Little Saigon

Chapter 27

Saigon plaza was swelling with Vietnamese when Frye arrived just before sunset. He couldn’t believe it. Banners and flags flapped in the breeze, booths lined the perimeter of the roped-off parking lot, streams of dark heads flowed in from the streets. Three patrol cars waited near the plaza entrance. Two more had come into the lot.

He joined the flow of bodies moving in. The entrance ticket cost five dollars and said FREE VIETNAM in English, with Vietnamese writing on the other side. A cop frisked him on his way through. Frye could smell food cooking — a spicy aroma that immediately made him hungry. Squeezing through a temporary archway that served as the official portal, he looked up to see a huge poster of Li’s face, her eyes focused, it seemed, on the setting sun.

Massive reproductions of Thach’s ruined face hung beside those of Li, with DEATH TO THACH emblazoned below in red.

A stage had been built near the center of the plaza, bathed in bright lights and festooned with Vietnamese and American flags. The podium was draped with a sign in both languages: DESTROY COMMUNISM, LIBERATE VIETNAM, FREE LI. Frye studied the backdrop — three versions of Li’s face, all taken from her album covers. He could see Nguyen Hy, sharply dressed in white linen, directing some activity behind the microphone. Beside the stage stood two men in dark suits, their arms crossed. More Feds, Frye guessed. Two others lingered on the far side, another munched distractedly beside a food booth. He spotted Wiggins talking to air NBC reporter. There were rows of chairs set up on the asphalt, but not even half enough, he guessed. Already the booths were surrounded by people buying food. In one booth a bingolike game progressed, with dozens of players studying little cards with numbers on them. The barker was a short man, his stubby arm turning a wire cage filled with numbered cubes, his voice a ceaseless syllabic river.

Strange, he thought, but it’s all so quiet here. Nothing more than a low murmur, and already a couple of thousand people. Most of them wore black. Their faces revealed nothing. They looked joyless but not anguished, full of purpose but without focus, eager with impacted patience. The lights bore down and the people waited.

A young woman slipped past Frye, glancing at him, and he could see the fear — a minor tension was all she gave away — just a flicker in her eyes. The barker pulled another winner. A middle-aged man stepped forward, ticket raised. He received an envelope, then backed again into the crowd. How few of that age you see here, Frye realized: a generation decimated by the war.

He bought skewers of Vietnamese sausage on a bed of noodles, and two oddish, green blocks of gel wrapped in plastic for dessert. The Committee to Free Vietnam booth was busy. Standing outside the office, workers handed out pamphlets, pointing at the collection of Secret-War-zone photographs, taking names and numbers. One of the girls recognized Frye and waved him over.

“You like Vietnamese food?” she asked.

“Real good,” said Frye.

“All the money raised tonight goes to free Li,” she said.

Frye noted the long table set up on the sidewalk. The CFV workers were taking donations, which went directly from the outstretched hands of the Vietnamese into a gray safe. Ones, tens, twenties, a small jade necklace, pearl earrings. An old woman offered fifty cents. Then she stood there with tears running down her face and worked a ring from her finger. She handed it over. “Li Frye,” she said. “Tự do hay là chết.”

The girl looked at Frye. “She say, ‘Freedom or death.’”

She smiled faintly and pointed out a picture on the CFV display. It showed a fragment of the Secret Army, eight heavily armed men. They appeared to be in the jungle somewhere, a camp perhaps. Frye studied the intensity of their faces, wondering what chance they had. Eighteen years old, he guessed, twenty? What spirit moved them into the jungle, against impossible odds, toward a martyrdom so puny it would be forgotten before their blood was dry? Maybe not, he thought: maybe all these people here would remember. That’s where Li comes in. Keeping the memory alive. The memory tender.

“Secret Army,” she said, still pointing.

“They’re so young.”

“Passion is not for the old. They are in Ben Cat, then in Bien Hoa, then in Saigon itself. No one can find them. They destroyed the bridge at Long Binh ten days ago. After that, they destroyed thirty-seven Communists near Cu Chi. Then, into the jungle, like a panther.”

“How many of them are there?”

