“What do you want, Jannick? What are you concealing from me now?”
“I’m on to something you could use, Cathy. After I use it, of course.” He smiled up at her, squinting into the sun.
She considered his offer for an instant. He had been useful in the past. He had a knack for coming up with angles on stories that frequently got answers to questions that hadn’t even been asked yet. He was as odd-looking as he was unconventional, and he could be a real bother, but she kind of liked him.
“Get out of the traffic. Meet me downstairs in the bar. Five minutes,” she said. She turned around and opened the louvered doors to her room. She looked in the mirror over her dresser, tucked in her shirt, and applied a light coat of lipstick. She gathered up her reporter’s notebook and pen on the way out the door.
He was sitting at a table overlooking the hotel’s courtyard when she walked in. He waved his Rolling Stone maniacally over his head, as if he expected she’d miss him. Typical. There were a grand total of four patrons in the Continental’s restaurant other than himself.
She walked over and sat down. A grinning waiter with a name tag that said KIM hovered at her shoulder.
“Coffee, missy?” he said, flashing a set of stained chompers.
“Coffee, Kimmy,” she replied.
“You shouldn’t tease the help,” Jannick said in a scolding tone. “You never know. He could be somebody’s uncle. He might know something.”
“He is somebody’s uncle,” said Joice, removing her glasses. “His nephew is a province chief down in the Delta, a real slimeball. You’ve heard of him. Kim Lam Bo. A real beauty, Kim the province chief. He likes to collect taxes in his underwear, preferably in a horizontal position. From the village wives in the province, that is.”
“Don’t tell me you’re shocked,” said Jannick. “He isn’t the only province chief who has a hard time keeping his pants on.”
“He’s the only one with an uncle who works in the Continental,” Joice said. “How convenient.”
“You’re not saying old Kim has big ears, are you?”
“And a loose tongue,” she said.
“I didn’t know he spoke that much English.”
“I caught him reading Newsweek one day in a linen closet upstairs.”
“Maybe he was just looking at the pictures,” Jannick said with a shrug.
“Yeah, Danny. That’s close.”
Kim the waiter arrived with two coffees and placed them on the table with the empty excess of subservience common to all Oriental workers accustomed to currying unneeded favor from unwanted Occidental guests.
“Thank you, Kim,” said Cathy Joice. “How is your son, Cam Cao?”
“Cam? Cam fine, missy. Number one.”
“And your wife?”
“Wife home, missy. Cook paht noodle. Yum-yum.” Kim rubbed his stomach and showed a stained-tooth grin.
“Yeah, Kim. Yum-yum. Run along. We’ve got business to conduct here.”
“Yes, missy. Run-run.” Kim the waiter scooted across the restaurant in the general direction of the kitchen, stopping to wipe imaginary dust from nearby tables as he went.
“You think he’s VC?” asked Jannick.
“You actually entertain a doubt that he isn’t?”
“Just checking. Just checking.”
“Are we eating?” she asked.
“Actually, no,” said Jannick. “PNS hasn’t paid me the expenses they owe me for three months going. However, I do have enough for coffee.”
“I figured,” said Joice. “What’s so important it rated that death-defying act you put on in the middle of the avenue, anyway?”
“I found out about a big court-martial I’m sure you’ll be interested in.”
“Oh yeah? How big?”
“They’ve got a Lieutenant up in II Corps for desertion in the face of the enemy.”
Cathy Joice’s head swiveled as if it were mounted on ball bearings. It was just the kind of story she had been waiting for. Two weeks previously she had filed a story about the alleged fragging of an officer by some enlisted men, but the station had killed the story back in Kansas City. She didn’t have enough “color” footage, they said. The fact that no American soldier had been court-martialed for the alleged offense “detracted from the story’s legitimacy,” according to her immediate stateside superior, the news director. He had cabled his thoughts on the matter in response to a cable she had sent complaining at some length about her stories being held to unequal standards, compared to what she knew they were airing every night in Kansas City.
No matter. The story remained dead, filed away in a library of news film in the station basement.
