right back. No sense letting the cops know they were in town. They were led to the single round room on the third floor. Broker tipped the bellboy who had nothing to carry and sat on the bed and stared at the phone. It was 11:49.
His numb filthy fingers pawed his wallet from his jeans and smeared the snowy white card Lola LaPorte had given him in New Orleans a million years ago. He dialed the switchboard at the Century Hotel. Trin opened the icebox and found it stocked with Huda beers. He tossed one to Broker.
“Connect me to the Imperial Room,” said Broker.
He opened the can and took a swig and didn’t miss a beat when the cool, husky voice of Lola LaPorte came on the line like magic.
“Hi, Morticia, kiss any alligators lately?”
“It’s him,” she said, aside. Then, directly into the receiver, “Where are you?”
“Wherever it is it’s hotter’n shit and they go in for really big red flags with yellow stars.”
“I’m looking at the same flag.” She paused. “Broker, we had to detain Nina. We didn’t know what you were up to. She’s…all right.”
“Sure she is.”
“Okay. Bevode got carried away as usual. Cyrus has apologized to her and even discussed plastic surgery. She’s here. Okay.”
“At the hotel?”
“In Hue.”
“Where’s Bevode?”
“Cyrus thought it would be a good idea to keep you and him separated so he sent him…away. On the boat. You’ll be dealing with us.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you have anything to tell us?” She sounded like she was holding her breath.
“Tell Cyrus I got something with sand on it, not salt water.”
“He says he found it,” she said, offstage again. Her voice was like being on the beach again, Pandora’s box springing open: imprisoned Cham curses fluttering out like monarch butterflies.
Cyrus LaPorte came on the line, breathless with excitement. “Just what have you got?”
“Ming Mang’s mad money, in a hole in the sand on the beach,” said Broker.
“How?” Incredulous.
“Easy, we followed the map.”
“What map?”
“The one we got from Jimmy, dummy,” said Broker.
“You didn’t need to kill those boys,” Cyrus said hotly. “I don’t buy this story the Wisconsin cops put out. Jimmy Tuna in his last gasp nails two men.”
Broker yawned. “Fuck you, Cyrus. You should have stayed home.”
“He’s dead, Jimmy, the cancer got him,” said Cyrus.
“Yeah, well. Look, we have to work out some ground rules,” said Broker. “I want to see Nina, then you can have a look.”
“When?”
“Thirty minutes.”
“Jesus. Where?”
“Right under that big red flag across the river. Bring Nina. And bring a shopping bag. We’ll do a switch.” Broker hung up the phone. He didn’t like not knowing where Bevode Fret was.
“Now…” said Trin, intently inspecting the pop top in his beer can.
“It all depends on Lola LaPorte. If she won’t give up Nina, we’re screwed. Cyrus’ll probably try an approach, to feel us out,” said Broker.
“Try and split us up.”
“Yeah,” Broker squinted, “try to get you to betray me.”
Trin smiled. He looked like a Vietnamese Dead End Kid with a partially washed face. But it was still an exquisite Vietnamese smile that masked Vietnamese thoughts and it didn’t reassure Broker one bit.
The Imperial Citadel was overrun with foreign devils. French, Germans, Aussies, Kiwis, Americans, Canadians: unloading from vans like retarded, wrinkled children in Bermuda shorts and herded by tour guide terriers. Mostly they headed through the gate to the Forbidden City. The direction Broker and Trin took smelled like shit. Someone had taken a dump next to the paved ramp that led to the flag tower. A squalor of pop cans and paper wrappers fouled the patchy grass. Trin handed him a blue baseball cap with Hue Tours printed on the crown and pointed to the sun. A fresh wave of sweat streaked the dirt on Broker’s arms. They’d done a poor job cleaning up. How many other things had they overlooked in their condition?
What was probably the only rental Mercedes in Hue City screeched to a halt perpendicular to the ramp. A blue van almost rear-ended it.