“Many. They are feared. They sneak into Saigon to meet with the resistance. They move across the border into Kampuchea. The Khmer Rouge help them, because they hate the Vietnamese. They steal supplies and disappear.”

She looked at him placidly. “For freedom. Please give.”

Frye nodded and dug out twenty bucks. Down to twelve dollars and change, he thought: I gotta get a job. He wandered toward the stage, where Nguyen was making a sound check. Hy looked down, grinned, and pointed to a small trailer parked behind the stage.

Donnell Crawley stood outside it, arms crossed, dark glasses on. He shook Frye’s hand and almost crushed it. “He’s inside,” said Donnell. “Things are going pretty good, I think.”

“I can’t believe the turnout.”

“Didn’t surprise me. These Vietnamese got a lot of heart.”

He found Bennett sitting in the trailer, a cordless telephone on his lap. He was wearing a suit and his prosthetic legs. His crutches leaned against a small refrigerator. Frye sat down. The trailer was hot and the windows were closed.

“What did Burke Parsons say?”

“He told me to lay off or he’d sick his snake on me.”

“He pulled that shit in ‘Nam, too. I hope you agreed.”

Frye nodded.

“Good. How about Lucia? Beaming after her big moment in Washington?”

“Burke did all the talking.”

“I used to think it was Lucia who wore the pants in that family. Now I’m starting to wonder. The dumber Burke plays, the smarter he seems.” Bennett leveled a calm, hateful gaze at Frye. “He’ll never buy into the Paradiso with refugee money, Chuck. I promise you that.”

The telephone buzzed. Bennett raised his hand for silence, breathed deeply, then picked up the receiver.

“Frye.”

A long pause. Bennett looked at him.

“Use Tran Khe, he’s a better driver, and he knows the house, I want word immediately after the pickup. Immediately.”

Frye checked his watch. Bennett wrote something on a notepad that was open on his lap. A minute went by, then two. Bennett sat still, just his chest moving slowly, the telephone held to his ear.

A moment later he hung up. “Thach just left his apartment. In twenty minutes, we’ll have him.”

“Is it Kim you were talking to?”

“Kim is in a safe house outside Saigon, getting it from the field by radio. She codes it out to resistance radio in Trang Bang, then they leapfrog it from village to village, all the way to Cambodia. The Khmer relay to Phnom Penh, where they’ve got telephone to Hong Kong, Our people in Hong Kong have access to secure British lines, and our man in London is good,” Bennett smiled. “He works in a travel agency. The rest is easy — London to New York to San Francisco to here. Pay phones. If the radios are all working right and the operators are good, it takes seven minutes to get word from Kim to me. If one thing goes wrong, it can take hours.”

“Does the CIA listen in?”

“Sure they do. Up until three months ago, we used some of their people for relay. NSA has us wrapped, but it takes time when you use different pay phones at this end. They’ve got us, it just takes a while to find us. They’re an hour behind, at least.”

Nguyen came into the trailer. “On schedule?”

“He’s on schedule, Hy.”

“Any chance I’ll get to make the announcement tonight?”

A sly grin passed over Bennett’s face, but he forced it away. “One step at a time.”

Nguyen nodded, then headed back out for the stage. Frye watched him through the window, shaking hands with Pat Arbuckle, who looked on with an air of bemused superiority. Crawley grasped a huge speaker cabinet to his chest and walked it closer to the stage front. A CBS news crew had cornered Minh, freezing him in bright light. A sound man held a boom over his head while the reporter pressed a microphone to his face. The chairs were already filled, and people without seats were pressing toward the stage for a good view. Willie and Dun entered, surrounded by bodyguards. Albert Wiggins loitered near a noodle stand.

“Amazing, isn’t it, Chuck, how much they love her — the old and young, the good, the bad, and everyone in between? They need her almost as much as I do. It’s important to me that these people don’t buckle under. When they show up here tonight, it’s like telling Hanoi that freedom won’t die. It’s a hard thing for them to do, because they’re scared. Kidnapping. Murder. Fear. The cops and FBI in front of them, Hanoi behind them. A little island of people locked inside the strongest country on earth. They’ve got balls.”

Then Nguyen Hy took the stage to a rousing hand of applause. He welcomed everyone, first in Vietnamese, then English. He said that freedom would never perish, and neither would America or Vietnam. “We have come here to pledge our support to those great countries, and for the Voice of Freedom — Li Frye!”

