Little Saigon

by T. Jefferson Parker

  He could see Bennett at a table near the back of the room, with Donnell Crawley and Nguyen Hy and a woman he didn’t recognize. Burke Parsons was partially obscured, as always, by a cowboy hat. Bennett was holding forth: arms outstretched, head forward and canted to one side as he talked. Frye waved and headed backstage. Benny, always at the center of things.

  Li was locking a silver Halliburton case when Frye walked into her dressing room. She glanced quickly to the mirror in front of her, then hopped up and came toward him. Full lovely face, waves of black hair, eyes dark and lustrous as obsidian. Her ao dai was purple, with black silk trousers. “I didn’t hear you come in, Chuck. Happy birthday!” She tiptoed up, pecked his cheek, then wiped it with a pale finger.

  He smiled. Something about Li always reduced him to appreciative idiocy, always made him smile. Maybe it was everything she’d been through. He had the feeling when he touched her that a fragile, priceless object was momentarily in his care. A smile was the least you could offer her. “Just wanted my kiss while Benny wasn’t looking. And to wish you luck for the show.”

  She stood away and looked at him. “You are a sweet man, Chuck. My chú, my number one.”

  “You look great, Li. Break a leg.” He kissed her. He watched her watch him. “What are these ‘Saigon Days’ all about?”

  “That’s the city, showing us off. Proud of what good citizens we’ve become.” She smiled. “Have you heard anything from Linda?”

  “Yes. We’re history.”

  She put her arms around him and pressed close. Her perfume smelled good. Then she stepped back and took his hands. “Perhaps it was simply meant to be.”

  “Whatever.”

  “No one can kill your heart, Chuck.” She looked at the Halliburton on her table. “Enjoy the show, chú. I have to finish my makeup.”

  “Sing up a storm, Li.”

  “I will. So many important people tonight. Lucia Parsons from the MIA Committee had to cancel, but she sent Burke instead. We can talk after the show, Chuck. There are a cake and presents at the house. I’ve written the most lovely song for Benny.”

  Frye picked his way back across the crowded room and sat down next to his brother. Bennett’s face swam in the light of the glitter ball. His hand was dry and strong. “Happy birthday, Chuck. You’re not even late.”

  “Wouldn’t miss this,” Frye said. “Happy birthday to you, too.” He shook hands with Donnell Crawley, Bennett’s dark and silent war buddy, who smothered Frye’s hand and nodded. Nguyen Hy, looking dapper and frail as always, placed his cigarette in an ashtray and offered his thin fingers. Hy, Frye knew, was head of the Center for Vietnam, a local humanitarian group. He never missed a chance to solicit help or money. He introduced the Vietnamese woman beside him. Her name was Kim, and she worked as a fundraiser for Hy’s CFV. “You don’t look very much like Bennett,” she said.

  “Thank you,” he said, elbowing his brother in the ribs.

  “One surf nazi per family is enough,” said Bennett. Frye saw him check his watch and glance toward the stage. “Five minutes and she’ll be on, little brother.”

  “Surf nazi?” asked Kim.

  Nguyen leaned forward to clarify. “A surfing enthusiast. Chuck is a former champion.”

  “Chuck is a former everything at this point,” said Bennett, flagging a waiter. “What’s the deal on your job?”

  “I’m freelance now.”

  “Vodka?”

  “Almost have to.”

  “That’s the spirit,” said Burke Parsons, tipping his hat to Frye. “I’ll get this round.”

  Frye nodded, considering Burke: Texas-oil rich, quiet, generous. Another friend of Bennett’s from the war. His sister Lucia got the headlines, as founder of an MIA Committee that was making genuine progress. Burke seemed to bask contentedly on her peripheries—rubbing shoulders, buying drinks, networking to no particular effect. Every time Frye saw him, Parsons was wearing the same moronic hat.

  Bennett ordered for everyone. “Billingham won’t reconsider?”

