“It looks like a brand with a skull and crossbones and some writing. What are we dealing with, Sam—a pirate serial killer?”
“I seriously doubt it. On closer examination, I determined that this isn’t your standard tattoo. It looked to me like a brand burned or pushed in after the victim was dead. Look closer at the crossed bones. You see any writing on them?”
“Yeah, I recognize the words, barely, but I can make out what they say—DE OPRESSO LIBRE. Our Special Forces insignia used to have those words emblazoned on them.” Jerry thought for a second. It was beginning to look like a rogue SF trooper was involved in the killings, and what little hard evidence he had pointed straight at one of his teammates. “Have you checked out this brand on the other victims?”
“I didn’t have any notes referencing this brand on my other case reports, but it was real small. I could have missed it. I’m thinking of exhuming some of the bodies to see if the brand is present.”
Sam was so exacting; that response was exactly what Jerry expected from him. “Why don’t you hold off on that? If my hunch is right, I don’t think our boy is done killing yet. You can look for it again on his next victim. Let me ask you this—could the brand have been made with a silver ring?”
“Yeah, Jerry, I’m relatively certain that if a ring was sufficiently heated or pressured into the skin, it could be used as a branding iron and leave this mark. Are you ready to take a look at the body?”
“No thanks, Sam, I’ve seen enough in these photos to make me lose my cookies ten times over. I don’t know how you manage.”
“Training, my boy, training. Now if there’s nothing else for us to discuss, I have a few hot bodies to dissect before going home for dinner. I’ll forward the official results of Mr. Hong’s autopsy to your office as soon as the serological study is complete.”
“Thanks, Sam, and don’t forget to check out any of the stiffs that aren’t buried yet for that brand.” As Jerry walked out of the coroner’s office, he expelled a deep breath of formaldehyde-containing air, trying to rid his lungs of the repugnant aroma. The odor clung to him like a tight pair of jockey briefs. He didn’t know what was worse, the formaldehyde, or the big gulp of “carbon monoxious” L.A. air that he forced into his empty lungs as he stood in front of Sam’s office. It was only a short walk to where his unmarked police cruiser sat. He could hold his breath for that long, but he’d be damned if he’d be able to hold it until he reached the station house.
The migraine headaches that had begun two months ago now pounded in his temples like thunder over a central highland rice paddy. It had gotten worse as time went on, and he knew that he’d better find a safe place to crash before he blacked out. It was not intuition that told him he would black out; it was not some little bird or the bulldog barking in his ear. It was experience, that familiar performance of the death dance. He knew he needed to find a safe place, and find it soon. He didn’t want to be found on the street like some epileptic in the midst of a convulsing grand mal seizure. No that would never do, he thought, as he ducked into the alley.
He liked the coolness of alleys. The air, as pungent as it was from the accumulated garbage, was still better to him than street air. He tried several of the back doors that fronted on the alley, but they were all locked. Finally, he looked around, and seeing nobody about, settled in next to a large, garbage-filled connex container. He slumped down in the corner of the container just as the black sheet closed over his eyes.
It was dark when he woke up. The raspy tongue of the alley cat licking his whiskered face brought him quickly to his feet. “Get off my face, you fucking varmint,” he yelled, as he grabbed a tuft of the tabby’s yellow hair and threw the startled cat as far as he could. A loud thud, followed by a shrill cry, told him that the cat had hit the brick wall opposite his connex container and had unceremoniously been deposited on the pavement. “If I want pussy sitting on my face, it sure as shit won’t be four-legged,” he yelled at nobody in particular.
He was on his feet now, looking out of the shadows. He could hear the wounded meows of the alley cat as it retreated. He actually felt refreshed. He had slept for two hours, something he hadn’t been able to do lately. Not being able to sleep was one of the symptoms of Post-Vietnam Syndrome, the headaches were another.
