Gearheardt shook his head. “It didn’t come up.”
“Well, all in good time, then. All in good time.”
When Whiffenpoof stopped in an office to inquire about better accommodations for Gearheardt and me, I looked at my friend and noisily let out my breath.
“Whoooey,” I said. “What in the hell was all that in there? I thought Giap was going to shoot you.”
Gearheardt smiled and patted my shoulder, watching Whiffenpoof arguing with a soldier vehemently, “That was just the boys playing ‘good cop, bad cop,’ Jack. They’re just dicking with us.” He turned now and grinned into my face. “Didn’t I tell you this was going to be fun?”
20 • Going Dutch in Hanoi
Our new quarters in Hanoi were an improvement from the previous evening.
“This is the life,” Gearheardt said as he plopped down on the metal cot covered with a thin green blanket and put his hands behind his head. “No dog turds on the floor, and the cockroaches are less than an inch long. Must be the VIP suite, don’t you think?”
I sat down on the adjacent bunk. The room had four beds and appeared to be a transient facility. Cigarette butts littered the floor, and a crude wooden table with matching chair sat empty of ornament. Afternoon sunlight filtered through a dusty, cracked window. The walls, like all of the other walls in the two-story, French-style building, were a faded yellow.
“You seem to be enjoying yourself, Gearheardt. You think this is fun, don’t you?”
“Jack, if I’d known Vietnam was going to be this much fun I’d have come over here five years ago.”
“We weren’t at war in Vietnam five years ago.”
“We would have been if I’d of come over here and started bombing the shit out of them. Wars are pretty easy to start, you know.”
“Look, Gearheardt, when are you going to level with me? What in the hell is this beer thing that you and Poofy are whispering about? And hauling it? What’s that got to do with anything? I’m almost beginning to like the idea of just shooting Ho Chi Minh and Giap. They’re the enemy, we’re Marines, we have guns. At the risk of sounding like you, why isn’t that our plan?”
“You’ll never make a politician, Jack.”
“If I’m going to die, I’d like to know what for. Is that too much to ask?”
“So you could die happy?”
I thought about it. “No.”
He sat up on the cot and scratched his head vigorously.
“You’re not going to tell me, are you, you asshole?” I said.
“Tell you what, Captain Armstrong?” Whiffenpoof came into the room carrying packs of cigarettes and two bottles of beer. He sat the lot on the desk and dropped into the chair. “Not easy to find Winstons in Hanoi, old boy,” he said to Gearheardt.
“How the cow ate the cabbage,” I answered.
The Brit looked puzzled and turned to Gearheardt.
“The cow—yes, well I’m afraid I haven’t much knowledge of that event. I suggest we take advantage of the opportunity to do a spot of planning. Several items to get ‘straight,’ as you Americans say. First off—”
“First off, hand me one of those bottles,” Gearheardt said. “Next off, why don’t you tell us what old Butty the Bomber is up to?”
“Butty the—oh you mean Miss LaFirm. At this moment she is, I assume, with General Giap on route to an anti-aircraft emplacement.”
“You’re shitting me,” Gearheardt said.
“If that means having you on, as I suspect, then no, I am most assuredly not ‘shitting’ you. One would assume from the bits of conversation that Butty had with Giap, she will attempt to fire on an aircraft if one enters the airspace above Hanoi this afternoon. Rather odd behavior, don’t you think? She seemed quite serious about it.”
“The bitch,” Gearheardt growled. “And after I spent half the night indoctrinating her. So help me, if she shoots down an American airplane, I’ll disembowel her. Whiffy, what’s your role in all this? I haven’t figured you out yet.”
“I say, would it be altogether too much trouble to determine just what name you prefer to call me and utilize that? Whiffy, Poofy, Poofter. Really. I may be the only friend you—”
“Whiff.”
“Pardon?”
“Whiff. We’ll call you Whiff. As in ‘get a whiff of that.’ That okay with you?”
“Goddammit! Could we get on to this planning that someone mentioned?”
They both turned their heads toward me, and I got the notion that Whiff was a kindred soul to Gearheardt in more ways than I would prefer.
