The Price of Blood (38 page)

They came up the ramp. Matching black sunglasses gave their smiling faces a shiny praying mantis warmth.

“Goddamn, Trin. How you been, boy?” Cyrus, always smooth, extended a leathery hand.

“Watch your step, Cyrus.” Trin sniffed, pointing to the side of the walkway. “Don’t step in the shit.” So much for old home week.

“Same old Trin, suckled by a tarantula. Lola, honey, this is the famous Nguyen Van Trin I’ve told you so much about.” Trin and Lola merely stared at each other. “How you doing, partner?” Cyrus aimed his hand at Broker.

“I told you not to come,” said Broker, refusing the handshake.

Cyrus withdrew the hand and cocked his head. “Be a realist. We knew you’d find it for us. Now it can only end one way…”

Broker’s bloodshot eyes snapped on Lola.

“Let’s hear it, Broker,” she said, tipping her sunglasses down on her nose and revealing her champagne eyes. “This is turning out to be…exhausting.”

Broker hefted the heavy bag in his right hand and said, “Let’s walk.” He turned and led then up the limestone ramp and stopped at a parapet that overlooked a strip of grass, the moat, a grassy park, and the street along the river. Some kids kicked a soccer ball directly below them.

“If I remember right, the Nguyen emperors used to stage exhibition fights in that pagoda,” said Cyrus, leaning his heavy forearms on the parapet. “Tigers against elephants. Fixed fights. They declawed the tigers.” He grinned. “How about we put you and Bevode in there.” He turned to his wife. “You’d probably get off on that.”

“I don’t particularly like to see men fight, but then, I’ve never really seen them do anything else,” she replied in a bored voice.

Broker reached into his bag, withdrew the ingot, and slapped it, blazing in the sun, down on the parapet wall.

“Holy God, son, not out here.” Cyrus covered the bar with his hands and stirred nervously, looking around. The shadow of the huge flag rippled his arid features.

“Why not? It came from here,” said Broker as he slid the bar back in the bag.

Cyrus cleared his throat and wrung his hands. “Ah, Lola, why don’t you and Trin take a little walk and let me and Phil talk some business.”

Trin smiled his exquisite smile. With a cynical dapper bow that was in extreme contrast to his shabby clothing, he extended his hand, guiding the way. Lola grinned and they sauntered off down the wall. Smiles all around. A convention of pirate flags.

Cyrus wheeled and grabbed Broker by the arm. “I don’t know, son. Trin on the play.”

“Jimmy found him.”

“I wouldn’t trust the fucker.” Cyrus squinted. “He has a history of changing sides.”

Broker roughly removed Cyrus’s hand. “I’ll worry about Trin.”

“Do that,” said Cyrus. “So, talk.”

“You give us Nina. Nina stays with Trin, out of the way. I take you to the gold. We get a tenth. Finder’s fee.”

“The girl will talk,” said Cyrus, shaking his head.

“Best I can do. Take it or leave it.”

“How long’s your visa good for, Phil?”

“What?”

“Twenty days, thirty at most. Then they’ll throw you out of the country. I’ll still be here.” Cyrus smiled. “And so will Trin.”

Broker needed some kind of edge. And fast. He leaned over the rampart and called down to the kids playing below, “Hey!”

They skidded on the grass and looked up. Broker’s hand came out of the sack and heaved the ingot over their heads. It glittered, turning end over end and went slurp in the moat. Bull’s-eye in a puddle of lotus and lily pads.

“Jesus,” LaPorte gasped.

Broker stepped in close and snatched Cyrus LaPorte’s left earlobe and twisted. “Jimmy told me in great detail all about that night. Nina’s the only thing keeping you alive, old man.” He released his hold. LaPorte staggered back, massaging his ear.

“Think about it,” admonished Broker as he brought the piece of ammo box lid out of his bag and slapped it into Cyrus’s stomach with a loud whack. “Meet me again. Tonight. Cafard’s still there, on the river. Seven o’clock.” He grinned. “For old times’ sake.”