Trin and Broker started down the ramp. A rangy sixfoot-two redneck in an absurd Save the Whales T-shirt got out from the sliding side door of the van. He could have been the tourist who had snatched Nina in Hanoi. With the help of another guy inside he held Nina Pryce up in the door. A white dot of tape marked her left ear. She was dressed in the same jeans and white blouse she’d worn in Hanoi. Save the Whales had to brace her shoulders to keep her upright. Cadaver pale in the bright sunlight, she stared ahead unblinking. Her hair was wet-cat damp and stuck to her temples, like someone had run a clumsy comb through it.
“A look,” cautioned Save the Whales. He had turpentine eyes under a painter’s cap, flat muscles, and the golden hair on his corded forearms looked like wood shavings. He raised a hand.
“She’s drugged.” Broker started to come closer.
“Better’n tying her up. She’s feisty, this one.”
Nina swooned on rubbery legs and tried to open her mouth. Broker wondered if she recognized him. Save the Whales eased her back in the van, got in himself, and closed the door. The van backed up, lurched, and accelerated. A chalky arm poked from the driver’s side, middle finger extended. Fuckin’ Virgil.
The passenger door on the Mercedes swung open. One smooth beige fashion model leg swung out, then the other. Lola popped from the gleaming German metal. An American Beauty thorn.
Okay. Bevode Fret was nowhere in sight.
“Remember Madame Nhu? That’s her big sister,” Broker said. “They’ll sell out anybody, including each other. A real happy couple.”
They exchanged grim smiles. All they had was sheer bluff. It all depended on Lola. The main thing was Nina was still alive. “You go off with Cyrus and talk business. Get me alone with her,” said Trin.
Broker didn’t like it. Trin strutted the Imperial grounds as though he was planning to ride an elephant into Champa. But it was happening.
Lola looked cool and poolside in her long dark hair and a white cotton skirt, blouse, and a broad straw sun-hat. Sunglasses hid her eyes. She raised a big shopping bag in her left hand. Cyrus, tanned to perfection and wearing a blue yachting cap, a desert shirt and a rakish red bandanna around his throat, emerged from behind the wheel.
They came up the ramp. Matching black sunglasses gave their smiling faces a shiny praying mantis warmth.
“Goddamn, Trin. How you been, boy?” Cyrus, always smooth, extended a leathery hand.
“Watch your step, Cyrus.” Trin sniffed, pointing to the side of the walkway. “Don’t step in the shit.” So much for old home week.
“Same old Trin, suckled by a tarantula. Lola, honey, this is the famous Nguyen Van Trin I’ve told you so much about.” Trin and Lola merely stare
d at each other. “How you doing, partner?” Cyrus aimed his hand at Broker.
“I told you not to come,” said Broker, refusing the handshake.
Cyrus withdrew the hand and cocked his head. “Be a realist. We knew you’d find it for us. Now it can only end one way…”
Broker’s bloodshot eyes snapped on Lola.
“Let’s hear it, Broker,” she said, tipping her sunglasses down on her nose and revealing her champagne eyes. “This is turning out to be…exhausting.”
Broker hefted the heavy bag in his right hand and said, “Let’s walk.” He turned and led then up the limestone ramp and stopped at a parapet that overlooked a strip of grass, the moat, a grassy park, and the street along the river. Some kids kicked a soccer ball directly below them.
“If I remember right, the Nguyen emperors used to stage exhibition fights in that pagoda,” said Cyrus, leaning his heavy forearms on the parapet. “Tigers against elephants. Fixed fights. They declawed the tigers.” He grinned. “How about we put you and Bevode in there.” He turned to his wife. “You’d probably get off on that.”
“I don’t particularly like to see men fight, but then, I’ve never really seen them do anything else,” she replied in a bored voice.
Broker reached into his bag, withdrew the ingot, and slapped it, blazing in the sun, down on the parapet wall.
“Holy God, son, not out here.” Cyrus covered the bar with his hands and stirred nervously, looking around. The shadow of the huge flag rippled his arid features.
