Little Saigon

Chapter 1

Chuck Frye, former second-best surfer of Laguna Beach, gazed through his windshield and saw no six-foot waves.

Instead, Laguna Canyon Road sped toward him in the darkness, its yellow stripe wavering, eucalyptus trees whisking past the beams of his skewed headlights.

Scenes from the last forty-eight hours played in his mind — fragments of a weekend abandon that was reckless far beyond the limits of common sense. It began as an epic debauch and things went downhill fast. It was exactly what he wanted. The time is nigh, Frye thought, to get myself together.

He sat up straight, took a deep and dizzying breath. How many motoring souls have met their maker on this road? he wondered. In his own lifetime it seemed like a million: busloads of tourists colliding with cement mixers, sports cars slamming into each other head-on, bikers wrapping themselves around power poles while their machines scattered fireworks across the hillsides. And always the orange outlines of the bodies, sprayed by the police to mark the final attitude of the departed.

Frye signaled contritely and made a left turn onto Canyon Oaks Drive.

The old Mercury rumbled past the nursery and body shops, then past the rickety little houses clustered in the darkness. The moon and a distant streetlamp shone on beat-up cars, toolsheds of odd design, drooping clotheslines. A cat ran through three gradients of shadow, then vanished under a pickup. A stand of plantain drooped with malarial laziness, while beside it a wall of honeysuckle gave off an aroma that made everything seem even warmer than it was. Laguna Beach — art colony, tourist trap, a piece of attempted Eden crammed between the hills and the ocean, hippies in the sixties, cocaine in the seventies, AIDS in the eighties, a representative Southern California beach town.

Nimbly executing a hairpin left, Frye gunned the Cyclone up a straightaway so vertical that the sky became a dashboard of whirling needles. Then the stars rushed back into place as he plopped level, narrowly missing the mailbox he had knocked over months ago and that now lay door-up in the ivy in front of his cave-house. He worked himself from the car, wrestled his mail from the box and advanced on his front door. “Home,” he mumbled. “Frye one, Visitors zip.”

The cave-house stood before him, a dark lump against a dark sky. It was built into a hill overlooking the city, facing west. Fumbling with his keys, Frye marveled again at the frankly weird history of the place — the gist being that one Skippy Sharp had paid a contractor to build a house in the great sandstone outcropping, then had run out of money when the project was only half finished. Skippy had lived in it for a few months before disappearing forever into Mexico, so the contractor himself took it over, then Sharp’s mother somehow got control of the thing and rented it in succession to a painter, an architect, a fish breeder, a child-molester, a nurse, then finally to the former second-best surfer in Laguna. Not long after he had rented it, Frye learned that the land had been bought by his own father, the venerable Edison Joseph Frye, thereby adding this tiny piece of ground to the vast Orange County Frye Ranch. Mrs. Sharp still “managed” the property, raising Frye’s rent often and with gusto, believing, he concluded, that his family fortune warranted such outrage. It was, in fact, a cave-house — with back rooms being nothing more than dark irregular caverns. But the living room, bedroom, kitchen and bath featured walls, electricity, and unimpeded views of the Pacific. Frye’s friends said that the cave-house was like Frye himself: half-finished, prone to dark recesses. At any rate, it was home.

He stood in the living room and felt the floor rotating under him, an illusion he explained away as the spinning of Earth on her axis. He went straight to his answering machine. Frye attended to this gadget with devotion, hopeful that some huge improvement might be in the offing.

Linda called to say she had filed Friday.

Dr. Redken’s office called: scan results in.

Bill Antioch at the MegaShop called to tell him about the Masters Invitational Surf Contest at Huntington Beach.

The last message was from Bennett. “Hope you haven’t forgotten the birthday thing at the Wind. Li wrote a song for us. See you there about ten, little brother. Saigon Days is still going on — that civic party — so I’ll save you a seat. That’s today, Sunday, in case you forgot.”

