Little Saigon

Chapter 30

The porch light was on and the door-mat said THE PARSONS — WELCOME! Frye opened the lock and then the deadbolt, and stepped in. A light shone from the kitchen. In the hallway he could see the thin shadows of the palms on the walls and hear the bubbling murmur of the shark pond. He moved lightly over the tile, then into the living room, where a single torchière widened its light to the ceiling. I’ve got the second floor, Lucia’s got the third. She does her work in the guest house.

Through the sliding glass door, Frye saw the guest quarters in the back, hidden under the banana trees: lights on, a few of Lucia’s tireless minions laboring over paperwork. He climbed. His head throbbed, but his mind had cleared. The first flight of stairs ended at a short hallway — Burke’s rooms, he thought — and the second began at the other end of it. As he started up, Frye could see a light above, and hear someone moving across the floor. At the top, he stayed close to the hallway walls, taking the last few steps quietly as he could. From inside the bedroom came the sound of a woman humming, the buzz of a long zipper being locked. The stock of the old Remington was warm and slippery in his hand.

Through the bedroom door he saw her, dressed in a black silk robe, her hair loose and flowing, organizing the contents of a suitcase that lay open on the bed. The Pacific sparkled through the window behind her, turned to purple-black by the moon and window glass. She spoke over her shoulder. “That you, Burke? Paul?”

Frye stepped in. Lucia gasped sharply, straightened. “Chuck? Burke’s out now, he’s—”

“I know where he is.”

“You talked to him tonight?”

“Mainly he talked to me.”

“You men come to some agreement about things?”

“Yes. We decided you owe me three million dollars that Dien stole from his people. I’m here to get it.”

Frye moved toward her and Lucia backed up. Then she reached slowly to the lamp and clicked it on. “Is that what I think it is all over your shirt?”

He looked down, nodding.

“I’d have never thought you could do that, Chuck.”

“Burke didn’t either. Get me Dien’s money, Lucia, or I’m going to do something extravagant.”

She looked at him a little defiantly, then sat on the bed. One big tear rolled down her face. She wiped it with the end of the robe sash. When she lowered her face into her hands, black hair cascaded down. “What did you do to him, Chuck?”

“It kind of got down to one of us or the other.”

She looked up with an anguished face. “You just keep living through things.”

“Funny, isn’t it?”

“Not really.” She sobbed into her hands again. Finally, she stood. Her chin shook. “Does it matter that I loved him? More than as just a brother?”

“Let’s weep.”

Lucia seemed to study him. “You got something real cold in you, Chuck. Part of Edison rubbed off, whether you know it or not.”

“Get me the money. I’m sick of you.”

“It’s in the safe down in the basement, with his snakes.”

Frye waved the shotgun toward the stairs. “You first, Lucia.”

“I’ve got a plane to catch in twenty minutes. I’m not going to miss it.”

Frye grabbed her robe and shoved her to the door. “March.”

She gave him a hopeless look, then led him out of the bedroom, down the stairs and into the library. She flicked on a light and groped a moment for the hidden switch. The wall panel swung out and the light went on. She shivered, then started down.

Their footsteps echoed in the big room. The heavy bags cast fat shadows on the padded floor. Frye could see the anaconda, six feet of it resting on the glass, interrupted on its nocturnal prowl. Lucia stopped, turned to him, and shivered again, wrapping her arms around herself. She nodded at the safe, wiped her eyes. “The key’s under Charlotte’s water dish.”

“The cobra?”

“Nobody else here with that name.”

“Get it out.”

She shook her head and stared at him. “Chuck, you could pay me, beat me, slander me, or steal my money, but you couldn’t get me to put my hand in that cage. Never.” She was trembling now, and her eyes were big. “There’s a nine-iron that Burke used to fish her out with sometimes. It’s leaning on the wall over there.”

He went to the cage. Charlotte’s head shifted; an eye beheld Frye. The water dish showed beneath one of her curls, a wedge of light blue against her pale green scales. Suddenly, her hood spread and she hissed. Even through the glass he could hear her — a big, pressurized sound like air being let from a balloon. Frye’s heart was in his mouth.

Charlotte stared him down, swaying, uncharmed.

The shotgun blast took half the cage with it, a splintered hurricane of glass, blood, scales. Charlotte slapped in the debris, loops and coils everywhere, a muscular, headless frenzy. He fished her out by the tail and dropped her to the floor.

The key was under the dish. It slid easily into the safe, and Frye brought Dien’s briefcases full of cash, gold, and jewelry onto the floor in front of him. “You knew about all of this, didn’t you, Ms. Ambassador? You helped him set it up.”

