Saigon Wife

by Colin Falconer

  So at last there was a chink in the armor.

  He came back from the kitchen with a stone kettle and saw me staring at the calendar. I looked away and we both pretended he hadn’t seen me.

  “Do you want to sit outside on the balcony?”

  “Inside is cooler.”

  He put the kettle on a little stand at a table by the window and then fetched two small red lacquered Chinese cups. He poured tea into the cups and raised his in a toast.

  “To find memories.”

  I was speechless.

  “It’s hot today,” I said, shocked at myself for saying something so banal.

  “But it may rain later in the year,” he said, making fun of me. I guessed I deserved that. “You look heart-stoppingly beautiful as you always do. But why are you here?”

  I drank the bitter green tea, shifting the handle-less cup from palm to palm as the heat scorched my fingers. “I need your help.”

  “I guessed that.”

  “It’s about Connor.”

  “Keep going, I can tell this is going to be good.”

  “He’s missing. I haven’t heard from him for a week and I don’t know who else to turn to.”

  “Except the man you can’t forgive for saving your life.”

  “That’s the way it’s turned out, I guess.”

  “A week is a long time to wait before you call someone missing.”

  “He said he’d be three days, four at the most.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Laos.”

  “Laos? He just got out of hospital.”

  I shrugged. That was my argument, too.

  “Hell, he’s just making it easy for these guys, isn’t he?”

  “He said he had a contact in Vientiane.”

  “The town is full of Corsicans, they still run the opium and morphine trade over there. They hate reporters worse than the mob. You shouldn’t have let him go.”

  “You think I didn’t try and stop him?”

  “I don’t know. Tell me something, do you love this guy?”

  “He’s my husband.”

  “That wasn’t my question.”

  “Of course I love him,” I said.

  He gave me a strange look that could have meant anything. He ran his fingers through his hair. “Well, all right, I’ll do what I can, but you have to be prepared for bad news.”

  “You heard about him getting beaten up?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you know who did it?”

  “I think we both know who ordered it. You know as well as I do, with Angel and his people you don’t get a second warning. He’s used up all his chances, princess. Going to Laos was like spitting in their eye. But I’ll make some enquiries with some friends of mine, see what I can find.”

  “Thank you.”

  My eyes went back to the calendar on the wall. Eleven years ago! It was another lifetime. If I closed my eyes I could still hear Inocencia rasping out the final words of her favorite bolero, see the sweat running down her face, the white monogrammed handkerchief clenched in her right fist.

  When I look in your eyes

  I see how I used to be

  When I look in the mirror

  I see what’s become of me

  I can’t stay here with you

  I know you’ll break my heart

  It’s love that bring us together

  It’s love that tears me apart

  “Beautiful,” he said. “I didn’t know you could sing.”

  “You loved her, didn’t you?”

  “Inocencia? Yes, I did. Not the way I loved you though.”

  I finished my tea, staring at the leaves in the bottom of the tiny cup. I wondered what one of those fortune tellers out in the street would say if she saw them.

  “I’d better go.”

  “I’ll call you as soon as I’ve found out something.”

  He got up and stood there with his hands in his pockets. I badly wanted to kiss him.

  “I never stopped loving you,” I said. “But it was a long time ago, Reyes, and we have to move on. Please find Connor for me.”

  A convoy of Army trucks rumbled through the square, belching blue clouds of exhaust smoke. I covered my face with a silk scarf and hurried into the cool of the Caravelle.

  I stopped at the desk and asked the clerk if there were any messages for me.

  “So sorry,” he said, checking the cubbyhole. “Nothing for you, madame.”

  I went back to my room. I got off the elevator at the wrong floor then when I found the right floor I couldn’t find my key. I was a mess. There was a part of me silently praying for my husband, another part of me thinking about the last time I made love to Reyes.

  Chapter 18

  Much of the old colonial town had gone, bulldozed to make way for new apartment blocks and bars. Angel had disdained the faded elegance of the Continental and the kitschy comforts of the Caravelle and had instead afforded himself of one of the few remaining colonial villas on Cong Ly Boulevard. I supposed his family’s unique relationship with the Thieu government might have helped with such a privileged arrangement.

  There was a uniformed guard on the gate, a high wall topped with razor wire. A long driveway led through the flower gardens and banana palms to a massive white porte-cochère, shaded by a giant tamarind tree. Purple bougainvillea climbed the cream stucco walls.

  A white-jacketed servant met me at the door and led the way. It was cool and quiet inside after the bedlam of the street, and there were silk carpets and antique furniture made from Burmese teak and walnut. The house smelled of must and the heavy night scents of the garden. I looked at the faded red damask and the cracked chandeliers and I could imagine a French fonctionnaire, dressed in a formal white frockcoat, calling for his bep to bring him his dinner.

  Angel was sitting on the terrace in a white shirt and linen trousers, his jacket thrown carelessly over one of the cane chairs. He was drinking cognac.

  I thought about him as a twenty-year-old callow Cuban kid. He was so eager to please back then and it had paid off, for he had pleased his father, and his father-in-law, and been duly rewarded for putting conscience aside.