Frye checked his watch but it was gone. He fumbled for a light switch, knocked over a stack of résumés he’d just had copied, then consulted his MegaShop surf calendar. It was still turned to February because of the whopping Hawaiian wave pictured there, tubular and perfect as Jack Lord’s hair. Flipping to August he confirmed that this was Sunday — Bennett’s birthday and, of course, his own.

He gathered up the résumés, wondering if the Register would call him. The Times had turned him down for lack of five years’ experience in daily-news reporting. He’d sent a résumé and a snappy cover letter to every newspaper in driving distance. He hated writing those letters more than anything on Earth.

Frye called time, made a cup of coffee, dumped in some milk and went outside. Feeling festive on this, his thirty-third birthday, he put down the convertible top and set out for Little Saigon.

Back out Laguna Canyon Road, up the San Diego Freeway, a warm summer night filled with redolent intervals of strawberries, oranges, asparagus, smog.

Thoughts of Linda — filing Friday — rushed his mind, but Frye countered them with the radio news and images of his weekend bacchanal. His marriage had lasted five years. In the end it had shot downward with an almost ballistic velocity. He assumed he had asked for it. Linda, he thought, I can’t face you now, love.

He pondered his family instead. Bennett Mark Frye, ex-second lieutenant, 3d platoon, C Company, 1st Battalion, 3d Marines. Bennett had made his bones and spilled his blood in Dong Zu, just north of Saigon, suffered the instant havoc of a Bouncing Betty, and returned to the States shortened and decorated. At thirty-eight, he was five years older than Chuck, to the day. Sometimes this shared birthday seemed all they had in common. Bennett, in his full complement, was shortish and thick; Chuck was taller, by far, and lean. Bennett was dark; Chuck light. Bennett was popular, a leader; Chuck was private and often even had trouble leading himself. Bennett was better at just about everything. Their father, Edison, took an almost sociological interest in the differences between his sons, which he concluded were generational and not genetic. As a decorated World War II hero, Edison believed military discipline had made Bennett what he was today, and that Chuck’s lack of any discipline at all had made him what he was — and wasn’t. Then there was Hyla, the peacemaker and source of whatever grace her sons had come to possess.

He got off on Bolsa, made a U-turn, and headed into the city of Westminster. The street signs were done in Old English lettering and the buildings sported hints of the Tudor — a grafting of English hamlet onto Southern California suburb.

Drinking coffee, he sped down Bolsa past the Brothers of Patrick Novitiate, which hovered quietly behind a stand of olive trees; past the Colony Funeral Home and its high stained-glass windows; past the subdivisions and trailer parks, the fast food stands, and auto shops. Everything closed at eight.

Westminster, he thought, just forty miles south of L.A. and fifteen north of Laguna, but a world apart. A suburb straining for identity, thus the Briticisms. The words “bedroom community” might apply, but always made Frye think of one huge mattress shared by people who did nothing but sleep, snack in bed, and mate. When the Indo-Chinese refugees arrived in the late seventies, Westminster got the identity it never had: it became capital of the largest population of Vietnamese outside of Southeast Asia. The numbers kept changing, as numbers do. Last Frye had heard, there were three hundred thousand Vietnamese in California, and half of them lived in the south. Eighty thousand alone lived in Orange County — most of those lived right here.

Another block down Bolsa, and the suburban landscape suddenly changed. East of the Asian Culture Center, all the signs were in bright Vietnamese. Crenulated tile rooftops with ornate extrados winged off into the darkness. Storefronts and parking lots were cluttered with flyers. The shop windows were alive with hand-scrawled paint: Siêu Thị Mỹ-Hoa Supermarket, Thò’i Trang Fabrics, Bảo Ngọc Jewelry and Gifts, Ba Lẹ Café, Tuyết Hổng Service Center, Ngân Đình Sandwich. The warm inland air no longer smelled of citrus, but of cooked fish and frying vegetables and exotic, unidentified spice. Frye breathed it all in. Little Saigon, he thought, and a few years ago hardly a Vietnamese in the state.

