by Chuck Logan
The second “poor kid” did it. And her tanned perfection and the fucking precision-combed hair and the clean white slacks and the white Topsiders and the white silk blouse.
Broker started for her. Trin, the thespian, was on him. “No. She helped us,” he pleaded.
Slumped against the wall like a comic suicide who was attempting to choke himself to death, Virgil Fret did a pasty jig on his butt while caw-hiss sounds—part bird, part snake—squeezed from his strangling throat.
Lola was in front of Broker. “Are you all right?” she asked. Her alarm and shock were palpable, real. And every hair was in place.
“Help,” Trin yelled at her. “Put a shirt on him.” He pointed to Virgil. “We can’t leave him here. Hurry.” Trin was wrapping Nina in a clean sheet from the other bed. “Find her clothes.”
Broker checked his watch. It was thirteen after eight. He tore open the bureau and found Nina’s clothes in a cast-off pile. He put the tennis shoes in her jeans, threw her underthings and shirt on top, and tied the jeans in a knot. He looked across the room.
Lola efficiently yanked a T-shirt on Virgil, batting her way around his struggling arms and hands. She had tears in her eyes. Two lines of mascara dripped down her cheeks. She found one of Virgil’s shoes and began beating him with it. “You hurt her, you bad—”
“Caw-hiss,” sputtered Virgil and Broker saw with satisfaction that the veins had swelled up like worms in his popped eyes. Lola’s voice failed but she continued to hit him with the shoe, like he was a bad dog who had soiled the living room carpet. Susan Sarandon was shit out of luck. Lola was going to win the Oscar.
They really think we’re this dumb? Doesn’t matter how it looks as long as they keep getting closer to the gold. Or what the cost. Sorry about that, Virgil.
Trin lifted Nina without apparent effort and jogged from the room. They were alone with Virgil Fret, who continued to die in breathy slow stages.
“I couldn’t talk today, Phillip. He was having me watched,” said Lola, stepping back from Virgil, who was now madly pumping his elbows. “Caw.” Pump, pump. Maybe he was going to fly away and save them the trouble of disposing of his worthless ass.
Trin dashed back in the room with a horrible grin on his flushed face. “Grab him, quick.” Trin rushed for Virgil. He seized a fifth of whiskey from the night table.
“What now?” said Broker, going with him.
“Inspiration,” said Trin, grinning, taking a quick slug of whiskey and holding the bottle out to Broker. Broker shook his head. Trin shook a dollop of whiskey on Broker’s shirt and then splashed some on Virgil’s inflated face. They yanked him to his feet.
“Quick, he’ll get away,” yelped Trin, dragging Virgil toward the door. They had him upright, his flailing arms over their shoulders, running now down the steps, Broker following Trin’s lead. “You stay here.” Trin waved the whiskey bottle in his free hand at Lola.
Rock and roll spooled in the inky night, neon spun behind dark trees. They galloped down the driveway and burst into the street. Tight lipped, Broker said, “I didn’t see a gun in there—”
“I checked the whole place, no gun,” said Trin.
“This punk would have a gun.”
“They don’t want us to have one. It’s a trap. This piece of shit is a throwaway.”
Several snoozing cyclo drivers spotted them and rose from their cabs. “There,” panted Trin. Down the block Broker saw the bear-walking drunken Aussie. His broad back was naked, streaked with sweat over a sarong. He stumbled down the street, staying upright mainly by the support of his right shoulder bumping on a cement wall. Patient as jackals, several cyclos padded on silent rubber tires, trailing his slow progress.
“Hey, buddy,” shouted Trin as they pulled abreast. “Have a drink.” He thrust out the bottle. “Let’s party.”
The giant yawned and pawed the bottle. Trin quickly analyzed the cyclo situation and selected the oldest driver, who also had the widest seat. He heaved Virgil in. The driver inspected Virgil and began to protest.
“What’s he say?” said Broker.
“He says this American is dying and he won’t ride him. We need dollars.” Broker dug in his pocket. Trin tugged the staggering Aussie and pulled him toward the cyclo. He pointed to Virgil whose protruding tongue was deep purple in the bounce of neon and who was feebly inching his hands back toward his throat. “Hey, mate, he knows where the girls are. Number one boom-boom.”
