Another Man's Moccasins

7

We sat in the office. Tuyen was holding his coffee cup, the contents of which he had doctored using the supplies that Saizarbitoria had procured from the Powder River Mercantile. He must not have liked the nondairy substitute, because he had yet to take a sip.

“I have another business; a group that unites Vietnamese children with their American relations—bui doi, which translates to ‘dust child’ in English.” He stared at the floor. “Children of the Dust is a nonprofit organization, and I became active in their efforts two years ago.”

“Working with the Vietnamese Amerasian Homecoming Act?” Santiago looked at me, and I shrugged.

“Exactly.” Tuyen glanced at Saizarbitoria. “Since 1987 we have assisted twenty-three thousand Amerasians and sixty-seven thousand of their relatives in immigrating to this country.”

I sipped my coffee. “Must be rewarding work.”

“Very.”

I nodded and made the mental note to ask Ned to check the organization from California. “What’s all this about Trung Sisters Distributing?” I thumbed his card from the folder on the desk.

He looked up. “It is another of my businesses, and the one that makes a profit.” He pulled another card from his jacket pocket and handed it to me; this one was emblazoned with the words CHILDREN OF THE DUST and had an address the same as the one for the film office, with the same three phone numbers. “I sometimes find it more advantageous to be in film distribution than an individual tracking down men who may have illegitimate children.”

I nodded. “Especially men in my age range who might’ve been in Vietnam?”

“It can be rather shocking, and sometimes responses are not particularly positive.”

“I can imagine.” I put my coffee cup on the desk. I had had enough of the stuff. I looked at Saizarbitoria, who seemed to be studying me. I turned back to Tuyen. “What about the Red Fork Ranch?”

“I am genuinely interested in the property.”

“But that’s not why you’re here.”

His face lowered. “No.”

“Mr. Tuyen, I’m really sorry to be insensitive, but I need to know about your granddaughter.” He placed his still untouched coffee on the desk, and I wasn’t happy about what I had to do next. “I’m assuming her married name was Paquet?”

“Yes, she was briefly enjoined to a young man, here in the U.S.”

"And that would be in California?”

“Yes. Orange County, Westminster.”

“Little Saigon.”

He looked up and smiled sadly. “I am not used to people referring to the area in that manner outside of Southern California.”

“Mr. Tuyen, do you have any idea why your granddaughter might’ve stolen a car and then run all the way to Wyoming?”

“A number of them, actually.”

“She obviously didn’t want you involved, so how was it you were able to find her?”

“She acquired one of my credit cards, a gas card. She also, well, borrowed a valuable laptop computer, some jewelry, and a few other items, but it was through the credit card I was able to follow her.”

I watched him for a moment. “We didn’t find any credit cards on your granddaughter’s person.”

“The card was left at a Flying J truck stop in Casper. I recovered it there.”

“So you figured she was heading north and drove to Powder Junction?”

“Yes, it was as good a guess as any other.”

“Did it occur to you to contact any law enforcement agencies to see if they could find her?”

He laced his fingers in his lap and stared at them. “My granddaughter . . . Ho Thi had some unfortunate incidents, which I thought might color a more official response to her disappearance.”

I looked at the planing light on the side of his face and then plunged ahead. “That would have to do with the troubles of a month and a half ago? ”

It took a commensurate amount of time for him to respond. “Yes.”

“So you figured with your experience in working with Children of the Dust, you would find her yourself?”

“Yes.”

“These incidents you referred to concerning Mrs. Paquet: We got some information from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department concerning some charges?”

He looked at me with a sharpness that he couldn’t or didn’t want to hide. "I don’t see how that is...”

“I’m just trying to get a clearer idea as to her situation, and how and why it is she ended up here the way she did.”

His eyes stayed steady with mine. “I understand you have a man in custody?”

I knew he was upset, but I needed answers. “The prostitution charges?”

He took a deep breath. “It was the young man she was married to; he was party to a number of illegal ventures and got her involved.”

“In prostitution?”