He watched the cars bustling in and out of the lots, and the refugees — dark people with dark eyes and black hair and solemn faces — gathered by the storefronts, glancing about as if expecting the worst. The South Vietnamese flag — yellow and red — waved outside a fish market, and beneath it hung a banner proclaiming these to be City of Westminster “Saigon Days.” An old man at the corner leaned on a cane and stared at the crosswalk. His wife stared too. A cultural pastime for some, Frye thought: waiting to leave. Three young girls skipped past the couple and weaved through the traffic.

He slowed and passed Washington Street, the first of the next half-dozen streets that — in a county called Orange but having few oranges, in a city called Westminster but having few English, in a place called Little Saigon but as far away from Vietnam as one might get — bear the names of the first six American presidents.

There seemed to be some lesson for the republic, but what was it?

He made a right at Brookhurst and kept his eye out for the nightclub, tucked in a corner and easy to miss. Then he spotted the neon green and orange with its bent palm tree, glowing against the summer night. ASIAN WIND CABARET — DANCING & DINING. The marquee said: CELEBRATE SAIGON DAYS... LI FRYE IN CONCERT... HAPPY BIRTHDAY BENNETT AND BOTHER. Second billing again, he thought, and they spelled me wrong. Certain individuals would not protest that call. Looks like a sellout too — parking lot buried in cars and a crowd at the door.

Julie, the club owner, was working the ticket window. She looked up, smiled, and waved him in. Frye stuffed his wad of bills back into a pocket: six hundred and thirty-seven dollars, his total lifetime savings to date, not including a business account that had next month’s lease payment for the MegaShop.

He stepped through the bead curtains and into the club.

It was jammed with refugees, all wanting to see their living legend. People were already looking for places to stand along the walls. Paper lamps cast an easy glow over lacquered tables and chairs, potted palms, and bow-tied waiters. The dance floor and stage were bathed in red light that glinted brightly off the microphone stand and guitars. The bass drum had LI FRYE emblazoned on it. Another banner over the stage announced SAIGON DAYS. A layer of smoke wavered in the beams from the spotlights. Frye scanned the ocean of Asian faces, all chopped into rotating bevels of shadow and light by a glitter ball hanging from the ceiling. The room seemed to be caught in some gentle, subaquatic swirl. Mirrored walls multiplied ever-diminishing replicas of it all.

He could see Bennett at a table near the back of the room, with Donnell Crawley and Nguyen Hy and a woman he didn’t recognize. Burke Parsons was partially obscured, as always, by a cowboy hat. Bennett was holding forth: arms outstretched, head forward and canted to one side as he talked. Frye waved and headed backstage. Benny, always at the center of things.

Li was locking a silver Halliburton case when Frye walked into her dressing room. She glanced quickly to the mirror in front of her, then hopped up and came toward him. Full lovely face, waves of black hair, eyes dark and lustrous as obsidian. Her ao dai was purple, with black silk trousers. “I didn’t hear you come in, Chuck. Happy birthday!” She tiptoed up, pecked his cheek, then wiped it with a pale finger.

He smiled. Something about Li always reduced him to appreciative idiocy, always made him smile. Maybe it was everything she’d been through. He had the feeling when he touched her that a fragile, priceless object was momentarily in his care. A smile was the least you could offer her. “Just wanted my kiss while Benny wasn’t looking. And to wish you luck for the show.”

She stood away and looked at him. “You are a sweet man, Chuck. My chú, my number one.”

“You look great, Li. Break a leg.” He kissed her. He watched her watch him. “What are these ‘Saigon Days’ all about?”

“That’s the city, showing us off. Proud of what good citizens we’ve become.” She smiled. “Have you heard anything from Linda?”

“Yes. We’re history.”

