T. Parker - Little Saigon

“Luck?”

“Zip. We’ll try again in the morning.”

Frye looked at the movie screen.

“I’ve been looking at some old stuff, Chuck. Absence doesn’t make the heart fonder, it just fucks it up.” Bennett drank from his gin. He looked at Frye a long while, then down. “I think about her every minute. Her face gets blurred and turns into something else. I’m trying to get a grip on it again, little brother. Pictures of me and Li. Want to see?”

Bennett had never once in twenty years showed him a candid picture from his seventeen months of war. A story here and there, a snippet, a recollection. A lot of nothing, Frye thought. Bennett slurped down more gin. He picked up the control. The projector fan eased on, and a slide rotated into place: Li and him standing outside a nightclub. She was dressed simply in a Western-style skirt and blouse. Bennett was in his dress uniform. It was night, and the club lights down the avenue were dense and bright. Bennett was smiling, his arm wrapped around her. “Saigon, March ‘seventy. I’d been in-country for seven months. I’d known Li for four.”

“You look happy.”

“Weirdest thing in the world, Chuck, to be happy in a war. Here’s some earlier shots.”

He flipped back. Shots of the 25th Infantry Headquarters at Dong Zu — ”Tropic Lightning,” said Bennett — a sprawling complex of one-story buildings and quonsets. A swimming pool. A golf course. Jeeps and grunts everywhere. Pictures of Benny and Crawley playing basketball.

Bennett stopped at a picture of a plain quonset surrounded by DO NOT ENTER signs. A guard stood out front. “Interrogation Central,” he said. “We called it Spook City. Between the CIA guys, the PSYOPS flakes and the civilian ‘reps’ who came and went, it was one weird fuckin’ place. There were cages inside, and rooms with a foot and a half of soundproofing on the walls so the screams wouldn’t get out.” Bennett’s head wobbled a little as he stared at the screen.

“What did you do there?”

“That’s where prisoners went before we shipped them south. That’s where I worked sometimes. Hell, that’s boring. Look, here’s Li. First one of her I ever took.”

The picture showed Kieu Li sitting on a stone bench in a courtyard. Frye noted the plantation mansion, lost to vines, in the background. Li had a worried look on her face, not sure how to react. Then a shot of her and Donnell. Then of her and a young Vietnamese man dressed in U.S. Army fatigues. He looked at the camera with a quiet arrogance.

“Huong Lam,” said Bennett. “The man you asked about.”

“Looks like a kid.”

“Seventeen. Same as Li.”

The next picture was of the three of them standing outside the cottage. They had their arms around each other. The jungle had practically choked the old colonial building. Frye could see a guitar propped against the wall.

Then a close-up of Li. Frye quickly saw the same things in her that Bennett must have: a simple beauty and dignity, a composure born of acceptance, a natural gentleness that emanated from her. He could see her strength, too, inseparable from her as water from a river or heat from fire. It’s what she needed to get through — he thought — the psychic national currency. Spend what you need to survive, and save what you can. Li, at least, had enough of it.

“She tell about that place in her story to Smith?”

Frye nodded, transfixed by Li’s face. “Sort of.”

“Beautiful little place. Not so big as the Michelin Plantation or the Fil Hol. Right in the middle of Three Corps Tac Zone, which was squat in the middle of the Viet Cong. Fuckin’ COSVN was less than a hundred miles northwest. It sat out in the middle of that jungle like a temple or something. Got run down after the French were kicked out, used for a bunch of different things. I used it to debrief Li. Was close enough for us all to get to, remote enough so we wouldn’t get seen and shot at.”

Frye looked at the slouching wall, clenched by vines. The fountain was in the foreground. Then a shot of Huong Lam, Bennett, and another Vietnamese man. Bennett had a bottle of champagne in his hand. Around Lam’s neck was the silver wave necklace that Frye had made for his brother.

Bennett drank down half a glass of gin. “The other Vietnamese guy we called Tony. He was Lam’s liaison. Never could get rid of him when there was a camera around. That necklace meant a lot to Lam, because he knew it meant a lot to me. What’d you make that thing out of, Chuck?”

“A quarter.”

“Nice work. Must have taken forever to file out that little wave.”

“Washington’s head is the top of the curl.”

“On patrol, Lam wrapped it in tape, so it wouldn’t jingle against his crucifix. He was a... weird guy. He was, like, half civilized and half savage. I never saw anybody fight with such a vengeance as him. You couldn’t tire him out. He’d take chances you wouldn’t believe. If we found tunnels, he’d go down. Most of the Vietnamese, they were too scared of those things. Not even Tony would go down there. We found a new hole one time, outside An Cat, hidden under a bunch of brush. Li’s intelligence told us where it was. We stood around for a minute while Lam got ready. He stripped down to just shirt and pants, took a knife in his teeth, a flashlight in his left hand and a nine-millimeter Smith in his right, and went in. We had tons of tunnel gadgets sent to us. Special shot-pistols, and headlamps like miners wear, radio transmitters that would strap to your back with the mike taped to your neck so your hands would be free. Lam never used that shit. All he had was a silencer for the pistol, because down there, a pistol shot could just about deafen you. He wouldn’t take a radio because things were too intense to be talking back with us. He wouldn’t smoke or drink or chew gum when he knew he was going down, because you really need your nose. Lam told me he could smell the Cong down there in the dark. Actually smell them. And he said he could feel them too, like sonar or something — he could feel their eyelids opening and closing, their muscles getting ready to move, their thoughts echoing off the tunnel walls.”

Frye could feel it himself, the solid darkness closing around him like fingers of a huge fist, squeezing his fear together, compacting his terror like a press.

Bennett drank again. “Thirty seconds later we heard three muffled shots. That meant he’d found another trap door. He’d always fire off three quick rounds through it before he went in. Then, two more of his shots, and one of theirs, way louder. Contact. After he got deep enough, we couldn’t hear much of anything. We’d just wait and hope he’d show again.”

Bennett stared at the picture of Lam. “He always would. They’d booby-trap those tunnels like crazy. They’d use snakes and spiders, spears and stakes, one-shot traps that would take your face off. They’d set crossbows in the walls and a trip wire in front you couldn’t see. They’d use fucking Coke cans to make grenades and fill them with rocks and broken glass. You set off one of those in a little tunnel and you were meat. One time he found three rats tied to a stake, and a vial and syringe not far away. He brought one of the animals out and we tested it — bubonic plague. The fucking VC version of germ warfare. Or they’d build a false wall and wait behind it. You got close enough, they’d whack you out with a fucking spear. They’d hide a claymore near the entrance ‘cause they knew when someone went down, a bunch of us would stand around and listen and watch. When the tunnel rat went in, the Cong would detonate the mine from inside and blow off the people above ground. But Lam, he was hip to all that shit. He knew. Sure enough, he came out all bloody and grimy. He’d found three VC and wasted them all. Lam didn’t say much more until later. He was too scared to talk. But when we got back and his nerves settled, he told me what went down. Turned out that time that there were four VC — all women. He’d taken out three and just couldn’t waste the last one. She was backed against a wall, not even bothering to hide anymore because she didn’t have a weapon and she knew he was gonna kill her. Lam just turned away and let her be. That’s what I mean about him being half civilized, too. He’d be unbelievably cruel, then do something like that. Lam had his own channel. Hell, we talked about everything. Looking back, I know I told him some shit I shouldn’t have. And he used it against us later.”