“Caw,” said Virgil. A newly hatched vulture chick mouthing the air.
The Aussie lit up, having found kin who talked his twittering dialect. Trin steered the giant into the cyclo and grabbed the handful of twenties from Broker. He turned to the agitated driver.
“I’m telling him he’s only had too much to drink,” said Trin who then broke into machine-gun Vietnamese as he counted out bills into the driver’s wrinkled hand.
The driver continued to protest, but his posture and voice had turned sly. The other cyclo drivers craned forward, crowding in as Trin and the older driver argued. Trin turned back to Broker.
“He’s a hard sell. He says, bullshit, he knows a dying American when he sees one.” Trin grinned insanely. “He says he was a fucking guerrilla in the fucking jungle for fifteen fucking years. Give me a hundred-dollar bill.”
Broker handed over Mr. Franklin.
“He says,” said Trin, “that’s the drunkest goddamn American he has ever seen in his life.”
In the cab, the Aussie tenderly poured whiskey into Virgil’s weakly moving mouth. With an evil smile creasing his leathery face, the former Viet Cong bent to his pedals and moved the bike cab out into the street. Virgil Fret disappeared into the teeming bicycles and motorbikes of Hue, wrapped in the meaty embrace of the cooing Aussie, who bent over him like a mama feeding her first child.
Trin spun on his heels and marched back toward the villa. “I told him to dump them in a rice paddy halfway to the coast.” They jogged back to the van parked in the shadows next to the villa. Lola’s outfit made a voluptuous, unmistakable fashion statement in the humid buzzing night.
“White,” said Broker.
“So nobody will shoot her by accident, say in the dark on a confused beach,” said Trin.
“I can’t stay now. I’m coming with you. That was our deal…” Lola, breathless with excitement, coming to meet them.
“I’m satisfied. You satisfied?” said Trin.
“Roger,” said Broker. He pivoted and his sand-busted tennis shoes crunched in the gravel as he put his left fist on stun and popped Lola LaPorte with a short left jab, hard enough to knock her cold, not quite hard enough to cave in her surgically enhanced, gorgeous right cheek.
They dragged Lola into the van and stretched her out in the aisle perpendicular to Nina. Trin picked up her purse and threw it in after her. Then he dug under the seats and pulled something out and grinned. “Duct tape. The only good thing the American army brought to Vietnam.”
Quickly he taped Lola’s ankles, hands, and ran two strips around her mouth. Then he scrambled to the wheel. “Now, we run like hell.”
69
“IT’S ALL RIGHT,” SOOTHED BROKER AS HE CRADLED Nina in the backseat. She opened one eye.
“Don’t bullshit me, Broker,” she croaked.
“It’s better,” he allowed.
He had sponged her off and opened Trin’s first-aid kit and had attempted to clean up the ear. Then he’d wrapped her in a blanket. Like a morbid footnote to the mad night, he remembered that the rest of her ear resided in a little glass jar, pickled in rice alcohol, in the house on the coast.
He dribbled mineral water on her caked lips and used his bandanna to clean more of the ugliness from her face. He didn’t know what to use to medicate the emotional wounds on the inside.
Unconditional love, maybe.
Fitfully, Lola stirred against her binds and moaned from the floor. Trin drove Highway 1 north out of Hue with agonizing restraint, cautious, now, of drawing attention. The he
adlights made a weaving tunnel of illumination that was regularly invaded by impassive Vietnamese crouched over handlebars. Occasionally a truck. It took forever to get to the turnoff to the coast. As the black farmland closed around them, Broker entertained paranoid fragments of the past: driving through the countryside at night with the lights on. Unarmed.
They were in the paddies now, going slow. Shadowy bicycles jostled the van. Nina turned in his arms, dug her face against his chest, and used her forehead for leverage to push herself up.
“She’s coming around,” said Broker.
With her face still buried in his chest, her marble cold hand worked up his throat and chin and felt his face. “Just barely,” she said in a hoarse voice.
“How you doing?”
“Sloe gin,” she muttered. “First time I had a horrible hangover, was sloe gin. I feel like sloe gin. ’Scuse me, open a window. I gotta puke.”
