“How were the accounts handled then?”
“Same as when you came in. They were always handled the same. One of us kept the books. Roy, until he rotated out in November. Then Sissy. Of course, it didn’t amount to much that early. Maybe twenty a month.”
“And the records for each transaction were destroyed as soon as it closed out?”
“The minute the funds cleared shore.”
“Was there ever any question about the amounts?”
“Never. Anyone could see the books. Anytime. In fact, we were usually together when we posted, and we all agreed, every time, about when to destroy the pages.”
“Where was this? At Miss Phoung’s?”
“It wasn’t her place then. Sissy didn’t meet her until later, maybe June of ’sixty-eight. He bought the house from a colonel in the White Mice named Thieu. It was a payoff for ignoring the Thai connection.”
“He bought low, sold high, and kept his eyes closed?”
Walker smiled. “Well, there was a little more to it.”
April interrupted. “What are white mice?”
“The national police,” Walker explained. “They wore spotless white uniforms. Very crisp, starched, clean. They’d kill anyone, do anything. Price negotiable.”
“Like everything else,” I said.
“That’s right. Everything was negotiable. The generals were spending the weekends with their wives in Bangkok. The ARVN didn’t leave camp without a payoff. The White Mice were for sale to anyone with cash, goods, or services. Air America was flying missions and drugs. Our government was making the soldiers pay for the war that was killing them. Everyone was for sale, even us.” Walker’s voice was bitter. “Everyone except Charlie,” he added. “Maybe that’s why Charlie won.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “Charlie won because he couldn’t afford to lose. Everyone else had a cutout. The Americans went back to the land of the round-eyes. The Vietnamese politicians had their Swiss accounts and apartments in Paris. Everyone in the Republic was playing a game, even Charlie. The only difference was that Charlie played for keeps.”
“It wasn’t a game for my mother,” April said.
That silenced us. “You are so right,” Walker admitted finally. “She was playing for keeps. We were all playing for keeps. It was like a secret that only Charlie knew, that the game was for keeps.”
“Charlie and the dead guys,” I added. Miss Phoung was on my mind. She had been so alive for me, back then. Always with a smile, laughter like little silver bells. I asked April, “How did she die?”
“Someone shot her. My aunt never knew who did it. She told me to say it was the Americans, but people still treated me like dirt. For a long time I hated everyone. I even hated my mother for giving me an American father. I cried a lot in those days.”
April spoke softly. “But it turned out to be a good thing, having an American father. It made it easier to get on the boat. I could pretend that I was going to see him. That he would find me, somehow, and love me.”
Sometimes you hate seeing how things end.
“When was she killed?” Walker asked.
“In 1971. In September.”
“After I left,” Walker said.
“I was gone too,” I told him. “I mustered out at Oakland in July. But I didn’t see her for the last six months. She disappeared a couple months after Roy took his discharge in-country. That was in November of ’seventy. Thanksgiving Day, I think.”
“I never understood that,” Walker said. “It was hard to get an in-country discharge. How did Roy swing it? And why?”
“He said it was to close down the Thai connection. I think he promoted some sort of job with Air America. Anyway, he got the discharge and then he disappeared. Miss Phoung disappeared too, shortly after that. I figured they were together, maybe out of the country. I got messages from him now and then, but the next time I actually saw him was in ’seventy-one. He was busy setting up the stateside end of the operation.”
“That’s when you became the candyman?”
I nodded. “We were bouncing money from country to country like a ball around a racquetball court. We were both in and out of the country a lot in those days. Roy more than I because he still had some kind of special passport left over from Air America. There were accounts in the Caymans, Panama, Japan, Manila, and Switzerland at one time. We finally brought the last of it home through Mexico.”
“And there was no question about the accounts then?” Walker asked. “The rest of us never knew. We just set up the transfer companies like he told us and funneled the commodities you delivered through them. It seemed like the totals were right, but we had no way of knowing.”
“As far as I could tell, Roy never dropped a dime,” I said. “The books were always open to me, and he explained everything he did, every move he made. He took two shares, for closing out the accounts, and the rest of us got one share apiece, just like we agreed in Saigon. Yours went into Peacemaker Investments and Sunpower Investment Company. Toker’s went into his land and properties in L.A. Mine went into property in the Albuquerque area. Roy kept half of his in the El Paso area and washed the rest of it through Quintana Enterprises, a holding company that invested in land in northern New Mexico. He closed that down just before I made the final deliveries to you and Toker. And that was it. Of course, I don’t know what happened after the final deliveries.”
“Was that the last time you saw him?”
I nodded. “In late ’seventy-four. Just after I saw you. I met him at the American Bar in Juarez. We had a couple of drinks, and then I walked out.”
Walker poured two inches of scotch over his ice cubes. The liquid turned a milky amber. He passed the bottle to me and I gave myself a couple more inches just to keep him company. He looked troubled. “It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “Toker said the accounts were off, but where? When?”
“There’s only one place left.”
“Squall Line?”
I took a healthy swig. “Yeah. Squall Line.”
