T. Parker - Little Saigon

Looking up the steeply angled, narrow tunnel, Frye shuddered. He pointed to the smudges the man had left.

“I’ll go first now,” said Minh.

Frye stood for a moment, eyes closed again, trying for confidence, or at least composure. He checked his watch: twenty minutes down. With a deep breath he gave Minh the lantern, then followed him inside.

Knees, elbows, concrete cold on the belly, not even enough room to raise his head all the way. Halfway in, he decided this was a big mistake. The lantern flickered and hissed ahead of him. Minh cursed.

Then Frye began to scramble, his elbows burning and his knees aching, but the harder he tried, the tighter things got. He finally had to just stop everything and listen to his own breathing for a moment and feel the precise thudding of his heart against the tunnel floor and try his best to think about something else. He thought of Cristobel, stark-raving nude, beckoning him. His face was hot against the cement. I hate this place, he thought, never again down here, never again. He inched forward, one calibrated movement at a time, putting his faith in the infinitesimal degrees of progress. He could see Minh, thirty feet ahead. The detective was on his back, pressing up with his arms. Something gave; his arms straightened. Frye heard a cover slide away.

Minh worked his arms and shoulders through the opening. He slipped through; Frye followed.

It smelled worse than anything he’d smelled in his life, unimaginably foul. When Minh settled the lantern on flat ground, the glow fell on rounded shapes that scurried into shadows and vanished. A high buzzing filled the air around him, a sense of motion in the upper reaches of the cavern. He choked down the urge to vomit and pulled the rest of his body into the chamber.

It was bigger than either of the first two rooms, with a high ceiling that glittered, Frye saw as he raised the lantern, with the shifting bodies of flies. A rat waddled before him and he kicked it. The rodent seemed to melt into a corner, tail disappearing, snakelike. The walls were earth, supported by a makeshift network of uneven beams laced with rope. Scrap lumber, he thought, tied instead of nailed, so no one would hear the construction from above. Three lanterns hung from the ropes. A cooler stood in one corner. He stepped over, stirring the flies overhead, and opened it. A couple of soft drinks floated in a few inches of water.

“Thirsty, Minh?”

“Shut up, Frye.”

He almost gagged again. He closed his eyes and concentrated against it. He finally took off his shirt and wrapped it around his face, tying it snug behind his head. A few feet from the cooler lay a stack of announcements for the Freedom Rally. Li’s hopeless face wavered in the lantern light.

“How do you get an ice chest into this hellhole, anyway?”

“I don’t know, Frye. I don’t care.”

“You ought to. It means there’s another way in here.”

He picked up the lantern again, and the flies hummed louder.

Built off of the main cavern was a smaller one. Frye held the lamp before him, cinched up the shirt around his face and ducked in. On the ground was a large canvas tarpaulin, and something underneath it was moving. His hand shook with the lantern, quivering the bright light. Something scraped beneath the tarp, then moved. Frye knelt down, took one corner of the material, then stood, peeling it away. Rats turned from their meal and peered into the light, then wobbled across the two decomposing bodies and headed for the shadows.

Frye hurled away the heavy tarp, let it drop. The bodies lay face up, strewn with lye. Rats had eaten the good parts. The ski caps they had used at the Asian Wind lay beside them, removed so the lye could do its work. Their bellies had swelled. One exposed and non-eaten hand looked like a glove filled with water.

Duc, Loc’s little brother, was still wearing his red high-tops.

Frye gave Minh the lantern and went back to the main room. The tunnels started tilting, and he braced himself against a damp wall. He couldn’t get enough air. His skin was hot, and a throbbing pressure felt as if it was about to burst his head. His eardrums roared.

Minh’s pale face looked around the corner from the other chamber. “Frye?”

What seemed important at this point was to get the hell out.

“Frye!”

The next thing he knew, the Dream Reader was helping him into her den. He lay there on his back, chest heaving, the light burning into his eyes.

She looked down on him. “No Li?”

“No Li.”

“You should listen to your dreams.”

“I tried, goddamn it.”

“The demons always win.”

A few minutes later Minh crawled up, bearing the lantern before him. Frye recognized the fear in his eyes.

The detective talked to the Dream Reader in Vietnamese. Frye gathered that some deal was being made. She protested, then nodded, then nodded again.

Minh used her phone to call Duncan. “Just come to the Dream Reader’s, I’ll explain it when you get here.”

He looked at Frye. “I’ll have questions for you, but I need answers from our friends below first. I appreciate what you’ve done. Can you keep your mouth shut for the next forty-eight hours? Tell me I don’t have to send you to jail again to make sure.”

“If you send me to jail again, I’ll get out and murder you. I promise.” Frye stood shakily.

Minh smiled. “You okay?”

“I think so. Just got kind of mixed-up.” He took one of the Dream Reader’s business cards and wrote “Cristobel Strauss” on it. He handed it to the detective and explained what had happened to her. “I want to know who did it,” Frye said. “I need to know who they are.”

Minh looked at him with new suspicion. “Why?”

“Three of them are still following her around. I’d just like to know who I’m dealing with, and I don’t want to get her upset. You can do it in one phone call to the Long Beach cops, or I can spend an hour at the courthouse. Either way, I’ll—”

“Okay, Frye. I know you well enough by now to realize you don’t give up. I’ll find out who they are.”

Through the screen door, Frye could see his brother sitting on the couch. The room was dark, but a soft light played off Bennett’s face. There was a tall glass in his hand and a bottle of gin on the table in front of him. A movie screen was set up in front of the TV. A carousel projector sat beside the gin bottle. Bennett looked up, his eyes all wrong. “It’s late. Even Michelsen and Toibin are asleep.”

Frye stepped in. “Need to use your shower.”

“What happened to you?”

Crawley appeared from the kitchen.

“I found out where they first took Li. Where Eddie went. There’s a tunnel under the Dream Reader’s.”

“ Jesus!”

Frye plodded to the bathroom, stripped and showered, put on some clothes that Donnell brought in. He looked at himself in the mirror. He had never looked so pale and drained in all his life. Li. Xuan. Eddie. Duc and the third gunman. The smell of death was so strong on him he got back in and showered again. He stopped when the hot water ran out.

There was a glass of ice waiting when he came back to the living room. He poured on the gin, sipped, and sat back. He told them about footprints on his floor, the mud on Li’s clothes, her song about the tunnel, his realization that she had been taken underground first. He told them of the trip down, every stink and horror still fresh in his mind. He told them he’d promised Minh to say nothing.

“Didn’t you call Wiggins?”

“I thought Minh would handle it better. He’ll tell the FBI soon enough, earn the points.”

“Me and Donnell spent the whole night at the plaza, asking people if they’d seen any new faces in town. If one gunman was an outsider, maybe more out-of-town people are involved.”