“Why not? It came from here,” said Broker as he slid the bar back in the bag.
Cyrus cleared his throat and wrung his hands. “Ah, Lola, why don’t you and Trin take a little walk and let me and Phil talk some business.”
Trin smiled his exquisite smile. With a cynical dapper bow that was in extreme contrast to his shabby clothing, he extended his hand, guiding the way. Lola grinned and they sauntered off down the wall. Smiles all around. A convention of pirate flags.
Cyrus wheeled and grabbed Broker by the arm. “I don’t know, son. Trin on the play.”
“Jimmy found him.”
“I wouldn’t trust the fucker.” Cyrus squinted. “He has a history of changing sides.”
Broker roughly removed Cyrus’s hand. “I’ll worry about Trin.”
“Do that,” said Cyrus. “So, talk.”
“You give us Nina. Nina stays with Trin, out of the way. I take you to the gold. We get a tenth. Finder’s fee.”
“The girl will talk,” said Cyrus, shaking his head.
“Best I can do. Take it or leave it.”
“How long’s your visa good for, Phil?”
“What?”
“Twenty days, thirty at most. Then they’ll throw you out of the country. I’ll still be here.” Cyrus smiled. “And so will Trin.”
Broker needed some kind of edge. And fast. He leaned over the rampart and called down to the kids playing below, “Hey!”
They skidded on the grass and looked up. Broker’s hand came out of the sack and heaved the ingot over their heads. It glittered, turning end over end and went slurp in the moat. Bull’s-eye in a puddle of lotus and lily pads.
“Jesus,” LaPorte gasped.
Broker stepped in close and snatched Cyrus LaPorte’s left earlobe and twisted. “Jimmy told me in great detail all about that night. Nina’s the only thing keeping you alive, old man.” He released his hold. LaPorte staggered back, massaging his ear.
“Think about it,” admonished Broker as he brought the piece of ammo box lid out of his bag and slapped it into Cyrus’s stomach with a loud whack. “Meet me again. Tonight. Cafard’s still there, on the river. Seven o’clock.” He grinned. “For old times’ sake.”
Then he swept up the shopping bag Lola had left and walked away, motioning to Trin to join him.
“How did it go?” Trin asked.
“I played crazy. I’m meeting him at Cafard’s at seven for another round. It don’t look good.” As they descended the ramp he opened Lola’s bag. It contained a gray T-shirt with the slogan GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM printed across a red Communist flag.
“Nice touch,” said Trin, inspecting the shirt. “She’s… big.” He sighed thoughtfully. “Screwing an American woman must be like separating a pile of bacon that’s been left out in the sun.” He curdled his lips. “Sticky.”
“You must have had a great conversation.”
Trin nodded. “I told her about my life-long ambition to open a big combination liquor and video store in Los Angeles.”
“What’d she say?”
“She knows where Nina is. She asked, if she helps us free Nina and runs from Cyrus, will we take care of her. I told her yes. She left a note in the bag on the shirt receipt.”
“Keep walking,” said Broker.
66
“IT’S A TRAP,” SAID BROKER.
“Of course it’s a trap, but what kind of trap?” said Trin, who had once been a connoisseur of traps and was now a guzzler of Huda beer. He tapped the hurried, scrawled note: “My Thong Kiet Villa, 21 My Thong. Rm 102. I take her a meal, 8 or 9. Try to get guards to break for supper. Get me out of here. When Bevode back. We’re all dead.”
“We’re” was underlined.
“I know that street. It’s secluded.”
The note lay on the cramped table between Broker’s tonic water and Trin’s beer. They’d stopped near the Citadel Gate to eat in a restaurant that looked like a garage with the door pulled up. A tiny fan was screwed to the wall and moved the heat around like a toy airplane propeller.
A cat so emaciated that it had to be HIV positive dragged a huge, fat, dead rat across the dirty floor. Broker sat up. He had seen that cat and that rat before. Their great, great grandfathers…
He looked around. “This is the pancake place. We used to come here in seventy-two,” he said.
