T. Parker - Little Saigon

The afternoon had begun to cool. He stopped to consider two marble lions, white, snarling, and heavy-manned, guarding the plaza entrance. Each stood on a black marble pedestal, with one paw resting on a ball. Behind them were four thick red columns supporting the elaborately crenulated archway. Two Vietnamese women hustled by, pushing a cart, then paused to read a CELEBRATE SAIGON DAYS banner hanging from a balcony. Outside the Bồng Lai Seafood Company, a rubber-booted worker hosed pungent, unspecific waste into a drain. In the window of Tǎng Fashions, a woman arranged a red silk dress on a mannequin. Two uniformed police came from the store and headed into the next one.

Outside Tǎi Lại Donuts and Hot Food, two more cops confronted a group of gang boys. Words were passed. A bulky officer spun one kid around, then handcuffed and pushed him into the back of his black-and-white. A man in a rumpled suit appeared from nowhere with a camera and started snapping pictures. The other cop moved in. Frye saw a press pass flash, watched the officer muscle the photographer off the sidewalk. The photog kept shooting. Give ’em hell, Frye thought. It’s all front-page stuff.

As if there wasn’t enough of it already. He stood in front of the news rack and read the headlines through the smudgy plastic: VIET SINGER KIDNAPPED IN ‘MINSTER NIGHT CLUB... CABARET SHOOTOUT LEAVES ONE DEAD... POP SINGER TAKEN AT GUNPOINT...

There were pictures of Li, pictures of the Asian Wind, pictures of Bennett hobbling out with Donnell Crawley behind him. He bought copies of everything and took them to Paris Cafe, where he sat outside and ate a heaping plateful of chicken and noodles. Looking out to the plaza, he saw another team of policemen going door-to-door. A network news crew was taping outside the Buddhist pagoda, a colorful establishing shot.

Did Arbuckle crack the Dream Reader? Apply pressure... The best thing you can do is just stay out of my investigation... Paris, my ass ... Everything in Little Saigon can be dangerous...

He slipped out Minh’s clip file and read the articles. The Ledger reporter on the Westminster beat was Rick Ford. Rick had an in-depth interview with Minh, a “day in the life of” ride-along deal, even a “detective at home” article. Rick Ford, Frye thought, is a good reporter.

Minh had joined the Westminster force just one year ago. He went through training at the L.A. Sheriff’s Academy, graduating high in his class. He was born in Saigon to an American employee of the CIA and a Vietnamese woman from a diplomatic family. During the war, he was commissioned, made lieutenant, and served in Intelligence Corps. He was evacuated during the fall, with his wife. They now lived in Westminster. During the eleven years since leaving Vietnam and joining the Westminster PD, he had earned a bachelor’s degree from Cal State Los Angeles, worked a series of odd jobs. His parents settled in Washington, D.C., where his father now worked for a political study “consortium.”

All fine and dandy, Frye thought, but how had Minh gone from officer to detective in less than a year?

He found a pay phone and called the Ledger.

“Easy,” said Rick Ford. “The department wanted to show him off. Call it extra equal opportunity. Vietnamese cops are tough to find, so Minh shot right up the ladder when they put him in Little Saigon. He’s the only guy on the whole force who speaks a word of Vietnamese.”

“What do the other cops think of him?”

“Not much.”

“That’s what I gathered from Duncan.”

“He’s gotten a lot of press. They’re jealous. He’s not a bad cop, I don’t think. He’s just kind of over his head. Why?”

“Just curious.”

“I would be too, if he was working that kidnapping. How’s your brother taking it?”

“He’s concerned.”

“Shit, Frye, I could have guessed that much. How about the FBI? Rumor has it some high-powered team is on its way from Washington.”

“That’s news to me.”

“I could go for an eyewitness description of what came down last night.”

“That’s my exclusive.”

“Got a new job?”

“I’m working on it. One more thing, Rick. Did you get the feeling that Minh keeps in contact with his dad?”

“He said he did.”

“Thanks, Rick.”

Frye went back to his table and read Minh’s file again. Why doesn’t Benny trust him? Does Benny trust anyone?

Suddenly, he felt his scalp tighten and a jittery flash of nerves run up his back as he heard Li’s voice, lilting and echo-ridden, passing through the atmosphere of the plaza.

It hit Frye like a ten-foot wave at Rockpile. He could see her standing in the spotlights, smiling down at Bennett. He could see her that last time at Frye Island, when she stooped in the flowerbed and placed the marigolds in the holes, then flattened herself against the ground when a car backfired coming onto the bridge. He could see her that first time, standing in the hallway outside Bennett’s room at the San Diego Naval Hospital while staff and patients strode widely around and pretended to ignore her. She hadn’t lowered her eyes one bit when Frye introduced himself, but looked straight at him and said: “I am Kieu Li — your brother’s wife. Beg pardon, man, but I faint.” She had, crumpling into his arms as her purse slid from her shoulder, a Coke clunked from her hand, and her hair — the longest, blackest hair Frye had ever seen — spilled across his elbow and dragged through the bubbles before he could hoist her to his chest and carry her outside. He could see her that one Christmas, playing a lovely version of “Fire and Rain” on the old D-28 that Bennett had given her, with the capo way up on the fifth fret to accompany her high and flawless voice. He could see her studying the television with intensity, adding to her English with ease, trying out words on him like “reparations,” “documentary,” and “amortization.” She had been horrified to learn that, according to all the major networks, the same word applied both to the item you wiped your face with at dinner, and the one used — as she put it — to “defeat” menstrual flow.

He could see her in the recording sessions he’d watched, earphone to her head as she stood in the booth and did her takes, time and time again. Twenty, thirty versions of the same song, and she never lost her composure, never lost her drive. He could see her at his parents’ parties, elegant but demure, the kind of person who draws interest like a magnet draws steel. He could see her as a girl just over from Vietnam, then as a woman of style and class, and as he did so, she seemed to grow from one to the other in a single brief second.

Sitting in the late afternoon sun of Little Saigon, he could see her face as she looked up at him the day he’d told her Linda had left him and said simply, “Forgive her.”

Li.

Five phone calls later he had gotten the office number for Dr. Stanley Smith, UCI Professor of Social Ecology. The professor answered his own phone. His voice was soft, rounded.

“Why do you want to talk to me?”

“The cops say you know everything.”

He could hear Smith’s flattered chuckle.

“I’m afraid, Mr. Frye, that this isn’t a good time for me at all. No, not at all.”

“Last night wasn’t a good time for my sister-in-law to get kidnapped either.”

Smith paused. “No. I wouldn’t think so. I... can make just a few minutes for you. I’m working off campus, at the Ziggurat building. Floor three, room three-forty-one.”

Frye took the San Diego freeway south. He watched clouds coloring above the tan hills, a herd of cattle raising silent dust, a magnificent smog-charged day atmospherically impossible in another age.