“I’m just visiting for a short time. Good doing business with you.”
Huay wondered what the soldier was talking about. Was he a partner with the recycler?
“This is someone else,” Khieu said to the soldier in English.
“Oh.” The man said.
Huay nodded and departed, annoyed with the awkwardness. As he walked to his Mercedes, he glanced back and thought he saw the soldier watching him. Damn. He was unsettled by this stupid distraction. He needed to go home, watch TV, and find out how the world was reacting. He’d been taping channel 9 all day on super long play.
FORD EXPLORER – HAPPY HOUR
Khieu set him straight. “No, that wasn’t the dealer. He’s the man lending me money for a new truck.”
Lane was confused. “Where do we meet the other guy?”
“Just up the Five.”
Lane felt the ring tighten around his head.
Khieu said, “I thought I told you. We don’t meet the dealer until midnight. Poker first.”
Lane blanched. “Khieu, I don’t know how to say this, but I can’t wait that long…”
Khieu pursed his lips, nodded. “Pull over there.” Khieu had Lane pull over behind a Smart and Final. A nosey parking lot security guard seemed to be watching them from the loading dock, so they were forced to drive around to the back of Bed, Bath and Beyond.
Khieu took off his shoe and produced a thin tin foil square from beneath the inner sole. “Do you have a pipe?” Lane shook his head, he felt like such a pathetic addict.
Khieu got out of the truck, walked over to the trash can and bent over. He brought back a discarded can of Sprite. He then pinched a dent in the middle to form a shallow bowl, and used a Bic finepoint pen to poke holes in it. A puncture on the side of the can served as a carburetor. Things were getting low down.
Lane held the pipe as Khieu rolled the little pebble of opiate in his fingers and set it gently in the aluminum bowl. He flicked his Fuji lighter. Lane leaned in to toke and noticed the can entitled him to $8 off admission to Magic Mountain.
Lane sat back and reclined his seat. He offered Khieu a Gitane.
“Remember Whistler?”
Khieu whistled and they both laughed. Whistler was a man they cleared mines with back in Cambodia. He had a hole in his cheek from a booby-trapped cigarette. The ball bearing had blown sideways instead of up. Whistler could have kept a band-aid over the hole, but he had a flamboyant personality and learned to use the hole to create amazingly mellifluous bird calls. The exploding cigarette, left in an abandoned camp by the Khmer Rouge (they also commonly left behind poisoned soup) had been the tenth one in the pack. But the crafty deception had not made Whistler stop smoking. Instead he loved to show-off by turning his head sideways and blowing delicate cheerio-sized smoke rings out of his cheek.
It was a good feeling to be laughing and smoking with an old friend. Lane had had a rough day. “You hear about the mines?”
Khieu nodded.
“That’s the reason I’m here.”
“I figured.” Khieu said.
“So maybe stay away from the beach for awhile.” Khieu nodded again.
“If I go fishing I usually go up to Lake Elsinore. I’m used to freshwater.” He held up the Sprite pipe and Lane nodded. Khieu scanned the parking lot for spectators. Finding none, he again touched the flame to the precious opiate. And Lane sucked in the smoke through a stranger’s can.
COMMERCE CASINO – 9:07 P.M.
Lane couldn’t believe what he was doing. He didn’t suspect he would be missed in the chaos at the Federal Building, but the whole point of him being in Los Angeles and his work on the Task Force was being corrupted. He was failing, but he realized he’d been fighting a losing battle for so long it barely registered as failure.
Commerce Casino, nestled on the shoulder of the 5 Freeway, was one giant sunken ballroom, surrounded by a carpeted hallway. “Almost an acre of action” is how the brochures described it. A hundred chandeliers hanging above a hundred green felt tables - seating for twelve hundred and not a single smile.
Khieu showed Lane the sign-up board, explained the table limits and buy-ins and then disappeared into the throng in search of his available Pai-Gow seat. He waved at a friend as he went.
Lane took a moment to survey the incredibly diverse crowed. It was like a living model of the entire Los Angeles basin. A representative from every race and nationality crowded around man-made isles of green; completely consumed in tense little battles for small stakes and deluded status. Meanwhile the house took a steady, unseen toll.
The only games Lane considered were seven stud, five draw, hold ‘em, and five stud. There were open seats at many of the Asian games, but Lane didn’t play any of them regularly and knew he would be at a disadvantage. The waiting lists to get a seat at traditional poker tables were incredibly long and Lane placed his initials, JL, on a five card draw table with a higher buy-in than he wanted.
Khieu was right about which night to go. Friday was hopping with amateurs, straining for action. The professionals lurked like alligators, patient and deadly, nothing escaping their gaze as they slowly turned men’s hard-earned minimum wage paychecks into useless stubs.
Lane felt good; Khieu’s opium seemed to have reset all of his internal systems. He had just a touch of the fogged-in feeling - low sounds muffled, high sounds coming into his head extra piercing. Lane’s wallet held three hundred and twenty-two dollars. His Army credit union ATM card would only allow him to withdraw $200 in any twenty-four hour period. It was lower than civilian credit unions because soldiers tended to go on benders. The two hundred dollar limit helped limit the damage to their accounts.