“Human trafficking.” He picked up his cup but only looked into it. “There is an underlying problem with the Vietnamese Amerasian Homecoming Act in that a number of corrupt Vietnamese staffers in the U.S. consulate, along with human brokers who acquire these mules who assist them, are—what is the colloquialism?—piggybacking illegals into the United States. Visas are granted as long as they are prepared to take their new, well, family, one can say, along with them. These human brokers make close to twenty thousand dollars for each accompanying visa.”

“And this man, Paquet?”

“Rene Philippe Paquet.”

“He’s involved with this? ”

“Was. He died in Los Angeles.”

“How did he die?”

Tuyen swallowed, as if the words were leaving a bad taste in his mouth. “He was also involved in the drugs and found dead in his apartment.”

I got up and walked over to the only window, which was in the top of the only door, and looked through the curling and sun-faded decal of the Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department at the overexposed light baking the empty playground of the elementary school across the street. “I guess I’m a little confused, Mr. Tuyen. How did Ho Thi, whom I’m assuming was a United States citizen, get involved with Paquet?”

From the sound of his voice, I could tell he had turned toward me. “I’m afraid you may not understand the complications of my relationship with my granddaughter, Sheriff.”

I leaned on the door facing with my back still to the desk and waited.

“Perhaps, Sheriff, I should tell you my own story first?”

“You were in the war? ”

“Yes.”

A rusty, half-ton pickup chugged by on the otherwise empty roadway. “You speak English very well.”

He took a deep breath. “Yes. I was drafted from a small village in the Lang Son Province and, because of my ease with acquiring languages, was sent from the South Vietnamese Army to the Rangers. I spoke English especially well, along with French, Chinese, and Russian, and so they conscripted me in conjunction with the American Special Forces and the Short Term Road Watch and Target Acquisition program.”

“Black Tigers and STRATA? ”

“Yes. I was twice wounded and received a battle citation before being transferred to the American Embassy in Saigon. As the war worsened, I was given the opportunity to expatriate myself to the United States, but not with my wife and son. I stayed, and we survived through my bureaucratic skills until I was able to take my family on a vacation to Taiwan, where we escaped to France and then here. With my contacts in the embassy, I was able to procure a job in film distribution and six years ago was finally able to open my own business.”

Santiago poured himself another coffee. “Sounds like the American dream come true.”

I kept looking out the window. “I notice you didn’t mention a granddaughter? ”

“Yes.” Something in the way he said it caused me to turn my head and look at him. “It is sometimes difficult to explain the abandonment of wartime to those who have not experienced it. You were in the American war, Sheriff? ”

“I was.”

He studied me awhile. “Then perhaps you will understand. There was a woman whom I spent time with in Saigon, both during and after the war; not my wife.”

I nodded, abandoned the playground, and came back to sit on the corner of the metal desk. “Your participation with Children of the Dust came from your personal experience? ”

“Yes, and then my granddaughter arrived over a year ago, and it was obvious that she had not had an easy life which, as she grew older, exhibited itself in numerous ways.” He took another breath. “She did not speak English and made no attempts to learn the language after arriving. She was trenchant and rebellious toward us and began spending more and more time with the young man I mentioned.” I watched as he examined his laced fingers. “She was arrested for solicitation six weeks ago.”

“I think I’m getting a clearer picture as to why she would want to run away, but do you have any idea why it is that she would come to Wyoming?”

“None.”

Saizarbitoria was still watching me as I reached over the desk and into the Cordura shooting duffel. I slipped the photograph, still in the plastic bag, from one of the folders and handed it to Tuyen. “Do you know this woman?”

He took the photograph and studied it, finally looking up at me. “No.” His eyes stayed on me for a moment, went to the photo again, and then back to me. “And this is you?”

"Yes.”

"When was this picture taken, if I might presume to ask?”

“The end of ’67, just before Tet.” He studied the photograph again, and I could hear the years clicking in his head like abacus beads. I leaned forward. “Third generation; is it possible that this is Ho Thi’s grandmother? ”

“It is not the woman I knew....”

