Little Saigon

by T. Jefferson Parker

  According to his father, it was not. Edison considered him prodigal and had abandoned hope that Chuck would, in any Biblical sense, ever come home. Frye grew up with his father’s disappointments like some boys grow up with bicycles: one model always on the way out, another forever on the way in. He had let Bennett carry the family banner. Flagrantly, though often accidentally, Frye had besmirched the family name. As a child, he had been indifferent to adults, given to odd enthusiasms, and always seemed to get caught. A school psychologist had termed him “troubled.” He was the kind of kid who drinks highball remnants at his parents’ cocktail parties, then falls into the punch bowl. Frye knew that Edison had hoped for vindication in his university career, at which he had failed miserably. Instead, he opted for the pro surfing tour, the MegaShop and his line of surfing gadgetry, all a shameful demerit to the Frye name. His high status as a surfer was his nadir with Edison, something on par with sodomy or treason. His marriage to Linda Stowe had been “a dot of light at the end of one helluva dark tunnel,” as Edison had once quipped, but was now coming to a screeching official halt. His stint as an Orange County Ledger reporter—his first real job—was over.

  Long ago, Frye had abdicated success to Bennett, to whom it came more easily, upon whom it sat with a certain grace that Chuck could never muster. After a point, it was expected.

  Turning onto the Newport Peninsula, Frye mused on his latest sin against the family name: an alfresco sexual event that took place at his own Halloween party and was found so shocking by neighbors that they called the police. The foreplay was duly photographed by one Donovan Swirk, a photojournalist of the lowest order. The picture, which ran front page of Swirk’s Avenger, showed Frye in an ape costume—without the head—chasing a woman dressed as a maid toward a hedge of blooming hibiscus. Frye was leering wildly. The maid’s minidress danced up to reveal her naked buns, which caught the strobe flash just so. But her face was turned from the camera. The caption read: HALLOWEEN DREAM—LAGUNATIC CHUCK FRYE GOES APE OVER MYSTERY MAID! What actually transpired behind the hedge was hinted at. Swirk had made an offer of one hundred dollars for the maid’s name, which was to be announced in his next issue. Edison and Linda’s father—Laguna Mayor Ned Stowe—had run Swirk out of business with dispatch. Frye punched Swirk in a restaurant one night, but the damage was done. He wouldn’t give up the name of the Mystery Maid, and that was that. He was released on his own recognizance, charges pending—disturbing the peace and indecent exposure.

  Frye remembered the angry visit from Ned, demanding to know how Frye could pull such a shit stunt while married to his daughter. Every few weeks since then, the Laguna cops had called him in to say that Mayor Stowe would press charges unless the Mystery Maid was identified. Frye sensed a bluff here: Everybody feared they knew the girl. This civic interest was, to Frye’s thinking, prurient beyond belief. On some primitive level, he had cuckolded the entire city.

  As he drove over the peninsula bridge and watched the yachts bobbing at their moorings, he realized with a sharp sadness that Swirk’s photograph had doomed his marriage long before he even knew it was doomed, an invisible turning point, an imperceptible pivot. How had he been so deaf then, he wondered, only to hear it now, like the report of some distant pistol? The beginning of the end with Linda, he thought: and I was too dumb to know it.

  The Cyclone eased off of Balboa Boulevard, then through a series of short side streets. He crossed a narrow bridge, regarding the canals and homes crowded onto the precious sand-spit peninsula. The road shrunk to one lane and took him over another bridge that left him facing a black iron gate with a brass plate that said FRYE ISLAND. He got out and called on the intercom. A moment later the gate swung open on silent, well-oiled hinges.

  Home.

  The driveway leading to the main house was wide and lined with stiff, pungent junipers. Edison preferred masculine flora. Frye guided the car around a curve, bringing into view the big antebellum house, sprawling lawn, a sliver of swimming pool, the helipad and copter at the far west end, the servants’ house, and his father’s cottage. Two new Mercedes and a red Jeep sparkled in front of the white colonnade of the house. Bennett’s van was there, with two more cars Frye didn’t recognize. Beyond the orange trees that surrounded the entire island, ocean glimmered on pale sand. Motor yachts heaved slowly at the dock—Edison’s Absolute looking like a skyscraper turned on its side.

