T. Parker - Little Saigon

Frye looked into her dead brown eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But I couldn’t let him get away with this. I’m so fucking sorry. I’d have told you sooner, but I was afraid of what he’d do to me. I know you saw through me—” Her tears ran fast, but she still looked straight at him. “I was so glad you saw through me, Chuck, but I wasn’t going to crack. I just wasn’t. He had me fooled a while. Then real scared. I didn’t know what he’d do. Until I realized he was going to kill you, Mike came first. Everything I did was for my brother. Everything except when I made love to you.”

She cried silently as she looked at Frye. Slowly, by sheer force of will, Cristobel recomposed herself. “I did that for me. Funny part is, I’d fallen in love with you. I lay in bed that night knowing I’m in love with a man I’m cheating on and lying to and setting up for God knows what. I’d never treated a person worse than I treated you. It doesn’t mean anything now. It means less than anything.”

She turned, walked toward the door, stopped. “Tell the cops I did it, I don’t care. I’m actually proud I shot that sonofabitch. I had a lot to live for a couple of days ago. Right now, all I want is to see Mike again.” She looked down for a long moment, as if in prayer. When she looked back up at him, Frye saw how far gone she really was. “I’d get something on that head of yours, it’s bleeding an awful lot.”

“Stay.”

“I’m sorry, Chuck. You’re a pretty good man.”

Frye watched her go — a single body moving down a dark tunnel, surrounded on all sides by relentless steel — no exits, no yields, no turns, no options, no comebacks, no light at the end of it... just footsteps, golden hair, echoes.

He went back to the cave and dug Burke’s house keys from his sopping pocket.

Then he carried the shotgun to his car, placed it on the seat beside him, and drove to Lucia’s house.

The porch light was on and the door-mat said THE PARSONS — WELCOME! Frye opened the lock and then the deadbolt, and stepped in. A light shone from the kitchen. In the hallway he could see the thin shadows of the palms on the walls and hear the bubbling murmur of the shark pond. He moved lightly over the tile, then into the living room, where a single torchière widened its light to the ceiling. I’ve got the second floor, Lucia’s got the third. She does her work in the guest house.

Through the sliding glass door, Frye saw the guest quarters in the back, hidden under the banana trees: lights on, a few of Lucia’s tireless minions laboring over paperwork. He climbed. His head throbbed, but his mind had cleared. The first flight of stairs ended at a short hallway — Burke’s rooms, he thought — and the second began at the other end of it. As he started up, Frye could see a light above, and hear someone moving across the floor. At the top, he stayed close to the hallway walls, taking the last few steps quietly as he could. From inside the bedroom came the sound of a woman humming, the buzz of a long zipper being locked. The stock of the old Remington was warm and slippery in his hand.

Through the bedroom door he saw her, dressed in a black silk robe, her hair loose and flowing, organizing the contents of a suitcase that lay open on the bed. The Pacific sparkled through the window behind her, turned to purple-black by the moon and window glass. She spoke over her shoulder. “That you, Burke? Paul?”

Frye stepped in. Lucia gasped sharply, straightened. “Chuck? Burke’s out now, he’s—”

“I know where he is.”

“You talked to him tonight?”

“Mainly he talked to me.”

“You men come to some agreement about things?”

“Yes. We decided you owe me three million dollars that Dien stole from his people. I’m here to get it.”

Frye moved toward her and Lucia backed up. Then she reached slowly to the lamp and clicked it on. “Is that what I think it is all over your shirt?”

He looked down, nodding.

“I’d have never thought you could do that, Chuck.”

“Burke didn’t either. Get me Dien’s money, Lucia, or I’m going to do something extravagant.”

She looked at him a little defiantly, then sat on the bed. One big tear rolled down her face. She wiped it with the end of the robe sash. When she lowered her face into her hands, black hair cascaded down. “What did you do to him, Chuck?”

“It kind of got down to one of us or the other.”

She looked up with an anguished face. “You just keep living through things.”

“Funny, isn’t it?”

“Not really.” She sobbed into her hands again. Finally, she stood. Her chin shook. “Does it matter that I loved him? More than as just a brother?”

“Let’s weep.”

Lucia seemed to study him. “You got something real cold in you, Chuck. Part of Edison rubbed off, whether you know it or not.”

“Get me the money. I’m sick of you.”

“It’s in the safe down in the basement, with his snakes.”

Frye waved the shotgun toward the stairs. “You first, Lucia.”

“I’ve got a plane to catch in twenty minutes. I’m not going to miss it.”

Frye grabbed her robe and shoved her to the door. “March.”

She gave him a hopeless look, then led him out of the bedroom, down the stairs and into the library. She flicked on a light and groped a moment for the hidden switch. The wall panel swung out and the light went on. She shivered, then started down.

Their footsteps echoed in the big room. The heavy bags cast fat shadows on the padded floor. Frye could see the anaconda, six feet of it resting on the glass, interrupted on its nocturnal prowl. Lucia stopped, turned to him, and shivered again, wrapping her arms around herself. She nodded at the safe, wiped her eyes. “The key’s under Charlotte’s water dish.”

“The cobra?”

“Nobody else here with that name.”

“Get it out.”

She shook her head and stared at him. “Chuck, you could pay me, beat me, slander me, or steal my money, but you couldn’t get me to put my hand in that cage. Never.” She was trembling now, and her eyes were big. “There’s a nine-iron that Burke used to fish her out with sometimes. It’s leaning on the wall over there.”

He went to the cage. Charlotte’s head shifted; an eye beheld Frye. The water dish showed beneath one of her curls, a wedge of light blue against her pale green scales. Suddenly, her hood spread and she hissed. Even through the glass he could hear her — a big, pressurized sound like air being let from a balloon. Frye’s heart was in his mouth.

Charlotte stared him down, swaying, uncharmed.

The shotgun blast took half the cage with it, a splintered hurricane of glass, blood, scales. Charlotte slapped in the debris, loops and coils everywhere, a muscular, headless frenzy. He fished her out by the tail and dropped her to the floor.

The key was under the dish. It slid easily into the safe, and Frye brought Dien’s briefcases full of cash, gold, and jewelry onto the floor in front of him. “You knew about all of this, didn’t you, Ms. Ambassador? You helped him set it up.”

“I did what I had to to get our men back.”

“There were a thousand easier ways. Ways that wouldn’t have killed my brother and a lot of other people.”

Lucia wiped her eyes again with the belt, then crossed her arms. “Burke threw in a couple of things that I... wasn’t expecting. I didn’t know he helped bring Colonel Thach here. I didn’t know he was behind the kidnapping until a couple of days after it happened. When Burke’s plan went into motion, the best policy option was to see it through, rather than try to stop it. There comes a point when you go with what works.”