“Then possibly her great-grandmother? This woman in the photograph, her name was Mai Kim and she died in 1968.”

He stared into the black-and-white, memorizing the woman’s face and comparing it with his granddaughter. “It is possible. Did you know her well, Sheriff?”

“Not in the personal sense, but she was a bar girl at the Boy-Howdy Beau-Coups Good Times Lounge just outside Tan Son Nhut air force base, where I was sent as a Marine inspector.”

“You were a police officer then, too?”

“Yes.”

He thought about it some more. “You think it is possible that Ho Thi received this photograph from her mother or another woman within the family and mistakenly believed that she was related to you?”

“Right now, it’s all I’ve got to go on and the only connection to Wyoming that I have.”

“I see.”

“Mr. Tuyen, I’m going to need you to look at some photographs of your granddaughter for purposes of recognition, see some identification that she was, indeed, your granddaughter, and then we can make arrangements with the Division of Criminal Investigation to have the body shipped back to California. ”

“Yes, of course.”

“Were you planning on heading back anytime soon?”

He was still looking at the photo in the plastic bag and possibly thinking of other things in other plastic bags. “I had intended to leave today, but I didn’t seem to have the energy once I’d gotten in my vehicle.”

I stuck my hand out for the black-and-white, but he misinterpreted and shook it, so I took the photograph back with my other hand. “That’s perfectly understandable. I can appreciate it if you need some time alone, but if you’d rather look at those things this afternoon, you’ll have to come up to my office in Durant.”

“I’m not sure if I will be up to that this afternoon, but perhaps I will go back and check into my room again and see how I feel later today.” He stood.

“That’ll be fine. Tomorrow morning is just as good. You still have my card?”

“I do.” He stopped at the door and looked back at us. “And you have my granddaughter’s belongings?”

“Yes.”

“I would like to pick up those things.”

“I’m sure we can release them as soon as we get all the information back from Cheyenne, and I get some documentation on you and your granddaughter.”

“I will see to it.” He still stood there, and I knew what was next. “I am reticent to ask again, but I understand you have arrested a man for the murder of Ho Thi?”

I crossed my arms. “We have a man who is being held under reasonable suspicion in connection with her death. However, there is not conclusive evidence against him.”

In the backlight of the glass-paned door, Tuyen’s outline was dark and featureless. “This man was living under the highway? ”

“I’m afraid so.”

I could see the outline of his chest rise and fall. “It is difficult to remember that things like this can happen, even here.”

He turned the knob, pushed open the door, and was gone.

“Jeez, Boss . . .”

Saizarbitoria had followed me out the door to the playground where I stood with my boot propped up on the jungle gym. I looked out at the flat grasslands leading to the Powder River. There was a low rise to the east of town before the breaks of the northbound water crumpled the plains like an unmade bed. Everything was a dried-out watercolor, and it looked like if you touched anything, it would crumble and blow away. We needed rain.

“What did you say?”

He stood next to me, his hand wrapped around one of the bars for an instant, then he yanked it away from the cooking metal. He blew on his hand. “Kind of rough on a guy who just lost his granddaughter.”

“He didn’t find her that long ago.”

“Jesus.” He barely said it, but I still heard him.

I was having a hard enough time thinking about the things I needed to think about without the weight of his judgment. “Call up Jim Craft down in Natrona County and get him to go check out the Flying J, see what they say about the stolen card.”

He cleared his throat, adjusted his wraparound sunglasses, and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “All right.”

“And then ask DCI if there was anything in Ho Thi indicating drug use.” The brim of my hat hung across my brow, so I pushed it back and continued to look at the horizon for clouds that weren’t there.

He stiffened a little. “Why?”

“Because Paquet was and, most likely, if she was involved in prostitution she was involved in drugs.” I took my boot off the rung and stood there looking at him. He was a handsome kid, and there wasn’t any back-down in him, especially with me, and that’s why I liked him so much. I turned and started toward my truck. “You’d be amazed at what you’d do if you were desperate.”