The crowd cheered; the applause rose. The band struck up a number, which he recognized as one of Li’s — “Freedom’s Bones.” It was an instrumental version, her voice replaced by an electric guitar. Frye could see her face on the banners, lilting in the breeze.

He listened to Nguyen’s fevered voice again. Hy said that the kidnapping was executed by Communist agents of Hanoi, enemies of freedom, Moscow-fed animals out to destroy the Vietnamese people. The crowd listened quietly, then stirred. The band started up again, another Li Frye song. Nguyen exhorted the people to support the cause of freedom. His arms were raised heavenward, his hands open as if to draw blessing directly out of the sky.

Frye saw Albert Wiggins standing near the CBS news van, scanning the plaza balconies with binoculars. The reporter was talking with one of the CFV girls. Bennett wiped the sweat from his forehead, then stood clumsily on his crutches. “I’m on for about two minutes.” he said. “If the phone rings, come get me. Don’t answer it. Don’t touch it.”

Through the trailer window, Frye watched his brother labor up the back steps of the stage as Nguyen introduced him. A fresh peal of applause rose as Bennett stepped into the bright lights and, balancing with difficulty, raised his hands. Frye could hear Bennett’s voice, loud and clear over the microphone. He thanked them for being there. He told them that courage didn’t exist without fear. He told them that Li was here in spirit, and that her body and her laughter and her voice would be with them again soon. “You are full of power and grace,” he said. “Never give up.”

He stood there as the band played “Star Spangled Banner,” then turned from a surge of applause and headed toward the trailer. Frye helped him through the door and onto the small bed. Bennett’s face was dripping sweat, and his pupils were big. He loosened his necktie, brought the phone to his lap, and checked his watch. “Any minute, Chuck.”

Frye could hear Nguyen, his voice rising, the clapping and shouts, swells of approval. He could see an old man dragging an effigy of Vietnamese President Truong Ky up a center aisle toward the stage. It was dressed in black pajamas with red hammers and sickles all over them.

The crowd came to its feet as the old man moved toward the podium. Nguyen paused and watched.

The phone was buzzing. Bennett lifted two crossed fingers to Frye, held them in the air, then picked up the handset. Through the trailer window, Frye could see Nguyen now, standing on the stage as the old man shuffled the last twenty feet toward him. A dozen celebrants had stood to form a loose gauntlet as they passed by. They yelled and spit on the dummy, its stuffed head bobbing toward Hy, spittle wobbling through stage light toward the effigy. The old man covered himself from the barrage. The crowd was chanting, Thà Chết không làm nô lệ, thà chệt không làm nô lệ... When Frye turned back to Bennett, his brother’s crossed fingers were still in the air, but his face had gone pale. He stared straight at Frye. He was nodding.

Nguyen hoisted the dummy onto the stage, to a ferocious chorus of cheers. He held it by the neck, out at arm’s length, waving the face toward the seats.

“We will resist! We will unify Vietnam! We will struggle until freedom is ours!”

Bennett gently put down the phone. He looked at his brother with something that Frye had never seen before. It took him a moment to realize what it was. It was fear.

Frye could scarcely hear what Bennett said next. The crowd hit a frenzy as Nguyen prepared to decapitate the dummy with a plastic sword. Bennett spoke softly. “Thach knew about kilometer twenty-one. He was ready for us.”

Frye reached down to help Bennett off the bed. He glanced outside as Hy lifted the dummy for execution. Something went wrong with the stage lights. For a fractional second, Hy and the doll were so brightly lit, blanched in a flash of white so pure that Frye’s eyes burned.

Then they were blown apart by a concussive orange blast, emanating from the head of the effigy. The trailer rocked, and Frye slammed against the side. Nguyen’s outstretched arm, his shoulder, and his head disassembled in a bright shower that sprayed all directions at once. His knees straightened, his torso jerked back and collapsed. The plastic sword shot skyward. The dummy jumped into the air, as if yanked by invisible wires. The people in the first rows turned to run.

