Little Saigon

by T. Jefferson Parker

  It’s too normal, he thought. Too business-as-usual. Why bring a kidnapped woman to a shopping center, anyway? “We guessed wrong, Benny. They’d never come here. It’s too—”

  “Shut up, Chuck. There it is!”

  Bennett hurled himself out of the car before Frye even stopped. Crawley ran from Thòi-Trang Fabrics. Frye squeezed into an open space beside the Celica and got out. He watched Bennett climb to the hood, swing across it, and peer through the windshield. Crawley cupped his hands to a side window. Frye touched the hood: still warm. He noted the odd paint job—the way that the grill and the chrome and the trim had all been painted the same dark blue as the body. Bennett slid off the car and landed with a thud on the sidewalk. For a moment he stood there, as if sinking in the cement; his fists down for balance and his face washed pink by the light of the nearest sign. Frye read it:

  ÐOÁN MỘNG

  DREAM READER

  ÐỨNG-ÐẮN, CHÍNH XÁC

  Giá Ðặc Biệt

  Accurate, Specific

  On Special

  Frye could see a woman inside the shop, watching without interest. Bennett pivoted toward the door; Crawley moved ahead of him and pulled it open.

  The woman was big and old, with gray hair twisted back in a severe bun, and wearing a tight black ao dai. Sitting behind a small table, she looked at each of them in turn, her eyes half suspicion and half amusement. Black lights cast a violet glow over two chairs, a Chinese calendar hanging from one wall, a brush painting of a mountain with waterfall. Incense burned from a small brass pot in one corner, Bennett pushed a chair close to her, climbed in, and braced himself on her table. “That blue car, right there. Where are the people who were in it?”

  She placed a small enamel box before Bennett. She looked at Crawley, then Frye. Crawley opened it, put two bills inside. Frye saw her glance at the money, then back to his brother. “I saw no one.”

  For a second it looked as if Bennett would end up in her lap. “The hell you didn’t, lady. Two men and a woman. Li Frye! Li Frye, lady, you know who that is?”

  “Everyone know Li. I was in the back.”

  “Look me in the face and tell me you didn’t see that car come in.”

  She considered Frye, and for the briefest moment he was sure what he saw in her eyes was fear. “I did not see that car come in.” She brought out a tape from a drawer and placed it beside the box as if it were the final card of a straight flush. It was one of Li’s—”The Lost Mothers.” Her face filled the front, photographed against a single strand of barbed wire. The Dream Reader crossed her heavy arms. “I know Li Frye. She was not here.”

  Bennett looked at her, then at Crawley, then went into the back room through a bead curtain that swayed and rattled in his wake. For the next few seconds Frye stood there and listened to his brother—a door opening then slamming, a grunt, curses. The incense burner shook, its brass lid chiming quietly. The Dream Reader stared at him. Frye had the feeling that she was memorizing his thoughts. Crawley’s face was deep purple in the black light. Bennett heaved back in, beads flying, then trailing over his shoulders as he came through. “Let’s go.”

  They spread out to cover the shops. Next door, the jewelry store owner told Frye he’d been with customers—didn’t see the car arrive, very sorry. He hadn’t seen Li since last month, when she sang a benefit here at the plaza. She looked beautiful. He mentioned big savings on Seiko diver’s watches, waterproof to two hundred feet, no tax. “That is a gang car,” he said. “You can tell because they paint it all one color.”

  The woman in the flower shop spoke no English at all, but nodded and smiled when he said Li’s name. She pushed the play button on a portable tape machine, and Li’s voice creaked from the tiny speakers.

  “Li Frye?” he asked, pointing to the blue Celica.

  “Li Flye,” she said, pointing to the tape player.

  “Thanks.”

  Two young men drinking outside Tour d’Ivoire said they’d seen the car pull up, but it was empty. Frye pressed, and the story got changed to another car pulling up at another place at another time. When he thanked them, they said no problem, we always help police.