“I did what I had to to get our men back.”

“There were a thousand easier ways. Ways that wouldn’t have killed my brother and a lot of other people.”

Lucia wiped her eyes again with the belt, then crossed her arms. “Burke threw in a couple of things that I... wasn’t expecting. I didn’t know he helped bring Colonel Thach here. I didn’t know he was behind the kidnapping until a couple of days after it happened. When Burke’s plan went into motion, the best policy option was to see it through, rather than try to stop it. There comes a point when you go with what works.”

“What about the Paradiso?”

“That was something we had our eyes on for years. There really isn’t anything illegal about it, Chuck, Dien’s money is legitimate investment capital so far as I’m concerned. Your father cut us in as partners. It just took a little convincing.”

“You fucked him.”

Lucia checked her watch. “That helped.”

Frye found the video tape that Loc had stolen out of his apartment. He put it in one briefcase along with the loot.

Then Lucia brought her hands to her face and broke down. Her shoulders heaved, the robe jiggled. Her sobbing started loud and kept getting louder. Frye could see the tears dripping off her wrists. He stood there for a minute until the storm passed. When she had gathered herself back together, she gave him an odd look, and shook her head. “Do whatever you want, Chuck. I’m being picked up in ten minutes for a flight to Washington. I don’t intend to miss it. I’ve got men to bring home.”

She turned and climbed the stairs.

In the bedroom, Frye watched her pack. She moved mechanically, efficiently. “You can’t possibly be thinking of having me arrested.”

“It’s pretty damned possible.”

“If you do, Hanoi will shut down and start stalling again. You can bet on it. Those men of ours will sit there longer, rot a little more. Basically, Chuck, you can take me, or you can let the prisoners come home. You can’t have both. Think about it.”

“I am.”

Frye looked down on the guest house. Two of Lucia’s young workers had set their luggage on the porch. One checked her watch, looked up toward the bedroom. Thank God for Burke’s soundproof playroom, he thought.

Lucia yanked a dress from her closet and deftly worked it into a hanging bag. She glanced at the alarm clock. “Chuck, God rules up above, and people like me rule here. If you try to stop me, you’ll only ruin a very good thing. The concerns you have are just too... small. In the big scheme of things, little people get hurt. It’s really just simple math. And if you can put a stop to bringing back our men, then you’ve got to take a good hard look at your own soul. You ready to do that?”

“You might think you’re a moral giant, Lucia, but to me you’re just a whore. If I don’t get what I want out of you I’ll have your ass in jail before this night’s over.”

“You might get a good case, but I’d get a better judge. I’ve got three intelligence agencies and two cabinet members behind me. I’m subpoena-proof. So why not be smart? Let the men come home. Forget what happened. Take what you want, while you’ve got hands to grab with. Grow up. You’ve got the goods to be like your father is, or like I am. You’ve got what it takes.” She faced him, hands on her hips, one long leg revealed by the slit in the robe. She smiled. “Do you?”

For a moment, Frye was actually tempted. “Paul DeCord will want to talk to Burke soon. What time is he due here?”

“He’s due now. He’ll take us out to the airport. Why?”

“There are some things I need from him. I’m going to get them one way or another.”

“Going to kill him too?”

“If I have to.” He looked down on Lucia’s underlings, waiting outside the cottage. Idealists, he thought. Humanitarians. Suckers.

“You’re as dangerous as the rest of them, Chuck. In your own way.”

Frye studied her lovely face. He looked at the king-sized bed, the two night stands and reading lamps, the pair of cowboy boots on the floor by the far side. “How long have you and Burke been sleeping together?”

Lucia sat down. She looked at him with superiority, but the tears rolled down her face anyway. She wiped them away with her robe sleeve. “The first time, we were twelve.”

“Why?”

“Then, just because it felt so good, and he was so beautiful. Later, because it was just our little thing. It’s like being a vampire. You just don’t go back to the regular world.” She looked at him, a hint of invitation in her eyes. She slid out of the robe, turned her back to him, bent her perfect ass his way, and worked on a pair of panty hose. Next a wool skirt, a blouse, black pumps, a suitcoat. She checked her watch, then locked her suitcase.

“What’s in all this for you, Lucia?”

“I’m going to ease right into the district congressional seat when it comes up vacant next time, that’s what’s in it for me. After the first POWs come home, I’m going to be front-page everything. Cover of Time, Life, you name it. My recognition factor will be off the charts, so I’m going to use it.”

“Isn’t all that Texas oil money enough for you?”