Whiff smiled, looked at Gearheardt with raised eyebrows, then back at me.
“Well, not much use in beating the badger at this juncture I’m sure. Your companion—”
“Beating the badger?”
“Could you just let him talk, Gearheardt? I foolishly would like to have some idea what is going on. If it means dying happy, as you put it, so be it.”
“Dying? That’s a rather severe undertaking. Not ready by half to go that way if I can help it,” Whiff said. “Your companion has no doubt told you that I am a distributor of spirits, in addition to performing a spot of spying—on behalf of friends, of course.” He looked back at Gearheardt, who was inspecting his .357. “Please put that away if you don’t mind, old chap. Thanks, that’s better.” He looked relieved, and later I was to find out just why. But now he startled me when I would have sworn my startling centers were hopelessly burned out.
“Simply stated, your president has promised me a major beer franchise for Vietnam. Seems that your friend Gearheardt has no knowledge of that fact, although I was told that he would bring documents to that effect.”
“A major beer franchise.” My mind was spinning wildly in neutral.
Out of his tuxedo Whiff looked a bit seedy. His socks were without elastic and bunched loosely above his shoes. His blue wool jacket, shiny at the elbows, was missing a couple of sleeve buttons and in dire need of a cleaning.
Whiff went on, although he seemed to take notice of my scrutiny and shrugged his jacket about his shoulders and pulled one frayed cuff farther from his sleeve.
“Yes, I wouldn’t think it too much to ask, given the lengths I have taken to assure a civilized reception for you and Almost Captain Gearheardt. Copious amounts of the beverage are consumed by your troopers here, and it doesn’t seem out of sorts to benefit one’s purse by attending to their supply.”
“Why aren’t you importing some of that warm piss you sell in England?” Gearheardt asked.
Whiff drew a wounded expression and then gently cleared his throat as if shutting off the bile that he would prefer to deliver. “Well then, I’m afraid the warm piss that you refer to so generously, has a flavor and character that is somewhat stymied by the near-frozen state that you Americans prefer in your beverages. In any case, that isn’t the point. The point is—”
“You’re saying the Americans can’t appreciate the finer character of your English brew? My friend, you’ve never—”
I jumped to my feet. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Now we’re going to sit here and argue over the goddam beer! I won’t have it! I don’t give a shit! There is no point!” I sat back down and exhaled, trying to calm myself. “I’m taking charge here. I’m the senior officer—don’t even start, Gearheardt. I don’t think either of you have a plan, so I’m making one. Comprende?” I was back on my feet.
The Brit looked at Gearheardt before he spoke. “Well, I say, as a commercial activity this is not a situation that lends itself—”
“It’s a war, shit-for-brains. War.” I pulled out my pistol and pointed at his British nose. “Are you in or out, Whifferpooferpooftersham?”
“Oh, decidedly in, Captain. First things first, I always say.” He threw up his hands in front of his face when I shoved the pistol closer to his nose. “Blood before beer, I always say.” He laughed and motioned my pistol away from his face. His cool surprised me. I really would have liked to shoot him. I was wanting to shoot
somebody.
Gearheardt was lighting a cigarette. “You’ve got the controls, buddy,” he said.
“Good. First you, Whiff, what’s your game? And don’t give me that beer franchise crap.” I sat back down on my bunk, keeping my PPK in my hand.
“Actually, my primary mission is to support your efforts, Captain Armstrong. Beyond that, old man, I’m afraid I’m completely in the wool. It was my impression that you and Captain Gearheardt were here to make some sort of bargain with the old chap and that he would then instruct his minions in Paris to cooperate in the conclusion of the hostile activities. Butty the Bomber, as you call her, most whimsical I might add, was to be a diversion of sorts.”
“Who’s this Gon Norea guy? He work for you?”
“Decidedly not. I assumed that he worked for you. Through one of your other contacts here I mean.” The Brit was sounding more defensive. “By the by, I believe that he may have hooked up with your Gunnery Sergeant Buckles.”
Gearheardt looked up from polishing his boots with a strip of blanket he had torn off.
“He what? If that’s the case why doesn’t Gon bring him here? What do you know about the gunny anyway, Poofy? Jack and I haven’t discussed him with you.”
