Little Saigon

Chapter 22

The traffic was heavy all the way through Corona del Mar. The hurricane far to the south had sent not only its waves, but its warm humid air. As the evening gathered, a damp breeze rose from the south bearing a faint hint of the tropics with it.

The Newport Peninsula was still crowded with tourists and beach-goers, most of them heading away from town as the afternoon cooled into evening. The sun hung dull and heavy in the western gray. A band of kids waited at the bus stop — Boogie Boards and flippers, towels and skateboards. Evening glass at 19th Street, he thought: monster waves looming into the point, a few locals braving the sections for brief rides with abrupt endings.

He swung onto Balboa Boulevard and followed the narrow sidestreets toward the island.

The boyhood home, he thought, his mind filling with reruns of lawn croquet; surfing the 19th Street point; a fierce spanking from Edison when Frye had loaded his fourth-grade friends into the helicopter to fly them all to school one morning; Debbie’s yellow trike; Hyla amidst the endless cocktail parties looking more beautiful than any movie star; Debbie drying his toothbrush after he’d used it, just to get him in trouble when Hyla checked it; Bennett and him wrestling on the grass; Bennett and him trying to dig to China; Bennett and him stuffing a potato into the muffler of Edison’s car and waiting in the junipers for the explosion that sent him diving for cover in fear of assassination; Bennett and him shaping boards; Bennett leaving for college, then the war; Bennett coming home on a gurney with no legs and a wild, faraway glint in his eyes.

From here to the cave-house, he thought: Time passes, people change, lives end.

He found his mother in the kitchen. The amount of time that Hyla spent in her kitchen, Frye knew, was tied to the larger workings in her life. The more helpless she felt, the more kitchen time. It was a busy sanctuary, filled with chores easily done with half a mind. Her smile was hollow. She had cut her hair. She took one look at him, touching the place where Minh had slapped him with the pistol. “Oh, Chuck. Did you get my happy birthday card?”

“Loved it.”

“We’ll celebrate tonight.”

“Grand. Love the new ‘do. Kind of a punk-mom look.”

“People say I look like David Bowie, but I don’t know who he is.”

“His loss.”

“Yes, I’m sure it is.” She turned to the counter so Frye wouldn’t see the lank exhaustion in her face.

He put a hand to her shoulder, but she leaned away from him and sucked down a quivering breath, forcing herself calm by an act of pure will. “Papa’s in the cottage with the dogs.” She gently aimed him down the hallway. Frye turned to watch as she went back into the kitchen and into the smell of roasting duck.

He walked across the lawn to his father’s cottage, stopping for a moment to consider the sun beginning to set above the junipers, scant gray clouds easing across an orange-to-blue backdrop. Thunderstorm for sure, he thought: you can smell it.

As usual, the cottage door was locked. Frye knocked and waited. A moment later it opened and Edison stood in the doorway. His face seemed to sag, his gray hair stuck out like he’d just slept ten hours, his clothes were a mess. He had a martini glass in one hand and a felt-tip marker in the other. “Hello, son. Enter. I’m almost done with this.”

Edison went to his blotter, threw a page back and studied the writing. It said, “Ransom Demand by Tues. 1200 Hrs?” Frye poured himself a drink. The springers yapped outside.

His father crossed out the question and looked up at Chuck. “I was wrong. No demand, and it’s Thursday already. I must have been looking at this all wrong.”

“It might still come.”

“Statistically, this is bad news. It means—”

“I know what it means. I just don’t believe it. Have you gotten anything new? Arbuckle find any more Dac Cong?”

Edison eyed him, nodded tiredly. “Nothing you need to know, son.”

“So, the blackout’s still on:”

“Any good organization compartmentalizes its—”

“This is supposed to be a family, not the CIA.”

Edison tossed his marker to the desk and sighed. Frye studied his father’s big face, how receptive, how innocent it could look. “We just go ‘round in circles, don’t we, son?”

“Guess so.”

Edison nodded. “It didn’t happen just all at once, you know.”

“It all goes back to the day that Debbie went down, doesn’t it?”

Edison stood up, distractedly poured another martini. He looked at Frye with a combination of exasperation and sadness that Frye hadn’t seen in years. “Please don’t say that. No, son. It goes back to the days — and there were many of them, Chuck — when you chose a different direction than the family’s. When you went your own way and left us to ours. A break like that, it doesn’t come just all at once.”

“It wasn’t a different direction. It was a different path.”

