T. Parker - Little Saigon

He tried to gather his thoughts, piece together the collusion that had sent Bennett alone to his death. Surely, thought Frye, Burns sat on the information. As surely as Toibin and Michelsen were called off at the eleventh hour. The Feds are probably up in Mojave right now, clearing out the bodies, tidying up the scene. They’ll leave a Vietnamese or two, drum up some identification for them, and make it look like a ransom drop gone wrong. Thach’s body will disappear forever. And they’ll sit hard on me and Li to keep our mouths shut. How hard?

Five minutes later, the white belly of a chopper lowered from the darkness to the helipad. Frye watched Special Agent Wiggins and Senator Lansdale duck the blades and hurry toward the house. Not long after that, the two men, with Li in tow, headed for the cottage. Wiggins broke away and headed toward Frye.

He stood on the dock, just a few feet away. “We’re awfully sorry about Bennett,” he said.

“I’ll bet you are.”

“Chuck, we’d like to talk to you now. First you alone, then Li, then the two of you together. It’s very important.”

Frye stood up and tried to walk past him. Wiggins caught his arm. “I can put you under protective arrest, if I have to.”

“Please don’t.” Frye turned and hit Wiggins as hard as he could, an uppercut just under the sternum. The punch started down in his toes. He was amazed how far his fist went in. The special agent huffed and his hands flew out, beating like the wings of a landing bird as he fell backward into the water.

Frye went to the cottage, peered through a window and saw Lansdale explaining something to Li, his hands out for emphasis, an imploring look on his face. She glanced up at Frye, and he was sure she was about to break down.

Back in the main house, he found Edison lurking near a window, trying to see into the cottage. He looked at Frye forlornly.

“They’re hurting Li, Pop. Why don’t you throw them off your property? Or at least sit in so you can hear the lies they’ll want her to tell about your son.”

Edison hesitated, then breathed deeply, slammed open the door, and marched across the lawn toward his cottage. The dogs started yapping. Wiggins slogged to intercept him, but Edison just bellowed and walked past. Frye had never loved his father so much in all his life.

The cave-house was dark and empty.

Your money is filthy to me... I demanded it satisfy my allies in this campaign.

Frye thought: What I have to do now is deal with the final mover and shaker. He’ll come for the ransom cash. Thach didn’t want it, but he tried to collect it for his partner. Now I’ve got it, safe in the cave beside a box of Christmas ornaments. And anyone who would orchestrate all this will certainly come for the payoff. Why didn’t I know that it was Dien, all along? The connections here, and in Vietnam. The greed. The tape of DeCord. The showpiece shooting at the Wind, to move suspicion from him. The millions of dollars he leeched from his believers, so he could sink them into the Laguna Paradiso. Organizing the terror of his own city, to drum up more resistance, raise more money. And the final scam: Help Thach kidnap Li, then cash out. When his money isn’t at the airstrip, he’ll know something went wrong. When he finds out I’m alive, he’ll come.

It doesn’t matter, he thought. I’ll be ready.

Frye checked the time on the wall clock, then put a blank tape into his cassette recorder and slid it under a newspaper on the coffee table. He checked the clip in the .45 that Bennett had given him, jacked a round into the chamber, and flicked off the safety. Carefully, he placed it under the couch cushion, handle out.

He got his old shotgun from under the bed, took it outside and sawed off most of the barrel with a hacksaw he used to cut out surfboards. He removed the plug, pushed one round into the ejection port, then four more into the magazine. He took it back to the cave and placed it in the box of Christmas stuff. The two suitcases sat behind the box.

He wandered. He checked his Grow-Bug: it was up to five inches now. He made coffee, took a cup back to the sofa, sat down, and waited.

It was one of those nights when you hear everything, whether you want to or not: the electricity buzzing in the power lines outside, the individual swish of each car on the road below, the ticking of the clock that you never once heard tick in the five years it’s been there. He breathed deeply but it didn’t do any good.

I’m safer here than anywhere else, he thought. Except the island, and I won’t have them coming onto the island for the money. I’m on my own ground. There’s no time to bring Donnell here, and Pop needs Arbuckle. Minh, if I could even trust him, would be out of jurisdiction. And I wouldn’t believe the Feds if they said hello.

Why not stay with the Laguna cops, let Dien come and go, and find no one here and his ransom money gone? I’ll tell you why, because I’m past the point of being a good citizen. Was never cut out for it anyway, Because it’s time and evidence and lawyers and courts and plea bargains and reduced sentences and early paroles and what I truly feel the need for here is some tangible satisfaction.

He was sitting on the couch with a fresh cup when he heard the car coming up his driveway, saw the headlights slide against the walls, then die. Outside, an engine shut off, a door opened and closed. Exactly twenty-three minutes from the time I got here, he saw: he must have been waiting on the Canyon Road. Was it Wiggins who tipped him, or “Burns”? Does it matter? With a shaking hand he found the tape recorder and switched it on. He rearranged the newspapers. He touched the handle of the .45, concealed well within the cushion of the couch. Footsteps. A knock.

“Door’s open.”

To Frye’s disbelief, it was Burke Parsons who peered in, looked around, and shut the door behind him. He was tan and fit, with a white shirt open to his chest, a blue blazer and a pair of expensive jeans. “Hello, Chuck. My money was gone, and so were you, so I figured something went wrong. I thought you’d be here sooner.”

Frye just stared at Burke. “I was with Mom and Dad.”

Burke walked slowly toward him, hands out a little, palms up, an innocent man. “That must have been real hard.”

“Worst day of my life, Burke.”

Parsons stood beside the chair across from him. “You’re awfully cool right now, Chuck. Where’s the gun?”

“No guns.”

Burke pulled a big automatic from his coat pocket and leveled it at Frye’s chest. “Don’t mind if I have a quick look, do you?”

“Go right ahead.”

Parsons waved him up. Frye stood while Burke patted him down, twice. “All I can say is I’m about done with you Fryes. Not that it hasn’t been a pleasure all along. What I need from you is my ransom money and I’ll just be on my way.”

Burke stepped back and looked at Frye. For a moment he stood there, and Frye could see that he was listening, watching, smelling, sensing. His brow furrowed. “Something’s wrong here, Chuck. I just know it.”

Burke smiled, kept the pistol aimed at Frye while he bent over and ran his hand under the couch cushion.

On his second pass, he brought out Bennett’s .45. “Well what do you know, Chuck.”

Frye sat down.

“Now, you have my money?”

“What money?”

Parsons studied him again, his face darkening. “Something’s still wrong, Chuck. What is it? You ask too many questions, and you ask them too fast. Do I smell a tape recorder? Isn’t that what I should expect from a reporter type?”

He leaned over the coffee table and poked through the mess of newspapers with the tip of his gun. He smiled, flipped the papers off the machine, pushed the stop button, then the eject switch. He pocketed the tape. “You’re not exactly bright sometimes, Chuck. But I gotta hand it to you for perseverance.”