Khe Sanh, Vietnam: 1968

The NVA had found the range of the helicopter pretty quickly, and the mortar fire was singing around us like roman candles in the monsoon wet.

I ducked against the bulkhead and forced air in and out of my lungs, unsure if the whistling I heard was my breath or the enemy rounds. I looked over and saw Henry disconnecting Babysan Quang Sang from the webbing and the cargo net in anticipation of the Indo-Chinese fire drill from the helicopter.

He looked at me only once. “Run, and do not stop until you reach something.”

The generators along with the Willie Petes, or illumination rounds, from inside the wire lit up the area with a blinding sideways glare that threw dramatic contrasting shadows on the wet, rain-slicked surface of everything—as if the situation needed it.

We were coming in hot, and the big Kingbee followed the contours of the valley as we made the final approach, skimming in about six feet off the hard ground and stalling our movement at the LZ, with the gigantic circles of water imitating the interlocking revolution of the rotors.

Everybody moved at once. Hollywood Hoang gunned the engine with a roar as we piled off on one side, the two corpsmen following Henry and Babysan Quang Sang out of the helicopter’s side door and into the pouring rain and incandescent night.

I came out of a crouch and shot after the receding images of the running men; the two corpsmen had slanted right, toward the burned-out hulk of an M47 tank, and Henry and Babysan disappeared into a trench about fifty yards away.

I felt like a buffalo chasing antelope.

As my foot came off what pretended to be the landing strip, I felt the chopper begin its hurried ascent like it was falling from the earth instead of rising. Hoang had given us all the time he could and was now on his way out. I ran the first twenty or so yards from the helicopter when something pushed me to the red mud with a tremendous outburst of air and an immediate loss of oxygen, along with an explosion much louder than the rest. The impact of the overpressure forced my helmet onto my nose and pushed me forward, and I slid diagonally in the raw scarred mud.

I was pretty sure I was burning. It wasn’t that I felt like I was on fire, but the smell was so close that it had to be me. I couldn’t hear anything, just the sound of my breath and the coursing blood in my temples. When I moved, it was as if I were viewing myself in slow motion; even my head pivoted like it was on some long boom.

I forced myself to get up but fell to one side in the muck, and I half turned toward all the light. My eyes closed with the fury of it but, when I half opened one, I could see someone lying in the distance. The fire backlit the outline of a hand, and then an arm reached out into the night air. I stumbled up through the smoke and slanted sheets of rain.

There was wreckage everywhere, and the acrid taste of the fire filled my throat and pushed itself back out from my body. I gagged but staggered forward, looking for the arm that had reached out to me. I fell over smoking debris and could make out part of the helicopter’s fuselage as the drops sizzled on the superheated metal.

Hollywood Hoang’s uniform was singed but still mostly powder blue. I reached down and grabbed him, fell back, but held on, still trying to get my ears to clear the shrieking.

He didn’t weigh much, so I carried him, slowly pulling him the distance toward the trench and wondering what had happened to everyone else.

That’s when I saw the other bodies.

One of the corpsmen hadn’t made it. For some reason, the majority of the explosion had blown to the left and had taken him with it. The rotors, the engine, or just the sheer ferocity of the blast had caught him, and he lay there in three pieces. The other was crawling through the burning oil and was screaming. At least I assumed he was screaming since his mouth was open.

I got to the man, picked him up by the front of his flak jacket, and leveraged him onto one of my muddy knees. I grabbed again and got a better hold of him as his face rolled up toward mine. “Don’t leave me.”

I lifted Quincy Morton from Detroit, Michigan, put Hoang over my shoulder, and turned, starting toward the trench again. The smoke enveloped everything, and it was as if we disappeared. I slogged forward into the darkness; the heat pressed against my back like a steam iron, and the weight of the two bodies slowed me down to a crawl in the mud that collected under my combat boots.

I remembered the blocking sleds at USC and the grueling two-a-days under the California sun, squared my shoulders, put my head down, and pulled.

