“Yeah, I know, Willy.” . . . and Jerry did know. He knew exactly what Willy saw in his dreams. His were the same. “Take it easy and don’t get excited. I’m here as your friend. I’m not here to hurt you. Try and remember where you’ve been, or who you’ve been with.”
“It’s all a blur, Jerry, my life’s like the sun during an eclipse. Large pieces of my memory are blocked out by the headaches, the rest is blocked out by the booze. Shit, Jerry, I wish I could just stop drinking.”
“I know how it must be, Willy, but try to remember what you did yesterday.”
“After I left here, I took the money you gave me and got a jug of muscatel. I remember wandering down into Pleiku City again, where I met up with one of the old team. It’s a real blur, Jerry. My head was pounding and I needed a place to sleep. I think I found an alley and pulled in behind a dumpster to finish my jug. I don’t know, Jer’, I just don’t know; it’s my memory, it’s just not sharp like it used to be.” He began to cry inconsolably as he laid his head down on the table.
It was pathetic to have to listen to Willy Beal’s slurred speech as he described some event so far removed from reality that he didn’t know the past from the present. As for his assertion that he used to be sharp, well, Jerry remembered a time that the only thing sharp about Willy was his bayonet . . . a time when he seemed to be the guy who put the “C” in “conehead.” If brains were toilet paper, Willy in those days wouldn’t have enough to wipe his ass. Jerry often wondered how Willy had managed to pass the Special Forces entrance exam, but he did, and besides, he was Jerry’s teammate. Jerry loved him for all his faults and knew Willy would have his back in the field.
It was 1966. Willy and Jerry were running an operation north of Kontum Provence. It was near the Ho Chi Minh Trail, south of Dak To. Willy was reading the map and Jerry was running the radio. The Cong were crawling all over the area of operation like fleas on a dog. Having Willy along didn’t give Jerry much comfort, but at least he had the radio.
They had come to a clearing that looked out onto a large village. The village seemed to be abandoned, but it was noon, and not uncommon for an entire village to be taking what the locals referred to as “pot time.” Pot time was not a rest break for smoking dope, but a few hours taken in the middle of the day to nap and rest from the incessant chores which were part of village life. Willy came over to Jerry with his map, his thumbnail clearly marked the village location. “It’s too big for us to take alone, Jerry, but my nose tells me that if the Cong left this place alone, it’s for a good reason.”
Jerry told Willy that he thought they ought to send in a patrol to recon the village. He told him that he thought it was strange that there were no animals around or no cooking fires going. Willy’s explanation seemed so logical at the time. “They’re conserving their firewood, Jerry. We’ve never had a sweeter plum than this one. I can smell them, Jerry. The whole village is asleep and we’re in the perfect position to call in an air strike.” Willy looked just like a kid at the candy store, him and his fucking map. He shoved it into Jerry’s face again, his thumbnail marking the coordinates.
“I’ll call it in,” Jerry said. “Spooky Five-Five, this is Salted Beacon Alpha. Need an airstrike on a heavily fortified enemy position at grid coordinates 2573, 6849. Do you copy?”
“This is Spooky Five-Five, Salted Beacon Alpha. Confirm location coordinates 2573, 6849.”
“Confirm location coordinates, Spooky Five-Five.”
In less than five minutes, the roar of the F-4s nearly deafened them as they swooped low over the trees, dropping napalm canisters from their wingtips. There were six of the planes. In the next pass, they came in low, firing several rockets each, plus their 20mm cannons, cutting down every living thing and reducing the village to a smoldering pile of burning straw.
Willy leaned over Jerry’s shoulder and waved the map in Jerry’s face again, only, this time, his thumb had moved one kilometer to the south, revealing the parenthetic word “(ABANDONED)” next to the village they had just nuked with the full force of the U.S. Air Force. Jerry grabbed the map from him and couldn’t believe his eyes as he drew it closer to his face. His keen senses still did not detect the sounds or the smell of death after the all-out air assault. There were no VC crying mournfully in pain. There were no bodies scattered around what remained of the hooches. There wasn’t even one pig squealing, except for Willy, squealing with delight at the show of force delivered by the Air Force.