  Frye sighed and looked out to the crowd. He had been a good, if sometimes overimaginative, reporter of the facts. He covered restaurants for free food, movies for free tickets, and boxing at the Sherrington Hotel for a free ringside seat. On three hundred twenty dollars a week, and negative cash flow from his surf shop, he’d learned to forage. But the fact of the matter—try as he might to forget it—was that Frye had been canned exactly sixteen days ago for writing an article about a boxer who obviously took a dive in the fifth round of a Sherrington semi-main event. When Frye tried to contact the young welterweight’s manager for his side of the story, the man—one Rollie Dean Mack of Elite Management—wouldn’t return his calls. Frye ran the story and said so. Mack’s attorney then told Frye’s publisher that either Frye or Elite’s advertising would be removed from the paper, implying they’d sue for libel. Ledger publisher Ron Billingham had never much liked the boxing stuff anyway. Frye got his walking papers on a Friday, cleaned his desk out that evening, put in one last fruitless call to Rollie Dean Mack, then went out and drank at high velocity. That welterweight had gone down for pay, no doubt about it.

  Frye shrugged; Bennett studied him. “Things will work out, Chuck. I know some friends of Billingham’s, so hang tight.”

  Bennett pointed out the luminaries in the crowd: General Dien and his wife; Binh, a Vietnamese newspaper publisher; Tranh Ky, businessman and president of the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce; Dr. Phom-Do, professor and author of nineteen books on Asian history. The mayor and some council members were here. “Miss Saigon Days” sat, banner-draped and hopelessly nervous, between her father and mother.

  “Lucia couldn’t make it, so she sent her idiot twin brother instead,” said Burke. He smiled, sucking on his beer. “She had to meet with some senate folks out to Washington. Hated to miss this, I’ll tell ya.”

  Frye noted how people were starting to speak of Lucia Parsons in tones of near reverence. She had made a dozen trips to Hanoi to talk about the MIAs—all lavishly chronicled in the press. Apparently, Hanoi was actually talking back. Rumor had it that she was eyeing a seat in Congress and the MIA Committee was paving her way. Frye had seen her on television. She was bright, articulate, beautiful. Burke, even with his cowboy hat, had the same dark good looks.

  “Lots of good people here,” said Bennett. “Then over there, some not-so-good ones.”

  He nodded toward a corner table populated by young male faces with gel-slick heads. Sharp clothes, quick eyes, an easy arrogance about them. “Gangs. That’s part of Ground Zero.” Bennett leaned close. “And right next to you is Eddie Vo, the leader. I don’t recognize the guy with the sunglasses.”

  Frye watched Eddie Vo and Sunglasses pouring fresh beers over ice, bringing lighters to their cigarettes, ogling a young woman with sly enthusiasm.

  “They are not bad people,” offered Nguyen Hy. “Energy needing to be directed. They are fine, as long as the Dark Men don’t show up. Ground Zero and the Dark Men are like matches and gas.”

  The waiter returned with a tray of drinks. Frye sipped his and watched the crowd, noting that Eddie Vo was fiddling with a cassette tape. A recorder sat beside it. Frye leaned over. “Chromium tape?”

  Vo stared sullenly. “Five bucks, man, and it’s already tangled.”

  Frye shrugged. Then the lights dimmed and a communal murmur rose from the audience, heads lifting toward the stage. Miss Saigon Days was looking at him. She turned away before he could smile. The band came on, slender Vietnamese men in French-cut suits, followed by the backup singers, all in white ao dai, all lovely. Drums rattled, the bass groaned. The backup singers waited, looking down. The guitar player tapped the mike. Bennett adjusted himself in his seat, grinning in anticipation. Someone waved and Bennett waved back.

  Li glided onstage, centered in a spotlight, her black hair shining through the smoky atmosphere, purple ao dai tight around her middle, silk pants loose and flowing. Frye could feel Bennett’s hands pounding
beside him, faster and faster. Li took the microphone. The stage lights focused her smile and brought a sparkle to her eyes as she looked over the crowd and found Bennett. She raised a hand and the spotlight angled to their table. “For my husband,” Frye heard her say. “And for his brother, too. Happy birthday to you.”

  Then the light shifted back to Li and the band eased into its first song. Frye watched Eddie, still fighting with his faulty tape cassette. Sunglasses was staring at the stage, apparently transfixed. Li brought the mike to her mouth, and the first ripples of her voice settled onto the crowd as easily as foam onto a beach. Frye listened in rapt ignorance to the lyrics spilling out in Li’s mother tongue: lilting, rhythmic, soothing. Kim scooted her chair close to him and translated in the caesuras:

  When everything is turned to night

  The leaves fallen from black branches

  I’m not alone, I have my song

  To you my brother, my love …

  Frye watched the lights play off Li’s smile and the embroidered lace of her blouse. Bennett’s arms were crossed, a look of simple wonder on his face. Donnell Crawley tapped his glass to the beat and Nguyen Hy drew pensively on a cigarette. Kim leaned close again, her breath sweet against his cheek:

  When longing is my only life

  And the sky weeps rain of sadness

  I know that there is no end

  To you my brother, my love …

  Frye could hear Eddie Vo cackling between the softly sung lines. “Just one night with her in my bed,” he said. “I wouldn’t be a brother to her!”