Then he swept up the shopping bag Lola had left and walked away, motioning to Trin to join him.

“How did it go?” Trin asked.

“I played crazy. I’m meeting him at Cafard’s at seven for another round. It don’t look good.” As they descended the ramp he opened Lola’s bag. It contained a gray T-shirt with the slogan G
OOD
M
ORNING
, V
IETNAM
printed across a red Communist flag.

“Nice touch,” said Trin, inspecting the shirt. “She’s… big.” He sighed thoughtfully. “Screwing an American woman must be like separating a pile of bacon that’s been left out in the sun.” He curdled his lips. “Sticky.”

“You must have had a great conversation.”

Trin nodded. “I told her about my life-long ambition to open a big combination liquor and video store in Los Angeles.”

“What’d she say?”

“She knows where Nina is. She asked, if she helps us free Nina and runs from Cyrus, will we take care of her. I told her yes. She left a note in the bag on the shirt receipt.”

“Keep walking,” said Broker.

“I
T’S A TRAP,” SAID BROKER.

“Of course it’s a trap, but what kind of trap?” said Trin, who had once been a connoisseur of traps and was now a guzzler of Huda beer. He tapped the hurried, scrawled note: “My Thong Kiet Villa, 21 My Thong. Rm 102. I take her a meal, 8 or 9. Try to get guards to break for supper. Get me out of here. When Bevode back. We’re all dead.”

“We’re” was underlined.

“I know that street. It’s secluded.”

The note lay on the cramped table between Broker’s tonic water and Trin’s beer. They’d stopped near the Citadel Gate to eat in a restaurant that looked like a garage with the door pulled up. A tiny fan was screwed to the wall and moved the heat around like a toy airplane propeller.

A cat so emaciated that it had to be HIV positive dragged a huge, fat, dead rat across the dirty floor. Broker sat up. He had seen that cat and that rat before. Their great, great grandfathers…

He looked around. “This is the pancake place. We used to come here in seventy-two,” he said.

Trin smiled. “The same. Still the best banh khoai in Hue.” Broker ate four of the pleasure cakes with rice, chili peppers, garlic, and raw vegetables, some of which he could identify. The peanut sauce he did remember. He pushed his plate away and felt stronger.

Trin’s second beer arrived and he said, “Since we could both be dead tonight it’s time to tell me everything.” He leaned across the table. “Nina is after more than just having the militia arrest Cyrus for stealing antiquities, correct?”

Broker nodded. “Remember that cigarette case Ray had? Jimmy says Ray made Cyrus put the order to go after the gold and ditch us in writing. And sign it. Ray put it in the case. Ray’s under the pallet with the orders that can implicate Cyrus. Cyrus still thinks Ray is on the bottom of the ocean.”

“What fate would Nina like for Cyrus?” Trin asked solemnly.

The beer talking. Pumping up his grandiose bent. Broker exhaled. “She wants him tried by the U.S. military for murdering her father.”

“More likely he’ll wind up in a Vietnamese prison.”

“I think she has her heart set on Leavenworth Penitentiary. Or a firing squad.”

“That makes it harder. She’s very demanding.” Trin nodded profoundly and his dark eyes were merry with alcohol and mystery. “I like the way this woman thinks. She must be saved.”

Back on the street the motorscooters darted, edgy in the fierce afternoon heat. Broker looked longingly at a husky, sober traffic cop, neatly turned out in his crisp uniform and whistle. He turned to Trin.

“Why don’t we go to your place, I’d like to see it.”

Trin shook his head and stared straight ahead. “It’s nothing, not worth your time.”

Broker leaned back, uneasy. Translation: There was no apartment in Hue.

They cruised the back streets and found the address on My Thong Street. It was perfect. Like Lola’s hair. And her offer of help.

The villa was screened by a six-foot hedge that continued out on either side of the driveway. Peeking up the drive they could see the blue van parked in the yard. The lot next to the villa was under construction and there was room for a vehicle to slip in and hide between the walls of the new building and the hedge.