  Or perhaps some men never had one to start with. I supposed it was possible.

  His two goons sat at another table, playing cards on a foldout table, smoking, watching me with mean black eyes.

  He stood up to greet me with a cocky grin, and kissed me on both cheeks, lingering longer than was necessary. He invited me to sit, had his houseboy fetch me a vermouth. Vermouth? It seemed he was getting used to the way of life already.

  “Baby! Can’t believe you’re here. Good to see you, guapa.”

  “This isn’t a social call, Angel.”

  He raised his hands in mock horror. “Baby, what’s wrong?”

  “Where’s my husband?”

  He decided to make a joke of it. He looked under the table then under one of the chairs and raised his hands in a ‘Not here!’ expression. His bodyguards laughed at these antics, but then they were paid to.

  “What have you done with him?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “He’s missing. I know it was you.”

  He wagged a finger at her. “No, this you do not know. This is what is called a guess. And the truth is, baby, I am not responsible for this unhappy circumstance, though as I have clearly warned you, I cannot answer for his safety if he continues disrupting my business.”

  “You know he went to Laos.”

  “I had heard this. A dangerous country, I imagine there are spiders and snakes in the jungle.”

  “Have you had him murdered?”

  He leaned back, and finally looked a little pissed. “I am a businessman not a gangster.”

  “Did you arrange this with your Corsican friends? We’ve known each other a long time, Angel, let’s not bullshit each other.”

  He sipped his cognac and crunched a block of ice between his back teeth.
“What are you doing with this guy? You could do a lot better.”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “If you had married me, you would never find yourself in this position.” He held out his hand to indicate his sympathy for all I had been brought to.

  “But you didn’t marry me, you chose Esmeralda Salvatore instead, and every day I thank God for it.”

  “You think your life is better? Look at you.”

  “I cannot believe I ever loved you.”

  “I would still take you back, you know, you would only have to say the word.”

  His gall took my breath away. I couldn’t find the words to answer him. The Limoges china rattled in its glass cabinet, the B-52s carpet-bombing again.

  “I heard Reyes is in town. You remember Reyes? Sure you do. Didn’t you have a thing with him one time? Maybe he’s the one made your husband disappear, you ever think of that?”

  “Angel, we were friends once.”

  “We’re still friends. Haven’t I been good to you over the years? When you were in trouble in Miami, who was it helped you out?”

  “Then help me out now. Tell me where Connor is.”

  “I already told you, I don’t know, baby. And if you had listened to me when I came to you, we would not be having this conversation. I talked to you then as one friend to another. I told you to get that rat bastard out of Saigon.”

  I was wasting my time. I left my drink on the table and got up to leave.

  “Or maybe you arranged it, so you could collect on the insurance.”

  “What insurance?”

  “The insurance called Reyes Garcia.”

  He sat in the chair, grinning, going to fat, the handsome prince who turned into a bullfrog. “What did they do to you, Angel?”

  “They made me rich is what they did. Rich enough that beautiful women come to my house in the middle of the night and beg me to help them, that’s what they did.”

  I thought about hitting him with the crystal brandy decanter. It wouldn’t have killed him, but it would have given me real satisfaction. But then what?

  “You kill him,” I whispered. “and I’ll kill you.”

  That just made him laugh all the harder. “Sure you will, baby. Sure you will. Enjoy Saigon,” and he dismissed me with a wave of his hand.

  His servant led the way out.

  I took a taxi back to the Caravelle through the snarl of taxis, siclos, motor scooters and ARVN trucks, past the shanties and cardboard shacks of the poor and the dispossessed. The exhaust fumes cast a grey and foul pall over the city.

  The city stank of diesel and decay.

  Chapter 19

  REYES

  Cholon was the Chinese quarter of Saigon, one of those cities that slept by day and worked by night. It was only as the sun dropped low over the rooftops that it started to come alive; hawkers set up at the roadside, fanning the little charcoal fires under their portable kitchens; dentists and barbers set to work under kerosene lanterns slung from the branches of tamarind trees.

  It was a world away from the noisy bars with American names along the Tu Do and Le Loi. Reyes directed his siclo driver down to the docks, got out near a cluster of godowns. Sampans huddled on the oily water and there was an overpowering stench of nuoc mam, kerosene and sewage. The noise from the night market was outrageous, even when they whispered the Chinese could rupture your eardrum.

  He turned down an alleyway beside one of the warehouses, left the bedlam of taxis and cooking stalls and motorcycles behind. The river was filthy, black with oil and there was rubbish everywhere. A dog nosed at a pile of fruit peelings and rats scurried among the oil drums.

  He followed the shouts coming from the rear of the warehouse, found a tin shed near the end of one of the jetties. It was breathless hot inside, there were at least a hundred sweating bodies crowded around a dirt pit. Everyone was screaming at the top of their voice and waving fistfuls of piastres. Two men holding fighting cocks around their bodies faced each other in the ring. Both birds had gleaming metal claws fixed to the spurs on their legs.

  Walt leaned against one of the barriers on the far side, chewing a toothpick. He waved a languid hand when he saw Reyes.