  Up the sidewalk he could see Crawley coming from a noodle shop. Beyond him Bennett worked himself from a door with some difficulty, then slammed it shut. He went back to the Celica, stared for a moment at the eye-level license plate, then crashed his fist onto the hood. The dent showed like a cut, catching the pink light of the Dream Reader—accurate, specific, on special. Frye could see her, still sitting inside, plump and silent as Buddha. Bennett waved him toward the Cyclone. He’s coming apart, Frye thought: he’s blowing up like the mine that got him in Dong Zu.

  Using a crowbar from the Mercury, Bennett pried his way into the Toyota trunk in less than a minute. He sat on the pavement when he’d finished, drenched in sweat, his chest heaving and his eyes definitely not right. He wasn’t tall enough to see inside. “What’s in there, Chuck?”

  “Nothing, and you’re wrecking evidence.”

  Bennett hurled the crowbar back into the Cyclone, then glowered at Frye. “We’re going over every inch of this goddamned place. Don’t come back to this car unless you’ve got Li with you.”

  Frye looked out at Saigon Plaza. People stared from the windows and doorways. The searchlights crisscrossed in the darkness above.

  He went into every shop, stopped people on the sidewalk, and talked to everyone who would talk back. No one had seen a thing. When he returned to his car half an hour later, Donnell and Bennett were waiting.

  Cops were all over the Asian Wind, Light bars pulsed, flashing against the building. Radios squawked. Two officers strung yellow crime-scene tape between saw-horses. An ambulance sped away. A potbellied sergeant stood, hands on hips, at a loss for some meaningful chore. An officer at the door let them in when Bennett told him who they were.

  The cabaret had become a different place. The stage lights were off, the glitter ball stilled, and instead of music came the echoing murmur of police as they conferred, shot pictures of the body on the stage, roped off the back exit, nodded, and pointed like battlefield visitors reimagining some hopeless stand or bloody offensive.

  Frye crunched across the glassy dance floor, righted a chair, and sat with his back to what was once a mirrored wall. Crawley stood beside him, arms crossed. Burke Parsons talked with an officer, pointing toward the stage with his hat, then stepped forward and knelt. With his free hand he indicated the exit route of the gunmen. Bennett climbed into a dinner booth, where a plainclothes cop joined him, pen and notepad poised.

  Frye took a deep breath and leaned his head back, staring up at the bullet-sprayed ceiling. He tried to slow his mind, to organize his memory, but it swarmed him in undisciplined waves. It struck him that he had a true scoop here, a first-hand story, a big one. A week’s worth of front-page news, he thought, and nobody to print it.

  Julie came across the littered floor, her face tight, eyes quick and angry. She sat beside him. “They got away from you?”

  “They got away.”

  “Did you get close enough to see them?”

  “Someone at the plaza must have. Not us.”

  Julie lit a cigarette. They watched the police photographer snapping away at the body on stage.

  “General Dien shot him,” Frye said.

  “I was under a table.”

  “He must be seventy years old.”

  “Seventy-six. I should never let gang people in here. This is what happens. In Saigon I was a singer. I open this cabaret so I can have music, but I get guns instead.”

  Julie rose when a cop waved her over. Her eyes were hard and dark as she looked down at Frye. “She will be all right. No one would hurt Li.”

  Just one night with her in my bed.

  Frye stood and worked his way to the back of the room. Their table was flipped over, chairs scattered outward. A pair of sunglasses lay twisted amidst the napkins and stir sticks. The tape recorder was crushed. Had they p
lanned on coming back?

  He touched the recorder with his toe, and behind him someone yelled. “Hey!” Frye turned: it was the big-bellied sergeant, arms swinging as he approached.

  “Get the hell out of there.”

  Frye stood, frozen like a rabbit in a headlight. Authority figures were never his specialty.

  The sergeant’s face was now in his own. “Get back to that chair and sit there until Detective Minh wants you. Otherwise, out.”

  “Whatever.”

  “ ‘Whatever’ don’t cut it. In the chair.”

  He sat down next to Crawley, put his face in his hands, and tried to think. His ears rang from the shots. The air still smelled of gunpowder. Julie brought him a cup of Vietnamese coffee—strong, black, and sweet.

