Little Saigon

Chapter 13

For the next two hours Frye controlled events from over his own shoulder, a hovering, objective, third party to himself. It was just after one in the morning.

He got the other Frye to answer questions and control his urge to vomit. He tried to counter the other Frye’s drowsiness and the constant grinding of his jaw. He watched with detached interest as CSI Duncan finally walked from the study, bearing a plastic garbage bag, tied and tagged. The gurney slid by silently a few moments later. The other Frye just stood there in front of him with tears running down his cheeks, and he thought: The kid needs a break.

The other Frye dealt with Minh rather admirably, he thought, answering his questions patiently, then finally standing up and telling the detective to go fuck himself and talk to someone else. The other Frye bummed a smoke from someone and went outside.

The other Frye watched as the FBI descended and Special Agent Wiggins in his lawyer’s suit took charge. He nodded when Wiggins took him into one of the girls’ bedrooms and explained that no one, repeat, no one must know that Xuan was beheaded. This, in order to catch the perp. He refused to sign whatever it was they asked him to sign.

The other Frye saw the horror in Madame Tuy’s eyes as an agent escorted her and her daughters into a waiting car.

Both Fryes watched as they wheeled Nha to the ambulance on a stretcher, her body cold and pale as ice, a shock so deep that the faces of the paramedics said she really might not make it.

Then it was two o’clock. The two Fryes slowly joined again and melted into the bucket seat of the Cyclone. The car either moved, or the road slid under it — he wasn’t sure of the mechanics — but Bolsa Avenue began to pass along the windows.

Little Saigon crept by on either side, a tunnel of lights and shops. First there were two of everything, but he wiped his eyes and then there was only one.

Outside the Committee to Free Vietnam headquarters, Bennett’s van waited in the parking lot.

Frye pulled in and parked next to it. For a long while he just sat there, wondering why he was just sitting there.

He found himself outside the well-lit lobby. The door was cracked open, Frye tried it — locked, but not pulled shut. He went in. Posters of entertainers — Li among them, maps, three desks and typewriters, three phones, and a collection of cheap patio chairs. A South Vietnamese flag hung against the far wall. Another wall supported a military shrine of some kind: a glass case containing an empty uniform pinned to a backboard as if still occupied by its owner. The boots, medals, holster, pistol, and belt were all in place. A dark walnut door leading further into the building was shut.

Frye stood there, trying to quell the visions that kept swirling before his eyes.

But displayed in a case beside the uniform were three photographs that brought them on even stronger. In the first picture a naked man was being led by two soldiers. Behind them were thatched roof bungalows and jungle. In the second, the man was kneeling before a man with a sword. In the third he was still kneeling, but his head lay on the ground beside him and dark streams of blood ran down his chest.

Colonel Thach stood above his victim in post-pivotal grace, legs bent, arms and sword extended, like Reggie sending one out of Yankee Stadium. His face was a hideous grimace. Below the photographs was a simple card, thumbtacked to the wall, that said IN MEMORY OF GENERAL HAN, RESISTANCE LEADER — 1935–1986.

Frye slumped into a patio chair, staring into the horrible face of the colonel. I’d give just about anything in the world, he thought, to make this all go away.

A muffled thud issued from somewhere beyond the lobby. Frye wondered why his heart didn’t beat faster, why a surge of adrenaline didn’t break loose inside him, but all he felt was numb. Another thud, voices.

He stood up, turned off the lobby lights, and cracked the wooden door.

The back room was a warehouse, expansive and tall, with open rafters and industrial lights hung from chains. There were shelves stacked with pamphlets and literature, rows of books, boxes and cartons of indeterminate content. A portable podium with microphone, a public address system, and a couple of television monitors were placed along the near wall. At the far end of the big room Crawley and Nguyen loaded crates from a pallet into a red van. Coffin-shaped, but shorter, Frye thought. Legs and arms. Hands and feet. Heads are not replaceable.

Bennett stood nearby, watching, a short automatic weapon in his hands. He held it up, sighted on some target in the rafters, pulled the trigger. Frye heard the dry ping echo toward him. Bennett placed the weapon into a crate and Donnell hammered on the lid.

Frye wondered at how unsurprised he was. Deep down inside, he told himself, I knew he was lying all along.

“That’s the end of it,” said Crawley.

Nguyen swung shut the van doors, wiped his hands. “We shouldn’t worry. DeCord will change his mind. It’s his job to be reasonable.”

“He just followin’ orders,” said Donnell. “You shoulda seen his face when Benny told him it was all down on tape.”

“Well, the fucking tape is gone, so hurry up,” said Bennett.

He swung across the floor and opened the door of the van. The special platform rotated out, and he climbed into the seat. Frye watched Crawley point in his direction. “Gotta lock it up?”

“I already did,” said Nguyen, checking his watch. “Let’s go.”

