Conspiracy

68

Thao Duong went home after eating. Karr followed, keeping his distance as the Art Room had directed earlier. Shortly after he sat down at the café a block away, Marie Telach came on the line with new instructions.

“Tommy, we want to be in a position to pick up Thao Duong if necessary. You’re going to have to find a way to get a tracking bug on him.”

“Aw, man.”

“I don’t think it will be impossible. I was thinking you could plant one of the horse shoe bugs in his shoe. We’ve done that in heels before. We saw on one of the surveillance shots that he wears thick Western-style dress shoes.”

“Nah, that’s not what I was complaining about. It’ll be easy. But I was just about to order some food,” Karr said, getting up. “Now I have to get back to work.”

“Didn’t you just eat?”

“Snacks from street vendors don’t count,” said Karr.

He found a shoe repairman whose shop was still open a few blocks away. Considering the language barrier — even with the translator talking in Karr’s ear, he struggled to get the tones right — he thought he did fairly well to buy an entire shoe repair set for fifty bucks. The cobbler even had his apprentice shine Karr’s shoes as part of the deal.

He was wearing sneakers, so it wasn’t much of a shine.

Still, the thought was there.

Karr hoped that Thao Duong would veg out in front of the television and call it an early night; he’d break into the apartment and doctor the Vietnamese bureaucrat’s shoes once he was sleeping. But around eight o’clock, Thao Duong put on his things and went downstairs to his own motorbike.

Karr had already bugged the bike, so he let Thao Duong stay about two blocks ahead. It wasn’t long before Karr realized where they were going — the same red-light district that Cam Tre Luc had visited the night before.

“Ten bucks he’s headed to Saigon Rouge,” said Rockman. “I had a hunch these guys were connected.”

“Where’s my ten bucks?” said Karr as Thao Duong passed by the street where Saigon Rouge was.

“He’ll come back,” said Rockman. “Don’t get too close.” Karr turned to parallel Thao Duong as he drove deeper in District 4. Finally Rockman reported that Thao Duong had stopped a few blocks away.

The buildings in the area Karr drove through were mostly one-story shacks, a patchwork of mismatched metal and discarded wood. Men clustered in the shade of the streetlights, eying the large motorcycle driver suspiciously.

Thao Duong had stopped on a block with large buildings, five-and six-story ware houses made of crumbling cement.

Karr spotted the bike in front of a narrow five-story building whose bottom-floor windows were covered with pieces of cardboard boxes and whose upper windows were empty. He circled the block. A chain-link fence topped with barbed wire set off a tiny junkyard immediately behind the building.

As soon as Karr stopped, a trio of large dogs ran at him, smashing into the fence as they yapped.

“Guess I’ll wait somewhere else,” he told the dogs, revving the bike and driving away.

“Thao Dung’s bike is moving,” Rockman said.

“You sure?”

“Bike’s moving. I don’t know if he’s on it.”

“Yeah, around here, it could easily have been stolen,” said Karr. He zipped around the block, but rather than following Thao Duong, he cruised slowly in front of the building where he had been, pulled a U-turn at the end of the block, and came back.

“Tommy, what are you doing?” asked Rockman.

“We can always find the bike,” explained Karr.

He pulled his bike up on the curb, and cruised slowly down the sidewalk to the front of the building. Though un-even, the cement was in far better shape than the nearby structures. Karr stopped next to a telephone pole, casually steadying himself there with his left hand — and planting two video bugs at the same time.

A fireplug of a man came out of the building, yelling at Karr in Vietnamese. Karr waved at the man, then gunned the bike away.

“Are you interested in knowing what he said?” asked the translator in the Art Room.

“I’m thinking it had something to do with my ancestry,” laughed Karr.

“Good guess.”

“Thao Duong’s bike is back at his apartment,” said Rockman. “It was him — he’s inside. OK, we’re listening to him.”

“You have any information on that building?” Karr asked.

“Negative.”

“See what you can dig up for me. I’ll check it out later, once the genealogist goes to sleep.” By the time Karr got to Thao Duong’s apartment, Thao Duong had already gone upstairs and was watching a Vietnam ese soap opera. Karr cruised the neighborhood, making sure he hadn’t been followed, then found a restaurant several blocks away where he could get something to eat while waiting for Thao Duong to go to bed.

Three plates of Vietnamese barbecue ribs, two dishes of steamy noodles with shrimp, and a whole chicken later,

Thao Duong was still awake and watching television.

“Didn’t anyone ever tell him that stuff rots your mind?” Karr told Rockman when he gave him the update.

“Guess you’ll just have to chill.”

“Yeah. Good thing I saved room for dessert.”