  Sunglasses answered, “Stanley would be jealous.”

  “Stanley … lại cái! Goddamn this tape!”

  Li finished the song with a note so high and pure that Frye feared for his vodka glass. She bowed, black hair cascading down. The applause seemed to force a gust of smoke toward the ceiling. Bennett shot Chuck a proud look as the spotlights found their table again.

  Before he knew he was doing it, Frye had gotten up and hugged his brother, patting him on the back. The applause got louder. Then the light reapplied itself to Li, who had turned to her band to count down the next tune. Strange, thought Frye, as he sat back down, how in the middle of everything you find yourself just plain happy. Bennett was nodding at him. Kim leaned close again. “This is a new song, Chuck. About our home, and being heartsick for what you cannot have.”

  Li looked out over her audience, then spoke over the oddly syncopated rhythm of her band. “Vietnam, where are you? We must learn the language of getting you back.”

  The guitar opened, mournfully high and lonesome.

  “I’m sorry for you people,” Frye blurted past a wisp of black hair and into Kim’s ear.

  She looked at him in assessment. “You tried.”

  “No, I didn’t. Not me.”

  I didn’t do a damn thing, he thought: Bennett paid the family price. I didn’t argue with draft number three-fifty-one. He drank more, guilty again that it was Bennett who had gone, Bennett who had lost. But he had won, too: a wife, and a life among the people for whom he had given so much. Chuck looked at his brother, wondering for the thousandth time if the trade was worth it. Half a man now, roughly—head, torso, arms, and two stumps. He looked at Donnell Crawley, the grunt who had carried Bennett back to safety, jammed his helmet onto one of Bennett’s gushing thighs, and gotten shot in the head for his trouble.

  Frye glanced around for Eddie Vo, but Eddie Vo was gone. So was Sunglasses. The tape recorder sat by their beer bottles, a gutted cassette on the table beside it.

  Weird-ass time to go outside and smoke one, Frye thought. Miss Saigon Days’ father stood and came toward their table, smiling.

  When three hooded figures walked to the front of the stage and lowered machine guns at the crowd, Frye thought it was part of the show. For the shortest of moments—between the fall of the drumsticks, between Li’s melancholy lines, between the beats of Frye’s heart—the Asian Wind went quiet.

  Then gunfire shattered the submarine light, splashing mirror glass as if it were water. There was a collective heave, the crashing of bodies on furniture. Li hurled her mike at one of the intruders, then grabbed her stand and lifted it high above a gunman in a ski mask. But he jumped the stage, slipped inside her blow, and clenched her around the neck. Another, wearing a black hood, grabbed a backup singer, then let go, whirled around, and helped the man in the ski mask grapple with Li. Her hair splayed in the spotlight and a pale curve of shoulder flashed where the silk ripped apart in gloved hands.

  Frye reached out and grabbed the beauty queen’s father by his necktie. In the unbelievably long moment that it took to hit the floor, all he could think about were the people he should have treated better before he died.

  Bennett landed beside him, rolled over and righted himself. Up on his fists now, with his stumps swinging between his thick arms, Bennett charged the stage. Shards of glass sprinkled down like rain. Frye saw the machine gun fix on Bennett and thought: All the way to Vietnam and back, and he’s going to die crawling across a barroom floor.

  For one blessed second, the gunman hesitated.

  Frye jumped up and dove for Bennett. So did Burke Parsons, his Stetson flying off. With his arms locked around his brother’s chest, Frye looked up through the stampede to see Li being dragged toward the rear exit. Her feet flailed uselessly above the floor—one shiny black shoe flying off.

  Beside them, General Dien raised a pistol and fired. The gunman on stage jerked as a bright crimson-halo burst behind his head. His weapon pumped bullets into the stage until it finally fell from his hand and clattered to the floor.