“What was Squall Line?” April asked.
“You don’t want to know,” Walker told her. “It was just something we got roped into, a payoff. A government operation.”
“A payoff?” She wasn’t going to let it alone.
“Something we had to do to stay in business. It began in September of ’sixty-eight. I was working at a warehouse in Long Binh. It was hotter than hell that day. The humidity was up around ninety, and inside the warehouse you felt like you were swimming in your own sweat. We were loading a shipment for some of the exchanges up north. I had a couple of spec fours running fork lifts, putting pads on a truck for the airport, when a skinny Honky named Max Corvin showed up.
“I knew he was trouble the minute I saw him. He was in civvies, starched shirt, light blue blazer, tie, the whole nine yards. He even wore a hat, in that heat. And pure white! He was the whitest man I ever saw. Living in ’Nam, and he looked like the sun never touched him. The guy scared me even before he opened his mouth.
“I walked him into the warehouse where we could be out of sight, and he laid it on me. He knew everything we were doing, who was involved, how it worked, everything. I was sweating like a stuck pig after five minutes. And then he told me that we were going to slide. If we played ball.
“Sissy and I were the only guys in-country at that time. Roy had wrangled an assignment to the Southern Command, in Panama, ten months earlier. He was setting up receivers for the money. We were dragging about sixty a month and living like kings. And this guy had us by the short hairs. We talked about everything. Wasting the dude, everything. But there was no telling how far up the line Corvin had taken the story, so we just had to sweat it out and wait for him to yank our chain. Man, those were some bad weeks!” Walker shuddered at the memory.
April looked at me. “Where were you when this happened?”
“Fort Benning. I didn’t arrive in the Republic until January of ’sixty-nine.”
She turned back
to Walker. “What did he want?”
“A piece of the action at first. Ten thousand a month. But later, he wanted errand boys. He said he was with Air America. Thinking back, I don’t believe it, but I did then. He was spooky enough.”
“What kind of errands?”
I cut in. The conversation was going where I didn’t want her to follow. “We had to make some deliveries out of country,” I told her. I turned to Walker. “This is not a good thing to talk about,” I said. “Maybe there was a shortage out of Squall Line. The best way to find out is to ask Roy. The only other way is to find Corvin. And I don’t know how to do that.”
“There is a third way,” he said.
“I don’t want to go back there.”
“Back where?” April asked.
“Where Sissy was killed,” I said.
We sat in silence for a while. Eventually Walker said, “There’s one thing we haven’t talked about. What to do if it is Roy behind all this.”
“We’ll do what we have to do.”
“And if it’s Corvin? Or someone else?”
“Same-same,” I said.
“I can’t go with you.”
I just looked at him. He wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“Joyce is pregnant,” he said slowly, “and I’ve got another kid, a boy. He’s only ten.” He swallowed and looked across the room, away from me. “I’ll pay you, of course.”
“I’ll bill you,” I told him, and stood to go.
When we were back in the car and on our way to the motel, April asked, “What did you mean, you’ll do what you have to do?”
I studied the traffic for a long time before answering her. Finally, I said, “This has to be stopped. Even if Roy is behind it. But I don’t think it is him.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s no reason I can think of for the trouble to have started now. I mean, all this happened twenty years ago. That’s a long time. Why would Roy have started hunting us now?” I glanced at her. “Did anything happen recently? Anything that might have changed the status quo?”
It was her turn to take a long pause. I assumed she was thinking, but when I looked at her I saw that she was weeping. “Just one thing,” she said softly. “I told Dad that I wanted to find my real father.”
There wasn’t much to say to that. I just drove, trying to make sense of it and of what I’d learned about the girl. She was Phoung’s child. That changed the way I thought about her, somehow. And then the possibility that she was Roy’s changed it again. Some part of me didn’t want to think about that, preferred not to know who was her father. But it had to be thought of. It seemed tied to what had happened in Los Angeles.
Suppose Roy were April’s father, as now seemed likely. Suppose Toker knew how to get in touch with Roy, which was pretty damned unlikely, and told him she was looking for him. So what? There was still no reason for Toker’s death. Roy could have denied being the girl’s father. There was no way she could prove it. And even if she could, so what again? She would have no legal claim on him. There was no way she could hurt him. She couldn’t even embarrass him.
Suppose he had a wife who wouldn’t like a Eurasian daughter crawling out of the woodwork? No, that kind of wife was impossible to imagine, for Roy. Any kind of wife was impossible to imagine for Roy. A wife would imply a commitment to someone besides himself. More, it would imply a human need. Roy had no need for anything that couldn’t be bought.
So just the fact that April was looking for her father was no threat to Roy. Suppose his paternity were connected with something else, something that made Toker, and possibly April, dangerous to him? Even that didn’t fly. The situation simply didn’t have Roy’s signature on it. He always used the minimum force necessary to achieve his ends. If there had been a threat, he would have disappeared, left it behind, or found a solution that required something less than a Claymore or a grenade.
