Little Mountain (19 page)

         Already he felt much older than the recruit in the photo who had just turned thirty. He had a slightly flat nose and solid, muscular arms that came from the daily Nautilus and barbells at Cochran’s Gym. “You’re built like a halfback,” Julie had told him, and he hadn’t understood the compliment right away. He didn’t want to be half of anything to Julie. His father’s sense of mission showed in his eyes. Who are you, Sam?

         I am Sambath Long: refugee, survivor. Citizen, cop.
Julia’s husband, Patricia’s father.
My father’s son, my father’s--no, not his avenger.
Bin Chea is dead, and I have a job: find his killer and bring him to justice.

His face flushed with heat. Where was the justice for my father while his killer lived in freedom for 15 years? No matter who did the job on Bin Chea, they did it right. Why do I give a damn about catching him, even if he’s just Lowell street scum?

         But maybe Cal is right: what better kind of justice than to find Chea’s killer and let him go? Let Wilkins gloat over my failure while I wish a stranger well, like returning a walking fish to the safety of my father’s pond.

Sam’s eyes were dry--he hadn’t cried since he was 19, and he had no intention of starting now. The last time he cried, Sarapon was being led away from Little Mountain and into the jungle--one soldier in front, two behind. For about a hundred meters he followed, desperately trying to formulate a plan, a ruse,
a
rescue. A light breeze rustled the forest leaves and blew the stench of the killing field into his face. In the clearing not three hundred meters away was the end of his sister’s world, a tangle of bodies dissolving in the swamp.

         In front of Sambath was the corpse of a tree choked with vines, blocking his view of Sarapon. He stepped around it and found himself looking at a girl with a rifle. Her eyes were two coals glowing with heat. She was just a flat-chested child who should have been home playing with her friends and singing songs by the riverbank.

         “The wheel of history turns!” she said, jamming the barrel into Sambath’s gut. A roar of pain exploded in his body, and his bladder gave way like a broken dam.

         “Go back to work, comrade,” she said. “Comrade Bin says she is a capitalist singer. She will meet
Angka
, and there is nothing you can do about it.”

         Sambath turned his back on Little Mountain and cried. He beat his head on the rotted trunk, and the girl with the rifle left him alone.

         Part of Sam wished he could cry now. He had never taken the time to grieve properly for his family. Old hurts drifted back, because he had never said goodbye. Maybe he should have a ceremony at a Buddhist temple to remember them, though he had not set foot in a temple since the day his father stopped forcing him to go, about a year before the revolution. What did they look like, his family? No photographs survived, just memories with edges that faded and lines that blurred.

“Oh, Sam, it’s such a great house,” Julie said. “It’s got hardwood floors, a carpeted stairway up to the bedrooms,
a
big back yard with a maple tree where we could put up a swing for Trish. Oh, and this very nice Cambodian woman owns it.”

         Her sudden appearance had startled him. She could pull him out of the depths--God, he shouldn’t brood about his past anyway.

         The lamplight glinted in her eyes, and the touch of her hand made him forget his pain for a minute. “You should see the place,” she said. “We have to go back and see it in the daytime. It’s a white two-story house with black shutters and a screened-in porch. She said it has aluminum siding so you don’t have to paint it. And there’s a nice fence around the back yard so Trish can play. Oh Sam, you’ve got to see how they keep the inside. It’s immaculate.”

         That night Sam
lay
on top of the covers with only the moonlight to help him see. Julie wore a filmy nightgown that Sam had bought her for Valentine’s Day. The curtains rustled in the fan’s soft breeze, and light danced across the faint image of her breasts. She touched his lips with her fingers,
then
gently kissed his chest.
God, how he wanted her, now and always.
Soon her legs were wrapped around him, and their shadows moved slowly against the wall.

         That night, he dreamed of Bin Chea’s corpse on the medical examiner’s table. “Autopsies aren’t pretty,” Dr. Katsios said as he pulled the cord on a chain saw. Then the dead man reached out and grabbed at Sam’s chest.

         Comrade Bin smiled as he clutched Sam’s bloody, beating heart.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The next morning, Viseth drove his shitbox down to the park and waited. Rocky would come by sooner or later as he always did, eating an ice cream or tossing a stone. Viseth parked in the shade of a tree, but the goddamn sunlight kept moving. There was that Cambodian woman again, Bin Chea’s neighbor.
The nice-looking broad with the ass going to waste.
She looked at him once and went back to playing with her kid. Damn shade was gone now, and the car seat felt like a hot skillet.

         Finally, Rocky appeared in his rear view mirror, sucking on a
popsicle
.
I’ll give you something to suck on, Rocky.

         “Hi Rocky,” he said.
Big smile.
“Want a ride?”

        
“Nah.
My name’s not
Rocky
, it’s Ravy.”

         Viseth didn’t give a damn if the kid’s name was Buddha. “Come on! Want to make
five
bucks this time?
Easy money!”

         Rocky’s eyes lit up. “Five?
No way!”

         “Bet your ass,” Viseth said. “Get in the car and I’ll show you.”

         “I’m not supposed to go with strangers.”

         Viseth sighed and put on his best you-hurt-my-feelings look. “Oh, get serious. Do I look like a stranger to you?”