Frye saw the big aluminum door rise, folding back into its runners. Bennett’s van started with a roar and a puff of white smoke. When it was outside, the door came down and a moment later, the lights went off.

From the darkness of the lobby Frye watched Bennett’s van emerge onto Bolsa and head west, toward the freeway. The invisible man in the uniform watched from beside him. Frye did what Nguyen should have done: closed the door all the way.

You lied to me, brother.

He walked to the Cyclone, unaware of what was around him, watching the van roll down Bolsa. He felt drawn to Bennett now like a moth to light, like a junkie to the needle, like a tightrope walker to the heights.

He wondered dully just how bad this could get.

He steered down Bolsa, Bennett’s van mixing with the traffic ahead.

Traffic was light on the San Diego Freeway south. Frye stayed four cars back and in another lane. His head ached and his hands felt cold. Things kept jumping into the periphery of his vision — ugly things, things disassembled, shapes within shapes. He looked down and realized how hard he was gripping the wheel, tried to relax.

Westminster gave way to Fountain Valley, Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, Irvine. Frye started shaking, so he rolled up the windows and turned on the heater. At Jamboree Road, Bennett signaled and got off. They headed toward the ocean. Corona del Mar was busy and the lights all wanted to blur together so Frye just let them, thinking — go ahead fuckers, blur all you want because all I have to do is follow the red taillights, the bouncing red taillights, there’s too much red in this world, if everything was blue or green it would be a better place, no doubt about that at all.

Then south on Coast Highway along the hillsides and pasturelands belonging to the Frye Ranch, future site of the Laguna Paradiso — three hotels, twenty clusters of custom homesites, riding trails, an equestrian center, a yacht marina, and a shopping plaza the size of a small Central American republic.

Frye looked out his window. Shouldering moonlight, the hills stooped like peasants, humble, uninformed of their future. He read the sign as he passed it:

Bennett had stopped in a left-turn lane. Frye moved to the far right and sped past. In his rearview he saw the van wait for the traffic to clear, then ease across the highway toward the development entrance. Nothing more than a dirt road, he thought, winding back into the country. I’ll just get on it, wind back and keep winding until the road disappears, then I’ll get out and walk until the continent ends, then I’ll swim until the water dries up, and when the water is gone I’ll move through the air, like a vapor, a hawk, an angel...

He watched Bennett’s taillights bounce toward the gate. A moment later he yanked his wheel hard and spun a U-turn. By the time he came to the gate and another big sign announcing the Laguna Paradiso, the van had disappeared over a hillock.

He killed the headlights, got out, and tried the lock. The dust from the van settled around him. The lock wouldn’t budge. Just as well, he thought, they’d spot the Cyclone anyway. He backed the car up the highway, nearly out of sight around a curve, then wandered back, jumped the gate, and started down the dirt road.

The Coast Highway traffic was soon behind him. He looked ahead in the darkness for Bennett’s van, but all he could see was the pale strip of graded earth blending into the hills. The smell of dust hovered over the road, along with the scrubbed aroma of sage and eucalyptus, a hint of oranges from the east, of ocean from the west. He stopped, turned his ear away from the onshore breeze: an engine died in the middle distance; doors opened and closed. The road climbed steeply over the next rise, leveled, then rose again. Frye stopped at the top and surveyed the meadow, wide and touched by moonlight. The van sat in the middle.

Beside it was a dark transport helicopter, rotor blades drooping. Crawley and Nguyen had swung open the van doors and started moving the crates into the cargo bay of the waiting chopper. Bennett stood nearby, with two men that Frye couldn’t recognize. He squatted behind a small oak and watched. It could have been fifteen minutes, or two hours. He counted the cases as they were loaded.

A family of skunks waddled past, not ten feet away, a stinking mom and three perfect miniatures. Frye held his breath and kept counting: twenty-six cases in all, heavy enough to require two men, even when one was Donnell.

When he turned to watch where the skunks had gone he saw the form on a ridge behind him, a kneeling hump with a large mirror of moonlight where its eyes should be. It was still as a rock. It gave off a series of soft clicking noises. Paul DeCord focused one end of the long lens.

Frye almost shot through the oak branches when the helicopter started, an earth-shivering whine that set the blades slowly into motion. Donnell was closing the van doors. Nguyen had already climbed in. The man that Bennett was talking to lowered his hand and Bennett shook it, then swiveled toward his van. Frye turned slowly back to DeCord, but only the ridge was there. Not much choice, he thought, but to stay put.

The helicopter engines accelerated, the blades slowly straightened, the meadow grass whorled and flattened beneath them. Bennett’s van backed away without sound. When the machine lifted into the air, Crawley ran over and kicked up the flattened grass where the tires had rested. The van circled, headlights spraying light onto the meadow.

Frye knew he should press himself against the earth and put his face to the dirt. Avoid detection. Protect his night vision. But he just sat there while the chopper roared over, shaking the tree, raising leaves and debris. He closed his eyes.

