Little Saigon

by T. Jefferson Parker

  “She was.”

  “Where?”

  Bennett kept pacing, fists clenched, pivoting his stumps between his big arms, landing with muffled thuds. Frye marveled for the millionth time at this odd locomotion, which reminded him of apes, bar-dips, pain. But with Benny it’s all grace and strength. Like a bumblebee, he doesn’t know he can’t do it. Bennett’s van was the only thing he had configured for his loss—hand levers for brakes and gas. But his home and office, the entire rest of his life, denied that Benny was different.

  No one had answered Frye yet. Finally, it was Kim. “She was going to Paris, Chuck. To see friends.”

  Frye gathered from this exchange that he was clearly not to be in the know. Bennett never told him much. It had always been that way. For a moment, Frye could see the child in his brother’s haggard face, the child who was always making the plans, starting the projects, and gathering the information that made up a boy’s private world. Benny, he thought, always up to something. When Frye had discovered the hole dug near the beach at Frye Island, hidden under sheets of cardboard that were sprinkled with a light layer of sand, it was days before Bennett admitted that he was digging to China. When Frye had been blamed for the disappearance of certain bedsheets, it was weeks before they were discovered stretched and stapled to form the wings of Bennett’s “pedal-craft.” Bennett had emerged from the boathouse on the contraption, peddling furiously to lift himself and the stolen sheets to freedom. The aircraft dropped like a brick as he steered it off the dock, leaving Bennett to gasp in the center of a spreading ring of percale cotton and cold Newport Harbor water. When Bennett developed a little limp that slowly got worse—Frye had imitated, it convincingly—it was days before Hyla found out that he’d stepped on a nail that had gone straight through his foot. Benny hadn’t told her—he knew a tetanus shot was called for, and he hated needles. When Bennett enlisted in ROTC, he’d called from Tucson to say he’d done it. When he joined up early to fight in Vietnam, he’d called from Florida to say good-bye. When he’d married a Vietnamese peasant named Kieu Li, he’d phoned from Hong Kong to announce that he was now a husband.

  Always his own agenda, thought Frye. Benny’s the kind of guy who’d call from the moon to say he’d become an astronaut.

  When he came home from the war, Bennett told him even less, but since then, Bennett had become a minor public figure. He’d started out with the Frye Ranch Company in property management, graduated to development, become a vice-president in the commercial division. The press had always loved Bennett: disabled war hero, business wiz, and half of an interracial marriage to singer Kieu Li. His awards piled up, his civic involvement deepened and his fortune grew, though he lived modestly. With the rumors of Edison’s retirement, Bennett had become heir apparent to the biggest real estate empire in the state. Frye could remember one night at Bennett’s house when his brother had confided that he and Li couldn’t have children. It was typical of Bennett: a short statement followed by no explanation. Frye had managed to deduce that Bennett was impaired. He assumed that his brother’s sterility at least partly explained his ceaseless energy in business, his deep involvement with the refugee community, his silent intensities. From the first time Frye saw Bennett after the war, it was apparent to him his legs were not all that his brother had left in Vietnam. It was something in his spirit, in the depth of focus in his eyes, in the smothered pain that shone from them. It was the look of a man who had lost something even more precious than flesh, and knew it. Frye had seen it in some of Benny’s friends. It was a look of loss, a look of regret, a look of longing.

  But even now, Frye thought, it’s Benny’s style to never announce his plans. He just does what he does, and tells you later if he feels like it. Two years in Vietnam, and he rarely speaks of it. He told about meeting Li, falling in love, marrying her in Saigon. He told about some of his patrols, about the Vietnamese friend who’d go down into the tunnels when nobody else would. He told about the drinking and the drugs, the freaks and the killers. But somehow, Bennett himself always seemed to slip into the background. The rest of it stayed locked inside, privately tended.

  Frye looked at the case again. “How’d that Halliburton get from Li’s dressing room to here?”

  “Don’t worry how,” snapped Bennett.

  Frye watched a quick exchange of glances, a flurry of eye talk that included everyone but himself. Kim brought him a cup of tea, delivered with an understanding half-smile. He leaned back into the soft couch. The fuck do I care, he thought, it’s just a case that moves around on its own.

