T. Parker - Little Saigon

The lobby was empty. But through the open door he could see Burke Parsons, phone to his ear. Behind him sat General Dien, arms crossed.

But no Rollie Dean Mack.

Parsons hung up. The phone rang a second later. He answered, checked his watch, slammed down the phone, and stood. “Come on, General.”

Frye flew down the stairs as fast and as lightly as he could. He realized he’d parked three cars away from the Jaguar.

He dodged around a corner and ran along the first-level suites. He pressed into a dark doorway, flattening against it as best he could.

Parsons and Dien moved quickly toward the lot. The General stopped beside Frye’s car and said something. Burke got into the Jaguar and started it up. His voice echoed across the lot. “Come on, Dien. We don’t have all fuckin’ night, now do we?”

The general shuffled toward his Caddy. Frye watched the Jag back up, straighten, then bounce from the Elite Management parking lot onto Palisade. Dien’s car followed.

Parsons, he thought. Of course you know Mack. Of course Lucia has a key to his suite at the Sherrington. Of course you could ask Mack a favor. You are Mack.

Frye sat in his living room for a few minutes, wondering why Burke Parsons had gotten him fired. No matter which way he turned it, he couldn’t make sense of it.

The phone rang just after one A.M. Detective John Minh sounded exhausted. “I’ve been here since eight this morning,” he said. “Did you hear about the banners?”

“What banners?”

“Draped all around Saigon Plaza sometime last night. They said ‘Thach Watches,’ ‘Thach Knows,’ ‘Thach Sees.’ I got there at nine and there must have been two hundred refugees milling around the plaza, staring at the things. By noon the place was deserted. Nobody but FBI. They got those banners down very quickly. No one’s going out. Everybody thinks they’ve seen some old ghost from the war now. I’ve got a stack of reported sightings a foot high — Viet Cong murderers, Dac Cong torturers, traitors of every description. Everybody’s carrying a gun. Just after dark, an old Vietnamese shot someone trying to get into his house. It was his son, who’d forgotten his key. An hour after that I found the Dark Men and Ground Zero patrolling their neighborhoods on foot. More guns on them than you could count. Tonight around ten, Loc tried to get into Dien’s house. Dien’s guards found him inside the fence and shot him down. They said he fired first. It’s crazy up here. Now listen, Frye, I shouldn’t have taken the time to look into this rape thing, but I got the answers you need. I checked with the police in Long Beach, Los Angeles, San Pedro, Wilmington, Seal Beach and Portuguese Bend. L.A. county sheriffs, too. Nobody named Cristobel Strauss was raped up there. Not in the last ten years, anyway.”

Frye’s felt his heart accelerating. “Oh.”

“Maybe she’s a little crazy, Chuck.”

“Maybe. Thanks.”

He called Cristobel but the line was busy.

He went back out to the Cyclone.

The blue apartments were dark and the traffic on Coast Highway was thin. Frye parked in front of the bookstore and wondered just what he was going to say. The truth of it was, he didn’t have any idea.

The house lights were dim. Frye looked through the window and saw nothing. Then, two silhouettes materialized on her deck that overlooked the water. He moved to the railing and peered around the corner. They stood on the deck, the water sparkling black behind them.

One was Cristobel, and the other was Burke.

He couldn’t make out their words because of the surf rushing in below. He could see that Cristobel was sobbing. She was outlined against the ocean: face in her hands, hair spilling forward, back quivering. Parsons reached out and drew her to him. He lifted her chin with a finger and put his mouth on hers. Then a muted crack of flesh against flesh, and Burke’s head snapped. Cristobel crossed her arms, and Parsons laughed.

The next set of waves drowned him out. Frye headed down the stairs and back to his car.

Just after sunrise Frye clambered Upward from a dream of dark water and headless bodies to the sound of someone moving across his living room. The old floor creaked; he could sense the weight and motion, the secretive tiptoe of the intruder.

He slipped from the damp sheets, pulled on a robe, and took Bennett’s .45 from under the bed. Backing along the hallway, he heard something rustle in the kitchen. His heart thrashed like a sparrow in a shopping bag. He held the gun to his chest, sidled into the living room, and drew down on the woman just as she turned. The briefcase fell from her hand.

“Jesus, Chuck!”

“Linda.”

“Don’t kill me. It’s just a divorce.”

Frye lowered the weapon, hands shaking. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people.”

“I guess not. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

He placed the .45 in the silverware drawer and slid it shut. “The pressures of modern life.”

“Pressure was never your specialty. But why the gun?”

“I had a break-in.” Frye felt cold, idiotic. He put on some water to boil and Linda went to the living room.

She sat on his lacerated couch. He watched her as he mixed the instant. Same auburn hair, same quick brown eyes, same sad mouth. She had a briefcase beside her. She lit a cigarette.

Frye sat down across from her. “You look good.”

“Thanks, Chuck.”

“Like New York?”

“It’s not for everyone.” Linda balanced the case on her legs now, swung open the top and pulled out a sheaf of legal papers. “It’s preliminary stuff. I’m not asking for any material settlement.”

“Half of nothing isn’t much.”

“No,” she said quietly. “Anything of mine you want?”

“It’s all still here. Take what you need.”

“I’m settled in. It’s yours.”

“Ken there yet?”

“He moved out two weeks ago. Got a job with Kidder Peabody. What happened to the couch?”

“Medflies. How’d it go in Detox Mansion?”

“I’ll never touch that shit again, if that’s what you mean. Anton bailed on me when I checked in.”

“I knew he would. They got him three weeks ago with half a kilo and two-hundred grand cash.”

“I know. I saw him yesterday for a minute. He’s at it again. I got out of there pretty fast.”

“Time for a quickie, though?”

Linda shut the briefcase top, snapped the latches. “I could have had my lawyers send this over, Chuck. But I thought we could maybe be okay just for a few minutes. You gotta just realize how crazy it all was. Anton and I... I was in the grip.”

“I’d have rather you paid him in cash.”

“We didn’t have any cash.”

The cigarette burned down in the ashtray. Frye signed the papers.

Linda wiped a big tear away, but another formed to replace it. “Baby, we messed it up so bad.”

“I know.”

“It all happened so fast, and now I’m a million miles away, and I don’t know anyone but Ken, I miss you, Chuck.”

He moved to hold her, but she stood, briefcase sliding to the floor with a thud. “No. I’m gutting this one out, I just have to cut it off clean, Chucky. In New York I’m Linda Stowe, and I got a job and a flat, and there’s nothing crazy inside me. Here, I’m just a mess of a girl.” She wiped her eyes again, futilely. She looked down at him. “I know you loved me when I was a mess of a girl, but I couldn’t keep that up. I got a life too, you know. Your idea was always to break things up just to watch the parts fly around. That white stuff got to me. You weren’t supposed to let that happen. It hits different people different ways. Just because you could take it or leave it, didn’t mean I could. Oh, hell, Chuck, we’ve been through this before. I should have let the lawyer do this.”