She put her arms around him and pressed close. Her perfume smelled good. Then she stepped back and took his hands. “Perhaps it was simply meant to be.”

“Whatever.”

“No one can kill your heart, Chuck.” She looked at the Halliburton on her table. “Enjoy the show, chú. I have to finish my makeup.”

“Sing up a storm, Li.”

“I will. So many important people tonight. Lucia Parsons from the MIA Committee had to cancel, but she sent Burke instead. We can talk after the show, Chuck. There are a cake and presents at the house. I’ve written the most lovely song for Benny.”

Frye picked his way back across the crowded room and sat down next to his brother. Bennett’s face swam in the light of the glitter ball. His hand was dry and strong. “Happy birthday, Chuck. You’re not even late.”

“Wouldn’t miss this,” Frye said. “Happy birthday to you, too.” He shook hands with Donnell Crawley, Bennett’s dark and silent war buddy, who smothered Frye’s hand and nodded. Nguyen Hy, looking dapper and frail as always, placed his cigarette in an ashtray and offered his thin fingers. Hy, Frye knew, was head of the Center for Vietnam, a local humanitarian group. He never missed a chance to solicit help or money. He introduced the Vietnamese woman beside him. Her name was Kim, and she worked as a fundraiser for Hy’s CFV. “You don’t look very much like Bennett,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said, elbowing his brother in the ribs.

“One surf nazi per family is enough,” said Bennett. Frye saw him check his watch and glance toward the stage. “Five minutes and she’ll be on, little brother.”

“Surf nazi?” asked Kim.

Nguyen leaned forward to clarify. “A surfing enthusiast. Chuck is a former champion.”

“Chuck is a former everything at this point,” said Bennett, flagging a waiter. “What’s the deal on your job?”

“I’m freelance now.”

“Vodka?”

“Almost have to.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Burke Parsons, tipping his hat to Frye. “I’ll get this round.”

Frye nodded, considering Burke: Texas-oil rich, quiet, generous. Another friend of Bennett’s from the war. His sister Lucia got the headlines, as founder of an MIA Committee that was making genuine progress. Burke seemed to bask contentedly on her peripheries — rubbing shoulders, buying drinks, networking to no particular effect. Every time Frye saw him, Parsons was wearing the same moronic hat.

Bennett ordered for everyone. “Billingham won’t reconsider?”

Frye sighed and looked out to the crowd. He had been a good, if sometimes overimaginative, reporter of the facts. He covered restaurants for free food, movies for free tickets, and boxing at the Sherrington Hotel for a free ringside seat. On three hundred twenty dollars a week, and negative cash flow from his surf shop, he’d learned to forage. But the fact of the matter — try as he might to forget it — was that Frye had been canned exactly sixteen days ago for writing an article about a boxer who obviously took a dive in the fifth round of a Sherrington semi-main event. When Frye tried to contact the young welterweight’s manager for his side of the story, the man — one Rollie Dean Mack of Elite Management — wouldn’t return his calls. Frye ran the story and said so. Mack’s attorney then told Frye’s publisher that either Frye or Elite’s advertising would be removed from the paper, implying they’d sue for libel. Ledger publisher Ron Billingham had never much liked the boxing stuff anyway. Frye got his walking papers on a Friday, cleaned his desk out that evening, put in one last fruitless call to Rollie Dean Mack, then went out and drank at high velocity. That welterweight had gone down for pay, no doubt about it.

Frye shrugged; Bennett studied him. “Things will work out, Chuck. I know some friends of Billingham’s, so hang tight.”

Bennett pointed out the luminaries in the crowd: General Dien and his wife; Binh, a Vietnamese newspaper publisher; Tranh Ky, businessman and president of the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce; Dr. Phom-Do, professor and author of nineteen books on Asian history. The mayor and some council members were here. “Miss Saigon Days” sat, banner-draped and hopelessly nervous, between her father and mother.

