A “whoosh” came up and quickly engulfed the pool of fluid under the barstool. It ran up the chair legs like Jim Brown returning a punt, then caught “The Hulk’s” ass on fire as he sat pinned to the stool and the bar top.
McConnell ran out the door of Mama O’s, hoping the tires of his jeep hadn’t been stolen. He hopped into his waiting jeep and roared off toward the chopper that was waiting to take him back to A-255. It was kind of like when I was a kid, he thought. I used to catch a big old horsefly and pull one wing off, then I’d pin the other to a tabletop. The poor critter would just walk around and around in circles. Then I’d pour a few drops of lighter fluid on the fly and, burn, baby, burn. The flies he did as a kid were what gave him the idea of how to roast the Hulk, the only difference being that horseflies didn’t have cocks, and he knew he would never see any of the flies again. He wasn’t so sure he’d never see Romanowski again, but as he said under his breath as he exited the chopper, “I’ll try to stay clear of him and if not, well, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”
Gunner McConnell woke up from his comfortable nap and ordered another scotch. He looked at his watch and saw that he’d been asleep for over two hours. He hated to sleep and, like so many of the veterans of Vietnam, he slept very little. When he slept, he dreamed, and when he dreamed it wasn’t about his two favorite subjects, booze and broads, but usually about the war. The only thing good that came out of the war for Gunner was his business connections to the American Vietnamese community. Those connections had brought him the two things he didn’t have as a nineteen-year-old dogface slogging through a muddy rice paddy . . . wealth and power. Not just physical power—he had always possessed that—but the power derived from money and connections with influential people. In his wildest dreams, he never thought that being invited to a party in Pleiku would lead to this. Colonel Vinh Ho had gotten out of Saigon in ’74, before the “fall” in ’75, and headed for America. An important contact of the Central Intelligence Agency, he was relocated with his family and settled in Los Angeles, California. His family had considerable personal wealth, and with the sizable monthly stipend from a grateful government, he lived well. He was a shrewd man, with a vast information network. It was this network that gave him real power.
He had used the network to learn what would be Sergeant McConnell’s last day in Vietnam. Two weeks prior to that date, he contacted the sergeant and made a business proposition to him. Vinh Ho asked McConnell to be his business partner, operating out of Thailand. He told McConnell that for his work, he would receive ten percent profit from the lucrative drug and gun trading company that he’d set up. No investment would be necessary. McConnell thought about it for a moment, thinking that he’d had enough of Southeast Asia. As he started to refuse Vinh Ho’s offer, the Colonel courteously reminded him of a dead ARVN soldier left in a fifty-five-gallon drum behind a Pleiku bar. “If the American authorities were given the photographs that I have, it could go real hard on you. You would certainly end up back in the LBJ for another tour, and I understand one Sergeant Romanowski is still stationed there.”
Gunner didn’t need to hear any more. He immediately agreed to the partnership. After his separation from the service, he went straight to Bangkok to set up shop for Vinh Ho. He’d been there ever since—no regrets, plenty of dames, plenty of dough, and enough shopping trips into L.A. to make life interesting.
NINE
Vinh Ho was only half Vietnamese. His father had been a soldier in the People’s Army of China. On one of the father’s forays across the border into Vietnam, he spied the woman that would eventually become Vinh’s mother. She was a petite girl of fourteen, working in the rice fields that surrounded the village of Vientiane. To hear her version, Vinh’s father watched from the jungle’s fringe for several hours as she bent to her field work. Near dusk, he could take it no longer. He rushed out from his position in the underbrush and dragged the young girl back into the jungle, where he raped her repeatedly for several hours before letting her return to her family. Ashamed and admonished by her father, she was banished from the village. She wandered around the countryside, stealing food by night and hiding by day until she finally worked her way down to Pleiku City, where in her ninth month she gave birth to a boy child. She named him Vinh Ho after the boy’s rapist father.