I had taken a good seven steps when somebody ran into me. He bounced off and must have fallen to the ground, so I released the swabo corpsman only for a second to try and help whoever had fallen, but the swabo misinterpreted the movement and grabbed my arm just as I saw the barrel of the AK-47 rising up and into my face. It didn’t matter. I didn’t have my rifle.

He fired, the cicada sound of the machine gun coming unwound as I fell with the whistling rush of the bullets flying beside me; I came down on him hard and could feel him trying to get the automatic loose from under me, but I’d yanked a hand free and could feel his throat. Everything was wet, and we slithered there against each other.

He was kicking, but the weight of all three of us didn’t allow for much movement. I tightened my grip on his larynx and felt the cartilage begin to give as his voice box collapsed and pressed into the air cavity of his esophagus. I couldn’t hear anything since the explosion, but I could imagine that I could still hear the spittle. He must have gargled like a baby working itself up for a full-blooded scream.

It never came.

He wasn’t moving and wasn’t breathing, but I still wasn’t sure if he was dead.

I lay there on top of him, retching, coughing, and finally vomiting.

I spit and cleared my mouth and felt for the two men who lay beside me, feeling the corpsman’s hands grabbing my arm. I got to my knees and then my feet, picked them up again, and staggered forward into the smothering rain. I gathered momentum, realizing that if we stayed out there in the open for much longer, we were dead.

The NVA had overrun the garrison and were headed for the wire; we were only a few steps ahead of them. I could feel my boots digging into the goose-shit ground, and what adrenaline I had left propelled me as we blew through the swirls of the remaining smoke-and mist-clogged night.

I continued to push off with each stride growing just a little bit longer, and with the mantra I will not die like this... I will not die like this... I will not die like this....

Men rose up ahead, but I didn’t have time to fight them all so I just continued on, blasting forward and taking them with me. The biggest was at point and tried to shrug down like a running back looking for a hole in the line, but I was too much weight with the two bodies I carried and took him as I lost my footing and carried us over the edge of a flat world.

We fell, and I could finally hear the weapons firing around me and the curse words, thankfully, in English. I opened my eyes but could only see the reddish rainwater that filtered between the stacks of soggy sandbags and Henry. He was cradling his brow with blood fil-tering through his fingers as he laughed and shook his head with that bitter secret-survivor smile.

He spoke out of the side of his mouth as he fired the CAR-16 over the lip of the trench, the flame from the 5.56’s barrel extending from the black metal like the eyes of some deflated jack-o’-lantern. The blood was still seeping from his head where I’d hit him, when he looked at me.

“When I said run till you reach something, I did not mean me.”

She tossed part of a crust to Dog, who was sitting in the hallway to my left. We watched as the beast took the baked dough and swallowed it in two bites.

“Because it’s your turn, and there isn’t anybody else.” She didn’t look satisfied with my answer, but she was relatively happy that I’d brought dinner before I headed back to the ranch to check on Cady.

Vic sipped her Rainier beer and watched as the giant folded the last slice of his pizza, stuffing it into his mouth behind the impenetrable curtain of black hair, and chewed. He had eaten all of his own pie and all but the one slice Vic had picked at and the three slices I’d devoured of another. He’d chugged the liter of pop that we’d provided and finally lay back on the bunk and covered his eyes with his arm.

Vic studied him for a moment and then spoke. “So the one night I’m going to sleep in the jail, you’re going home?” I didn’t say anything. She watched me as I took a sip of my beer. “Sure you don’t want to stick around? ”

“One of us can’t leave this room.” I glanced at the prisoner, now snoring softly. “And under the circumstances . . .”

She shrugged. “This is the shittiest pizza I’ve ever eaten.”

I continued to watch the Indian. “He seemed to like it.”

“He lives under the highway; I’m not so sure his culinary sensibilities are all that refined.”

I peeled the R on the label of my beer bottle with my thumbnail. “Saizarbitoria thinks I’m a racist.”

“That’s okay. I think you’re a slave driver.” She pushed her ball cap back; the hat was a sign that she was having a bad hair day—something that I had learned not to mention. “Why?”

“I was kind of hard on this Tuyen fellow today.”