“Lucia couldn’t make it, so she sent her idiot twin brother instead,” said Burke. He smiled, sucking on his beer. “She had to meet with some senate folks out to Washington. Hated to miss this, I’ll tell ya.”

Frye noted how people were starting to speak of Lucia Parsons in tones of near reverence. She had made a dozen trips to Hanoi to talk about the MIAs — all lavishly chronicled in the press. Apparently, Hanoi was actually talking back. Rumor had it that she was eyeing a seat in Congress and the MIA Committee was paving her way. Frye had seen her on television. She was bright, articulate, beautiful. Burke, even with his cowboy hat, had the same dark good looks.

“Lots of good people here,” said Bennett. “Then over there, some not-so-good ones.”

He nodded toward a corner table populated by young male faces with gel-slick heads. Sharp clothes, quick eyes, an easy arrogance about them. “Gangs. That’s part of Ground Zero.” Bennett leaned close. “And right next to you is Eddie Vo, the leader. I don’t recognize the guy with the sunglasses.”

Frye watched Eddie Vo and Sunglasses pouring fresh beers over ice, bringing lighters to their cigarettes, ogling a young woman with sly enthusiasm.

“They are not bad people,” offered Nguyen Hy. “Energy needing to be directed. They are fine, as long as the Dark Men don’t show up. Ground Zero and the Dark Men are like matches and gas.”

The waiter returned with a tray of drinks. Frye sipped his and watched the crowd, noting that Eddie Vo was fiddling with a cassette tape. A recorder sat beside it. Frye leaned over. “Chromium tape?”

Vo stared sullenly. “Five bucks, man, and it’s already tangled.”

Frye shrugged. Then the lights dimmed and a communal murmur rose from the audience, heads lifting toward the stage. Miss Saigon Days was looking at him. She turned away before he could smile. The band came on, slender Vietnamese men in French-cut suits, followed by the backup singers, all in white ao dai, all lovely. Drums rattled, the bass groaned. The backup singers waited, looking down. The guitar player tapped the mike. Bennett adjusted himself in his seat, grinning in anticipation. Someone waved and Bennett waved back.

Li glided onstage, centered in a spotlight, her black hair shining through the smoky atmosphere, purple ao dai tight around her middle, silk pants loose and flowing. Frye could feel Bennett’s hands pounding beside him, faster and faster. Li took the microphone. The stage lights focused her smile and brought a sparkle to her eyes as she looked over the crowd and found Bennett. She raised a hand and the spotlight angled to their table. “For my husband,” Frye heard her say. “And for his brother, too. Happy birthday to you.”

Then the light shifted back to Li and the band eased into its first song. Frye watched Eddie, still fighting with his faulty tape cassette. Sunglasses was staring at the stage, apparently transfixed. Li brought the mike to her mouth, and the first ripples of her voice settled onto the crowd as easily as foam onto a beach. Frye listened in rapt ignorance to the lyrics spilling out in Li’s mother tongue: lilting, rhythmic, soothing. Kim scooted her chair close to him and translated in the caesuras:

Frye watched the lights play off Li’s smile and the embroidered lace of her blouse. Bennett’s arms were crossed, a look of simple wonder on his face. Donnell Crawley tapped his glass to the beat and Nguyen Hy drew pensively on a cigarette. Kim leaned close again, her breath sweet against his cheek:

Frye could hear Eddie Vo cackling between the softly sung lines. “Just one night with her in my bed,” he said. “I wouldn’t be a brother to her!”

Sunglasses answered, “Stanley would be jealous.”

“Stanley... lại cái! Goddamn this tape!”

Li finished the song with a note so high and pure that Frye feared for his vodka glass. She bowed, black hair cascading down. The applause seemed to force a gust of smoke toward the ceiling. Bennett shot Chuck a proud look as the spotlights found their table again.