Lane folded two of his hundreds away. Khieu had told him two hundred would be enough for a two weeks supply. Lane decided that if he could win a few hands he might invest in four hundred dollars worth.
Lane tried to remind himself he was only killing time. Unfortunately he had been misinformed about the smoking policy. There was no smoking allowed at the tables or in the surrounding area. There were 16 sets of initials in the column before Lane’s, so he decided to reconnoiter the sports bar.
Lane was immediately pleased to see the sports bar allowed nicotine addicts a small break. Behind strips of plastic (like a butcher’s freezer at a supermarket) there was an outdoor patio that accommodated smokers, although they were still trapped behind an eight-foot fence and watched over by a security guard like convicts in the yard. Occasionally initials would come over the intercom and men would stub out their butt and leave, as though they were being drafted or simply returning to the front after a furlough.
Inside the bar, Lane was surprised to see only one television played footage of the funeral attack. And even that had the volume off. The terrorist attack on the police seemed to have little impact on the recreational habits of poker players. The rest of the sets showed sports. The world hadn’t stopped. And again Lane wondered what the hell he was doing there. On the silent television Lane saw Catherine Mills standing on her chair. Skirt hiked up. Underneath, the body count scrolled – 9 Policemen killed, 3 civilians, the poor security guard, thirty-five injured, six critically, more landmines recovered. There was a clip of the dead robot at the library being loaded into the back of the bomb squad van. Lane was surprised, he didn’t think the media were close enough for a shot like that. This was followed by the Chief of Police in a press conference and then a silent sound-bite from Congressman Boone. Lane wondered how they would handle the cover-up of the first incident.
From the next images, Lane could see that the men from Washington were taking over now. Today’s events met their conditions for an official terrorist attack, the first one, limited in scope, apparently did not. Although no organization was taking official credit, Lane knew they weren’t dealing with an amateur. Acoustic mines, placed with that kind of planning were too sophisticated for a domestic nut. And Lane thought he recognized the tactics. They were too mine specific to be the work o
f a fundamentalist middle-eastern or European terrorist. There were millions of mines in Afghanistan, but because of the wide open terrain and all the other easily available weapons, there wasn’t a mine culture. It all pointed to Southeast Asia. On the television the body parts flew out of the grave. The people in the bar barely noticed. In Boston an over-the-hill pitcher tossed a lazy knuckle-ball – a young steroid case up from the minors crushed it out to left, bouncing it off the green monster. Lane saw the middle-aged hurler pulled out of the game.
“What can I get you, soldier?”
Lane looked at the sixty-year-old woman behind the bar – an Armenian grandmother with a unibrow. He laughed. Was it that obvious? He ordered a beer he didn’t really want. As a rule, he never drank in casinos, but in his casual games he didn’t limit himself. He tipped the grandmother a dollar and then stepped back out on the patio where he watched cars creep by on the 5 - and quickly discovered his beer was barely cold.
NEWPORT BEACH – 9:07 P.M.
Huay cracked open the icy beer. He liked beer from Mexico. It tasted fresher than U.S. beer. Maybe it was made with more joy, or by people who appreciated it more. Huay watched the images captured on his vcr. He was getting excellent coverage. The local networks were working in crisis mode, mostly because the footage was so juicy.
The Chief of Police’s press conference was replayed over and over – even though it was all about covering his ass (the only thing he ever did in press conferences at Parker Center.) And this was usually followed by a Federal official in a suit and tie, making threats. Threatening him and anyone like him.
Huay went over his letter in his head one more time:
To: The Citizens of the United States of America
From: People for a Landmine Free Cambodia
Now you have a small taste of the horror of landmines.
In Cambodia, this horror is a daily occurrence.
Your government continues to manufacture and stockpile landmines. These weapons do not discriminate between soldiers, civilians or children.
It is time for the United States to pay its debt to the people of Cambodia.
The loss of innocent life is deeply regretted. But the people of the United States must understand what it is like to have beautiful areas of your country rendered indefinitely unsafe. Ten peaceful Cambodians die or are maimed every day by mines. We are a country slightly smaller than Oklahoma. We have approximately twelve million people and ten million landmines in our soil. The U.S. is responsible for the conditions that brought these mines.
The mining of the U.S. will stop when three simple demands are met:
The U.S. signs the international treaty banning the landmines that has been ratified by 127 nations and was championed by Princess Diana.
The U.S. funds a U.N. managed project to eradicate landmines in the ground in Cambodia to a 99.9% clearance rate.
The U.S. contributes a ten billion dollar infrastructure grant to rebuild the economy of Cambodia.
We may pause, but we will not stop planting until these conditions are met. This is a promise.
* * *
Huay had sent his letter to The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. He’d also sent one in French to the local office of Le Monde.