“You’re splitting the atom, Chuck. You never wanted to be part of the Frye Ranch. I suppose I can understand that. I wasn’t too adamant, was I? You never wanted to be around the family much either. Those were ten long years when you did the surf tour and ran that goddamned shop of yours. What’d I get from you then, a handful of postcards? Really, son, correct me if I’m wrong.”

Frye looked out the window to the harbor and the big homes on the peninsula. “I always tried to tell you what was going on.”

“I didn’t know you got third place in Australia until somebody brought in a clipping three weeks later. I didn’t know you got second in Hawaii until a month after it was over. I didn’t know you were chasing women around at your own parties until I saw it in the goddamned newspaper, Chuck. I didn’t even know that you and Linda were having trouble until her father told me. That’s your idea of telling me what’s going on?”

“You were against the tour, Pop.”

“Does that mean I didn’t care?”

Frye, for the first time in his life, was starting to see things from Edison’s angle. “You were a son. You know how it is. You tell your dad what you think he’ll be proud of.”

“Chuck, there wasn’t one damned thing I did in my life that my old man was proud of. I’m not complaining — I’m stating fact. Charles James Frye was one heartless sonofabitch. I thought that then, and I think it now.” Edison sniffed his martini and drank. “He inherited the ranch from his dad, who probably wasn’t much better. So I’ve been where you are. And I don’t hesitate to say that I think surfing for a living is one helluva waste of talent, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t for your kicking butt and being the best goddamned surfer in the world, did it?”

Frye recalled Edison’s letters: One cannot remain juvenile forever... We’ve lost one child to the water, please don’t become another... With Love and Disappointment, Father.

“Whatever, Pop. We’ve all got funny ways of showing things.”

“And as far as Debbie goes, well, son... I’m sorry and it wasn’t your fault. I know the waves were big. I know she’d been out in them before. But you were out there with her. Not Benny, not me.”

Edison looked at him. “Let me ask you something, Chuck. We haven’t talked in a long time. It’s been a while since you’ve given half a damn about what goes on at this island. Now we’ve had Li kidnapped, your mother is torn apart, the Feds are crawling all over me and the shit’s hit the fan in a big way. All of a sudden you want to start throwing things in my face. I’m not perfect. I spent years trying to make you think that, maybe. But I gave up. Why are you digging back? Why now?”

Good question, he thought. For the moment, he was stumped. “I don’t know.”

“I think you do.”

Frye looked back out the window. Self-analysis was never his long suit. But there comes a point, he thought, when things fly away faster than you can catch up. There comes a point where wings beat and feathers fall and your hands tremble with what’s no longer in them. You sit there and watch and wish there was something you could have done. Something. “Things are disappearing. Debbie. Linda. Li. The way I was a few years ago. The way we were.”

He thought of Xuan, of the Dark Men in the cavern, of Eddie Vo blown away on his own front porch. He thought of Debbie, dropping in on that monster, looking frail and tiny on the little board he’d made her, knees wobbling, her feet so tan and small, and that look on her face as she glanced at him that said: I’m a bit out of my league on this one, but I’ve seen you do it, so watch, just you watch...

“Anyway, I guess I’m trying to hold onto what’s left.”

Edison was silent for a long moment. “Amen to that, son.”

“It’s Benny, Pop. I think he’s in more trouble than he’s letting on. I think Li was taken... for leverage. That’s why there’s been no ransom demand.”

Edison arched an eyebrow, then glanced toward his blotter on its stand. “I’m listening.”

“Do you know about the CFV? The supplies they send overseas?”

“Of course I do.”

“Do you know it’s guns he’s running?”

Edison shook his head, smiling. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Well, it’s true. I watched them loading a chopper out on the Paradiso. Guns, Pop.”

Edison stood, began pacing. “Go on.”

“Do you know about Colonel Thach?”

“The fuck is he?”

Frye told him. The war. The assassination. The heads. Xuan. “There’s just a handful of us who know what happened to him, Pop. The FBI’s keeping it strictly to themselves.”

Edison jabbed a poker into the dead fireplace, rearranging ashes and old coals. “Benny’s running guns against Thach, and Li was part of the pipeline. And I’ll bet that Thach was Dac Cong in the war.”

Frye nodded.

Edison slammed his martini glass into the fireplace. “Wiggins has been dragging his feet all along. Not sharing his evidence with me was one thing, but holding out something like this? What’s his reason?”