  Frye fought to his feet, lunged through the crowd and through the back door. A blue Celica ripped from the parking lot in a puff of tire smoke and sped around a corner.

  He jumped into his old Mercury, started it up, and slammed it into gear.

  His headlights raked the lot, and for a brief illuminated second he saw what looked like Eddie Vo’s wide-eyed face staring back at him from the front seat of a parked station wagon.

  Then Frye was screaming for Bennett against the wail of his own tires, in a voice he could hardly hear. Just as he skidded up to the rear door, Donnell Crawley burst out, carrying Bennett in his arms.

  CHAPTER 2

  HE WAS OFF, BENNETT NEXT TO HIM ON THE big bench seat, Crawley riding shotgun. Bennett yelled in his ear. “Get on it! Go!”

  He bounced the Cyclone onto Brookhurst and floored it. Police sirens started to wail. Up the broad, busy street, the Celica slanted into the slow lane and swung right onto Westminster Boulevard. Frye steered around a lame Volkswagen, ate a hundred yards of asphalt in one gulp, then slid through the corner gas station, pumps and astonished attendants flying past his ears. “Faster,” screamed Bennett. “They’re going left, they’re going left!”

  The big V-8 rush pinned them to the upholstery and Frye cut the distance—a hundred yards … fifty—but the Celica waited until the oncoming traffic was bunched and heading toward them before it lurched across and disappeared down Magnolia. He skidded to a stop in a chorus of horns. Two police units howled past him, sirens high. Six cars … seven … ten and still coming while they waited there, staring down Magnolia as if willpower could slow the escape of the Celica. Frye finally gave up and punched it in front of an OCTD bus, which lowered heavily like some great animal amidst its own brake lights and tire smoke as they shot by.

  Far ahead of them, the blue Celica turned left again.

  Bennett reached out and turned the wheel, jumping the Cyclone into the left lane. “Left on Green Flower, next light. They’re heading for the plaza!”

  Frye jumped the median, clipped a street sign, and barged past the cars lining up in the turn lane. When the oncoming traffic broke, he lumbered onto the street again and swung left onto Green Flower. In the distance Frye could see the lights of Saigon Plaza, the archway at the entrance. Two beams of light funneled up and crisscrossed in the sky overhead. “They’re going to the plaza, I
know it. Get on it, Chuck, goddamn it, move.”

  They came into Saigon Plaza from the back, squeezing along the narrow alley between Thanh Tong Fabrics and the office of Dang Long Co, M.D. Streetlamps lined the sidewalk. The shops and buildings with their bright signs and painted windows sat behind them. Cars filled the parking lot, flyers glided along the asphalt in the warm breeze. To his left Frye could see the huge archway and the two marble lions standing guard at the main entrance off Bolsa.

  Bennett reached over and took the wheel, guiding them to the right. His voice was quiet, almost a whisper. “Go slow and hug the perimeter, Chuck. She’s in here somewhere. Donnell, call the cops and give them the car make.”

  Crawley jumped out and ran toward the shops.

  “Someone must have seen them,” said Frye.

  “They won’t tell us shit,” Bennett said.

  Frye cruised. Crowded sidewalk, windows, groups of refugees looking on with curiosity. Hãng Du Lịch Bát Đạt Travel, Bổng Loi Seafood Company, Tài Lọi Donuts and Hot Food. Banners everywhere: FINAL SALE! CLEARANCE SALE! CELEBRATE SAIGON DAYS—THE CITY OF WESTMINSTER. Pop music came from Tranh Cafe, a group of young men hanging around in front.

  At the far end of the plaza he eased left, following the sidewalk and streetlamps. Bennett leaned forward against the dash—his right hand spread to the vinyl, his left a fist that gently pounded the padding above the radio. Frye could still hear sirens heading for the Asian Wind. Two big searchlights shot their beams high into the night. The sign on the building said PH? HANH CAFÉ—GRAND OPENING! The outside tables were almost full. Drinkers sat, contemplating the convertible and its two passengers. They passed Rendez-Vous Fashions, Dry Cleaning and Art Gallery, its windows filled with silk dresses and lacquer paintings. They passed Kim-Thinh Jewelry and Masami’s Needlecraft and Thòi-Trang Fabrics and Tour d’Ivoire Restaurant. They passed Thúy’s Hổng Kông Video and Phuọng Fashions. They passed places with signs he couldn’t hope to read.