“Whiff, you mean,” he replied with a nervous laugh. “Certainly you did. Or perhaps it was Miss LaFirm.”
“You didn’t answer my question.” I watched the Brit’s face carefully.
“Yes, I suppose that would make sense. But you see—”
Outside, an air-raid siren began wailing. We heard the sounds of running in the building. Gearheardt dove over a bunk and looked out the window.
“Uh oh, sounds like the boys are coming. Stay away from the hospitals, Jack.”
“Very funny. What can you see out there?”
“My first actual Chinese firedrill. Except with North Vietnamese. Whoa. Listen to that AA fire. That’d better not be that Butty bitch!”
“Shit. What next?”
I stood at the window beside him and watched the scurrying crowd below us.
“Don’t ask me. You’re in charge, remember?” He searched the skies. “Man, would you look at that flak? These fuckers throw up some lead, don’t they?”
“Whiffer, what do—”
But the Whiffer was gone when I turned around.
“I don’t like the looks of this, Gearheardt. Do you think that Brit is on our side?”
Gearheardt was still looking out of the window.
“Do you suppose I could pick off a couple of these little bastards with my .357 and they would blame it on the airstrike?” He was fingering his pistol.
“Something tells me that wouldn’t be a good idea.”
A blast nearby drove Gearheardt away from the window, which rattled but did not break. Gearheardt stepped to the side and looked at me.
“Jack, that’s what we call cowering,” he said with a smile. I was nearly under the desk. “Make room for me, pal.”
The explosions and anti-aircraft fire continued for ten minutes and then moved farther away. Finally, we heard another siren which we took to be the all-clear signal. Gearheardt moved cautiously to the window.
“I see some smoke but that’s all. If we lost any aircraft today, I’m ramming this pistol up someone’s—”
“If I see that damn Brit again …” I trailed off, not sure what I would do.
“I think he’s okay. He’s just a hustler, Jack. Doesn’t mean that he’s against us. He’s helped us so far, hasn’t he? No one has skinned us. He got our weapons back. And he seems to have arranged the meeting with Ho. That’s all that we could ask at this point.”
“Maybe so, but if he found out that we’re going to kill those bastards, he might not be so helpful. Seems he has a cozy little racket running here.” Although I wasn’t quite sure what it was and was only repeating something I had heard in a movie.
“Nothing to do now but wait, Jack me boy. Get some rest. This should be quite a night.”
“If the Brit knew that we planned to kill Ho and—”
“But he does know. I told him.”
Gearheardt had his eyes closed.
“That is our plan, is it not? We’re wasting those two, right?”
Gearheardt didn’t open his eyes. “It’s all right with me.”
“What do you mean it’s all right with you? Isn’t that the plan? Gearheardt, look at me. I don’t get a lot of comfort out of ‘It’s all right with me.’”
He opened his eyes and sat up now. “Jack, it’s a complicated situation. Yes, that’s one plan. As a Marine officer I’m committed to pretty well killing everybody foreign and domestic or however that oath went. But as a spy I have to take into consideration America’s reputation in the intelligence community, and as a businessman, well we have certain contracts—”
“You’re not a goddamned businessman, Gearheardt! Where in the hell did you get that idea? We need to find the gunny, do our duty and then, if possible, which I doubt, get our asses out of Dodge.”
Gearheardt sat by me and offered me one of his cigarettes.
“Jack, think about it. If we were able to really make a deal with Ho Chi Minh. A deal that would cause him to send the signal to Paris to stop dicking around and negotiate. Think what that would mean. Thousands, maybe millions of innocent lives might be saved. And yes, we could go down as the guys who did it.”
I jumped up and stepped away from him. Gearheardt making sense. Gearheardt spewing humanitarian clichés. Gearheardt thinking beyond beer and women.
“Weren’t you the one that not twenty-four hours ago was telling me that our mission was to Double-O-Seven these two? Remember that? Assassins? Hired guns?” This was a nightmare. I wished I were back with Barker and that other guy, lying in a landing zone with North Vietnamese trying to kill me.
“Jack, all I am saying is give peace a chance.”