“The party line is that they’re scared of letting people believe that Thach’s men are here. They’ve only got one witness — the woman who sold the black cloth — and they’re saying she’s unreliable. Just because the dead gunman was Dac Cong in the war, doesn’t mean he works for Thach.”

“Maybe they’re right. Little Saigon will close up tighter than it is already if people get in a panic about nothing. But I’ll throttle Lansdale.”

“It isn’t Lansdale’s bureau, Pop.”

“This is not good...”

Frye waited for the follow-up, but that was all, Edison at his most intense, Frye had realized some years ago, was a man of few words. The rest of it was just sound and fury, his style, his way of letting off steam. He went to the big blotter fastened to the wall and picked up the felt pen, still dangling by its string. Under FBI (LANSDALE), he wrote “Bureau knows of Thach, keeping all info to itself. Why?” He stepped back, studied his note, then dropped the pen. “Chuck, I know what you were trying to say a few minutes ago. I want you to know I’ll try to be a little more inclusive. Come here, I want to show you something.”

Edison led him to the back room of the cottage, his work room. Among the drawing tables and stools was a model of the Paradiso, like Bennett’s but more detailed. “It’s the biggest thing we’ve ever done,” he said. “The best. Bennett and I designed it from the start. A joint venture, if you will.” He stood back and studied it. “Look at that, Chuck, forty-thousand acres of the best real estate in the world. It’s just hills and cattle now, but when we’re done, it will be the best place on earth a man could live. None better, except maybe for this island.”

Frye noted the custom homesites, the marina and hotels, the equestrian center and riding trails, golf course, lakes, the heliport, the village of shops. Edison himself had designed the electric trolley that would deliver hillside residents to the beach every half hour, and take them home when they were ready. It would run on solar-generated power.

“I haven’t gone over the details with you, have I?”

“Not really.”

“Well there she is!”

Frye admired the relative simplicity of it all, the fact that people living in the Paradiso would have plenty of ground to themselves. Edison stood for a moment staring at the model, absorbed. He nodded. “I’m happy with it so far,” he said. “Still a lot to do.”

“You’ve got lots to be proud of.”

“You’ll be proud of it still, when I’m dead and gone.” Edison sat back down and considered his son. “Going to take a lot of people to get it up and keep it going. All sorts of people, Chuck.”

“It looks great, Pop.”

Edison smiled faintly, sipped again from his drink.

“Cost a lot to get going?”

“Financing’s the easy part. Easy, but complex. Everybody wants in on a project like this. The return is a sure thing. The trick is keeping control of it. Your brother and I have controlling interest, of course, so a lot of the capital is ours. So the Paradiso is ours too. I mean, it’s all of ours, Chuck. It’s the family’s.”

“Then what’s Lucia Parsons’s part?”

“Financing. That’s all. She and Burke have oil money, and now they’ve got a place to put some of it.” Edison studied the model again, wrote himself a quick note. “Lucia says there is big news tonight at seven. About the MIAs.”

“I saw you two retiring to the Elite office at the hotel.”

Edison drank, watching Frye over the glass. “And?”

“It was Rollie Dean Mack at Elite who got me fired.”

“He wasn’t there, if that makes you feel any better.”

“What’s Lucia doing with a key?”

“Elite Management has donated a lot to the MIA Committee. I think Burke knows Mack or something. It’s just a key — who cares? Let’s not start again, son.”

“You and Lucia looked pretty friendly at the fights.”

“That’s just what we are. Friends. Partners.” Edison checked his watch, then took a deep breath. “Chuck, I’ll try to keep you better informed about what’s going on. This is from Lansdale again, information the FBI won’t tell us. They intercepted a coded radio transmission Tuesday night. Again yesterday morning. Wiggins sent a tape to Fort Meade for decoding, and the gist of the message is that they’ve got Li and their plans for her are progressing as planned. The FBI doesn’t know who sent it, who got it, or exactly where it came from. They had it narrowed down to somewhere Saigon Plaza, but the transmission ended before they could find the radio. Wiggins is set up to pinpoint it the next broadcast.”

“Was it in Vietnamese?”

“It sure as hell was.”

“So people outside of Little Saigon have a hand in it. Thach’s people — I’m sure of it.”

Edison glowered at his blotter again, as if it had betrayed him. “Thach,” he muttered softly. In big letters he wrote, RADIO CONTACT WITH THACH? LOCATION OF TRANSMITTER.