Gunner sat in relative seclusion at a back table, always reserved for him at his favorite restaurant, the Club Saigon. Colonel Vinh Ho, or Uncle Vinh as he preferred to be called, had a thin smile on his lips as he gently cradled his brandy snifter in his thin, ladylike hands. He purposely kept the lighting level at his table low so he could conduct business in the obscurity that a back table and low lights provide.
“Once again you have done well, my friend,” he said as he eyed the tall man sitting across from him. “Your flight was a pleasant one?”
“As always, Uncle Vinh, you have provided me with the best that life has to offer and I return your friendship with the best that I can offer: my loyalty.”
“You are well, Mac?”
“Just fine. A little jet lag, that’s all, nothing that a few beers and some hot leg won’t cure.”
“I will arrange it for you. Is there anything else I can do to make your brief stay here more pleasant?”
“Yeah. Could you have one of your boys take my rental car back to the agency? I prefer to leave the driving in this crazy town to somebody else,” he said as he handed a set of rental car keys across the table.
“I will see to it. Now if there is nothing else, I will have my man drop you at your hotel.” Uncle Vinh waved his hand and a young Vietnamese boy appeared. After a brief discussion in their native tongue, Uncle Vinh handed him the car keys.
“Please come this way, sir,” the boy said as he ushered the tall American toward the restaurant’s front door. Holding the keys aloft, he asked, “Your car, where is it?”
“Right out front, my man, the white Lincoln Town Car.”
“Thank you, sir. Uncle Vinh’s limo will take you where you want to go. He told me to tell you that the car and driver will be at your disposal while you are in L.A.” He waved and a black limo pulled to the curb.
A tall, thin Oriental girl, nattily attired in a tight-fitting dark jacket and black leather miniskirt, got out and opened the back door for him. “Uncle Vinh said that I was to provide you with the ride of your life,” she said as she stood smiling next to the open door.
“I love my uncle. Take us to the Airport Hilton, little lady.”
THIRTEEN
With each passing day, the case began to push harder into Jerry’s head. It filled his cranium, consuming those parts of his mind normally reserved for higher brain function. Other cases and matters that pertained to daily survival in the big city were pushed out of his head, overflowing and spilling onto the floor like foam from a twelve-ounce beer poured into a ten-ounce glass.
It was eight in the morning and his head was already pounding. His mouth was drier than a popcorn fart and his breakfast, consisting of a half cup of cold coffee and three aspirins, hadn’t set too well on his stomach. I really ought to quit this job, he thought. Maybe it was the fact that his diet wasn’t what it should be to maintain a healthy body. Lately, alcohol and aspirin had replaced two of the basic food groups he normally associated with health: pizza and chocolate donuts.
As he tried to sneak into his cubicle in the squad room, Captain Davis waved him over to his desk. “Something I can do for you, Cap?”
“Jerry, I thought about our little talk last night and maybe, just maybe, I can justify some short-term surveillance for you.”
“Why the change of heart, captain? The mayor jump in the chief’s shit, then the chief jump in yours?”
“Something like that. Did you read the paper this morning?”
“Do these eyes look capable of reading to you?”
“Jerry, you’ve got to take better care of yourself. You look like shit.” Captain Davis thrust his folded paper into Jerry’s hands. “Get yourself a cup of
coffee, read the lead article, and tell me how many men you’ll need for limited surveillance.”
Jerry unfolded the Times and the banner headline jumped out at him like a bullfrog in the Calaveras County Jumping Frog Contest.
ANOTHER MURDER IN LITTLE SAIGON—POLICE BAFFLED.
Jerry wound his way back to his cubicle, bumping into several desks as he read the lead story. “According to an informed source, the police have no leads and no suspects in custody.”
“Informed source?” What informed source? Jerry thought to himself. He plopped down into his battered leather office chair. His head was screaming for a few more aspirin tablets. He reached into his top desk drawer and withdrew a large red-capped bottle. He popped the top, shook out three white beauties, and capitulated to his head’s demands. He sat back in his chair and reread the lead story in The Times. Whoever the “informed source” was was half right: they didn’t have a suspect in custody. Without knowing who the leak in the department was, Jerry would have to keep his investigation even closer to the vest. He made the conscious decision to not even tell Captain Davis what he’d found out at the coroner’s office. By releasing selective information, he could eventually find the breach in the department’s security dike.