Trin smiled. “The same. Still the best banh khoai in Hue.” Broker ate four of the pleasure cakes with rice, chili peppers, garlic, and raw vegetables, some of which he could identify. The peanut sauce he did remember. He pushed his plate away and felt stronger.
Trin’s second beer arrived and he said, “Since we could both be dead tonight it’s time to tell me everything.” He leaned across the table. “Nina is after more than just having the militia arrest Cyrus for stealing antiquities, correct?”
Broker nodded. “Remember that cigarette case Ray had? Jimmy says Ray made Cyrus put the order to go after the gold and ditch us in writing. And sign it. Ray put it in the case. Ray’s under the pallet with the orders that can implicate Cyrus. Cyrus still thinks Ray is on the bottom of the ocean.”
“What fate would Nina like for Cyrus?” Trin asked solemnly.
The beer talking. Pumping up his grandiose bent. Broker exhaled. “She wants him tried by the U.S. military for murdering her father.”
“More likely he’ll wind up in a Vietnamese prison.”
“I think she has her heart set on Leavenworth Penitentiary. Or a firing squad.”
“That makes it harder. She’s very demanding.” Trin nodded profoundly and his dark eyes were merry with alcohol and mystery. “I like the way this woman thinks. She must be saved.”
Back on the street the motorscooters darted, edgy in the fierce afternoon heat. Broker looked longingly at a husky, sober traffic cop, neatly turned out in his crisp uniform and whistle. He turned to Trin.
“Why don’t we go to your place, I’d like to see it.”
Trin shook his head and stared straight ahead. “It’s nothing, not worth your time.”
Broker leaned back, uneasy. Translation: There was no apartment in Hue.
They cruised the back streets and found the address on My Thong Street. It was perfect. Like Lola’s hair. And her offer of help.
The villa was screened by a six-foot hedge that continued out on either side of the driveway. Peeking up the drive they could see the blue van parked in the yard. The lot next to the villa was under construction and there was room for
a vehicle to slip in and hide between the walls of the new building and the hedge.
“A government-run tourist villa,” said Trin. “Probably one housekeeper on duty. I doubt there are any other guests. Cyrus has probably taken all four rooms.”
“If there’s a guard, and he’s armed, we have a problem.”
Trin protested. “A gunshot in Hue? There would suddenly be so many police…No, I think if there’s a guard he’s a sacrificial offering. Expendable.”
Trin seemed to know a whole lot all of a sudden. Since his chat with Lola. Broker ran the possibilities. Trin and Lola against the world. Trin, Lola, and Cyrus against him. “What if it’s Bevode Fret?”
“That man has no finesse. Cyrus wants to bring off something smooth. That man would ruin everything.”
They drove the streets to eat up time. They paused at the ViaCom Bank and inspected the cement apron in the back where the pallet of gold had sat from March 19, when the Communists took the city, until Jimmy Tuna and Ray Pryce choppered in on April 30, 1975.
The former MACV compound, where Trin had been held prisoner, was two blocks away. Painted smartly in government brown it was now a military hotel. Back on Le Loi, they stopped so Broker could confirm the location of the new La Cafard. Now La Cafard floated, two brightly lit donuts connected by planks and gangways. Sampans docked next to it.
They returned to the guest house and walked out on the broad veranda that overlooked the Perfume River. Trin swung his beer and pointed below them. “This used to be corps headquarters. That’s the tennis court where General Troung used to play with Westmoreland.”
Broker was now seriously worried about Trin’s alcohol intake as well as his reliability. His face had reddened to a permanent pepper flush a few shades hotter than the huge Communist flag that tossed in the breeze across the river. The flag kept time to a disco on Le Loi Street that blared “Hotel California” in the foundry heat. Trin grinned and toasted him with his beer can.
What if Trin was dying to stir his crank in a pile of round-eyed bacon grease? Or maybe he wanted to get all the concerned Americans in one place and then let the militia shoot them all on the beach. It was possible that he really wanted to open a liquor store in California…