“Thanks, Pop. For keeping me informed.”

Edison nodded, his face softening. A smile began. Frye felt good. Then he realized that Edison wasn’t even looking at him anymore. His father lurched up and swept past Frye to the cottage door. “Ah! There he is! Get in here, son.”

Frye turned. Edison knelt down and hugged Bennett. From over Edison’s shoulder, Frye could see his brother’s expression. The eyes had a dark look, a look of helplessness, fear, violence.

Edison stood and waved to Frye. “Into the dining room, men! Dinner. Search and destroy!”

Frye assumed his battle station at the table: left of Edison, Hyla beside him, and Bennett across. He could remember sitting here for breakfast almost thirty years ago, in a tall yellow chair with a detachable tray, dumping his oatmeal on the floor to watch it hit. For a moment he conjured images of everyone, even the old woman who had cooked for them. Edison had grayed. Hyla had shrunk. Bennett had been blown in half. What about me? Taller, with the same urge to toss things off high places just to see them land. Every time I sit here, I feel like a kid again.

Mauro, the servant, poured the wine and served the food, as he had for two decades. Hyla raised her glass and paused, though everyone seemed to sense what was coming. They drank to Li. Frye watched his father at the head of the table, standing to carve the duck. The silver tray glittered in the light of a chandelier so high in the dining room altitude that Frye once plinked it with his Daisy to bring down solid evidence that it was really there. He had carried the shard, bright as a piece of sunlight, in his pocket for two days. Edison had given him a licking he still remembered. He looked up to see the broken crystal but it was impossible to locate now, as it had been then.

Edison finished carving. “Any word from Linda, Chuck?”

“None that I’ve heard.”

“Shell come back. No woman leaves a Frye. It’s simply never been done.”

Frye looked at his mother, attempting sincerity. “We’re talking off and on. Things’ll work out.”

“The bitch is bluffing, Chuck.”

“Ed!”

“Hyla! You can’t publicly humiliate your wife and expect gratitude, now can you? It will just take some time for Linda to come to her senses.”

“Chuck has a new... companion, don’t you, son?”

Frye felt a subtle yet growing urge to strangle his father right here at the dinner table. “Her name’s Cristobel Strauss. We’ve seen each other a few times.”

Hyla sat, shoulders a little hunched, her eyes big and imploring. “Oh?”

“You’d like her, Mom.”

“You’re a married man, Charles.”

“I’m aware of that.”

Frye drank more wine as a silence descended upon the table. The clink of silverware became unbearable. “Mega’s going into women’s wear,” he said.

Hyla rose to the switch of topic. “Nice things for women, Chuck?”

“Meganice.”

“I still think it sounds like a bomb, son,” said Edison. “Megaton. Change the name is my advice, for your marketing department, if nothing else.”

Frye watched Bennett wipe a small grin with his napkin. Mauro had filled his wine glass from the martini pitcher.

“Can’t change the name, Pop. Mega is my motto.”

Hyla motioned Mauro forward for more wine. She looked at Chuck with an expression of sadness so complete that he had to look away. She feels worse about Linda than I do. In the silence that followed, he could sense everyone’s thoughts leaving him and moving across the table to his brother. Bennett busied himself with seconds and another glass of gin.

When dinner was finished, Hyla brought out the birthday cake, an elaborate chocolate affair dancing with candles. She sang. Edison smiled at his bride. Frye and Bennett ganged up on the blowing-out routine, which ended — as it had for years — with the candles coming back to life. Edison got still another laugh out of this shopworn trickery. Hyla raised her glass. “To the two best sons God could give a woman,” she said. “There are better times ahead for both of you. Happy birthdays.” She bowed her head and prayed out loud for guidance and help, forgiveness and redemption, the return of Li and Linda.

Mauro brought in a tray with packages on it, bright wrapping paper reflecting off the silver. Frye got a television wristwatch that Edison immediately swiped and started to fiddle with, and a foam insect guaranteed to grow to two hundred times its original size if you dropped it in water. The package said Gro-Bug. Frye realized with a minor thrill that the thing would hit sixteen feet at maturity, bigger than his whole kitchen. What if you could make a surfboard like that, like, carry it in your pocket until you need it? He pondered marketing gimmicks as Bennett opened his gifts — a television watch also, and a plastic scuba diver with pellets to make bubbles come out his mask. Mauro brought out a big snifter full of water, into which Bennett deployed the frogman. For a moment they all sat, watching the fizz rise. It seemed to go on forever.