  “Someone left three bottles of champagne on her dresser. And wrote the word bạn on the mirror, with her lipstick. Then it said ‘You Have Lost.’ Is bạn Vietnamese for something?”

  Bennett looked up, some dark ceremony going on inside him. “The cops didn’t say anything about champagne.”

  “Maybe they thought it was there before. It wasn’t. I saw her just before the show.”

  “Chuck, come with me. I’ve got a favor to ask you.”

  Bennett led the way to his bedroom. Frye followed down the hall, feeling again the great non-presence of Li. Her absence was everywhere. Bennett took a cigar box from under the bed and handed it to Frye. It was light, wrapped in layers of duct tape. Bennett’s voice was low. “I want you to take this and put it somewhere out of sight, Chuck. About as out of sight as you can make it, is what I mean. Just for a day or so. That’s all.”

  “What’s in it?”

  Bennett put a finger to his lips, then shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Don’t open it. Don’t fiddle with it, don’t do anything but hide it and forget it.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because you’re my brother.” Bennett clamped a strong hand to Frye’s wrist. “I can trust you, Chuck. And right now I’m not sure how many people I can say that about.”

  “Sure, Benny.”

  “Chuck, I’m going to ask you to do one more thing for me. It’s important. Be at the island at eight tomorrow morning. Have a full tank of gas and be on time. Can do?”

  Frye nodded, feeling the pride of the enlisted man. “What do you think? Who’d take Li? Why?”

  Bennett looked down a long time, lost to something in the carpet. “I don’t know.”

  “Did you have any idea—”

  “Hell, no, I didn’t.”

  “Do you know who might—”

  “What is this, a goddamned interview?”

  “You’ve got no ideas at all?”

  “We’re only the richest family in the county, Chuck. You figure it out.”

  “What about the singing? The political songs? I know tempers get short up here.”

  Bennett hesitated, then swung toward the door. “She’s a hero to these people. They’d die for her. But you know how it is—you try to help somebody and somebody else thinks you’re after their ass. Now head out the back, Chuck. I don’t want anyone to know you’ve got that thing. Not even the people in my living room.”

  Frye followed down the hall, glancing again at his brother’s citations and awards displayed on the wall. They stopped in a small utility room, and Bennett pushed open the door.

  Frye stepped out. “I’ll be there at eight with a full tank. One more thing, Benny. What’s bạn?”

  Bennett turned toward the door. “It’s Vietnamese. It means friend. Are you sure that the champagne wasn’t there when you went backstage the first time?”

  “I’m sure.”

  CHAPTER 3

  HE COULDN’T SLEEP, HE COULDN’T SIT STILL. He couldn’t concentrate. Every time the breeze rattled the blinds, his heart flew up and hovered like a bird. He kept hearing sounds. So he paced the cave-house, still seeing Li as she was pulled offstage, still hearing her last shriek above the screams in the Asian Wind.

  He kept calling Frye Island to talk to his parents, but both lines were busy. Just before four in the morning, he got through. Edison told him to be at the island at eight, then put him on with his mother. Frye could
hear her summoning strength, forcing her voice into rigid optimism. “I just know she’ll be okay,” said Hyla. “I just know it. Pray, Chuck. It works.”

  “I’m going to be there for you,” said Frye.

  Hyla hesitated. “Oh, Chuck, that’s so good.”

  “We’ll get her back, Mom. I know it too.”

  He hefted the cigar box, shook it, held it to his ear like he would a Christmas present, set it down. Solid. One pound. Animal, vegetable, mineral?

  With Bennett’s orders not to open it ringing in his mind, Frye opened the thing anyway, layers of silver duct tape rasping off, sticking to his fingers. He lifted the top, looked in, then spilled the contents: one video cassette, black case, rewound.

  He slipped it into his VCR, turned down the volume, and watched. Bad color, jerky camera work. Then Nguyen Hy, the young refugee leader, sitting alone in … a restaurant?