Vinh’s Chinese ancestry did not go unnoticed by the Vietnamese that he grew up with. He had to grow up tough, spending his youth in mostly criminal endeavors. His mother became a bar girl and prostitute, vowing never to return to the serene farm life of rural Vietnam. By then the French had invaded their country and renamed it French Indochina. Vinh’s mother became a favorite whore of the French generals, eventually contracting syphilis. She died from the disease, but not before giving it to half the French Army.
Vinh worked for the underground until the French were driven out of Vietnam. By then, he had gone from being a leader in the underground to the regular army, where he had attained the rank of Colonel.
TEN
The message on Simon Cohen’s desk read, “Detective Jerry Andrews. Will be in to see you at eleven a.m.” Simon Cohen, MD, Ph.D., was one of “the few, the tough, the proud”: LAPD shrinks. As he looked at his gold Rolex, Simon noticed that it was five of eleven. He looked at his message pad and wondered why Jerry had made this appointment to see him. It had been years since he had seen him last, two years and four months to be exact. The last time Jerry had been in to see him, it was to talk about his PVS (Post-Vietnam Syndrome): the problem of not sleeping at night, the horrible dreams, the headaches, and the disassociation episodes. They’d shot the shit for an hour, Simon had given Jerry some strong sleeping pills, and that had been it. I wonder what brings him in to see me now, he thought.
A light tapping at his door broke his thought pattern as his secretary ushered Jerry into the office. “Detective Andrews is here for his appointment, Doctor.”
“Thanks, that will be all, Madeline,” he said, motioning Jerry to the nearby leather couch. “Your message didn’t say what you needed to see me about, Jerry. What’s troubling you?”
“I didn’t ask for this appointment to talk about my problems, Doc. I need to talk to you about a case I’m working on. The guys at the Rampart Cop Shop tell me that you’re the resident expert on serial killers.”
“Well, I’m not sure that I’d call myself ‘the resident expert,’ but I do have some experience in that area. I have interviewed several serial killers warehoused in Folsom and San Quentin, and written papers for the Prison Psychiatric Association on the subject.”
“I’m working on a serial murder case just now, Doc. At least I think it’s a serial murder case. What I’d like to know is, what are some of the things that you’ve found in common with all these wackos?”
“I see you haven’t lost your tact in the last couple of years, Jerry.”
“You know me, Doc! I haven’t got time for being tactful when I’ve got so many windmills to tilt at.”
“I learned a lot about these ‘wackos,’ as you call them during my interviews at the prisons. I can’t mention any of them by name since they’re technically still considered patients of mine. I’m sure that if you’re interested, you could use your detective skills to figure out who they are. Several of them have sniffed the gas since I spoke with them, but I can tell you some general stuff that might help you.”
“Anything you can give me, Doc, will be more than I have now.”
“In general, serial killers are comfortable with murder. They’re not only comfortable but also, after several killings, it becomes thrilling for them to kill. They’d rather kill than have sex. In fact, many of them have orgasms during the act of murdering their victims.”
“That profile sounds pretty grim, Doc.”
“It gets worse Jerry. These guys—and I’m not suggesting that women couldn’t fit the profile, but most are men—these guys are driven by fantasy. The grotesque becomes commonplace to them. They are usually gifted, intelligen
t people.”
“Is there anything that they do, aside from the actual killing, that I should look for?”
“Some things you might find are notes: some of these guys like to leave notes on their victims. Some, as you know, like to repeat the same act over and over. These acts are usually sexual in nature. Some will kill on a certain day of the week or month, or at a certain time—it’s part of their psychosis. Almost all of them are driven by voices. It’s strictly a madman’s world, a world of their own making, driven by hatred.”
“I’m sure glad I came to see you, Doc. I feel much better now that we’ve talked. If you don’t mind. I’d like to confer with you from time to time if I could. This case is starting to bust my balls.”
“No problem, Jerry. It all pays the same. By the way, did those headaches you came to see me about go away?”
“Yeah, they went away as soon as my last wife left me! Don’t bother getting up, Doc, I know the way out.”