Broker quickly pulled back the sliding side window and helped her lean out. Her ribcage heaved and she retched down the side of the car. He pulled her back in and wrapped her in the blanket. “Got anything to drink?” she said in a dry voice.
“Water.”
“That Trin up there?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Give us a drink, Trin,” said Nina. “Got this horrible taste in my mouth.”
Trin reached under the front seat and handed back an unlabeled bottle of clear liquid. “Watch it. That’s home-made rice whiskey, it might not mix with what they gave you,” he cautioned.
“Gimme,” said Nina. She fastened her hand around the bottle. Broker smiled. A dicey smile. He’d been afraid she’d be in shock. Trauma. By the thin light of the moon he could see the set of her jaw. She was one pissed female human.
Nina gagged on the first swallow of whiskey and lurched toward the window. But she kept it down and went back for a second jolt. She handed the bottle to Broker. “Drink with me,” she said. He did. The moonshine brought tears to his eyes. He handed the bottle back to Trin, who took a long swig, corked it, and stuffed it back under the seat.
“Who’s that on the floor?” said Nina, arching her neck.
“Madame LaPorte. She led us to you. We’re not real sure we trust her so she’s not traveling first class.”
“You found it.”
Broker nodded. “It’s something.”
Nina shuddered and Broker took her in his arms again. “You all right?” he asked foolishly.
“Hell, no, I’m not all right. Got a cigarette?”
He put a cigarette in her lips and popped his Zippo. She steadied on the tobacco, drawing it deep into her lungs. Exhaled.
“You remember anything?” asked Broker.
“The bad parts. There weren’t any good parts.”
“Knock on wood. We might have a fighting chance now.”
“I’m for fighting,” said Nina. She smoked and gazed out the window. They were into the sand now and moonlight twinkled on the dunes. Willows spun crepuscular shadows around the stark geometry of a North Vietnamese cemetery.
She said slowly, “They burned me with cigarettes. I didn’t tell them shit. Gave ’em a lecture on the fucking Code of Conduct.” Gingerly her hand went to her festered left ear.
“I saved it for you,” said Broker absurdly.
“What?”
“You know.”
“Fuckers.” Her voice was still hoarse, but stronger. He could feel her cinching herself by an act of will into a tight knot of leather and stitched canvas and buckles.
“That red-headed creep tried to rape me.” She shook her head ruefully and dragged on the cigarette. By the flare of the cigarette tip she saw the expression on Broker’s face. “Don’t worry, fire base cervix didn’t get overrun…here.” She tried to smile. “Might have in Minnesota, though.” She turned and gazed out the window. “Little shit tried to rape me,” she said, forcefully this time. “But the only thing he could get up was cocaine up his nose. I laughed at him. That’s when he burned me.”
“That was Bevode’s little brother. We took care of him.”
“Fuck him and his limp little dick,” she muttered.
Broker winced at her truculent vulgarity. But she needed it now. If there was a part of her childhood left that remembered playing with dolls it had died in that room.
They drove on in silence broken only by Lola LaPorte’s gagged protests. Nina used Broker’s bandanna to give herself a quick cat-wash. She excused herself and crawled over Lola to the back of the van with the bottle of water and performed a crude douche. She returned at least ritually cleansed. Broker helped her into her clothes.
A farmhouse up ahead was illuminated by an improbable glow. When they went past, they saw a family gathered on a sleeping platform in front of a big color TV.
“Huh,” said Nina. “Is there electricity out here?”
“Batteries,” said Trin.
“That’s the beginning of the end of Vietnamese culture,” pronounced Nina dryly and they all laughed. Shaky. But a laugh. She was trying to let them know she was all right. Not a burden. They drove for a long time in silence and there were no more houses.
Then Trin arched in the front seat and yelled. “Oh-oh.” Just before he killed the headlights Broker saw the tree felled across the road.
The barrel of a rifle poked through the open driver’s window. The van was surrounded by limping side-slanting shadows, crabwalkers.
A low discussion commenced in Vietnamese. “It’s all right,” Broker told Nina, recognizing Trung Si behind the rifle.
“It’s not all right,” said Trin very coldly.