“Did you see that? Boy, did we knock the Cong’s dick in the dirt or what, Jerry? Yessiree, those Air Force boys sure know how to deliver the ordinance.”
Jerry felt it was his duty to show Willy the error of his ways and to try and do so with as little implication of his lack of intelligence as possible, thus sparing him the ultimate humiliation. “Willy, I have some good news and I have some bad news. Which do you want first?”
“Give me the good news, Jerry!”
“The good news is we just wiped out one of the largest villages in our area of operation, and we did it without losing a man.”
“Sounds good! What’s the bad news? Those jets make you shit your drawers bringing the strike so close to us?”
“No, Willy. The bad news is, and I want to tell you this as gently as possible, the bad news is your thumb was covering up the word ‘ABANDONED’ on this map of yours. We just spent about a hundred thousand dollars scorching an abandoned village.”
Willy looked crushed by the news. His momentary elation turned to sullen despair. He grabbed the map from Jerry’s hands and tore it in half, then in half again and again. “Son of a bitch! This backward Army never gives a guy the tools he needs to win this war. Let’s get out of here before Charley finds us.”
“Willy, didn’t you forget something?”
“What are you talking about, Jerry?”
“You just tore up our map. How do you think we’re going to find our way back to camp? Willy, don’t take this wrong, but I think that when the war is over, you should pursue an occupation that suits your high degree of intellect and advanced powers of higher reasoning.”
“What occupation is that, Jerry?”
“Become a brain surgeon. Now let’s get out of here, you idiot!”
“Right behind you, Sarge.”
Jerry looked into the vacant eyes of Willy Beal as he sat across from him at the sleazy table. The happy-go-lucky soldier, full of pride and full of life, had been replaced by the derelict Willy Beal, and it was not a picture Jerry relished looking at. For all his early faults, Willy Beal had never deserved this fate.
“Willy, I need for you to meet me here tomorrow. It’s real important. I’m having some pictures developed and I want to show them to you. Maybe the guy you spent some time with in Pleiku yesterday”—Jerry almost choked that one out, feeling he had to play along with Willy’s delusion—“is someone you know and can identify with my help and a photograph?”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right, Jerry. I won’t promise, but I’ll try to be here tomorrow.”
Jerry reached into my wallet and pulled a bill out, offering it in Willy’s direction. “That’s better, Willy. Here’s a twenty to tide you over until tomorrow night.”
“Keep your money, Jerry. I’d only drink it up and probably miss our appointment. I’ll see you here tomorrow night and we can look at some pictures and talk about the old times when we were on the team.”
“Sounds good to me. Take care of yourself.” Jerry squeezed Willy’s emaciated arm as he got up to leave and noticed that Willy had already nodded off to sleep again.
As he passed the bar, Jerry pulled Mondo aside. “Mondo, let him sleep it off, then make sure you feed the hell out of him with some of your good south-of-the-border chow.” Jerry handed Mondo a ten-dollar bill. This case was getting expensive with all the people he was supporting.
SIXTEEN
Jerry made his way back to the Delta Hotel, taking the scenic, circuitous route, in order to maintain his anonymity in the sea o
f bums that roamed Little Saigon at night. He entered the ramshackle foyer of the hotel. It was as if he’d never left. The deskman’s sleepy, dulcet, expression led Jerry to believe that his IQ was in the one-digit range, but long ago Jerry’d learned not to judge an Oriental book by its cover. He walked up to the desk with his valise in hand. “Room 502, please.”
“Top of the stairs on the right,” the deskman said, without looking up.
“Yeah, I know where it is. How about the key?”
“So sorry. Your key is right back here in the box. I guess you didn’t find the Turkish bath?” he said with a shit-eating grin on his face.