  He squeezed through the crowd to join him.

  They watched the fight. It lasted no more than thirty seconds and when it was done Walt shook his head. “This place is like Vegas,” he said. “I’d swear it’s rigged.”

  “It’s just two chickens, Walt.”

  “So why do I always pick the wrong one?”

  They were already getting ready for the next fight. Everyone was shouting at once, shoving money in each other’s faces. Reyes saw a skinny man with a wispy moustache standing on the other side of the barrier holding a thick roll of piastres, licking his fingers to count them. Every now and then he would look up, nod at some other man on the other side of the ring and wordlessly the bet was made.

  “Found out something interesting about that staff sergeant,” Walt said.

  “What staff sergeant?”

  “The one who died in the Nevada. I found out what his job was.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He worked in the morgue at the air base. They fly a couple hundred bodies out of there a week sometimes.”

  “Nice job.”

  “You know what I figure? I’d guess that’s how they’re smuggling out the horse. Could be stitching it inside the bodies. It would take a lot of organization here and State-side, but it could be done.”

  “That is the sickest thing I ever heard. You can prove it?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “That’s...depraved.”

  “You see, I can still shock you. That’s good. Like I said though, it’s only guesswork.”

  “Why don’t you guys find out for sure?”

  “Not in our interests to do that. It would make a lot of trouble for a friendly government. Our job is to keep the enemy at bay.”

  “You mean the Drug Enforcement guys.”

  He nodded. “Well yeah, but the communists, too. Still, makes me wonder where that missing shipment has gone.”

  “Life is full of mysteries, Walt.”

  “Well if I could solve the mystery I’d tell whoever has that briefcase he’d better watch his back. It might be time to liquidate the assets and get out, if you know what I mean. Go to an island in the middle of nowhere perhaps.”

  “If I find the guy I’ll tell him.”

  “You sure you won’t change your mind about my little idea? This is like a once in a lifetime, Reyes. I even got a name for the resort. I’m going to call it Paradise. Who doesn’t want to go to Paradise? Fuck, that could even be our advertising slogan.”

  “You’re a genius, you should be on Madison Avenue.”

  Reyes craned his neck to look into the ring. The two cocks in the next fight didn’t look evenly matched—the black one was bigger than the other and much heavier. The other had golden feathers along its breast and its head; it would have been a pretty bird without the razors on its back legs.

  “I’m betting on the yellow one,” Walt said.

  “Why the hell would you do that?”

  “I got great odds. He looks quicker and feistier to me.”

  “No wonder you lose all your money, Walt.”

  “So, what did you want to see me about?”

  “I need a favor, Walt. Need you to find someone for me.”

  “Go to a dating agency.”

  “Connor O’Loughlin.”

  Walt looked at him, puzzled. “You fucking with me?”

  “His wife came to see me today. He’s gone missing.”

  “His wife? You mean the ex-girlfriend you still talk about all the time?”

  “You talk about her, not me.”

  “Why should you care what the hell happens to her husband?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s just say I’m doing her a favor. Seems he went to Laos about a week ago, still chasing this story about the heroin connection. Why don’t y
ou call the embassy there for me, see if they know what happened to the guy?”

  “He went to Laos?”

  “I thought you’d be pleased.”

  “He’s starting to get on my nerves. He’s a real Crusader Rabbit, isn’t he?”

  “He doesn’t know when to stop.”

  “All right, I’ll make a call for you. I’d like to know what the fuck he’s doing, too.”

  “Thanks.

  The fight started. The two birds leaped at each other, attacking with beaks and spurs. It was over in seconds, and as Reyes had guessed, the smaller bird didn’t have a chance. The black bird had experience and it knew how to use its weight. It darted in and delivered two slashes with its spurs, and Reyes winced. Over before it had begun.

  The younger bird was brave, but courage is sometimes not enough. Bookmakers are rich because most of the time the bigger, stronger bird does win. The referee called it off, but it was already too late.

  Life was like that. Connor would have done well to remember it.

  They were in the Royale, a seedy hotel between the Tu Do and the Nguyen Hue, the Street of Flowers. Outside, the street broiled in the afternoon sun.

  “I went to see Angel last night,” she said.

  “That was dangerous.”

  “I’m not scared of him.”

  “You should be.” The city looked drab in the heat, a vista of peeling hoardings and red-tiled roofs. She ran her fingers along the condensation on her glass.

  “He swears he didn’t hurt him.”

  “You believe him?”

  “No.”

  She looked so lost. Reyes wanted to reach out and hold her, resisted the urge. Perhaps she really loved Connor, like she said. Well, he would help her find out what had happened to him, one way or the other, and then get right away from her. It was the only way.

  He had asked her to meet him so he could tell her he was doing his best, that he was still waiting for news. He could have told her that on the phone. This was just an excuse to see her again.

  Why the hell did she have to show up in Saigon? He used to feel sorry for men who obsessed over women like this. What was his rule? You get in and get out, you don’t promise anything you can’t deliver, then move on before anyone gets hurt.

  “Why did you buy the bar?”