It was 1974 and Jerry was on patrol in the Central Highlands. He and Blackjack Baker were on a search-and-destroy mission near the village of Kon Won Kia, a small Montagnard outpost that overlooked the Cambodian border. They had been on patrol for two weeks, and if it weren’t for bad luck they’d’ve had no luck at all. Half their original strike force had been killed or wounded in several encounters with November Victor Alpha regulars of the 15th NVA Regiment.
Blackjack came to Jerry one night and told him that bad luck had nothing to do with the unusual losses they were suffering. “Jerry, I think we got us a fucking informant on this operation,” he said.
Until Blackjack had said that, the thought had never occurred to Jerry, who had just chalked up their losses to bad luck. “You got any ideas who it might be?”
Blackjack replied, “Yeah, I think I got it narrowed down to two people, but I can’t be sure unless we run us a little test. Will you be willing to follow my lead on this one?”
“You bet. What have you got in mind?”
Blackjack’s plan was rather simple, consisting of a sunrise sneak attack on a village that only he and Jerry knew had been abandoned. Theoretically, only Blackjack, Jerry, and their two ARVN counterparts knew the day, the time, and the route of travel to the village. “You think it’s one of the ARVNs, don’t you?” Jerry said, tongue in cheek.
“Yes, I do. I guess a little of the old Gunner has rubbed off on me, Jerry. I just don’t trust them. You notice that they weren’t leading the ‘yards’ at our last enemy contact at Kon Won Kia?”
“Come to think of it, I didn’t see them anywhere, even before the first shot was fired, but they did show up after the smoke cleared.”
“Now you’re getting the picture, buddy-boy. Now let’s arrange a strategy meeting with our ARVN friends and let them in on our next mission. See on the map, here,” Blackjack’s finger went to a small hamlet named Kon Ti Leo, which we both knew was no longer located there. “The Montagnards discovered better water about two ‘clicks’ to the south and moved their nomadic asses the year before last. This map was never changed, but the old structures and the communal house are still in this location.”
“I get it. So we tell our ARVNs that Central Highlands Intel has some new information and ordered us to hit the (abandoned) village of Kon Ti Leo.”
“You got the picture, GI. All we have to do is lay it on real thick and I have a hunch that the trail into and out of that village will be inundated with NVAs, waiting to shoot our asses to kingdom come.”
It felt damn good to notice that, on the day they selected to take the village, the ARVNs were not in the camp that morning. Jerry heard the booming voice of Blackjack Baker ordering in the F-4s and artillery, using the village coordinates and the coordinates of the entrance and exit trails, 500 meters in each direction. “Kick the shit out of them, boys,” he yelled, “I don’t want to find a living thing in there when we do our sweep. Rock and roll, scorched earth!” Before he could finish his sentence, the first wave of F-4s deposited their napalm canisters and boomed out at Mach one. It all went downhill from there for “Charley.” Twenty minutes later, when we got the all clear, I looked out over the ridge we sat on and noticed that “old” Kon Ti Leo was a black pockmark on the face of mother earth. The body count yielded two ARVNs, who were sent back in vinyl caskets to be buried with full honors, amongst the rest of the ARVN heroes that fell during the war.
If Blackjack were here, he’d know what to do to stop the leak in the department, but since he isn’t, I’ll just have to work out my own plan. Jerry sat down casually behind his desk, content to keep avoiding Captain Davis. The “death diagram” stared back at him as if trying to tell him something that should be obvious. Like a blinking light in the red-light district. It drew him into its mysterious circle, mesmerizing him, tantalizing his sense of the macabre. Six—no, seven killings. The earless, bloody faces of the victims stared out at him in black-and-white horror. Jerry took a red marker pen and scrawled THE KILLER IS LEFT HANDED on top of the board.