  Hyla met him at the door. She hugged him and he pressed gently back, feeling the stiffness of her aging body, smelling her hair, thinking that she seemed a skosh shorter than the last time he’d seen her. Mom. Straight shoulders. Strong face. Eyes blue and clear as bottled water. Her hair was cut short, in New Wave fashion. She stepped back and looked at him. “All I can do is thank God you two are alive,” she said. “And all I can tell you is that Li will be all right. We’ll get her back. I know it.”

  Frye nodded. Then Hyla was crying, but her face never lost its composure, just big tears rolling down her cheeks. “I keep thinking about her, about what I could have done …”

  Frye held her close, saying what he could about not worrying, thinking positive, faith, and a dozen other ideas that seemed pitifully outgunned by actuality. It was the first time since she learned about Benny that Frye had seen her cry.

  She took a deep, quivering breath and stepped away again. “They’re in the cottage. Breakfast is ready when you are. And happy birthday, Chuck. We’ll have a proper dinner on Thursday, okay?”

  He walked across the lawn to his father’s cottage, a squat, one-level affair on the far north end of the island. A kennel built onto it teemed with springer spaniels, who bounced and yapped as Frye ran his hand along the chain link. It’s useless to try for names anymore, he thought: There must be a dozen dogs now, maybe more.

  As usual, the cottage was locked. He knocked, and a moment later Edison swung open the door: gray hair slicked back over his big patrician head, shirt-sleeves rolled up, eyes hard, his face heavy and lined. “Well,” he said. “Look what the tide washed in.”

  Bennett was sitting behind the desk. Donnell Crawley leaned against one wall, arms crossed. A man that Frye recognized as Pat Arbuckle, head of Frye Company Security, stood beside the fireplace, smoking a cigarette. Two of his men were with him, at semi-attention. A bulky man in a pale suit sat on the sofa, with the telephone to his ear, concentrating.

  “You stash that box I gave you?” Bennett asked.

  “Stashed.”

  Edison reintroduced Chuck to Arbuckle.

  The man with the telephone stood up and gave it to Edison with a frustrated shrug. Edison listened a moment, then barked into the mouthpiece. “I don’t give a damn what any lame-ass senate committee thinks it’s doing this morning. Get me Lansdale out of that meeting and do it now.” His bushy eyebrows raised and lowered. “Of course I can wait, but not for very goddamned long I can’t!” He slammed down the receiver and wiped his forehead. “Politicians. Okay, Bennett, we’ve got Nguyen and his Vietnamese out on the pavement, digging for a witness who doesn’t have lockjaw. We’ve got Minh and the Westminster cops looking for this Eddie Vo. I’ll get Lansdale to light a fire under the FBI. What in hell are you doodling there, anyway?”

  Bennett looked up at Edison, then back down at the graph pad before him. Frye looked over his shoulder. A simple schematic of Saigon Plaza, the parking lot and shops, the place where they’d found the blue Celica marked by a square with an X in it. “Somebody at the plaza saw her.”

  “Maybe they’ll talk to Nguyen.”

  Arbuckle stepped forward, flicking his cigarette into the fireplace. “Apply pressure.”

  “Pat’s good at that,” said Edison.

  Arbuckle’s men nodded gravely.

  Bennett leaned back in the chair. “Apply lots of it. That fat Dream Reader sat there and watched the car pull up. I know she saw them. Cops searched her place but they found the same thing we did. Nothing. Bring me that phone, Chuck. Maybe Minh’s got something on Vo.”

  E
dison took Arbuckle by the arm and aimed him toward the door. “You’re wasting time and oxygen, Pat. Go apply pressure to the fat madam.”

  Bennett finished dialing, looked up. “Money talks with her. And get one of Hy’s people to interpret.”

  Arbuckle was still nodding when Edison pushed him out the door, his assistants in tow.

  Frye looked at the heavy man in the suit. “Chuck Frye,” he said.

  “I know,” said the man. “Phil Barnum. I’m the congressman for the Westminster district. Friend of Bennett’s.”

  Edison glanced at Chuck, then to Bennett, who was still waiting for his call to go through. “You’ll get a ransom demand today. And you ought to be home where those bastards can find you. Fucking Lansdale. Where’s the FBI anyway, those goddamned blue-suit Boy Scouts?”