  He checks his watch. He sips from a tea cup. Fifteen seconds later a man in a tennis shirt and chinos strides in, briefcase in hand, sunglasses on. He’s tallish, well-muscled, with a no-nonsense look when he takes off the shades. His mustache is heavy, drooping, red. They shake hands and talk silently; Nguyen accepts the case. More talk; Red Mustache leaves. Hy lights a cigarette, waits half a minute, then squares the briefcase before him, lifts open the lid and displays to the camera neat stacks of twenty-dollar bills. Nguyen smiles, shuts the case, leaves.

  The screen goes blank, then Nguyen again—or someone who looks just like him. He’s far from the camera, standing under a tree not far from the Humanities building on the UCI campus. It must be early morning. No students. He’s being shot from above, from an office, or maybe the fifth floor German department.

  Frye recognized the place because he’d flunked out.

  Hy smokes, waits. Red Mustache arrives shortly, wearing a coat and tie this time, and a pair of professorial glasses. No mistaking his hair; his erect, athletic posture. The briefcase looks the same; they talk; he leaves. Again Nguyen waits, then walks toward the camera, stops on a walkway below, and, with a grin, opens the case.

  Money again.

  More than I make in a week, Frye thought.

  He hit the fast forward to another scene with Nguyen. This time, the video tape showed still photographs of a drop near the carousel at South Coast Plaza. Nguyen sits alone on bench; Red Mustache, arrives with the briefcase and leaves without it, Hy doesn’t show off his booty this time, he just looks into the camera without smiling, then grabs the handle and leaves.

  That was the grand finale.

  Interesting theme, here. The only thing Frye could come up with was: If you get something you gotta give something. Especially if you’re getting a briefcase full of money.

  He stuck the tape back in the box and took it to the far dark region of the cave-house, where he stashed it deep down in a cardboard box of Christmas ornaments.

  He stood there for a moment, feeling the eerie proximity of the cave walls, the solid darkness encroaching just outside the beam of his flashlight. In the old days, he thought, I liked this cave. It was a little corner of mystery right in my own house. Now, it just scares me. Just like the surf when I go under. He felt a wave of vertigo wash over him, thick, warm, tangible. His scalp crawled and his heart sped up. He followed his light beam back out.

  Benny, what did you get yourself into?

  And who wants this tape so bad you can’t even keep it where you live?

  He went outside. From his patio he could see the Pacific—a dark, horizonless plate with a wobble of moonlight on it. High tide at five-forty, three-to-five foot swell from the south, warm water, strong waves. Hurricane surf due soon, spawned in Mexico. What’d they say her name was—Dinah, Dolores, Doreen?

  The trouble with five in the morning is Linda’s ghost. It’s her time, Frye thought, she’s got the run of the place. Ought to charge it rent. Eight o’clock in New York. She’s up …

  He went back inside and pulled on a short-john wet-suit—one of his own MegaSuits—and ground some fresh wax onto a board. Then into a pair of red MegaSandals for the steep walk down the hill and into town. Where are you now, Li? What have they done with you? Red tennis shoes. The man who dragged you out was wearing red tennis shoes.

  Forest Avenue was deserted. The morning air was cool but already he could feel warmth building inside the wetsuit, and smell the biting, high-pitched smell of rubber and sweat wafting up.

  He thought about the ocean and saw himself going down, swirling with dizziness and vertigo, thrashing in panic. Will it happen again, this time? Next?

  He walked past the leather shop and the flower stand, boarded up for the night. Then past the post office, where a bum was sleeping under the wanted posters, his shopping cart standing guard above him.

  I’ll tell Detective Minh tomorrow: The man had red tennis shoes.

  A painting in the Sassone Gallery stopped him cold, a giant blue swirling metallic thing that seemed spring-loaded, ready to act. The longer he stared into the dense psychedelia the more he saw forms of Li’s last show: bodies in mass exit, glass falling like rain, pockets of light marching the walls, a halo of red mist suspended in the stage glow over a dying man’s head.