This one was different, however. This one had a court-martial.
“What’s the story, Danny? When did you find this out?”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Jannick clucked mockingly. “Don’t be getting too eager, now. I haven’t actually decided how I’m going to handle this story, Cathy. Then, of course, there is the matter of Friday night.”
“You’re not going to use your goddamned story to tease a date out of me, Jannick. No way. No sir.”
“Who said anything about a date, Cathy? Not I.” Jannick batted his eyelashes in an exaggerated display of innocence.
“Then what are you getting at, you worthless creep?”
“I thought maybe if you were sitting in the Hap To Grill on Friday night, and I happened by, I might notice you sitting there all by yourself, and we might have a drink together. Maybe even dinner.”
“What about your three months of unpaid expenses, Jannick? I thought you couldn’t afford lunch, much less the Hap To Grill.”
“Well, I can’t, actually. However, Mr. Hap happens to owe me a small favor, on which I have yet to collect.”
“I thought you told me you were laying off the black market lately.”
“Lately, yes. This favor happens to be several months old. Counting interest, I’d say it would count for a week’s worth of dinners.”
Jannick was grinning at her, and she couldn’t help but smile back. He wasn’t a creep, actually. In fact, he was one hell of a lot smarter than most of the newshounds prowling the backstreets and rice paddies of Vietnam, and he was personally about twice as interesting. Somehow, though, she had never featured herself on the arm of a guy wearing a rock-and-roll T-shirt—in fact, the same rock-and-roll T-shirt she had seen him wearing only two days before.
“Okay. So maybe I like having a drink by myself at the Hap To Grill. And maybe by Friday night I’ll be lonesome enough that I wouldn’t mind some company for dinner. What does two maybe’s buy me, Danny? Cough it up.”
“You have heard of General Matthew Nelson Blue, Jr., I presume?”
“The roving ambassador? He used to be Deputy Director of the CIA. Big World War II hero. Of course I’ve heard of him.”
“His grandson is up on charges in II Corps. Desertion in the face of the enemy. God only knows what else.”
“How did you find this out?”
“I cannot reveal my sources,” said Jannick, drawing himself up in mock seriousness.
“Come on, Jannick. You’re talking to Cathy.”
“Seriously. I can’t tell you how. All I can tell you is the info is legit.”
“When did you hear about it?”
“This morning.”
“So you haven’t done anything on the story? You haven’t called anybody?”
“No. I was just heading back to my room when I saw you on the balcony. . . .”
“Then don’t. They’re only going to give you the runaround for the first week you ask questions about it, anyway. You know that.”
“What, you think you can do better?”
“I know I can do better, and you know it, too.”
Jannick took a sip of coffee. She was right, and he knew it. The Pacific News Service was not exactly at the top of the Army press spokesman’s “preferred” list. In fact, it wasn’t even on a list. The credentials Jannick ca
rried had been left to him by an AP guy who had left Vietnam over six months ago. Officially, as a reporter Danny Jannick didn’t even exist.
“Okay. I admit my chances of breaking anything for a while aren’t the best. But we’ve got to come to some kind of agreement on this thing. It’s my story. I ought to be able to file at least a day ahead of you. It’s only fair.”
Cathy Joice thought for a moment. The chances that something appearing on the PNS wire would find its way into the establishment press within twenty-four hours were slim to nil. She’d be on CBS national news days before anyone picked up Danny’s stuff.
“Sure,” she said, smiling widely. “That’s fine with me, Danny. Now let’s get down to it. I want everything you’ve got.”
“Well, that’s pretty much it. The big General’s grandson is getting court-martialed. That’s about all I know. That, and it’s supposed to be big-time hush-hush, natch.”
“What’s his name?”
“It’s Matthew Nelson Blue the fourth. He’s an Infantry platoon leader up there. Or he was.”
“Isn’t that something? Those generals pass their names along until they pick up so many Roman numerals they just about tip over.”
“Yeah, weird. A real WASP thing, I guess.”
“How old is the news?”