         Rocky got in and didn’t complain about the hot seat. Viseth drove his car down three blocks to the fried chicken emporium and took a left down Mersey Street. Thank God he was away from 11th Street where that dickhead Chea lived. The houses were so squeaky clean, the women so damned high and mighty, he bet they locked their knees together at night. And the cops were so nosy. How many times did they ever come to his neighborhood except to bother the Battboys? That Cambodian cop was next.

         He pulled into a rutted driveway in the shade between two houses. The air smelled of garbage. Flies buzzed around a trash bag that probably had been ripped open by one of the stray mongrels that fought each other for meals. In the back was an old Firebird sitting in a sea of weeds, its tires flat, its windows and headlights punched out, bird shit on the hood, “VK SUCKS” spray painted in a Day-Glo challenge on the driver’s side. Whoever had messed with his wheels was going to die. Probably that spic kid Justo who’d made him swallow blood. Justo hadn’t been around lately, which seemed strange.

         A month ago, the old Firebird had looked like new: polished and cleaned, and he almost had it running so he could drive it to California, and now this. No decent car, no money. Not until the offer came along.
Five hundred in advance.
Nobody had ever trusted him like that. Then all he had to do was whack somebody he didn’t know, and he’d get the other half of
the thou
. Simple, except where the hell was rest of the money? Where the hell was the man? The longer he waited, the more chance some asshole like this kid would point the finger at him.

         A pigeon crapped on the roof of the Firebird, and Rocky chased it away with a pebble. Viseth grabbed him by the back of his neck.

         “Ow! Ow! What are you doing?” Rocky said.

         “Shut up, you little prick.” Viseth pushed Rocky toward the bulkhead at the back of Viseth’s house and lifted the door, a piece of rotting plywood held on by a single rusty hinge. “Get in there,” he said, and he pushed Rocky into the darkness. It was cool down there, cool and dank. The air smelled of must and slow decay. In his hand, he could feel Rocky’s body shaking. “No noise, little Rocky, or I’ll snap your neck.” He jerked Rocky’s head slightly to show just what he meant. Rocky uttered a faint squeal. Scratching noises came from the floor, like rats disturbed from their secret business. Not enough light shone through the dirty cellar windows, and Viseth groped above his head for the light chain. A bare yellow bulb glowed, and a rat dashed for cover behind a barrel. Cobwebs laced the ceiling, trailed to the walls, hung straight down. Viseth trembled as his grip tightened on Rocky. Power gave him a hard-on, and he had power now. Maybe this was what his father had done in Cambodia: held life between his fingertips, ready to crush it at his pleasure.

         “You pissed me off, do you know that?” Viseth whispered.

        
“N-n-no!
I-I didn’t know. I want to go home.”

        
“Throwing those fucking rocks when I told you to stop.
One light was all I wanted. Now they’re asking you about the light, aren’t they?”

         “N-nobody’s asking me stuff.”

         They stood under the bare bulb, and Viseth felt the heat from its glow. The boy’s neck was as cold and clammy as the room. Above them was the sound of someone walking on the first
floor.
That would be his mother, who screamed last night that she had no control of him, that he would end up dead from a policeman’s gun or a Battboy’s knife.

         “
Yes, they are! Aren’t they?
” Viseth slapped him.

         Rocky staggered backward and clasped his face in his hands.
“
Mommymommymommymommiieeee!
”
His voice was scarcely more than a whisper. Tears seeped between his trembling fingers.

         Viseth fumbled in his pockets for a cigarette,
then
flicked his lighter. The flame cast a jaundiced light on Rocky and threw jittering shadows against the wall. He inhaled deeply and felt a moment of calm. “Mommy mommy,” he said. “When I’m done with you I’ll go fuck your mommy.”

         Rocky’s fingers spread apart and his eyes opened wide. His whispered, “No, don’t!” Then a faint squeal came out of his mouth and made him sound like a tortured puppy.

         Viseth bent down and drew his face close to Rocky. He blew smoke in his face. “This is your last chance to be quiet, you little shit.”

         Rocky’s body shook as though it would fly apart in a thousand directions. Viseth squeezed Rocky’s head for a moment and then loosened his grip. He rummaged through a pile of rags and found his shotgun.

         “Stay here,” he said. “Remember, no noise.” Under the cellar stairs lay a jumble of cardboard boxes with rags, magazines, broken toys, garden chemicals, rat poison. “It’s a fire trap,” his mother had said. “I wish you would stay out of it. Mister Chea promises to clean it up.”

         “He’ll never do it,” Viseth said, which suited him fine. Under a shelf hung a foldout of a Biker of the Month, her legs spread over the seat of her Harley. She wore nothing but a wide-open biker’s jacket, but streaks of oil had dripped down from the shelf across Viseth’s favorite picture. He’d been too quick to throw the shotgun up there and knocked over the motor oil.
Too bad.
They didn’t get much better than Miss April.

         The night of the killing, Viseth had tried to return the shotgun. “Keep it,” the man said. “It’s a bonus.” Now it occurred to Viseth that he might be better off without the evidence.

         But the gun had become his secret trophy. He lifted it carefully, as though he hadn’t already spilled the oil. It was time to give Rocky something to remember, something sure to shut him up for good. The gun felt good in his hands as he held the short, hard barrel. He opened the gun and turned to Rocky. Two shells sat inside the barrel as though waiting for orders.

         Rocky sat on a cushion and stared, his eyes wide and watery brown. Tears vibrated on the tip of his chin. Viseth pointed to the shells.

         “Know what these are gonna do to your head?” Viseth said as he closed the gun.