I stared hard at him. Something was different. He looked away.
“Oh shit. Oh holy shit. Gearheardt, you bastard. You poor alcoholic, good-for-nothing low-life, chickenshit bastard. It’s Butty, isn’t it? You think you’re in love. You’re pussy-whipped. You were only with her a few hours, and you’re willing to give up killing. And what about strafing? You’re willing to give that up too?”
“Now, Jack, don’t give me a lot of grief. The woman is—”
“What about all that disembowel, shove a pistol up her—?”
“Hold on, Jack. Don’t get personal. Sure, she has a few hangups. But I’ve done some pretty stupid things myself. And she’s not a bad person. Her career needed a little something, and the next thing she knew—voilà, parachuting naked into North Vietnam. And, I might add, I talked her out of killing you.”
“She was going to kill me ?” I pulled even farther away from him, back against the wall by the window.
“Well, actually she wanted me to do it. But I didn’t even hesitate, Jack. No fucking deal, I told her. I was ready to offer to just wing you, but she backed off the whole thing.”
He smiled and I didn’t have the slightest idea whether or not he was kidding. “Look, Jack. She is just a little mixed up sometimes. Demonstrating against a damn good war and all that. You know I respect people like that.”
“This anti-war stuff is great, Jack,” Gearheardt told me after one of his trips to the Bay Area. “You get the girls all fired up, and they have to release that emotion. I’m there, Jack. I’m there.”
“But doesn’t it ever bother you? I mean you’re taking advantage of these girls, aren’t you?”
“Jack, these girls are trying to destroy my way of life. How can I be taking advantage of them? Remember, I’m the one making the world a safe place for me to screw them.”
“Yes, there is that, I guess.”
I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor. After a moment Gearheardt went back to polishing his boots. He began to hum softly, a Beatles tune.
“Well, as my old dad would say ‘this is a fine fettle of kish.’”
<
br /> We sat that way, me against the wall and Gearheardt on the side of a bunk polishing his boots. After a bit I began to hear the noises of the city outside. My old dad. And my old mom, and old brothers and sisters. I began to get melancholy. The light now came into the room in a slanted, lazy rectangle, the floor darkening as the sun went below the window sill. I considered shooting Gearheardt, but the thought of being in Hanoi with no friends was too depressing. I thought of lying on the thin bunk with Mickey Mouse, or Penny, not making love but just holding her. Gearheardt walked to the window, patting my head as he passed me. I heard him straining to open the window and then felt the breeze when he succeeded. The city noises were louder.
“Pontius Pilate on blue rubber crutches!” Gearheardt yelled.
In the courtyard below us, standing beside an idling 1966 red Corvette convertible, Ho Chi Minh grinned up at us.
“You come down, Marine. Painting town.” He waved and then sat back down in the Corvette and revved the engine and let it back off. He grinned up again.
Gearheardt pointed at the gate through which a bright yellow Boss Mustang was creeping, looking ready to attack, its pipes blasting and rattling off the courtyard walls like a dragster on nitro. When it reached the Corvette, the driver, Giap apparently, revved up to max RPM and let it back off, popping and sputtering in Ho Chi Minh’s face. The old rascal stuck out his hand and raised his middle finger. Then he looked back up at us.
“Get ass hauling. Honey’s in ville.”
Gearheardt was at the door in two bounds. As he opened it he looked back at me, still standing at the window. “You heard him. Honey’s in ville.”
21 • The Blue Daisy Summit and Beer Bust
As soon as I got in the passenger side of the Mustang, Giap, who could barely see over the steering wheel, threw it in reverse and flew backward; the tires screeched as he turned the wheel expertly so that we ended up facing the courtyard gate. We were airborne briefly over the gutter at the side of the boulevard, turning ninety degrees and screaming up the street, Giap shifting into second before we reached the corner, near seventy miles an hour. I heard Ho Chi Minh’s Corvette burn out of the courtyard behind us and evidently over the median in the boulevard as he drew alongside us on the other side of the landscaped island. Gearheardt gave me a thumbs up from the Corvette’s passenger seat.
Nam-A-Rama Page 26