Trin cut the tape on Lola’s feet so she could walk and pushed her toward Broker. She tried to pull away, the whites of her eyes bulging in the moonlight, mummified protests coming from her gagged lips. Nina shoved her roughly ahead.
Formed in Indian file, they went off the track and snaked through the dunes, toward the sea. Trin and Trung Si were in the lead. Then five hard-faced middle-aged men in softly straining artificial limbs. Broker saw at least one empty sleeve among them. They all carried primitive weapons: machetes, rice sickles, butcher knives. Despite their handicaps they moved with precision, instinctively keeping an interval. Stopping every few steps to listen. Broker pushed Lola in front of him as he and Nina fell into the rhythm of the night discipline.
As they neared the beach they halted at the clack of bamboo. Another paraplegic hobbled from the shadows. He conversed tensely with Trin and Trung Si. When Nina started to ask a question Broker warned her to be silent. The stony intonation of Trin’s whispers informed him that, for better or worse, this was now a Vietnamese show.
Slowly they approached the house on the slope over the beach. The cripples sprawled carefully in the cover of the dunes while Trung Si hopped spry and silent on his crutch to a covering position and leaned over his rifle. Trin crept down to the house.
Five tense minutes passed. Then a low whistle sounded from the beach. Trung Si swung up on his crutch and waved his rifle. The cripples pushed themselves up and went down on line. Broker and Nina followed.
The place had been trashed. Shards of crockery and utensils were strewn in the trampled vegetable garden. Trin and his men gathered at the flagpole next to the porch.
Nina’s fingers spasmed on Broker’s biceps. Her nails broke the skin.
In the moonlight they could make out the legless mass of the flute player’s body. Trin held up a fuel oil lantern and Trung Si lit the wick. The soft yellow light revealed that the dead man’s neck was grotesquely stretched in a noose knotted in the flagpole lanyard. A chopstick had been pounded almost out of sight into his left ear.
“Meeow.” A low growl thickened the inflection of the voices around the flagpole. Smoldering dark eyes swung toward the three white people in the yard. Lola shied back, straining against the tape on her wrists. Nina grabbed her by the hair and shoved her forward and forced her to her knees in front of the flagpole.
Flies stormed around Lola’s face a
nd she averted her head from the barnyard stench. Trung Si swore. They saw that the Viet Cong flag had been taken down. It lay in the dirt, filled with feces. More flies clustered in black twitching furrows on the dead man’s body. Among the crawling insects they saw patches of skin upbraided, hanging in flaps.
One of the vets began brushing the flies away. Another steadied the corpse while another cripple cut the rope with a machete. Slowly they lowered the body to the earth.
Broker exhaled. Whipped and lynched. You find gold, you pay in blood. The flute player and Billie Holiday could have played a duet.
Trung Si tapped Broker on the shoulder and pointed out to sea. At first Broker thought he was pointing at the stars and then he picked out the faint regular line of electric lights hugging the horizon. A boat lay off the coast.
Then Trung Si spoke to Trin and Trin swore vehemently in his native tongue. Not in the heat of anger, but out of something much deeper and deliberate and sinister.
“That man. Trung Si was on his way back from hiding our boat. He saw them leave. Six white men in a power-boat. They carried AR-15s. That man had a whip.”
Then he moved in a certain scary way and Broker, who believed that Vietnamese all hid deadly stingers under their friendly smiles, braced himself.
The gravity knife appeared in his hand and the long blade pressed against Lola’s cheek, snaked it up under her gag, and cut it. He ripped the tape from Lola’s face.
“Jesus Christ,” gasped Lola. “Do something about the smell.”
“Lying bitch!” Trin slapped her face. Then he placed his tennis shoe in her back and pushed her off her knees, face forward into the reeking flag. Her neat white outfit wasn’t white anymore.
Trin squatted and yanked Lola’s hair, bringing her face up level with his. “Talk. Fast.”
Lola struggled to her knees and shook off Trin’s hand with an arrogant toss of her head. She stared at the murderous circle of faces that ringed her.
“I don’t know.”
“How’d they find this place?” demanded Broker.
Lola, finding herself in close proximity to excrement and the cloying bronze-sweetness of human blood, screamed it this time, “I don’t know!”