As Jerry headed out the door, the last thought he had about his last wife leaving him stuck in his head and he couldn’t shake it loose. Even the sight of Madeline’s shapely legs, crossed but revealing just enough thigh to give most grown men a hard-on, couldn’t jar his thoughts of Mona out of his brain. As he walked through the office door and out into the well-lit corridor, he noticed two things. One, his headache was back, and two, he didn’t have a hard-on.
Things with Mona had been okay at first. She was young and vibrant, with a shape that put even Madeline’s to shame. Jerry remembered how she used to love on him every moment that they were together. Mona could fuck like a mink and she was insatiable. The aura of sensuality hung in the air the minute she entered a room, and to him at least, all other women paled by comparison.
They went along fine for a few years. It takes some adjustment being married to a cop, but she managed with relative ease. They both wanted a family, especially Mona: she wanted kids really bad. They tried for over three years to have a family but, as luck would have it, she couldn’t conceive.
That was when the arguments had started. Jerry blamed her for being infertile and she blamed him for shooting blanks. That had gone on for over a year as they explored other possibilities, and just when he thought they might stop fighting long enough to resume their romance, she had run off with her gynecologist. She didn’t ask much of him, just half his pension and one fourth of his salary for the rest of his life. But he had gotten something out of the marriage worth more than money: a bad fuckin’ attitude, and a migraine that wouldn’t go away for years. Last he heard, Mona and her doctor were working on their third kid. His deductive mind told him that if he’d spent more time doing things to increase his sperm count, and less time ragging on her about infertility, he would probably be a proud poppa with a hot momma instead of a limp-dick cop with an attitude.
By the time he made it to the street where his car was parked, his head was pounding. He needed a beer and a shot, but first, he needed to start putting the facts of the Little Saigon serial murder case into some semblance of order. He headed for Rampart Station, putting his head into the case, and pushing Mona farther into his subconscious. Amazingly, as soon as he was able to do that, his migraine went away.
ELEVEN
It was just after midnight. The lights in Little Saigon burned brightly, blinking like a hypnotist’s strobe. Brilliant and enticingly seductive, they lured men off the street and into the bowels of the myriad of sleazy bars and sex clubs that lined the filthy avenue.
Baker’s Alley offered the only respite from the glare and, often as not, was an excellent place to purchase dope, get a quick blowjob, or, if you were real unlucky, get rolled. The shadows faded from gray to black as you got farther down the alley and closer to the back door of the Club Saigon. The single light fixture that hung over the door had long since had the lamp removed, and nobody cared enough to replace it.
It was a quarter past midnight when Johnny Hong, the mixed-race Vietnamese/Chinese dishwasher, stood on the top step of the landing, leaning against the greasy handrail. Every two hours he was allowed a smoke break, which he took with timed regularity.
“I ought to get smart and quit smoking these,” he mumbled under his breath in accented English. “Fuckin’ going to kill me one these days.” Johnny tossed the unfiltered butt he had between his lips unceremoniously down the stairs, where it landed on a pile of butts that had built up during the night. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out his pack, frantically fingering inside before cursing and throwing the empty pack onto the pile of butts at the bottom of the stair. “Son of a bitch, I’ve got to stop this habit.”
“Have one of mine, friend.” A hairy, tattooed arm reached out of the shadows next to the stairs and dangled a cigarette in front of Johnny’s face.
Johnny was instinctively wary, especially of strangers that lingered in the shadows, but his addiction overwhelmed his sense of fear. His instinct for self-preservation was strong, but so was his immediate need for a nicotine fix. “Thanks, stranger,” he said as he reached out for the obnoxious weed.
In a heartbeat, the tattooed arm grabbed Johnny’s wrist and clamped him in a vise-like grip. In one swift motion, Johnny’s body was swept over the rail and sent sailing across the dark alley, where he finally came to rest after his head struck the brick wall of the building opposite the Club Saigon. He could feel the sticky, warm ooze, swarming over his temples, around his nose and down into his mouth. He tasted the salt of his own blood but still remained conscious. His eyes were unfocused and glassy. He tried to look up and recognize his assailant, but as he lifted his head he felt a booted foot thud hard into his rib cage. This fucking habit’s going to kill me, he thought, as the boot hit the side of his jaw, shattering it, and spreading his teeth across the alley like twenty dice all rolling craps at the same time.
