T. Parker - Little Saigon

Frye was sure that Nha’s screaming and the sirens wailing in his own eardrums were enough to bring down the walls. Come down, he thought, come down and bury us and make this all untrue.

He stood there for a moment, blinking, married to Nha’s screams. Nothing would go away.

For the next two hours Frye controlled events from over his own shoulder, a hovering, objective, third party to himself. It was just after one in the morning.

He got the other Frye to answer questions and control his urge to vomit. He tried to counter the other Frye’s drowsiness and the constant grinding of his jaw. He watched with detached interest as CSI Duncan finally walked from the study, bearing a plastic garbage bag, tied and tagged. The gurney slid by silently a few moments later. The other Frye just stood there in front of him with tears running down his cheeks, and he thought: The kid needs a break.

The other Frye dealt with Minh rather admirably, he thought, answering his questions patiently, then finally standing up and telling the detective to go fuck himself and talk to someone else. The other Frye bummed a smoke from someone and went outside.

The other Frye watched as the FBI descended and Special Agent Wiggins in his lawyer’s suit took charge. He nodded when Wiggins took him into one of the girls’ bedrooms and explained that no one, repeat, no one must know that Xuan was beheaded. This, in order to catch the perp. He refused to sign whatever it was they asked him to sign.

The other Frye saw the horror in Madame Tuy’s eyes as an agent escorted her and her daughters into a waiting car.

Both Fryes watched as they wheeled Nha to the ambulance on a stretcher, her body cold and pale as ice, a shock so deep that the faces of the paramedics said she really might not make it.

Then it was two o’clock. The two Fryes slowly joined again and melted into the bucket seat of the Cyclone. The car either moved, or the road slid under it — he wasn’t sure of the mechanics — but Bolsa Avenue began to pass along the windows.

Little Saigon crept by on either side, a tunnel of lights and shops. First there were two of everything, but he wiped his eyes and then there was only one.

Outside the Committee to Free Vietnam headquarters, Bennett’s van waited in the parking lot.

Frye pulled in and parked next to it. For a long while he just sat there, wondering why he was just sitting there.

He found himself outside the well-lit lobby. The door was cracked open, Frye tried it — locked, but not pulled shut. He went in. Posters of entertainers — Li among them, maps, three desks and typewriters, three phones, and a collection of cheap patio chairs. A South Vietnamese flag hung against the far wall. Another wall supported a military shrine of some kind: a glass case containing an empty uniform pinned to a backboard as if still occupied by its owner. The boots, medals, holster, pistol, and belt were all in place. A dark walnut door leading further into the building was shut.

Frye stood there, trying to quell the visions that kept swirling before his eyes.

But displayed in a case beside the uniform were three photographs that brought them on even stronger. In the first picture a naked man was being led by two soldiers. Behind them were thatched roof bungalows and jungle. In the second, the man was kneeling before a man with a sword. In the third he was still kneeling, but his head lay on the ground beside him and dark streams of blood ran down his chest.

Colonel Thach stood above his victim in post-pivotal grace, legs bent, arms and sword extended, like Reggie sending one out of Yankee Stadium. His face was a hideous grimace. Below the photographs was a simple card, thumbtacked to the wall, that said IN MEMORY OF GENERAL HAN, RESISTANCE LEADER — 1935–1986.

Frye slumped into a patio chair, staring into the horrible face of the colonel. I’d give just about anything in the world, he thought, to make this all go away.

A muffled thud issued from somewhere beyond the lobby. Frye wondered why his heart didn’t beat faster, why a surge of adrenaline didn’t break loose inside him, but all he felt was numb. Another thud, voices.

He stood up, turned off the lobby lights, and cracked the wooden door.

The back room was a warehouse, expansive and tall, with open rafters and industrial lights hung from chains. There were shelves stacked with pamphlets and literature, rows of books, boxes and cartons of indeterminate content. A portable podium with microphone, a public address system, and a couple of television monitors were placed along the near wall. At the far end of the big room Crawley and Nguyen loaded crates from a pallet into a red van. Coffin-shaped, but shorter, Frye thought. Legs and arms. Hands and feet. Heads are not replaceable.

Bennett stood nearby, watching, a short automatic weapon in his hands. He held it up, sighted on some target in the rafters, pulled the trigger. Frye heard the dry ping echo toward him. Bennett placed the weapon into a crate and Donnell hammered on the lid.

Frye wondered at how unsurprised he was. Deep down inside, he told himself, I knew he was lying all along.

“That’s the end of it,” said Crawley.

Nguyen swung shut the van doors, wiped his hands. “We shouldn’t worry. DeCord will change his mind. It’s his job to be reasonable.”

“He just followin’ orders,” said Donnell. “You shoulda seen his face when Benny told him it was all down on tape.”

“Well, the fucking tape is gone, so hurry up,” said Bennett.

He swung across the floor and opened the door of the van. The special platform rotated out, and he climbed into the seat. Frye watched Crawley point in his direction. “Gotta lock it up?”

“I already did,” said Nguyen, checking his watch. “Let’s go.”

Frye saw the big aluminum door rise, folding back into its runners. Bennett’s van started with a roar and a puff of white smoke. When it was outside, the door came down and a moment later, the lights went off.

From the darkness of the lobby Frye watched Bennett’s van emerge onto Bolsa and head west, toward the freeway. The invisible man in the uniform watched from beside him. Frye did what Nguyen should have done: closed the door all the way.

You lied to me, brother.

He walked to the Cyclone, unaware of what was around him, watching the van roll down Bolsa. He felt drawn to Bennett now like a moth to light, like a junkie to the needle, like a tightrope walker to the heights.

He wondered dully just how bad this could get.

He steered down Bolsa, Bennett’s van mixing with the traffic ahead.

Traffic was light on the San Diego Freeway south. Frye stayed four cars back and in another lane. His head ached and his hands felt cold. Things kept jumping into the periphery of his vision — ugly things, things disassembled, shapes within shapes. He looked down and realized how hard he was gripping the wheel, tried to relax.

Westminster gave way to Fountain Valley, Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, Irvine. Frye started shaking, so he rolled up the windows and turned on the heater. At Jamboree Road, Bennett signaled and got off. They headed toward the ocean. Corona del Mar was busy and the lights all wanted to blur together so Frye just let them, thinking — go ahead fuckers, blur all you want because all I have to do is follow the red taillights, the bouncing red taillights, there’s too much red in this world, if everything was blue or green it would be a better place, no doubt about that at all.

Then south on Coast Highway along the hillsides and pasturelands belonging to the Frye Ranch, future site of the Laguna Paradiso — three hotels, twenty clusters of custom homesites, riding trails, an equestrian center, a yacht marina, and a shopping plaza the size of a small Central American republic.