As the crowd’s cheers turned to wails, Frye struggled outside. Crawley had already dragged Hy off the stage and onto the ground. The cops were converging, side-arms drawn, ordering everyone down, but the people streamed around them toward Bolsa. Frye watched Bennett join the surging mass.

Half a dozen bodies lay scattered by the first row of seats, some moving, some screaming, some inert. The network newsmen were still taping. Westminster police and FBI agents ran around, guns drawn, looking for someone to arrest, A hundred feet from the exit, a group of refugees had caught the old man. Frye watched him vanish in the dark mob, fists pounding away at the gray, sinking head.

He ripped off his coat and pressed it onto an old Vietnamese woman who was laying face up on the asphalt, her chest smoking. He looked for Bennett, but couldn’t find him. Someone beside him started moaning. He could see Crawley carrying a boy toward the stage, limp head and feet cascading over his arms. The CFV girl tried to tie a Vietnamese flag around a man’s bleeding thigh while a woman stood over him and wailed. An FBI man, pistol in one hand and a radio in the other, screamed at two others, who seemed lost for purpose. Then Frye spotted Bennett climbing into his van. Minh was on stage with Wiggins now, trying to sound assured as he spoke into the microphone, telling the people to proceed in an orderly exit toward the boulevard. Frye lifted his coat, took one look at the crater in the woman’s chest, and covered her face. A camera man steadied his lens at Frye and told him to pull the coat away. For a moment Frye just knelt there and watched Bennett’s van drive away, barging through the crowd to the avenue.

He helped Donnell get Hy to a paramedic van, but there wasn’t enough of Nguyen left to have any hope for. He ran for the Cyclone. It took him five minutes to force his way across the lot and onto the street. He sped down Bolsa toward Bennett’s house, lights and sirens flashing past.

The door was standing open and the lights were on, but the van was gone. Frye parked in the driveway and went in. The house was quiet. His ears rang and he was breathing hard. The television emitted a pale, hissing static. “Benny?” He checked the kitchen, then Donnell’s cottage. Where would you go, what’s more important than a dying friend? Why did you cut and run, Benny? As he stood in the back yard, Frye began to understand. It could only be one thing. The kidnap of Thach didn’t just backfire; it backfired exactly the way somebody had planned it. They had not only told Bennett that his operation had collapsed, but told him something about Li.

In the bedroom, he stooped down and looked under the bed for the suitcases of money. They were gone. Lying on the floor were Bennett’s crutches and suit.

How do you know where to go, Benny? I was in the trailer while they talked to you, and there wasn’t enough time to set up the details of a trade. You didn’t write anything down. You had no instructions. But you came here, took the money, left the television and lights on, the door open, and you ran. You didn’t know where you’d be going when you got here, but when you left, you did. The instructions were here. They left instructions here, while you were at the rally.

He walked into the living room. The static snow of the TV hissed quietly. The red PLAY letters indicated the VCR was on. Frye hit rewind and listened to the tape whine. When it stopped, he hit play. Li appeared on the screen. She looked exhausted, with dark pouches under her eyes, her face pale, her hair filthy. “Benny, I am all right. I love you so. They will release me to you if you bring the two million dollars they asked for and follow their instructions. If not, they kill me tonight.”

Someone offscreen pushed the barrel of a shotgun into her mouth. She sat there, staring out at Frye with her lips around the steel, tears running down her cheeks as a man’s voice gave instructions.

“Bennett, you must put the money in two suitcases and put them in your van. You must drive to the phone booth at U.S. Gas, at Division Street and Palmdale Avenue in Palmdale. Answer the phone at exactly ten forty-five P.M. You must not contact the police or FBI, or allow them to follow you in any way. We will watch you carefully. You must bring only the money. You must be alone. Do not be a fool and bring weapons.”

Frye felt his heart sink, then come back racing. He checked his watch. It was just after nine.

The Westminster Police lines were jammed. The FBI offices in Santa Ana were closed. A Los Angeles agent named Burns took the phone booth location, the plate numbers and description of the van and driver, the address and phone from which Frye was calling, then ordered him to stay exactly where he was.

Frye stayed exactly where he was for almost two seconds, then gave up. He found a .45 in Bennett’s drawer, shoved it into his pants, and headed back to the Cyclone.