T. Parker - Little Saigon

Frye handed Burke a beer and sat down. “What’s he want in return?”

Burke looked at him, a little off balance, it seemed. “In return? Well, nothing he spoke of. See, Chuck, this is old-boy network stuff. He owed me. So I just collected.”

Frye thought it over. “Is he going to talk to Billingham?”

“Said he would. So you ought to be getting a call one of these days. That’s assuming that the Ledger wants you back, Chuck.”

Frye smiled. “Thanks, Burke. Now I guess I owe you one.”

Parsons drank off half his beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his fist. “No hurt in being neighborly. Me and Lucia live down to Crescent Bay here in Laguna, just a mile or two from here. Lucia and Edison are working on that Paradiso, so I figured, why not help Chuck?”

“Lucia set for that next trip to Hanoi?”

“Been a change, Chuck. There’s some news that’s gonna make big headlines tonight. All the networks gonna carry it at seven. She talked to the President about this one. I think her travel plans are gonna change a bit now. You ought to tune in.”

“What’s the news?”

Burke smiled and spun his hat on a finger. “I don’t want to spring any leaks on this one, much as I’d like to help you out. My sister’s one hard-headed lady.”

“I get it.”

Parsons put on his hat and burped. “You know, Chuck, I worked with Bennett over in the Nam for a year, and we got to be friends. Back here in the States, we’ve still been at least acquaintances. But that sonofabitch is harder and harder to talk to these days. It’s like you can’t get nothing through to him. If you ever get the chance, could you make clear to him something that I’ve been trying to make clear for upwards of a week now?”

“What’s that?”

“That I’ll do what I can to help him, I’ve got myself. I’ve got some resources. I can get things done. I’ve told him that, but he just gets that thousand-yard stare. He don’t listen.”

“I’ll tell him.”

Parsons headed for the door. “I’m offering to help, is all. If Bennett wants, I’ll stay a million miles away. Man’s gotta have his privacy. You might just mention that to him, if you ever find him in a listening frame of mind.”

“Will do, Burke. Thanks again.”

“Let’s just wait and see if Mack comes through. Don’t believe a promise ‘til it happens.” Parsons tipped his hat. “See ya ‘round.”

At four, Hyla called to remind him about dinner that night. A few minutes before five he showered and headed for Frye Island.

The traffic was heavy all the way through Corona del Mar. The hurricane far to the south had sent not only its waves, but its warm humid air. As the evening gathered, a damp breeze rose from the south bearing a faint hint of the tropics with it.

The Newport Peninsula was still crowded with tourists and beach-goers, most of them heading away from town as the afternoon cooled into evening. The sun hung dull and heavy in the western gray. A band of kids waited at the bus stop — Boogie Boards and flippers, towels and skateboards. Evening glass at 19th Street, he thought: monster waves looming into the point, a few locals braving the sections for brief rides with abrupt endings.

He swung onto Balboa Boulevard and followed the narrow sidestreets toward the island.

The boyhood home, he thought, his mind filling with reruns of lawn croquet; surfing the 19th Street point; a fierce spanking from Edison when Frye had loaded his fourth-grade friends into the helicopter to fly them all to school one morning; Debbie’s yellow trike; Hyla amidst the endless cocktail parties looking more beautiful than any movie star; Debbie drying his toothbrush after he’d used it, just to get him in trouble when Hyla checked it; Bennett and him wrestling on the grass; Bennett and him trying to dig to China; Bennett and him stuffing a potato into the muffler of Edison’s car and waiting in the junipers for the explosion that sent him diving for cover in fear of assassination; Bennett and him shaping boards; Bennett leaving for college, then the war; Bennett coming home on a gurney with no legs and a wild, faraway glint in his eyes.

From here to the cave-house, he thought: Time passes, people change, lives end.

He found his mother in the kitchen. The amount of time that Hyla spent in her kitchen, Frye knew, was tied to the larger workings in her life. The more helpless she felt, the more kitchen time. It was a busy sanctuary, filled with chores easily done with half a mind. Her smile was hollow. She had cut her hair. She took one look at him, touching the place where Minh had slapped him with the pistol. “Oh, Chuck. Did you get my happy birthday card?”

“Loved it.”

“We’ll celebrate tonight.”

“Grand. Love the new ‘do. Kind of a punk-mom look.”

“People say I look like David Bowie, but I don’t know who he is.”

“His loss.”

“Yes, I’m sure it is.” She turned to the counter so Frye wouldn’t see the lank exhaustion in her face.

He put a hand to her shoulder, but she leaned away from him and sucked down a quivering breath, forcing herself calm by an act of pure will. “Papa’s in the cottage with the dogs.” She gently aimed him down the hallway. Frye turned to watch as she went back into the kitchen and into the smell of roasting duck.

He walked across the lawn to his father’s cottage, stopping for a moment to consider the sun beginning to set above the junipers, scant gray clouds easing across an orange-to-blue backdrop. Thunderstorm for sure, he thought: you can smell it.

As usual, the cottage door was locked. Frye knocked and waited. A moment later it opened and Edison stood in the doorway. His face seemed to sag, his gray hair stuck out like he’d just slept ten hours, his clothes were a mess. He had a martini glass in one hand and a felt-tip marker in the other. “Hello, son. Enter. I’m almost done with this.”

Edison went to his blotter, threw a page back and studied the writing. It said, “ Ransom Demand by Tues. 1200 Hrs?” Frye poured himself a drink. The springers yapped outside.

His father crossed out the question and looked up at Chuck. “I was wrong. No demand, and it’s Thursday already. I must have been looking at this all wrong.”

“It might still come.”

“Statistically, this is bad news. It means—”

“I know what it means. I just don’t believe it. Have you gotten anything new? Arbuckle find any more Dac Cong?”

Edison eyed him, nodded tiredly. “Nothing you need to know, son.”

“So, the blackout’s still on:”

“Any good organization compartmentalizes its—”

“This is supposed to be a family, not the CIA.”

Edison tossed his marker to the desk and sighed. Frye studied his father’s big face, how receptive, how innocent it could look. “We just go ‘round in circles, don’t we, son?”

“Guess so.”

Edison nodded. “It didn’t happen just all at once, you know.”

“It all goes back to the day that Debbie went down, doesn’t it?”

Edison stood up, distractedly poured another martini. He looked at Frye with a combination of exasperation and sadness that Frye hadn’t seen in years. “Please don’t say that. No, son. It goes back to the days — and there were many of them, Chuck — when you chose a different direction than the family’s. When you went your own way and left us to ours. A break like that, it doesn’t come just all at once.”

“It wasn’t a different direction. It was a different path.”

“You’re splitting the atom, Chuck. You never wanted to be part of the Frye Ranch. I suppose I can understand that. I wasn’t too adamant, was I? You never wanted to be around the family much either. Those were ten long years when you did the surf tour and ran that goddamned shop of yours. What’d I get from you then, a handful of postcards? Really, son, correct me if I’m wrong.”