But I wondered how much of my thinking was accurate and how much was just a reluctance to believe that Roy could have suddenly begun killing his old friends.
I don’t know why I parked in front of the motel instead of around the side, by the door to our room. I think it was because Walker and I both parked in the long-term lot at the airport. My decision to be unpredictable. Whatever the reason, I did park in front, and I led April through the lobby and out into the courtyard by the pool. There, I froze.
The drapes covering our patio door were closed. I distinctly remembered leaving them open, with the radio and all the lights on in the room. The lights were still on, but I couldn’t see into the room.
I pulled April to me, squeezing her arm hard to get her attention, and whispered to her to go back to the car and wait for me. She looked frightened, nodded, and took off. I walked around the perimeter of the buildings at a normal pace, listening intently. As I passed our room, I heard nothing. I should have heard the radio. It had been turned off. If someone was waiting for us inside, the radio would have been turned off so our key could be heard in the lock. I walked to the end of the building, then cut back across the pool area, out through the lobby, and to the car. April looked up when I slid in beside her.
“What’s wrong?”
“There’s been someone in the room.”
“Roy?”
“I don’t know who, or how many. Or if they’re still there. Or if they left anything behind.”
“Are we going to find out?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t let an enemy pick the time and place.”
“Then what are we going to do?”
“Leave town.” I put the car in gear and drove as quickly as I could to the airport. I parked in the short-term lot and left the keys under the front seat, along with the automatic. I didn’t like leaving the weapon.
We could still make the flight to Las Vegas I’d bought tickets for earlier. I called the number I’d memorized at Johnny Walker’s house. He didn’t sound sleepy when he picked up. “Yes?”
“Me.”
“What do you want?”
“Two things. We had visitors while we were at your place. They may have been waiting when we got back to the room. We didn’t go in to find out.”
He thought about that and then asked, “What else?”
“I’m leaving the car in the short-term lot.” I gave him the license plate number. “It has to be returned to Los Angeles. The gun needs to be dumped. And someone has to watch the room, see who comes out.”
“I told you I can’t get involved.”
“You can have this done. There’s no danger. Just watch. See what happens. I’ll take care of the rest of it.”
After a moment, I heard a sigh. “Okay. Call the office number. I’ll leave a message.”
He hung up. Ten minutes later, we were in the air, climbing toward thirty thousand feet.
Chapter 4
ALBUQUERQUE
I was getting sick of the Las Vegas airport. Fortunately, we didn’t have to stay long. There was a flight to Albuquerque in twenty minutes. We made it easily and flew out under two new names. I was Andrew Hofstat. She was my niece, Angela Romero.
April said nothing on the flight to Las Vegas. On the flight to Albuquerque, I told her that we were going to be okay. She said she wasn’t worried.
I knew that had to be a lie. I was worried. “Then why the long silence?” I asked.
“All my things. The things you bought me,” she said.
“We’ll get more,” I told her. “They were only clothes.”
She said nothing for the rest of the trip. It was still hours before dawn when we arrived in Albuquerque. We made a cautious approach to my car. I checked the undercarriage and opened the hood before I let her approach it. There was no sign it had been disturbed. We drove straight out to Placitas and made the same cautious approach to the house. Again, we found no sign of visitors.
I opened the door to the deck to air out the house, then threw together a breakfast of sorts and
put April in bed. After cleaning the kitchen, I locked the place carefully and got myself to bed just as the sky was beginning to lighten. I fell asleep immediately and only woke once, when April crawled in beside me. She put her back against me, sighed, and drifted off. After half an hour, so did I.
The morning was half gone when I pulled myself from one of my stranger dreams. I was sharing a life raft on the open sea with a faceless child. The raft kept shrinking, or maybe it had a leak. I was afraid of drowning, and more afraid of drowning the child. I slipped into the water and woke in a sweat. April was still asleep. She slept like a kitten, limp and sprawled over the bed. A lot limper than I was, anyway.
I put on a pot of coffee and showered, then stepped outdoors for a tour of the land. There was nothing obvious to see in the parking area. I walked around the house, keeping my eyes on the ground. Someone else had taken the same tour within the past day or two. There were footprints leading from the parking area to the stairs that came down off the deck behind the house.
I ran quickly back to the front and into the bedroom. April smiled up at me and stretched. “Good morning,” she said. I told her to get up and get dressed, and to do it quickly. Then I checked the door from the deck more closely than I had been able to in the dark the night before. It was scratched around the lock, but there was no indication that anyone had entered. The house was all right.
April padded into the kitchen while I was pouring coffee. I handed her a cup and surprised myself by telling her what I’d found. Normally I don’t like to tell people a thing until I know what to tell them to do about it. But she was different. Or I was. I wasn’t sure which.
She put her feet on a free stool and asked, “No one’s here now?”
“No, but we can’t count on that for long.”
“Maybe it was a prowler.”
“We don’t get prowlers out here. I may be the only person on the road who bothers to lock a door.”
She nodded. “You think it was Roy,” she said flatly.
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