“Just don’t you worry about my hygiene, friend, and I’ll pretend you’ve got a green card.” Jerry grabbed the key from the deskman’s hand and hustled up the stairs to his room. When he got to room 502, he checked around the door and found that the paper match he’d bent and put between the door and the frame was on the floor. Someone had been in his room, and he would bet it wasn’t to change the sheets. He wasn’t sure if whoever had gone in was still there, so he pulled his .357 out of his shoulder holster and carefully entered. His heart was pounding like a bass drum at the circus and sweat was flooding out of every pore. He didn’t need the extra body odor that fear always seemed to bring out in him; his disguise was convincing enough without it.
He entered low, not hitting the light switch, crouching, quickly turning from side to side as he’d been taught at the Academy. No shadows, no movement. The main room was clear and he didn’t have a bathroom to check. He started to relax. Maybe they did change the sheets while Jerry was gone. He switched on the light. The single thirty-watt bare bulb scarcely lit the center of the room, much less the corners. Out of curiosity, he checked the bed, but to his chagrin, the sheets still had the same cum stains in the same places. Oh, well, Jerry wasn’t here to sleep anyway.
Jerry switched out the light. His experience told him that by using that technique it would be easier for him to see out and not be seen. He pushed the bed up against the door to ensure that he wouldn’t be disturbed and took up his place at the window. It didn’t take long for him to see some action: first, a limo pulled up in front of the Club Saigon and disgorged Colonel Vinh Ho and his three hired bodyguards. Jerry quickly took photos of the “fearsome foursome” as he continued his surveillance. He shot up six rolls of film as car after car pulled alongside the curb, each disgorging several more Oriental gentlemen that Jerry recognized as being part of the Little Saigon underworld. The activity indicated that there was an important meeting going on at the Club Saigon, of that he was sure.
It was well after midnight. He had been working the surveillance in the stifling room for over three hours when the first signs of a major migraine struck. His headaches had been getting worse lately. Several times, he had blacked out as a result of the intense pain and when he’d awakened, he didn’t have a clue where he was or what he’d done during the episode. He hoped this wasn’t going to be one of those times. The vein in his temple began to throb and raised slightly, pulsating, straining in unison with each beat of his pounding heart. He felt it with his index finger, pushing the anomaly down, in hopes that it would disappear. As he pushed in on the left side of his head, a corresponding vein on the right side rose, constricted, and caused his eyelids to droop. He could tell that this was going to be a bad one, the mother of all migraines.
The cum-stained sheets were beginning to look really good to him just now. He knew that once he got past the smell it would be all right. He reached into his overnight bag and fumbled in the dark for his bottle of aspirin, which, because the room had no water, he would have to eat dry. He popped the plastic lid with his thumb and grabbed four of the tablets, which he pushed into his mouth and began to chew. He staggered over to where the bed sat in front of the door and collapsed onto the mattress, thinking, You never do get used to the smell. He hoped the aspirin would work before the pain pushed him past the limits of his tolerance. The narrow bed with its paper-thin mattress engulfed his body and welcomed him like a horny Saigon whore.
“I need to find out who is killing our people. I want to know who is responsible for the murders that are driving the drug addicts out of Little Saigon and into other areas of the city to buy their drugs.” Colonel Vinh Ho looked out over the group of men that sat around the large table in his private room at the Club Saigon. “It is beginning to affect our drug and prostitution businesses, and as you know, gentlemen, I don’t like anything that adversely affects business.”
He cast a long glance around the table, looking deep into the eyes of his dealers and pimps, looking for the slightest variation in normal composure, looking for something that would tell him that someone in the room knew more than they were telling him. His gaze paused ever so briefly as it passed the downcast, evasive eyes of Chou Lai, one of his most trusted lieutenants.
“I expect all of you to keep your eyes open to this problem and report to me as soon as you find out anything,” he continued. “We must rid our community of this profit-draining scourge and do it soon, before we are all without a means of our livelihoods. If there are no questions, you may all go now.”
There never were questions.
As the assembled men got up to leave, Vinh walked over to Chou and whispered in his ear. “Please stay after they have gone, my friend. I think we should talk.”
“Whatever you say, Colonel,” Chou said with trepidation in his voice.
After the others had left, Vinh drew a chair up to Chou Lai and leaned toward his nervous lieutenant. “I see by your eyes that you are troubled, Chou. Do you know something that you are not telling your Uncle Vinh?”
