T. Parker - Little Saigon

Frye looked out the window to the harbor and the big homes on the peninsula. “I always tried to tell you what was going on.”

“I didn’t know you got third place in Australia until somebody brought in a clipping three weeks later. I didn’t know you got second in Hawaii until a month after it was over. I didn’t know you were chasing women around at your own parties until I saw it in the goddamned newspaper, Chuck. I didn’t even know that you and Linda were having trouble until her father told me. That’s your idea of telling me what’s going on?”

“You were against the tour, Pop.”

“Does that mean I didn’t care?”

Frye, for the first time in his life, was starting to see things from Edison’s angle. “You were a son. You know how it is. You tell your dad what you think he’ll be proud of.”

“Chuck, there wasn’t one damned thing I did in my life that my old man was proud of. I’m not complaining — I’m stating fact. Charles James Frye was one heartless sonofabitch. I thought that then, and I think it now.” Edison sniffed his martini and drank. “He inherited the ranch from his dad, who probably wasn’t much better. So I’ve been where you are. And I don’t hesitate to say that I think surfing for a living is one helluva waste of talent, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t for your kicking butt and being the best goddamned surfer in the world, did it?”

Frye recalled Edison’s letters: One cannot remain juvenile forever... We’ve lost one child to the water, please don’t become another... With Love and Disappointment, Father.

“Whatever, Pop. We’ve all got funny ways of showing things.”

“And as far as Debbie goes, well, son... I’m sorry and it wasn’t your fault. I know the waves were big. I know she’d been out in them before. But you were out there with her. Not Benny, not me.”

Edison looked at him. “Let me ask you something, Chuck. We haven’t talked in a long time. It’s been a while since you’ve given half a damn about what goes on at this island. Now we’ve had Li kidnapped, your mother is torn apart, the Feds are crawling all over me and the shit’s hit the fan in a big way. All of a sudden you want to start throwing things in my face. I’m not perfect. I spent years trying to make you think that, maybe. But I gave up. Why are you digging back? Why now?”

Good question, he thought. For the moment, he was stumped. “I don’t know.”

“I think you do.”

Frye looked back out the window. Self-analysis was never his long suit. But there comes a point, he thought, when things fly away faster than you can catch up. There comes a point where wings beat and feathers fall and your hands tremble with what’s no longer in them. You sit there and watch and wish there was something you could have done. Something. “ Things are disappearing. Debbie. Linda. Li. The way I was a few years ago. The way we were.”

He thought of Xuan, of the Dark Men in the cavern, of Eddie Vo blown away on his own front porch. He thought of Debbie, dropping in on that monster, looking frail and tiny on the little board he’d made her, knees wobbling, her feet so tan and small, and that look on her face as she glanced at him that said: I’m a bit out of my league on this one, but I’ve seen you do it, so watch, just you watch...

“Anyway, I guess I’m trying to hold onto what’s left.”

Edison was silent for a long moment. “Amen to that, son.”

“It’s Benny, Pop. I think he’s in more trouble than he’s letting on. I think Li was taken... for leverage. That’s why there’s been no ransom demand.”

Edison arched an eyebrow, then glanced toward his blotter on its stand. “I’m listening.”

“Do you know about the CFV? The supplies they send overseas?”

“Of course I do.”

“Do you know it’s guns he’s running?”

Edison shook his head, smiling. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Well, it’s true. I watched them loading a chopper out on the Paradiso. Guns, Pop.”

Edison stood, began pacing. “Go on.”

“Do you know about Colonel Thach?”

“The fuck is he?”

Frye told him. The war. The assassination. The heads. Xuan. “There’s just a handful of us who know what happened to him, Pop. The FBI’s keeping it strictly to themselves.”

Edison jabbed a poker into the dead fireplace, rearranging ashes and old coals. “Benny’s running guns against Thach, and Li was part of the pipeline. And I’ll bet that Thach was Dac Cong in the war.”

Frye nodded.

Edison slammed his martini glass into the fireplace. “Wiggins has been dragging his feet all along. Not sharing his evidence with me was one thing, but holding out something like this? What’s his reason?”

“The party line is that they’re scared of letting people believe that Thach’s men are here. They’ve only got one witness — the woman who sold the black cloth — and they’re saying she’s unreliable. Just because the dead gunman was Dac Cong in the war, doesn’t mean he works for Thach.”

“Maybe they’re right. Little Saigon will close up tighter than it is already if people get in a panic about nothing. But I’ll throttle Lansdale.”

“It isn’t Lansdale’s bureau, Pop.”

“This is not good...”

Frye waited for the follow-up, but that was all, Edison at his most intense, Frye had realized some years ago, was a man of few words. The rest of it was just sound and fury, his style, his way of letting off steam. He went to the big blotter fastened to the wall and picked up the felt pen, still dangling by its string. Under FBI (LANSDALE), he wrote “Bureau knows of Thach, keeping all info to itself. Why?” He stepped back, studied his note, then dropped the pen. “Chuck, I know what you were trying to say a few minutes ago. I want you to know I’ll try to be a little more inclusive. Come here, I want to show you something.”

Edison led him to the back room of the cottage, his work room. Among the drawing tables and stools was a model of the Paradiso, like Bennett’s but more detailed. “It’s the biggest thing we’ve ever done,” he said. “The best. Bennett and I designed it from the start. A joint venture, if you will.” He stood back and studied it. “Look at that, Chuck, forty-thousand acres of the best real estate in the world. It’s just hills and cattle now, but when we’re done, it will be the best place on earth a man could live. None better, except maybe for this island.”

Frye noted the custom homesites, the marina and hotels, the equestrian center and riding trails, golf course, lakes, the heliport, the village of shops. Edison himself had designed the electric trolley that would deliver hillside residents to the beach every half hour, and take them home when they were ready. It would run on solar-generated power.

“I haven’t gone over the details with you, have I?”

“Not really.”

“Well there she is!”

Frye admired the relative simplicity of it all, the fact that people living in the Paradiso would have plenty of ground to themselves. Edison stood for a moment staring at the model, absorbed. He nodded. “I’m happy with it so far,” he said. “Still a lot to do.”

“You’ve got lots to be proud of.”

“You’ll be proud of it still, when I’m dead and gone.” Edison sat back down and considered his son. “Going to take a lot of people to get it up and keep it going. All sorts of people, Chuck.”

“It looks great, Pop.”

Edison smiled faintly, sipped again from his drink.

“Cost a lot to get going?”

“Financing’s the easy part. Easy, but complex. Everybody wants in on a project like this. The return is a sure thing. The trick is keeping control of it. Your brother and I have controlling interest, of course, so a lot of the capital is ours. So the Paradiso is ours too. I mean, it’s all of ours, Chuck. It’s the family’s.”