“It was fresh this morning. They just started the Article 32 on him yesterday.”
“Do you know who’s handling the prosecution?”
“Yeah. They’ve got a real dickhead from MACV, a JAG captain called Alvin Z. Dupuy.”
“He doesn’t sound like your favorite person.”
“He’s not. My mother used to work for his family back in New Orleans. The world could do with a few less Alvie Dupuys, I assure you.”
“Who’s the defense attorney?”
“Terry Morriss. He’s a Harvard dude. He’s okay.”
“Listen, Danny, why don’t you let me work this for twenty-four hours, and I’ll give you a call and let you know what I’ve got.”
“Sure. Fine with me.”
“Okay. It’s a deal.”
“And Friday night. That’s a deal too?”
Cathy Joice stood up and took a final swallow of coffee. She looked at Danny Jannick. If his face had been any more hopeful, you could have used it for the March of Dimes.
That was the problem with the men who had chased her and asked her out and called her and left messages for her at the hotel’s front desk, and yes, stood down in the middle of Le Loi Street, staring up at her. They hungered for her, and it was their eagerness that left her feeling empty. They hadn’t fallen in love with her, they had fallen for her, and there was a difference. She didn’t want anybody who fell. She wanted love to be difficult and foreign and terrifying and . . . lonely . . . as though you were the only two people in the world who were in love. Nobody else understood.
She wanted love to be dark, and so far, love was still 6:00 A.M.
“I was planning on going to the Hap To Grill anyway,” she said. “Talk to you tomorrow.”
She strode toward the door of the restaurant. In the corner, Kim the waiter watched her with black, knowing eyes. The woman the help at the Continental called “Teeveemissy” was up to something. It would take Kim the waiter a few hours, but by suppertime he would know what it was that had “Teeveemissy” so excited.
For this was the way of Saigon.
Danny Jannick’s credentials said he wasn’t really Danny Jannick, he was the AP guy who had left the country six months ago. Kim the waiter wasn’t really Kim the waiter, he was a province chiefs uncle and probably more than that. Catherine Joice had legitimate credentials that identified her properly. Kim the waiter had seen them himself, one morning while his niece was cleaning her room.
But in Vietnam, nothing was as it seemed.
No one was who he claimed to be.
6
* * *
* * *
There was a story the Colonel used to tell about his father. He had told the story up until ten years ago, when he and the General stopped talking to each other. He hadn’t told it very often, and he hadn’t made a big deal about it, though maybe he should have, for it was a story that had come back to haunt him.
One day in the 1930s, at Fort Leavenworth, when the General was still a Captain and the Colonel was a young boy, his father was playing polo on the big flat polo field out behind the movie theater. He played every afternoon at four o’clock in preparation for the summer tour of the Army polo team. The boy accompanied him, holding his father’s spare polo ponies between chukkers. Near the end of the game that afternoon, the score was tied and there was a loose ball. Captain Blue and a man on the other team rode at top speed toward the ball, which was bouncing slowly toward the goal. The other man was closer to the ball and he started to swing his mallet to hit the ball and send it away from the goal. Captain Blue spurred his polo pony and ran into the opposing player, nearly dismounting him. Captain Blue wheeled his pony and whacked the ball across the goal, scoring a goal. When the game ended a moment later, Captain Blue’s team had won.
Young Matt Blue dipped under the white rail fence around the polo field and walked over to take the reins of his father’s polo pony. The other men on the field dismounted and wandered down the field to a grove of oaks where every afternoon after the game, they gathered at the rail and were served tea by strikers, black soldiers who tended the polo ponies up at the stables. The polo players would take their tea and cool down in the shade of the oaks and talk about the game. On this afternoon, all the rest of the players, even the other officers on his father’s team, gathered down the rail at the end of the field in the sun, a good distance from Captain Blue and his son, who had taken their places under the oaks.
“Why are the other men standing down there today?” young Matt asked his father. “Why aren’t you having tea with the rest of the men, Dad?” For indeed he and his father were standing alone at the rail, sipping tea by themselves.