He imagined his letter passing through channels in the vast LA Times building downtown. He’d written it on his computer and printed it out on Great White paper, a common brand. He never saved the file, deleted each key stroke, and then swapped out the hard-drive. It wasn’t perfect, but most experts couldn’t really trace it. He would be disposing of the laptop as well - straight into the compactor at the warehouse. Dust in the wind. Huay was proud of his letter. It had taken him a long time to write it and he’d even looked up a couple words in the dictionary.
Huay was dismayed to see that his sleeping mines had been discovered in the library’s rose beds. He’d put in a lot of time and energy planning that mission. He’d also put himself at considerable risk, although he had to admit he’d kind of enjoyed it. He figured they must have done an extra security sweep after the Domino’s breech, or else had a dog he didn’t know about. But ultimately it might be better to see the Congressman outraged and scared rather than honored as some kind of hero in a state funeral. The media had helped him out as well. The smoking robot was disturbing and the shot of the burning table cloths incinerating the patriotic center-pieces was world-class propaganda.
The pasty man was on the screen again – outlining federal assistance. And then reiterating how it had been prudent not to jump to conclusions and alarm the public after the Zuma incident. Huay knew it was only the beginning. And he felt the local news anchors were really on his side, they were hoping it was only the beginning too. The next couple of days would really get their choppers in the air.
Huay rewound the tape until he got to the woman on the chair again. He felt intuitively that Catherine Mills was the heroine in the media’s story. Like the Reagan assassination scene and the man with the Uzi – only she had a commanding speaking part. Huay froze the image with his remote. Her name was on the screen - Special Agent in Charge, Catherine Mills. Huay carefully wrote her name on a post-it. When she died, people would know no one was safe.
PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY – 9:07 PM
Grover sucked on the bong, depleting the bowl, filling the long plastic tube. He held it in as long as he could and then burped and coughed up smoke. His esophagus and stomach felt scorched, as if he’d inhaled the smoke all the way into his small intestine. And then the rush hit him like a shovel to the forehead.
It was just what he needed. He was still recovering from his freaky arrest by the frogmen in front of Milken’s beach pad. He didn’t want to go back to the beach for a long time. And now the cops blowing up in the cemetery – Jesus Christ. Like a goddamn monster movie, those guts popping out of the grave… He’d had to stop watching television at five o’clock, well, actually he had switched over to MTV2, but there was no news on that channel, not even music news.
He powered up his laptop. He was looking forward to an evening of Montezuma’s Revenge – the first person shooter. You played Cortez, mowing down platoons of feathered Aztec warriors stampeding out of their flat-topped pyramids. He was in the middle of a saved game, just past the point where you rescued the first sacrificial virgin. His horse was dead, but his armor was at full strength and his gunpowder dry. Ultimately he would face the Sun King and make off with his golden treasure.
Grover was rudely interrupted by his roommate Todd and Todd’s skinny girlfriend. They were an annoying couple, constantly giving each other herpes. But right now Grover saw that his roommate’s girlfriend had a very cute visitor. He paused the game and was introduced to a Lithuanian exchange student. She was staying with the girlfriend’s family in Ventura, at Pepperdine for the weekend. Total fresh meat.
“I’m really 19, but here they make me go to high school. Because of the Rotary,” she said.
Todd explained that they were all headed to the Werewolf party. Werewolves consisted of equal parts Bacardi 151 and Jack Daniels. Mix, pour, shave. Grover had seen the magazine where the guy got the recipe. An intriguing distraction but--
“Nah, man. I can’t. I got a make-up tomorrow. I got my econometrics final rescheduled.”
Todd said, “Sonia, tell Grover what you want to do tonight.”
“I want to see Shirley MacLaine’s house,” said the exchange student, with a coy lilt. “On the beach.”
Grover was shocked. “You been watching the news, man?”
“Fuck it. You’re so paranoid.”
“I have a right to be paranoid. The cops came out of the fucking surf.”
“Just another reason to party and forget about it, dude.” Grover frowned as Todd picked at a fever blister in the corner of his mouth, big as a dime.
“Just come with us to the party, we probably won’t even go down there.”
Grover wasn’t sure if he was more scared of the FBI or the mines. Imagine what the cops
are like out there now. Shit.
No. Grover wasn’t going for the bait. Besides Montezuma’s Revenge, he had another ace in the hole - a bottle of Goldschlager schnapps under his bed, at least an inch full.
And he didn’t feel too bad for the Lithuanian Rotarian. Surely someone would patriotically show her something.
COMMERCE CASINO – 10:55 P.M.
Lane was finishing his second Babylon beer in the sports bar because the granny bartender had told him a joke: “What did the salmon say when he hit his head?
“Damn.”
It was an old bartender trick, get them chuckling and then hit them up for another round.
Lane was watching the silent television again. He noticed there were no shots of the beaches being closed. He could feel it, like a second shoe poised in the air – someone else was going to die. Mercifully he finally heard his initials over the intercom.
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