Mauro served coffee. Edison checked his watch. “Hon, might we retire to the den? There’s an important news item I think we all should see.”

They sat around Edison’s beloved big-screen TV. Hyla dimmed the lights, and Edison turned to ABC. The regular show had been preempted for a special network news report. Peter Jennings had the honors. Sitting beside him in the studio was Lucia Parsons. She looked like a million bucks. Jennings welcomed his viewers and said that the government of Vietnam had made an unprecedented “and perhaps historic” move: They had requested American air time to broadcast via satellite a live statement from the Vietnamese Council of State President, Truong Ky. Truong had said that the statement would be of special interest to the West. Jennings said that the President of the United States had personally called the network, urging that the broadcast be carried. Jennings speculated that the topic was American POWs. He asked Lucia.

She nodded, almost serenely, Frye thought. “I think, Peter, that is exactly what President Truong has on his mind.”

“Oh, my,” said Hyla.

Edison stared gravely at the set.

Bennett sat on the couch, arms crossed and silent.

“... as you know, and the MIA Committee has been lobbying the Vietnamese government through the Vietnamese people for nearly two years. I’ll put it bluntly, Peter. We all hope, we’re all just praying right now, that our labors have paid off.”

Jennings noted that ABC would supply an English translation in voice-over during the address; then the image of Truong appeared.

The picture was hazy, drained of color. He was sitting at a simple desk, a bristle of microphones in front of him, a Vietnamese flag behind him. He blinked into the lights. He was slight, gray-haired, dour. Without smiling, shuffling paper or any other visible preliminaries, he started speaking. The voice-over was heavily accented.

“It has come to the attention of the Vietnamese people that certain American soldiers are alive in this country. They were located after exhaustive searches, in remote provinces. They were being detained by primitive tribes who did not know of our nation’s victory and believed that we were still at war with America. It is the desire of the Vietnamese people that these men be free to return home, or go where they choose. The Vietnamese people are now making arrangements for this to happen. The Vietnamese people are a peace-loving nation. This we wish to demonstrate to the world community. We are not at odds with history. We wish to work with the peace-loving American people, through the MIA Committee, for the timely return of these men. Their exact number is not known. Negotiations will begin soon. We ask of America only one pre-condition to negotiation: to end all support for terrorist groups operating on Vietnamese soil. We can no longer tolerate American-supported violence in this sovereign state. As always, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam will struggle for a world of free peoples everywhere. We will welcome negotiators from the MIA Committee, and a minimum number of American Government representatives, in Hanoi. Our nation wishes to continue its role as a leader of peace and freedom throughout the world.”

President Truong stared into the camera, then vanished, replaced by an excited Jennings and a tearful, smiling Lucia Parsons.

“Oh, Ed! She’s done it.”

“Goddamn, I knew she would!”

Bennett looked up at Chuck.

Frye shook his head and grinned. He hugged his mom. He felt happy, but more: a feeling of freedom and release, the lifting from his shoulders of a weight he never knew was there.

Jennings’s voice reasserted itself: “Negotiations pending... just how many not stated... what condition these men are in... what steps if any did the United States Government take to facilitate this... unprecedented cooperation... unsure what President Truong is referring to, so far as American-sponsored ‘terrorism’ is concerned... much depends on Lucia Parsons’s ability to deal with Hanoi... a day of celebration and joy... the healing of a nation’s heart... upcoming comments from the president... back with Lucia Parsons in a moment... now this...”

Hyla stood up. “This calls for champagne! Mauro!”

They drank the bubbly and watched the follow-up in silence. Frye wondered at Lucia’s composure, her easy grace in front of millions. Jennings asked her about the so-called “terrorism” that Truong had mentioned.

“Peter, I believe there are groups, some of them centered in Orange County, California, whose unstated purpose is to overthrow the government of Vietnam. I’m not an expert in this, but I’ve heard talk of these people. It’s time for them to stop any kind of activity that could even be construed as ‘terrorist,’ so we can bring our men home. We can only implore them to desist.”

Bennett swung out of the room.

“Benny?” asked Hyla. “More champagne?”

Frye followed him from the house, down the sloping green of the huge back yard, to the dock. Bennett started up Edison’s Boston Whaler, choking the engine up high while he worked the lines from the dock cleats.

“Where to, Benny?”

“Get in.”