“We only spent a year there. No oil money at all. Burke copped the cowboy talk and look because it gave him a part to play. He was as solid an actor as DeNiro, believe me. When he joined up in ‘sixty-eight, military intelligence got him for a couple of years. Later, the CIA bought his contract.”

She gave Frye a distant look, wiped a tear off her cheek. “I was really torn up when he left for Vietnam. I started learning the language so I might be a little closer to what he was doing. I loved him in every way a woman can love a man. We’re not really bad folks, Chuck. We’re just... different.”

Frye said nothing. All he could think about was Bennett.

Lucia zipped shut an overnight case, then gave Frye a sad look. “Know something? A big reason I did all this is because it was my way of doing something good. You need to do something decent once in a while, when you do what I did with my brother. I think we’re born with certain souls, same as we’re born with certain eyes and ears. So I just tried to stack up some good acts to balance out mine. Deep inside, I have the soul of a mudshark. God, you wouldn’t believe how cold it can get.”

Frye looked out to the cottage as a white Lincoln rolled up and parked. Paul DeCord hustled out, opened the trunk, then headed for a side door.

Frye walked her down, his shotgun in one hand, a clump of Lucia’s black hair in the other. He made her carry the two briefcases of booty. She cracked the door and DeCord squeezed through. Frye intercepted him by the collar of his tennis shirt and rammed the muzzle into his throat. “You’re under arrest,” he said.

He pushed DeCord ahead of him and kept the gun on both of them as he marched them back to the living room. He made them sit next to each other on the couch.

DeCord rubbed his throat, darkly eyeing Frye. “Where’s Burke?”

“I shot him, so your clean-up committee is out of action. Now, it’s Uncle Sam versus the people, and I’m the people.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to live. And I want Li to live.”

DeCord nodded. “Why shouldn’t you?”

“Because Burke’s idea was to waste us, and you went along with it. That was the old program.”

“And you’ve got a new one.”

“I’ve got a tape of the payments you made to Hy. I’ve already made copies,” he lied. “I’ve packed them and addressed them to the networks, the attorney general, and the president. And if anything happens to me, or Li, or my family, the lawyers will get them out of the safe deposit boxes and mail them. Anything. If my father has a car accident, I’m going to blame you. If my mother gets mugged in a shopping center some night, I’m going to blame you. If Li has people following her around Little Saigon, I’ll blame you. If I wake up in a bad mood, I’m going to blame you, and the tapes go out. I never want to see your face again, DeCord. Or hers, except when she brings the prisoners home.”

DeCord glared at him, then nodded hopefully.

“The alternative is I can call the cops right now and they’ll take Lucia down for conspiracy to kidnap, murder, fraud. Your deal with Hanoi will go straight to hell.”

“Don’t let that happen, Chuck,” said DeCord. “It’s all ready. I know a lot of things have gone—”

“And I want a prisoner named Michael Strauss to be the first one off that plane, if it ever comes in. That’s what I want out of all this.”

Lucia nodded.

DeCord stood. “You’ve got your deal. I promise we’ll forget about you and what you know. I’ll have our attorneys put it in writing, and yours can approve it. I promise the U.S. government will use its power to protect you and Li under any circumstances. But those promises don’t mean a thing if we don’t bring the POWs home. Don’t send out those tapes, Chuck. Don’t write about this. Just let me and Lucia get this thing done.”

Frye stepped forward, put the shotgun barrel under Paul DeCord’s chin, and eased him back down onto the sofa. DeCord closed his eyes as Frye pressed the weapon harder against his neck. The two MIA Committee workers — an eager young man and a pretty woman who had permed her hair to look like Lucia’s — hustled into the living room from the sliding glass door. They froze, lips open and eyes wide. With the barrel of the.12 gauge, he pried DeCord’s chin toward them. Frye looked at the volunteers and Lucia, then at DeCord’s watering eyes, then down at his blood-splattered T-shirt.

“You’ve got your deal, Chuck,” DeCord slurred.

Frye pushed the weapon harder into his neck. “I’d rather have my brother.”

He stepped away, took the briefcases, and backed out of Lucia’s house into the warm Laguna night.

Frye parked along Coast Highway at Main Beach and walked along the sand to the old blue apartments. He could feel his heart breaking. Above him were sky and a fractional moon that plainly didn’t care.

Cristobel met him at the door. “I hoped you’d end up here sooner or later.”

He looked at her. She may as well have come from another planet.

When she held him her arms were good and strong, and he could feel her body shaking against his own.

“They killed him.”

“I know.”

“They killed him.”

“Chuck.”

“Don’t let go of me now.”

“No, I won’t.”

He came apart.