“Nothing that my uncle doesn’t already know,” he said.
“Try me, Chou, your uncle doesn’t claim to know everything that goes on in Little Saigon. I do try and keep my humble fingers on the pulse of this community, but it is impossible to know everything.”
“A girl was killed last night. It is the first time a girl has fallen victim to this killer. The girl,” he choked back a sob, trying to maintain his composure, “Ke Son Nu, was a close friend of mine.”
“How close, Chou?”
“I had arranged with her mother to marry her next spring. I was going to ask your permission, and because she has no father, I was going to ask you to give her away at the ceremony.”
“I see. I appreciate your consideration in telling me this most personal information. I feel honored that you would think so highly of me as to ask me to be part of your wedding ceremony. I understand your grief, Chou. While it may not be any consolation, be assured that because this personal tragedy has prematurely taken away your bride and your future together, my wedding gift to you will be the head of this man the newspapers are calling the Saigon Slasher.”
SEVENTEEN
The satchel charge that was thrown down into the commo bunker should have killed him. It killed the black pajama-clad Viet Cong soldier as soon as it lit off. It’s amazing how much concussive power can come from a small backpack stuffed with three pounds of plastic C-4 explosive.
During the war, he had gone through the tunnel. He wasn’t sure how he got there or where he was, but he went through the tunnel. He was propelled on his journey by a satchel charge prepared and delivered by the VC, who had probably just preceded him through the tunnel.
His last memory at the time was the sound of a loud thud as he was thrown against the hard, wooden door. There was a bright flash and the feeling of hot air rushing through the bunker and burning his face. After that, he was drifting above the room, looking down at the carnage and what was left of one of his CIDG and a shredded pair of black pajamas.
It felt good. He felt relieved, for he had been spared. Or had he? Why was he up here looking down on all this? If he was hurt in the blast, why didn’t he feel any pain? It was unrealistic to think that in that small room, he hadn’t been hurt, or worse yet, killed by the explosion. He floated effortlessly above the room, feeling free from ea
rthly bonds. He had no pain and was excited about it. How long had it been since he felt painlessness? Perhaps he had never in his life been without pain.
That’s when his attention shifted to the main tunnel. Maybe the blast had opened a long-forgotten side tunnel in the underground bunker, and that’s where he was? The musty walls of the tunnel were filled with a shimmering light that got brighter at the far end. He looked up and began to float upward toward the bright, warm, soothing light. There appeared to be someone at the end of the tunnel reaching toward him, offering to help him up, and through the opening. He couldn’t recognize them. I wonder what unit they’re from, he thought, as he continued to try and reach them. He imagined that this warm, fluid, pain-free environment was akin to being in his mother’s womb. Nine months of nothingness. Nine months of nurtured, blissful, untroubled growth. Then a hard slap on the ass, a choking cry, and that’s when the pain started.
It felt so good that he never wanted to leave the tunnel, but like being sucked down a drain in a whirlpool of clear water, he began to withdraw from the bright light of the opening. As he did, the light got duller and the intense pain came back. He found himself on the dirt floor of the bunker, writhing in pain and crying out for help. An out-of-body experience makes one acutely aware that death is not the unpleasant end that we might think, and it is not the final act of life, in that you believe there is something beyond the grave. There wasn’t much left of the two guys on the floor of the bunker so he couldn’t ask them if they’d experienced the rapture like he had. Besides, at this particular point in time he hurt too much to care about anything except getting help for himself.
It was when he was laid up in the MASH unit, recovering from his wounds and the effect of the concussion on his body, that he really had time to think about it. He asked some of the nurses if they had any experience with the out-of-body phenomenon. They were very polite, telling him to get some rest, and giving him large doses of sedatives. When he woke up, he found himself in the psychiatric ward, explaining to a panel of Army shrinks the sensation of floating over the bunker, and going through a brightly lit tunnel. When he saw where this was leading, not wanting to piss away his military career, he pretended that it never happened, and he was eventually returned to his unit.
Club Saigon Page 11