  Edison now marched to a far wall, onto which he had stapled several sheets from a large desk pad. He had written the main headings in black felt-tip: POLICE (MINH), FBI (LANSDALE), HOUSE/SENATE (BARNUM), FRYE COMPANY SECURITY (ARBUCKLE), COMMITTEE TO FREE VIETNAM (NGUYEN), BENNETT, EDISON. Under each he had noted the exact time and whatever progress each had made, or whatever assignments he wanted them to carry out. Frye saw that his own name was not included. Beneath (LANSDALE), Edison now scrawled “8:12 A.M.—STILL OUT!”

  “Bastard,” he muttered, then dropped the pen, which swung on a string tacked to the blotter.

  Bennett raised his hand, leaned into the phone. “Minh … Bennett Frye. Was that Eddie Vo’s Celica I chased all over hell last night, or not? The word I get from the street is it was.” Bennett pressed the speaker button and put down the receiver. Frye heard Detective John Minh’s clear voice come back over the line.

  “Eddie Vo drives a dark blue Celica, painted out like the one at the plaza. He reported it stolen two days ago.”

  “You bust him?”

  Minh paused. “We approached him for questioning early this morning. He escaped.”

  “What do you mean, escaped?”

  “We’ll find him. We now consider him our prime suspect.”

  “I sure as hell hope so. What about fingerprints, hair? Got an ID on the dead man yet?”

  “That’s all I can tell you right—”

  “ ‘Cause that’s all you have!” bellowed Edison. He began a verbal assault and Minh clicked off. Edison stopped mid-sentence, sat down, stood up again, and looked at Chuck. “What you hear in this room stays in this room.”

  Frye nodded. “Fine, but Eddie Vo didn’t do it.”

  They looked at him. Edison raised an eyebrow. “The hell’s that mean?”

  “He was in the parking lot, sitting in a car. I saw him. Minh knows it—I told him last night.”

  “Then he’s obviously found out something you don’t know. He’s the prime suspect, son. You heard the detective.”

  “I don’t care what he is, Vo wasn’t even inside the Wind when it happened. Bennett, listen to me … I saw him sitting—”

  Edison shook his head and turned to Bennett. “Minh isn’t going fast enough on this. Gimme that phone, I’m trying Lansdale again!” Thirty seconds later he was swearing out the senator, demanding an elite FBI team in Westminster before evening. Frye listened to Lansdale, pausing, evading, placating.

  “She could be at the bottom of the Pacific by then!”

  “They’ll find her, Ed. Just hang tight.”

  Edison pounded down the receiver, stared at Bennett’s notepad for a moment, then marched to the intercom and demanded breakfast immediately. He looked at Chuck again, then at Bennett. “What do you want him to do?”

  “I need you to drop off Kim at the LAX, Chuck. She’ll have the Halliburton case with her. You got some gas in that clunker?”

  “It’s ready. Shouldn’t I do something a little more useful?”

  “Like what?” asked Edison.

  Frye looked at his father, then at Bennett. “There are plenty of things I could—”

  Edison stood up and went toward the door. “What you can do is what Bennett tells you to do and no more, Chuck. It’s a case of too many cooks.”

  “While you and Minh chase a guy who didn’t do it? Come on, I’ll go out with Hy’s people, work the neighborhoods … something. I know a little bit about asking questions.”

  Edison shook his head. “This isn’t the time for that.”

  “You better go,” said Bennett. “Kim’s plane leaves at eleven, and I want you there plenty early. Call me as soon as you get home, okay? And one more thing, if Kim says there’s been a change, there’s been a change.”

  “Of what?”

  “Do what she says.”

  Frye pushed through the door and headed back to his car. Bennett padded up behind him. “Chuck … there is something else you can do for us. It’s not easy, but your contacts with the cops might help. If it gets sticky, back off. But find out what you can about John Minh.”

  Tough assignment, thought Frye. Cops don’t talk about other cops. Especially to reporters, ex or not. “What’s in the case that Kim’s taking to the airport?”

  Bennett looked at him matter-of-factly. “Li.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “TAKE INTERSTATE FIVE, CHUCK. WE’RE NOT going to Los Angeles airport.”

  They headed up the Santa Ana Freeway toward the city, late enough to miss the Monday morning traffic. The suburbs marched by, divisionless and vast. A blanket of tan smog hung ahead of them, while above it the sky gradually reasserted its blue.