  Burke Parsons walked up a moment later, adjusting his cowboy hat. He shook his head, took a breath, but said nothing. At first he seemed nervous, but a closer look showed Frye that Burke was close to furious. “People don’t mess with my friends. I told Bennett and I’ll tell you too. You need something, call me. Anything you need. Anything.” He swallowed hard, appeared ready to say something else, but didn’t. He gave Frye a fierce look, then turned and strode toward the door.

  Frye wandered over to the stage and watched the crime scene investigator doing his ballistics. He knew his face from an interview a year ago, but the name wasn’t attached. Three feet away lay the body. They’d taken off the gunman’s mask. He was a small Asian man with a slick of blood leaking from his head and a look of mild surprise in his eyes. He stared up at the stage lights.

  The investigator pulled a roll of string from his case and looked at Frye. “You wrote that crime lab article for the Ledger, didn’t you?”

  “Sure did. Chuck Frye.”

  “I’m Duncan. Good job. It helped our budget.” The CSI pointed toward Bennett. “Your brother?”

  “Right.”

  Frye watched as Duncan pushed a tack into the floor near the dead man’s head, then tied the string and walked off ten steps to a table. He looked at Frye. “Forty feet away and he gets it in the skull with a .22. Not his lucky day.”

  “More like fifty. The general was next table over.”

  Duncan stepped around a chair, string held high, and brought it down to where Frye was pointing. He tacked it down, along with a yellow tape measure.

  “Dien leave?” Frye asked. “I didn’t see him giving a statement.”

  “He took off. We had three people say he was the one who fired. ‘Course the Viets change their minds about every five minutes. Worst witnesses in the world. You see him shoot?”

  “Yeah. One shot.”

  Duncan paced back to the stage, trailing the tape.

  “Then what?”

  “This one stood right there and sprayed the floor.”

  “Well, if you want to look on the bright side, there was a miracle here tonight. A couple of hundred rounds fired in a place full of people, and the only one hit is a bad guy.”

  “What’s that tell you?”

  “That they were more into shock value than slaughter.”

  Frye saw in his mind that second—that one blessed second—in which a gunman seemed to have singled out Bennett, but held his fire. “Me too. But I won’t quote you on that.”

  “Don’t, I’m just the CSI.” Duncan eyeballed the tape, then looked at Frye. “Fifty-two feet, four inches.”

  In the far corner of the room, the plainclothes was still talking to Bennett. Frye looked across to Donnell Crawley, who sat mute and solid as an Easter Island statue. From below him, the dead gunman burped. Frye considered his dark face, the thick black hair, the trace of mustache. White cotton shirt. Black pants. Two black leather bracelets with silver studs. Black shoes with a crust of dried gray mud on the sides and bottoms.

  “Where do you think he picked up that mud, Duncan, in the middle of August?”

  The CSI set down his clipboard, walked to the aft end of the body. He touched the mud, smelled it, and shrugged. “CDL gave him a Westminster address. Nothing from Sacramento on him, Probably a local gang punk.”

  “What’s his name?”

  Duncan tasted the mud. “Sorry. If you really have to know, ask Minh. Our new dick for Little Saigon.”

  “Vietnamese?”

  “Half. Half American. He’s supposed to be the perfect recipe for down here.” The CSI sounded doubtful.

  When the sergeant wasn’t looking, Frye picked his way across the dance floor, then drifted over to the backstage door. Leaning against the wall a moment, he watched the cops work. No one seemed much interested, so he went back into Li’s dressing room, closed the door behind him, and flicked on a light.

  Her perfume still lingered. The makeup containers were stacked neatly on the table. The chair was pushed away. Her street clothes still hung in the open wardrobe: jeans, blouse, a light silk jacket.

  The Halliburton case was gone. In its place were three bottles of French champagne. The mirror had “BAN—You Have Lost” scrawled across it in bright red lipstick.

  Frye sat down in Li’s chair and looked at the words, then the bottles. Taunts from the kidnappers? What’s bạn?

  The top drawer contained a hand mirror, a couple of brushes and combs, a new package of emery boards, three black elastic stretch bands that hold hair without pulling it out. There were several pencil-like items of various color and utility. Something to do with the eyes, he reasoned. The second drawer had tissue, creams, ointments, unguents, oils, astringents, powders—a beauty blizzard.