Before he knew he was doing it, Frye had gotten up and hugged his brother, patting him on the back. The applause got louder. Then the light reapplied itself to Li, who had turned to her band to count down the next tune. Strange, thought Frye, as he sat back down, how in the middle of everything you find yourself just plain happy. Bennett was nodding at him. Kim leaned close again. “This is a new song, Chuck. About our home, and being heartsick for what you cannot have.”

Li looked out over her audience, then spoke over the oddly syncopated rhythm of her band. “Vietnam, where are you? We must learn the language of getting you back.”

The guitar opened, mournfully high and lonesome.

“I’m sorry for you people,” Frye blurted past a wisp of black hair and into Kim’s ear.

She looked at him in assessment. “You tried.”

“No, I didn’t. Not me.”

I didn’t do a damn thing, he thought: Bennett paid the family price. I didn’t argue with draft number three-fifty-one. He drank more, guilty again that it was Bennett who had gone, Bennett who had lost. But he had won, too: a wife, and a life among the people for whom he had given so much. Chuck looked at his brother, wondering for the thousandth time if the trade was worth it. Half a man now, roughly — head, torso, arms, and two stumps. He looked at Donnell Crawley, the grunt who had carried Bennett back to safety, jammed his helmet onto one of Bennett’s gushing thighs, and gotten shot in the head for his trouble.

Frye glanced around for Eddie Vo, but Eddie Vo was gone. So was Sunglasses. The tape recorder sat by their beer bottles, a gutted cassette on the table beside it.

Weird-ass time to go outside and smoke one, Frye thought. Miss Saigon Days’ father stood and came toward their table, smiling.

When three hooded figures walked to the front of the stage and lowered machine guns at the crowd, Frye thought it was part of the show. For the shortest of moments — between the fall of the drumsticks, between Li’s melancholy lines, between the beats of Frye’s heart — the Asian Wind went quiet.

Then gunfire shattered the submarine light, splashing mirror glass as if it were water. There was a collective heave, the crashing of bodies on furniture. Li hurled her mike at one of the intruders, then grabbed her stand and lifted it high above a gunman in a ski mask. But he jumped the stage, slipped inside her blow, and clenched her around the neck. Another, wearing a black hood, grabbed a backup singer, then let go, whirled around, and helped the man in the ski mask grapple with Li. Her hair splayed in the spotlight and a pale curve of shoulder flashed where the silk ripped apart in gloved hands.

Frye reached out and grabbed the beauty queen’s father by his necktie. In the unbelievably long moment that it took to hit the floor, all he could think about were the people he should have treated better before he died.

Bennett landed beside him, rolled over and righted himself. Up on his fists now, with his stumps swinging between his thick arms, Bennett charged the stage. Shards of glass sprinkled down like rain. Frye saw the machine gun fix on Bennett and thought: All the way to Vietnam and back, and he’s going to die crawling across a barroom floor.

For one blessed second, the gunman hesitated.

Frye jumped up and dove for Bennett. So did Burke Parsons, his Stetson flying off. With his arms locked around his brother’s chest, Frye looked up through the stampede to see Li being dragged toward the rear exit. Her feet flailed uselessly above the floor — one shiny black shoe flying off.

Beside them, General Dien raised a pistol and fired. The gunman on stage jerked as a bright crimson-halo burst behind his head. His weapon pumped bullets into the stage until it finally fell from his hand and clattered to the floor.

Frye fought to his feet, lunged through the crowd and through the back door. A blue Celica ripped from the parking lot in a puff of tire smoke and sped around a corner.

He jumped into his old Mercury, started it up, and slammed it into gear.

His headlights raked the lot, and for a brief illuminated second he saw what looked like Eddie Vo’s wide-eyed face staring back at him from the front seat of a parked station wagon.

Then Frye was screaming for Bennett against the wail of his own tires, in a voice he could hardly hear. Just as he skidded up to the rear door, Donnell Crawley burst out, carrying Bennett in his arms.