  Kim sat beside him with the air of someone awaiting diagnosis. She fingered a red handbag and stared straight ahead through dark glasses. She had smoked four cigarettes in a row and was now lighting her fifth. Every few minutes she turned to look behind them. “I could not sleep last night. All I could think of was Li.”

  “Me, too. What’s in the case, Kim?”

  She worked the combination and opened the top. Frye looked down at thirty odd cassette tapes, neatly arranged, surrounded by foam.

  “What’s on them?”

  “Li’s songs. Some messages to friends. News from the United States. Gossip from relatives.”

  “Why not just mail them?”

  Kim drew on the cigarette and looked at Frye. “Some places the mail cannot go.”

  “Paris isn’t that far away.”

  She locked the case and turned to stare back at the traffic again.

  Frye looked out to the Los Angeles skyline: overpasses and buildings and palm trees floating in a warm, tangible light. “Did you see her before the show last night?”

  “We ate dinner together.”

  “How was she?”

  “She was tired and anxious about her trip. She had no idea of what was to be.”

  “Did anyone?”

  Kim glanced behind them again. “There is always a feeling in Little Saigon that things may happen. You read the newspapers. There was the shooting last week. Before that, the fire. Robbery. There is activity.” She tossed the cigarette and drummed her fingers on the seat. “North of the city, take Highway Fourteen.”

  “I’m wondering if it was someone who knew her. A friend. Someone she thought was a friend. bạn.”

  Kim’s fingers stopped moving. She ran them through her long black hair. “That is possible, Chuck.”

  Fast Burbank, he took Highway 14 to Palmdale. The traffic thinned, the air cleared, the high desert landscape was rugged, parched. It was hot. Frye felt his shirt sticking to his back, his legs damp against the seat.

  “Where we going, Kim, Death Valley?”

  “Go through Palmdale, all the way to Rosamond.”

  Frye noted that the temperature needle of his car was creeping to the hot zone. He wiped his face and looked out to the flat, unforgiving desert.

  State Highway 14, wide, fast and in good repair, took them north. It shimmered ahead of him and vanished in a clear, acrylic hallucination. A faded sign announced the next city: WELCOME TO ROSAMOND—GATEWAY TO PROGRESS. Rosamond Boulevard led them east. Five miles past the town, Kim gui
ded him north on a wide dirt road. Then west on a smaller dirt road, marked by a rotting wood sign that said Sidewinder Mine. Two hundred yards later, the road ended in a sliding chain-link gate. Wind had driven tumbleweeds against the mesh. She got out into the heat, dug the keys from her purse, and opened the locks. The breeze caught her hair as she leaned into the gate and pushed it aside, loose brush and all. Frye proceeded. In the rearview, he watched her check the locks.

  “One-half mile, then right,” she said. A slight smile crossed her face. “It’s very hot today, Chuck.”

  The Cyclone rolled down the road, fan belts squeaking, gravel popping against the tires, a dusty cloud forming in its wake.

  The Lower Mojave Airstrip was two swatches of bleached, cracked cement held together by liberal patchings of tar, a quonset hut hangar and one low square building that once might have been a terminal. The tower was boarded up. A sign slouched, its words faintly visible after years of sandstorms, vandals’ bullets, neglect. “Cheaper fares?”

  Kim studied the place. “Better movies. Park by the tower.”

  Human life materialized in the dust as Frye pulled close. A mechanic in overalls stood outside one of the huts. Two young men—both Vietnamese—stood on the far side of the tower and squinted Frye’s way. The door of the terminal opened, then shut. At the far end of one runway, Frye noted a Piper, an old Fokker replica, and an ancient transport prop. It was repainted a beige that blended with the desert around it. The words “Liberty Transport” were stenciled below the fuselage. The left cargo door was open and a ramp led up from the runway, where a dozen or so wooden crates waited for loading.

  “Stay with me,” Kim said, pushing open her door against the growing wind.

  Frye followed her to the two men by the tower. They spoke briefly in Vietnamese. The shorter man seemed to be indicating the Halliburton, then the terminal. Kim squared her sunglasses and led the way to the squat building. Inside was a counter, a desk, a clock, two chairs, about twelve hundred square feet of nothing, and the father of Miss Saigon Days. The last thing Frye remembered of him was the bulging shock on his face as Frye yanked him to the floor by his necktie. He now sat at the desk, in front of a small computer screen. “Thank you, Mr. Frye,” he said quietly. “You saved my life.”