  Drawer three contained five cassette tapes still in their boxes, a small sixer of V-8 juice and, beneath a clean white towel, a large caliber two-shot derringer.

  Frye dropped the towel back, slid shut the drawer, and stood up. One side of the wardrobe held a few bright dresses and blouses, a half-dozen ao dai, a coat or two. The bottom looked like a bargain bin—shoes piled high, all colors and shapes. The other side was almost empty, except for Li’s street clothes. He brought a chair over and stood on it. The top shelf held only a portable radio—the kind with detachable speakers—and a small bundle of cassettes tied with one of Li’s black hair bands. Frye examined the radio, put it back.

  He was about to step down when he saw the buzzer attached to the far corner of the shelf. It looked like the mounting of an old doorbell, with a tarnished brass base and a black button. Looking under the shelf, he saw the wires disappearing through the back of the wardrobe cabinet. He leaned closer, blew off some dust, wondering. A call button for service? Then why put it way up here? An alarm? Again, why here, where it’s hard to get to?

  He pushed it. Below him, on the wall beside the wardrobe, a rectangular section of the wall panel slid quietly away. A window appeared, looking into a small room that was closed off from the main part of the club. One table set for four, chairs, paintings, a dusty arrangement of silk flowers. A mirror directly across the room gave him no reflection of his own face. One-way glass, he thought. Private dining, with a not-so-private window. To keep customers from stealing chopsticks?

  He pushed the button and watched the panel slide back, then stepped down and replaced the chair at Li’s makeup table. Then he hit the light switch, opened the door and walked straight into the sergeant’s belly. A big hand pushed him against the wall, his head hitting hard. “I told you to sit, asshole.”

  “I got bored.”

  The sergeant—his nameplate said Marxer—spun Frye around, handcuffed him, patted him down, then spun him back. “You’re interfering with a felony investigation. Walk.”

  Frye moved down the hallway and into the big room. Crawley stood up. Bennett looked over and shook his head. Detective Minh approached, pocketing his notepad. Frye studied the smooth thin face, the wavy black hair, the feminine mouth, and pale blue eyes. Marxer yanked him to a stop. “Kid’s been prowling around all night,” he said. “He was in the dressing room just now.”

  “What’s your name?” asked Minh.

  “Charles Edison Frye.”r />
  “What were you prowling for?”

  “A bathroom.”

  Minh glanced at Marxer, then back to Frye. “Let him go. Sergeant. He looks the type who couldn’t find a bathroom, and he can’t piss with his hands behind his back.”

  Marxer twisted him around. “Stay where I can see you.”

  Bennett padded up to them, fists down, arms taut for each pivot, angling his way through the debris. “Try to cooperate with these guys, Chuck.”

  Marxer took his time uncuffing Frye, giving his wrists a good jerk. Minh took out his notepad. “Over here in the booth, Chuck. I’ve got some questions for you.”

  During the next hour Frye answered questions, answered them again, then answered more. What struck him most was that Minh wrote for a while with his left hand, then with his right, then with his left again. And he seemed to keep changing faces: he’d look Vietnamese, then American, then like a man, then like a boy or a woman. He’s supposed to be the perfect recipe. There were only a few cops left in the cabaret when Frye was finally pointed to the door.

  Five minutes later, half a mile from the Asian Wind, Frye walked up the ramp to his brother’s house. It was just after two in the morning. The lights were on. Figures moved behind the curtains. Donnell Crawley opened the door.

  Crepe paper hung from the ceiling, a little stack of presents sat on the coffee table, in the dining room was a cake and a pyramid of bright red party hats. Bennett slammed down the phone and started pacing. He looked at Frye with an unmistakable darkness to his face. It always means fury, Frye thought. Kim sat on the couch, with a notepad open on her lap. Nguyen Hy hovered near the dining room, dialing a cordless telephone. Near the door sat two large pieces of leather luggage, and a silver Halliburton case. “I just called Pop and Mom,” Bennett said quietly. “They’re … okay.”

  Frye sank onto the couch, suddenly tired. In the long silence that followed, he realized what a gaping hole Li had left—in the house, in his brother, in himself. So much of her here, he thought, so much to extrapolate the loss from. “Li taking another trip, Benny?”