The thrill of the kill. Stalking your victim. Taking him down until the awareness of impending death becomes his reality, and fear manifests itself in a death mask, replacing a once serene face. How many times had the tattooed man killed like this? Too many to count. Who counts when you’re having so much fun? The victims fear was a strong narcotic. That’s what he was hooked on: his victim’s fear. He kept each one alive for a long time. He was slow and meticulous in the way he carved them up. He liked to save the ear for last. Always, the ear was last to go. Then he slit the victim’s throat and left him to slowly bleed to death on the pavement made sticky with the victims own blood.
Johnny Hong hung on and wished that he’d worked through his last break. The warm blood that dripped onto his hands felt like the unctuous greasy dishwater that was his livelihood, but the pain in his throbbing head and tortured breathing told him he wasn’t in his boss’s kitchen. First, his eyes looked up in the direction of the last kick. His face felt like he’d been force-fed a brick. He was scared, real scared. He pushed himself up on one elbow and started to beg.
When they started to beg, it was time to feed the bulldog. Reaching into his fatigue pockets, the tattooed man pulled out a long knife. With the accuracy of a surgeon, he slashed out, cutting the wrist tendons in Johnny Hong’s arm. Johnny crumbled to the pavement again.
“I can always tell when the fear takes over. I can smell it,” he said, as he leaned over Johnny. “I could smell it in Nam and I can smell it now. You stink when you’re scared.” He reached over with his knife and drew it across Johnny’s face, leaving a deep fissure. “Your momma’s going to want a closed-casket funeral for you when I’m done, boy—just like some of my buddies got.”
Johnny tried to talk, but only managed to spit out a tooth. The words he wanted to say couldn’t pass his swelling tongue. He was scared shitless and he didn’t want to die. He would do anything to stay alive, but the tug on his ear told him that his worst fear had been realized. The killer that was terrorizing Little Saigon had him by the short hairs, and he wouldn’t survive.
The ear came off and the killer held it aloft to revel in its horrible beauty. It was a
contradiction in terms, a dichotomy of the anatomy. He rubbed the bloody appendage all over his face, licking the accumulated blood from his lips with the joy of a boy having his first kill while hunting with his dad.
Johnny grasped the side of his head with both hands where he once had an ear. The fear . . . his whimpers were a cacophony of horror. He looked up into the face of his tormentor. He saw the knife raised high, an errant light from a passing car gleaming off the blade. He felt the hard steel drawn against his pulsing throat. He felt the warm fluid spurting up onto his face, then retreating down the front of his shirt. He saw a black curtain come down over his eyes. He never felt the pressure from the ring as it pushed roughly into his skin.
Jerry had several cases in his past investigations that had required the use of a pin chart. These charts were helpful in visualizing crime patterns, especially when clues were not readily apparent. As he entered Rampart, Jerry was considering setting one up for this case in the cramped cubbyhole he laughingly referred to as his office.
The map of the downtown area that Jerry generally patrolled hung on the wall that faced his desk. It stared back at him like a pockmarked teenager on a chocolate binge. He pulled the red-tipped pins that marked his last major case and replaced them in the top drawer of his gray Steelcase desk. I wonder why I didn’t pull these pins a long time ago, he thought. That case, a string of burglaries, had been solved by his squad over two years ago.
Right now, he had six positive M.O.’s that linked these killings, but nothing in the way of solid evidence. Lots of hunches, but no substance. Lots of earless bodies, but no killer. Lots of ideas and persons of interest, but no solid clues and only one suspect that Jerry had thought was placed in a body bag twenty-two years ago. Brilliant detective work; your only suspect to an ongoing murder investigation is a dead man. I’d better keep this theory to myself or I’ll be laughed out of the station house and the 44 Magnum.
Club Saigon Page 5