“Really? ”

“Yep.” I looked at the glue strip where the label had peeled away. “I don’t know, maybe it is prejudice. He was in the Black Tigers and STRATA.”

She stared at me. “And for those of us who weren’t born until after the Age of Aquarius, what the fuck does that mean? ”

“Black Tigers were the South Vietnamese version of our Special Forces, and STRATA was a program that dropped these guys behind enemy lines. There were, I think, about a hundred of them and about a third never made it back.”

“So this guy’s one bad motor scooter?”

“Could be.” I took a deep breath. “His English is good, better than any Vietnamese speaker I’ve ever heard....” It was silent too long, so I changed the subject. “Anything from Quincy, over at the VA? ” She lowered her beer bottle and looked at me as I stood and gathered the detritus, setting the two empty pizza boxes and bottles on the counter.

“He’s on vacation in the garden spot of garden spots, Detroit, and won’t be back until first thing tomorrow. I told them somebody would be by.”

“Did you ask them if they were missing a seven-foot Indian? ”

“I did, but the twit I was talking to didn’t really come forth with much.”

“You want to ride over to Sheridan with me tomorrow morning?”

“No.” She stood, considering me as I stopped in the doorway, and then leaned back against the minifridge door. “Not after sleeping on the jail floor all night . . . alone.” I watched her as she approached me—the way the uniform hung in all the right places, the lush, hanging-gardens-of-Babylon quality of her general physique. “It’s the uniform, right?”

“No, it’s not the uniform.”

“I mean . . . because it’s okay. I mean some guys are freaky, and they like a woman in uniform, but you’re not.”

We were standing in the doorway, just out of the giant’s line of sight, and somehow the conversation we’d been meaning to have was even worse here. “Not what?”

“Freaky.”

“No, I’m not.” She was standing close, and my back was against the wall in more ways than one. She put a hand out and touched my sleeve, running her fingers up my arm and feeling the embroidery at the sheriff ’s patch. Those eyes turned up to me. I could smell her, all of her, and started remembering that night in Philadelphia again. “Look . . .”

Her face was about eight inches from mine. “What?”

“I just . . . I don’t know if...”

In the dim light of the hall, her eyes shone, and I found myself studying the haloed glow. “What?”

“What we did, that one time, was out of context and now we’re back...”

She slowly went up on tiptoe and her hand trailed to the back of my neck as she pulled, and the distance between our faces decreased. “What’a ya say we slip out of these uniforms and get out of context again? ”

I brought my hands up to the small of her back and felt her shiver like a colt.

Contrary to popular belief, the best kisses don’t start lip to lip. This one started at the scar at my collarbone, nibbled its way up the muscles at the side of my neck, and paused at my jaw. I was having trouble breathing when I heard her moan, and it sounded as if it were coming from somewhere else, somewhere east and not so long ago. I turned my face to allow our lips to meet, but she’d frozen and had turned her head toward the holding cells.

We both stood there breathing, and her voice caught. “I think the prisoner is waking up.”

I nodded and watched as her arm and face slipped away. I caught her and pulled her in with one hand, placing the tip of my chin on top of her head and holding her there for just a moment, not talking. I felt her sigh and then loosened my grip.

“I guess I better get back in sight.”

I watched as she moved the folding chair and sat in plain view of the Indian, who immediately quieted down.

“If it makes you feel any better, I was thinking about asking you out on a date.”

Her head rose, and the dark gold of her eyes again shone, the lengthy canine tooth exposed like an ivory warning flare. “A what?”

I could feel my courage heading for the hills. “That’s what we used to call it back in the old days—dating.”

“Really? ”

“Yep.” I’m pretty sure my face was taking on a little color, but I braved it through and went back to pick up the trash from the counter. “What do they call it now? ”

The half-smile smirk stalled there like a cat playing with a mouse as she looked up at me. “Sport fucking.”

I lingered beside her for a moment and then glanced at the big Indian before heading out. It just seemed like our timing was never right. She waited till I was halfway down the hall before calling after me. “You sure you go? Me love you loooooooooong time....”