He took a drink of two-day-old cold coffee that had sat collecting dust on his desk blotter. He looked at the chart again and compulsively got out of his chair and took the red pen and wrote, off to the side of the map, “INTERVIEW WILLY BEAL.” He sat back in his chair again and stared at the chart. Shit, why all this fuss about Little Saigon? he thought. There were more murders per square block occurring in East L.A. than there, but they weren’t considered serial killings and therefore, no doubt, they were not important to the local politicians. The thought occurred to him that he should see if there were any gang-related issues connecting the Little Saigon Killings, like in East L.A. He got up again and wrote another reminder on the board.
It used to be that the headaches would only come once a month, but lately, they were coming every day or two. The thunder roared inside his skull and he knew that the search for a safe haven had to start immediately or he would leave himself vulnerable.
He never knew why, but one time he had blacked out, he had awoken in an alley, his clothes and hands covered with blood. He didn’t like the feeling of vulnerability. It made him feel defenseless and powerless to deal with the outside world that was molding him like a lump of moist clay. Fortunately, the blackouts did not last long, an hour or an hour and a half at most. He knew this because the last time he’d looked at his watch in the dim light of the alley he remembered the luminous dial said it was just past midnight when his mind’s curtain came down. He remembered looking at his watch when he awoke, when it said one thirty. An hour and a half. An hour and a half of dead, dreamless time. It was then that he thought, How pleasant and painless death must be.
When the dark curtain came down, he couldn’t feel the agonizing pain from the shrapnel that he carried around in his neck. The shrapnel was a fingertip-sized piece of metal from an exploding NVA eighty-deuce round that had been lobbed into the compound during the battle at A-255 in ’68. It had lodged against his third cervical vertebrae in a place the Army surgeons said “was too dangerous to operate on.” He found that while the migraine headaches continued to bother him periodically, the shrapnel didn’t restrict his movement, so he just learned to live with it.
When the dark curtain came down, the pain went away and he slept dreamlessly for an hour or two. The dark curtain may have been the body’s way of temporarily healing itself, making him feel good so that he would not consider living to be a waking hell, a hell in which normal sleep, when attainable, flashed back the bitter memories of past battles. How many times had he gone to sleep, only to be awakened by the sound of “Incoming!” shouted from the lips of one of his long-dead comrades? How many times had he been forced to revisit a dreamscape of exploding shells and dying cries from men ju
st like himself, only luckier? Luckier because they didn’t have to feel the pain in his head or hear the voices that he first noticed after his first tour of duty in Vietnam. Those damned voices never seemed to go away and directed him to do unspeakable things.
He remembered that he first heard the voices after his first kill. The voices drove him after that, and he became good at his new trade. Killing, that was his trade, that was what he was trained to do, and the voices, soft at first, then much louder as time went by, directed his actions. But the dark curtain seemed to change all that. With the coming of the dark curtain, the voices disappeared, or at least disappeared from his conscious level of auditory response. He was sure the voices continued to drive him through his subconscious after the dark curtain fell.
Worst of all were the faces, and there were so many. The faces of the friends he had made in boot camp, advanced infantry training, jump school, and the “A” Team. So many faces, first living, then dead. The faces of the enemy staring up at him from the trenches and tunnels where they fell, mortally wounded, crying out in anguish with their last expiring breath. Faces like twin comic masks, one happy, one sad, a duality caused by the certainty of death, and much worse, living through the hell to be tormented for life.
Yes, the dark curtain took all that away, he thought. The dark curtain made life pain-free and worth living. He had come to live for the pleasure it brought him.
The obnoxious sound of Jerry’s beeper went off while he was in transit, two blocks south of the 44 Magnum. He goosed the gas pedal a little and slid into a NO PARKING ZONE in front of his favorite watering hole. He figured that Mondo would let him use the phone to make a call while he burned out the toxic L.A. air clogging his pipes with some scotch.
Club Saigon Page 7
