T. Parker - Little Saigon

Frye looked at the case again. “How’d that Halliburton get from Li’s dressing room to here?”

“Don’t worry how,” snapped Bennett.

Frye watched a quick exchange of glances, a flurry of eye talk that included everyone but himself. Kim brought him a cup of tea, delivered with an understanding half-smile. He leaned back into the soft couch. The fuck do I care, he thought, it’s just a case that moves around on its own.

“Someone left three bottles of champagne on her dresser. And wrote the word bạn on the mirror, with her lipstick. Then it said ‘You Have Lost.’ Is bạn Vietnamese for something?”

Bennett looked up, some dark ceremony going on inside him. “The cops didn’t say anything about champagne.”

“Maybe they thought it was there before. It wasn’t. I saw her just before the show.”

“Chuck, come with me. I’ve got a favor to ask you.”

Bennett led the way to his bedroom. Frye followed down the hall, feeling again the great non-presence of Li. Her absence was everywhere. Bennett took a cigar box from under the bed and handed it to Frye. It was light, wrapped in layers of duct tape. Bennett’s voice was low. “I want you to take this and put it somewhere out of sight, Chuck. About as out of sight as you can make it, is what I mean. Just for a day or so. That’s all.”

“What’s in it?”

Bennett put a finger to his lips, then shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Don’t open it. Don’t fiddle with it, don’t do anything but hide it and forget it.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re my brother.” Bennett clamped a strong hand to Frye’s wrist. “I can trust you, Chuck. And right now I’m not sure how many people I can say that about.”

“Sure, Benny.”

“Chuck, I’m going to ask you to do one more thing for me. It’s important. Be at the island at eight tomorrow morning. Have a full tank of gas and be on time. Can do?”

Frye nodded, feeling the pride of the enlisted man. “What do you think? Who’d take Li? Why?”

Bennett looked down a long time, lost to something in the carpet. “I don’t know.”

“Did you have any idea—”

“Hell, no, I didn’t.”

“Do you know who might—”

“What is this, a goddamned interview?”

“You’ve got no ideas at all?”

“We’re only the richest family in the county, Chuck. You figure it out.”

“What about the singing? The political songs? I know tempers get short up here.”

Bennett hesitated, then swung toward the door. “She’s a hero to these people. They’d die for her. But you know how it is — you try to help somebody and somebody else thinks you’re after their ass. Now head out the back, Chuck. I don’t want anyone to know you’ve got that thing. Not even the people in my living room.”

Frye followed down the hall, glancing again at his brother’s citations and awards displayed on the wall. They stopped in a small utility room, and Bennett pushed open the door.

Frye stepped out. “I’ll be there at eight with a full tank. One more thing, Benny. What’s bạn?”

Bennett turned toward the door. “It’s Vietnamese. It means friend. Are you sure that the champagne wasn’t there when you went backstage the first time?”

“I’m sure.”

He couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t sit still. He couldn’t concentrate. Every time the breeze rattled the blinds, his heart flew up and hovered like a bird. He kept hearing sounds. So he paced the cave-house, still seeing Li as she was pulled offstage, still hearing her last shriek above the screams in the Asian Wind.

He kept calling Frye Island to talk to his parents, but both lines were busy. Just before four in the morning, he got through. Edison told him to be at the island at eight, then put him on with his mother. Frye could hear her summoning strength, forcing her voice into rigid optimism. “I just know she’ll be okay,” said Hyla. “I just know it. Pray, Chuck. It works.”

“I’m going to be there for you,” said Frye.

Hyla hesitated. “Oh, Chuck, that’s so good.”

“We’ll get her back, Mom. I know it too.”

He hefted the cigar box, shook it, held it to his ear like he would a Christmas present, set it down. Solid. One pound. Animal, vegetable, mineral?

With Bennett’s orders not to open it ringing in his mind, Frye opened the thing anyway, layers of silver duct tape rasping off, sticking to his fingers. He lifted the top, looked in, then spilled the contents: one video cassette, black case, rewound.

He slipped it into his VCR, turned down the volume, and watched. Bad color, jerky camera work. Then Nguyen Hy, the young refugee leader, sitting alone in... a restaurant?

He checks his watch. He sips from a tea cup. Fifteen seconds later a man in a tennis shirt and chinos strides in, briefcase in hand, sunglasses on. He’s tallish, well-muscled, with a no-nonsense look when he takes off the shades. His mustache is heavy, drooping, red. They shake hands and talk silently; Nguyen accepts the case. More talk; Red Mustache leaves. Hy lights a cigarette, waits half a minute, then squares the briefcase before him, lifts open the lid and displays to the camera neat stacks of twenty-dollar bills. Nguyen smiles, shuts the case, leaves.

The screen goes blank, then Nguyen again — or someone who looks just like him. He’s far from the camera, standing under a tree not far from the Humanities building on the UCI campus. It must be early morning. No students. He’s being shot from above, from an office, or maybe the fifth floor German department.

Frye recognized the place because he’d flunked out.

Hy smokes, waits. Red Mustache arrives shortly, wearing a coat and tie this time, and a pair of professorial glasses. No mistaking his hair; his erect, athletic posture. The briefcase looks the same; they talk; he leaves. Again Nguyen waits, then walks toward the camera, stops on a walkway below, and, with a grin, opens the case.

Money again.

More than I make in a week, Frye thought.

He hit the fast forward to another scene with Nguyen. This time, the video tape showed still photographs of a drop near the carousel at South Coast Plaza. Nguyen sits alone on bench; Red Mustache, arrives with the briefcase and leaves without it, Hy doesn’t show off his booty this time, he just looks into the camera without smiling, then grabs the handle and leaves.

That was the grand finale.

Interesting theme, here. The only thing Frye could come up with was: If you get something you gotta give something. Especially if you’re getting a briefcase full of money.

He stuck the tape back in the box and took it to the far dark region of the cave-house, where he stashed it deep down in a cardboard box of Christmas ornaments.

He stood there for a moment, feeling the eerie proximity of the cave walls, the solid darkness encroaching just outside the beam of his flashlight. In the old days, he thought, I liked this cave. It was a little corner of mystery right in my own house. Now, it just scares me. Just like the surf when I go under. He felt a wave of vertigo wash over him, thick, warm, tangible. His scalp crawled and his heart sped up. He followed his light beam back out.

Benny, what did you get yourself into?

And who wants this tape so bad you can’t even keep it where you live?

He went outside. From his patio he could see the Pacific — a dark, horizonless plate with a wobble of moonlight on it. High tide at five-forty, three-to-five foot swell from the south, warm water, strong waves. Hurricane surf due soon, spawned in Mexico. What’d they say her name was — Dinah, Dolores, Doreen?

The trouble with five in the morning is Linda’s ghost. It’s her time, Frye thought, she’s got the run of the place. Ought to charge it rent. Eight o’clock in New York. She’s up...