Then the pounding of the engines gave way to the minor workings of the van as it lumbered up the road toward him. A moment later it was past, a set of red taillights in the dust.

He leaned against the oak tree and finally opened his eyes again.

A road. A meadow. The muted hiss of traffic on Coast Highway. The future site of Laguna Paradiso, Edison and Bennett Frye, a Frye Ranch Development.

He turned on the television and every light in his house.

Cristobel had left a message that said: “Didn’t mean to freeze you. I’m still touching the water with my toes. Cold sometimes. Thanks for bringing back my dog. See you soon. How about lunch tomorrow?”

He poured a huge glassful of vodka.

The nurse at Westminster Hospital would tell him only that Tuy Nha had been admitted that night.

He dragged his old typewriter from the cave region, set it up on the kitchen table, and started writing the story of Tuy Xuan.

He told about the killings in Paris, Australia, and San Francisco. He told about the arms and legs that Xuan and his daughter helped to ship to Vietnam. He told about Colonel Thach’s vengeance and the tiny war the refugees waged against him, the kidnapping of Li, the secret photographers, the FBI, the flatfooted cops, the gangs that hated each other, the kids that loved Li.

An hour later he read it over, and all he saw were holes. What evidence is there that some distant colonel ordered Xuan’s murder? That said colonel had orchestrated murders around the world? What witness could testify that the supplies Xuan sent weren’t legs but guns? What did it matter that stubborn refugees who’d already lost the war were still at it in their pitiful, impotent way? What connection was there between the kidnapping of Li and the politics of Little Saigon? She was part of the richest family in the county, wasn’t she? Who cared that people loved her and looked up to her — people loved and looked up to Jimmy Swaggart for chrissakes. And Tuy Xuan’s study was torn apart, wasn’t it? Who’s to say that vicious thieves hadn’t taken his savings — Vietnamese don’t put their money in banks, you know — and signed Thach’s name to divert attention from them? And how much money did Xuan take in, to purchase his “prosthetics”? Did a little get into his pocket, perhaps? And who knows what kind of shady deals the Vietnamese here really make, anyway. Maybe the old man had it coming. Maybe in the war, in his patriotic fervor, Xuan had rolled a few heads himself.

Frye could picture Ronald Billingham hovering over his desk, tossing the copy back to him and saying, “You can’t accuse a man of murder when nobody saw him do it and he was halfway around the world when it happened.

This is America, Chuck, You’re a little too close to this one, buddy. I’ve got an art museum fundraiser tonight — cover it with a photog and don’t drink all the champagne.”

Besides, a story like that would expose Bennett.

Frye tossed the sheets to the lacerated couch.

Bennett called at quarter of four. “Wiggins just told me about Xuan, Chuck. I was out tonight or I’d have—”

“I know. You were at the Paradise.”

“Who told you that?”

“I watched. And so did Paul DeCord. With a camera.”

“It’s real important, Chuck, that you don’t say anything to anyone at this point. I can’t stress how—”

“I figured that.”

The silence seemed to go on forever before Frye spoke again. “Do you know about Colonel Thach?”

“You can’t spend much time in Little Saigon and not hear about Colonel Thach.”

“Did Wiggins tell you what they did to Xuan?”

“They shot him.”

“Wiggins made me swear I wouldn’t say anything, but Xuan wasn’t shot. He was beheaded.”

“Jesus, Chuck.”

“Thach could have engineered this, couldn’t he?”

“I’ve been praying since Sunday night that he didn’t.”

“You’ve suspected since then?”

“You saw what left the Paradiso tonight, Chuck. Colonel Thach and I have been making war on each other for ten years now. I never thought he’d bring it to me.”

Frye just stood there, part of him surprised at what his brother had been doing, part of him not even surprised a little. “What if he has?”

“Then we’ll never see Li again — alive. And more people in Little Saigon are going to die.”

“Who could stop him?”

Bennett waited. “Nobody has been able to yet.”

“What about the Feds?”

“They won’t even talk, not to me.”

“Dien?”

“He’s looking after his money and his reputation. I don’t think he could touch Thach’s people if he wanted to.”

“What about you?”

“I’m working on it. I have been for ten years. That’s all I can say.”

“I figured as much.”

“Chuck? Do one thing for me. Be careful, very careful, about where you go and what you do. I’ve asked you to stay out of this, now I’m ordering you.”

“I don’t work for you, Bennett.”

Bennett was silent. “No, I guess you don’t.”

Frye hung up. Who might know if Thach’s men had come here? Who knows all the comings and goings in Little Saigon? Who talks to the people, has his finger on things?

Who?

He is the most powerful man in Little Saigon.

Now I’ve got another reason to see the General.

More exhausted than he’d ever felt in his life, Frye fell into bed.