“Because of that last score, son,” said his father. “You know in the game of polo, when there’s a free ball like that one, members of both teams can ride for it. But there’s a tradition in polo called the ‘give.’ The second man to the ball is expected to veer away from the other man’s shot. The rules don’t require that he veer away, but it’s considered the gentlemanly thing, the proper thing to do.”
“And you ran Captain Walters down and stole the ball and made the shot,” said the boy.
“That’s right. I failed to give, and I scored the winning goal. That’s why we’re not having tea with the others today. Because I didn’t behave like a gentleman. They’re letting me know it.”
“Why didn’t you give, Dad?”
“The point of the game is to score goals and win, boy. You’re not out there to act like a gentleman. You’re out there to win. I rode him down and I took the shot and my side won.”
“And they’re mad at you, huh, Dad?”
“They’re mad at me, boy.” His father took a sip of tea and took the boy by the shoulders and looked him in the eye.
“Sometimes in life, my boy, if you’re going to get what you set out for, you’ve got to be a son of a bitch. That’s what those men are telling me. That I’m a son of a bitch.”
“And you don’t care what they think, Dad?”
“I won the game, boy. That’s all I care about.”
The son looked at his father. He was dirty and tired and he smelled of leather and horses and sweat and pride. His father had found it necessary occasionally to be a son of a bitch in life, and he wanted his son to know that when the time came, that’s what you had to be. A son of a bitch.
As it turned out, the Colonel didn’t follow his father’s advice, and it became a sore point between them as the years wore on. He never forgot what his father told him, however. Never again in his life would he see such a pure look of down-and-dirty, mean-ass, go-to-hell determination as he saw on his father’s sweat-and-dirt-stained and horse-smelling fac
e that afternoon. He was different from the other men, his father was, and he looked like it and he talked like it and he acted like it.
As he grew up, the boy who had held the reins of his father’s polo ponies that afternoon discovered how different he was from his father, a difference of which he was very proud.
But he learned that he was a bit like him, too.
Now it seemed the Colonel was going to find out just how much like his father he was, for he had caught a whiff of panic and madness in his son’s voice on the telephone from Vietnam. The fear in his son’s voice wasn’t at all like him. He was a levelheaded, logical sort, not given to doom-struck imaginings and dread. The moment he heard his son’s voice, he knew the time had come when he had to be a son of a bitch. He wondered how much of a son of a bitch he really was.
The Colonel recalled the story about the polo game as he drove from the Atlanta airport back to Fort Benning on the morning after the meeting with his father and Aunt Aggie at Wild Acres. Things were going to happen fast now. He had to talk to his wife first, tell her everything he’d found out from his father the night before. He knew she would agree with him that he had to get himself over to Vietnam as soon as possible. Then he had to get in uniform and tell the commanding general, Lieutenant General Ralph Hunter, that he was taking all the leave he had accumulated in order that he would be able to travel to Vietnam and aid in his son’s defense.
Lieutenant General Hunter wasn’t going to like it. The brigade had a major field exercise coming up, joint maneuvers with the 82nd Airborne Division out of Fayetteville, North Carolina. The brigade would be in the field for three weeks, not including the four weeks it would take to prepare for and stand down from the exercise. It wasn’t the most convenient seven weeks for a brigade commander to be gone. He would have to make Lieutenant General Hunter understand. Nothing was going to keep him from flying to Vietnam and helping his son.
There was another problem. Money. He and his wife had never been able to save much of it, Army pay being what it was, which wasn’t much. He would have to empty their savings account and hope for the best. He wished they’d been able to accumulate some assets along the way—a house, a few pieces of art, maybe some stocks. Here he was, more than twenty years in the Army, and he didn’t own appreciably more today than he had as a lieutenant. It was a sad state of affairs, and many were the times he had felt sorry for his wife, who had suffered alongside him as the rest of the world took the middle of the twentieth century by the lapels and shook it for everything it was worth. He had the feeling that all they’d been able to do while the civilians got fat and happy was pick up a few crumbs dropped under the table.
Army Blue Page 12