  On the kiosk outside the gallery hung a poster for the MIA Committee—Lucia Parsons’ group for getting American prisoners out of Vietnam. Frye studied the stylized graphic of the silhouette of a man’s head, with a strand of barbed wire behind it. Lucia Parsons, he thought. The Ledger society-page pet, and Laguna’s local heroine: rich, educated, willing to speak her mind. A former U.N. translator, fluent in four languages. She’d worked briefly for President Carter. Since coming to Laguna three years ago, she’d scaled down a bit: delivering food and money to earthquake victims in Guatemala, stopping offshore oil drilling, mobilizing the city to build shelters for the homeless. Then, two years ago, her MIA Committee began quietly getting attention. Now, she’s all over the place again, he thought. Always in the news, in the spotlight, rallying for support, money, publicity. A dozen trips to Hanoi in the last two years and, after each one, more “positive developments” on the MIAs. In last week’s papers she claimed she had evidence that American soldiers were still alive in Southeast Asia. She hadn’t delivered the proof. Frye wondered why. Lucky you missed the birthday concert tonight, he thought, would probably have wrecked a good cocktail dress.

  Beside the MIA poster was a “no nukes” poster, below that, something for the whales. There was also a poster for the free clinic. Laguna, he thought, so rich and sated, but so hungry for a cause.

  He jaywalked across a barren Coast Highway and arrived at Rockpile with the first light of dawn. The waves slapped the beach hard, indicating size and precision. To the north he could see the cliffs of Heisler Park, the profile of its gazebo, Las Brisas restaurant and a stand of palm trees, all outlined in lazy relief against a lightening sky. The rockpile began to materialize before him, whitewater surging on boulders where the pelicans stand eternal guard: observant, stoic, craphappy. He plopped down his board and sat on the sand beside it. Looking to the water he could see the sets forming outside, shadows within shadows, and feel the frightened beating of his heart.

  Frye had once loved being in the sea, and she had loved having him in her. But things had changed since the accident, since Linda. When he went down in her now, he could feel her cold fingers reaching for him with dark intent, trying to hold him there forever. Frye understood, on some primitive level, that he had disappointed this ocean. He wasn’t sure how or when or why. Now she was unforgiving of error, poised for vengeance. To Frye, hell was a small, dark place.

  There’s only one path to atonement, he thought.

  Try.

  In the hissing tube of his first wave, Frye kept seeing himself going under, swimming down through darkness but thinking it was up, his head crunching against the rocks or the bottom. At least it looked like himself, but his hair was longer and his eyes were different. Himself, but not himself.

  It was a right—top
-heavy, cylindrical and adamant, the sweet-spot rifling toward him as he shot through, rose to the lip and aimed back down for a bottom turn of such velocity that thoughts of disaster peeled from his mind and he finished in a balls-out rush that sent him and his board rocketing skyward, then down with a splash. For a moment he tred the dark water, heart thrashing like a kitten in a gunnysack.

  One is enough. Don’t press it.

  He sat on his board for a while.

  As always, the fear left him hungry for something to hold onto. Something actual. Something warm. Something that won’t go away.

  He paddled back in.

  A young woman was standing on the beach as he came up. Jeans, a sweater, no shoes. Good face. Frye caught her eye and got an evaluatory glance that measured and classified him in one instant. A big dog with a red scarf sniffed around her, then pissed on a mound of sand for lack of anything more vertical. “You’re Chuck Frye.”

  “I am.”

  “I saw you in some contests. You were real good.”

  “Thanks. Any chance you’d like to go to bed with me?”

  “Not a chance in hell.”

  “I see. What’s your name?”

  She yanked the choke chain, and the dog snapped to her side, red bandana trailing.

  A moment later she was gone, blending with the sunrise, her dog a minor blotch of red moving across the sand.

  He watched her go. There was always in Frye a yearning for the unlikely.

  Newport Beach is six miles up the coast from Laguna, and is rightly considered to be a stronghold for conservative high-rollers. Their children drive Carerras and BMWs, purchase their educations at USC, marry each other, then head into solid careers. Basically, Frye had flunked out. To his mind, Newport Beach was a pain in the ass anyway, though it does have a couple of great breaks.

  Frye Island is the smallest island in the Newport Harbor, but the only island with just one house, a helipad, tennis courts, and servants’ quarters on it. When Frye was a child, it was his entire world. Driving up Coast Highway, he wondered at the distance he had come since those days, about the life that had developed. From Frye Island to the cave-house in thirty-three years, he thought. Is this growing up?