T. Parker - Little Saigon

“You are arrogant and a fool. You are worse than your brother.”

“That’s the nicest thing I’ve heard all week.” Frye looked at the guards, who were now looking at him. He shrugged and walked out.

Two minutes later he had found Loc at Pho Dinh. He was with the Dark Men, five of them. “Dien knows we talked. He isn’t happy with me, and he won’t be happy with you.”

Loc stared at him for a moment, then nodded. “Duc has still not come back.”

“I wouldn’t bet he will. Be careful, Loc. You can come stay with me if you want, get out of Little Saigon.”

Loc shook his head. “I will wait for Duc. I have my friends. The general cannot surprise me now.”

“You know where to find me.”

“Thank you, Frye.”

He picked up three newspapers at the stands outside. They all carried stories on Tuy Xuan, killed by intruders in his Westminster home. They all said he’d been shot. No suspects. Motive: robbery.

He tossed them into a trash can as he headed back to his car.

The FBI offices were in the Federal Building in Santa Ana. Frye waited in a nondescript lobby for thirty minutes before anyone was ready to see him, while a receptionist answered the phone, channeled calls, took messages.

She finally showed him to a back office. It was spacious, with a view of downtown, an overactive air conditioner, and cool gray carpet.

Special Agent-in-Charge Albert Wiggins shook Frye’s hand with federal authority, then pointed him to a chair. He was thinner in real life than he looked on Xuan’s TV set, with eyes a little too close together and an undentable layer of confidence about him. His coat was on, his tie was knotted tight. “I’m glad you called this morning, Chuck. In fact, I was about to call you. There are a few things I’d like you to think about. You feeling okay today?”

Frye nodded.

Wiggins sat back. “First, what can I do for you?”

“I think you ought to pay some attention to the Thach angle. I know General Dien has been trying to tell you the same thing.”

Wiggins smiled. “What angle is that?”

“That Thach has engineered things like this before.”

“What are you referring to?”

Frye told him what he knew of Paris and Australia, the beheadings, Thach’s mission to obliterate the resistance. “I had a long talk with Xuan about three hours before he was killed. He more than suspected Thach’s influence in Little Saigon. When he died that way, it was too much of a coincidence to ignore.”

Wiggins nodded along with the whole story, as if he’d heard it just a few minutes before. “Yes, well, you can be assured that we’ve not been ignoring it either. Despite what your Vietnamese friends tell you. It’s a fact that Hanoi has its eyes and ears in Little Saigon. We kicked a few loose back in seventy-eight, more in eighty. All small-time people. They were encouraged by Hanoi to send reports about what was happening, and to send dollars. You might know that Vietnamese currency isn’t negotiable outside the country. The dollars are extremely valuable.”

“I imagine.”

Wiggins leaned back in his chair and linked his fingers behind his head. “You’re a reporter.”

“Used to be.”

“You know, we’re extremely cautious about this Thach angle, as you call it. Any mention of Colonel Thach is enough to stir up the refugees. They’re terrified of him. You wouldn’t be contemplating an article, a piece on him, would you?”

“I’m contemplating how to find Li, is all.”

“I understand. We’ll find her. But you have to know that by implying Thach’s influence here, you would be creating a great amount of fear and causing a potentially dangerous situation in Little Saigon. In fact, we believe this is what Xuan’s killers and Li’s kidnappers may well want.”

“Who are they?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be here talking to you, now would I?”

“You must have some ideas.”

Wiggins nodded, leaned forward. “I might. And you, Chuck, are the last one I’m supposed to share them with.”

“I know that.”

Wiggins stood, crossed his arms, gave Frye a governmental stare. “But I’ll do it anyway. I think — and this is purely a personal opinion at this point — that we’re not looking at a political situation at all. We’re not even looking at two related crimes. Listen. I think the kidnappers will come through with a big ransom demand, once they’ve sweated your brother long enough. God knows, between him and your father, the resources are there. When they do, we’re ready for them. That’s what Michelson and Toibin are there for. They’re the two best ransom men we’ve got. The second those kidnappers try to pick up the money, we’ll have them. I guarantee it.”

Wiggins took a deep breath. “Coffee?”

“No thanks. I’m listening.”

“I’ll admit it, Frye, when I first heard about Xuan, I thought the same thing you did. Two prominent resistance leaders... removed in the same week. But I did my homework on Xuan, bless his heart. He’s one of those Vietnamese who sees a Communist behind every bush, and remember this is the FBI talking. He organized his own secret police back in ‘seventy-eight, to screen the refugees coming in. People were beaten. People disappeared. You know what he was saying then? Thach. Thach is behind it all. Guy had a regular fixation, Frye. And I’ve got evidence now that Tuy Xuan may have been involved in some questionable dealings with the local gangs.”

“What kind of dealings?”

“He’s an activist. He enlists support in Nguyen Hy’s so-called Committee to Free Vietnam. They fund a ‘resistance’ over there. I’d speculate he got some funding from the gang kids’ families, and the gang kids went to get it back. It’s damn easy to throw suspicion, if you want to leave a signature. Look at yourself, it worked on you, didn’t it?”

“Who? The Dark Men? Ground Zero?”

“I don’t know, at this point. I’m not sure it matters. Let’s just say we’ve got early indicators that Xuan and the criminal youth element were tied. So we’re not talking politics here. We’re talking plain old dollars and cents. You know something, Chuck? The refugees are smart. They know that they can point fingers at Hanoi and we good Americans will go along with them. We hate Communists in this country, don’t we? Well, the refugees know that. They play on our own fears, and every time someone gets their pocket picked, they blame Hanoi. The gangs know that. Eddie Vo knows it.”

“Gang kids beheading an old man? Hard to swallow.”

“There was a gang working here in the early eighties. Their leader was infamous for doing just that. His nickname was Chop, for God’s sake. So it’s not hard for me to swallow at all. Unless, of course, you know something about Li or Xuan that you’re not telling us.” Wiggins sat down, looking at Frye innocently.

“Something like what?”

“The pipeline to Vietnam. The ‘prosthetics’ that Bennett and Li send over there.” Wiggins smiled. “He told me he was sending over plastic limbs, and I laughed in his face. Which isn’t easy to do to a man who hasn’t got any legs.”

Frye said nothing.

Wiggins smiled. “Hey — I don’t care. I think it’s great. Send all the guns and ammo he can afford. That’s the question, though. How does he afford it? Where’s he get the money?”

“You got me.”

“Knew I would, Chuck. Just knew I would.”

“Funny how we got back to politics again.”

“Fleecing money from homesick refugees isn’t politics. It’s theft.”

“General Dien is the master of that game, from what I hear.”

“And Nguyen Hy is a close second. Bennett and Li are just a little too close to Hy’s CFV for the... contact not to rub off. You know — sleep with pigs, you pick up their smell. And sooner or later, the suckers find out and what happens? Heads roll. So, if you’ve got any information on how that pipeline is financed, I’d sure like to know. I might be able to keep something like this from happening again. Talk about good copy, Chuck. You help me, and I’ll help you on this one. We could show just who’s taking money out of Little Saigon and where it’s going — or not going. But if you’ve got any ambition to write about some Vietnamese colonel cutting off heads in California, Chuck, I have to ask you to run it by this desk first. Would you do that?”