“A government-run tourist villa,” said Trin. “Probably one housekeeper on duty. I doubt there are any other guests. Cyrus has probably taken all four rooms.”

“If there’s a guard, and he’s armed, we have a problem.”

Trin protested. “A gunshot in Hue? There would suddenly be so many police…No, I think if there’s a guard he’s a sacrificial offering. Expendable.”

Trin seemed to know a whole lot all of a sudden. Since his chat with Lola. Broker ran the possibilities. Trin and Lola against the world. Trin, Lola, and Cyrus against him. “What if it’s Bevode Fret?”

“That man has no finesse. Cyrus wants to bring off something smooth. That man would ruin everything.”

They drove the streets to eat up time. They paused at the ViaCom Bank and inspected the cement apron in the back where the pallet of gold had sat from March 19, when the Communists took the city, until Jimmy Tuna and Ray Pryce choppered in on April 30, 1975.

The former MACV compound, where Trin had been held prisoner, was two blocks away. Painted smartly in government brown it was now a military hotel. Back on Le Loi, they stopped so Broker could confirm the location of the new La Cafard. Now La Cafard floated, two brightly lit donuts connected by planks and gangways. Sampans docked next to it.

They returned to the guest house and walked out on the broad veranda that overlooked the Perfume River. Trin swung his beer and pointed below them. “This used to be corps headquarters. That’s the tennis court where General Troung used to play with Westmoreland.”

Broker was now seriously worried about Trin’s alcohol intake as well as his reliability. His face had reddened to a permanent pepper flush a few shades hotter than the huge Communist flag that tossed in the breeze across the river. The flag kept time to a disco on Le Loi Street that blared “Hotel California” in the foundry heat. Trin grinned and toasted him with his beer can.

What if Trin
was
dying to stir his crank in a pile of round-eyed bacon grease? Or maybe he wanted to get all the concerned Americans in one place and then let the militia shoot them all on the beach. It was possible that he really wanted to open a liquor store in California…

Broker’s head hurt. “It’s a trap,” he repeated.

“For sure. That’s given. They know we’re at the same game,” Trin said jovially. “We’re in Vietnam, where traps were invented.” He waved the beer can dramatically. “The question is what kind of a trap and is it better than our trap.”

“They could jump us when we go for Nina—”

“That would still leave the messy business of getting us to talk. We might stand up under torture,” Trin said in a detached voice. “Or die under it. That’s not a lock. Cyrus used to like things sewn up. No. Lola is the key. If she helps us get Nina out and wants to
come with us
…We could show her the gold in gratitude. Then use her to signal them in. If she wants to go with us, then we’ll know!” Trin jabbed his index finger oratorically in the air. “Better for us. It saves us the trouble of having to reestablish contact after we get Nina.”

“I forgot what a devious guy you are,” said Broker.

Trin collapsed back on a lawn chair and took a long swig of beer. “You have no idea,” he sighed.

“Cool it on the booze.”

“It’s just beer. I know what I’m doing.”

“Yeah, but I’m not sure I know what you’re doing.”

“Trin’s laugh was intricate with fascination. “Imagine that we’re all jumping off a balcony over a swimming pool. We all have ropes around our necks. All the ropes are different lengths. Some of us will splash harmlessly into the water. Some of us will hang. We won’t know until we take the dive.” Trin smiled and drained his beer.

Broker wished he had Ed Ryan, J.T. Merryweather, and an ATF entry team.

But he didn’t.

He had Trin.

Across the street, “Hotel California” started to play again.

They went into the room and Trin called the desk and requested a six o’clock wake-up call. They were asleep the minute their heads hit the pillows.

At six the telephone woke them. Broker, cinder-eyed, stumbled to the bathroom and climbed in the tub and sprayed away grime with tepid water from the hand-held shower. He rubbed his chin whiskers. No shaving kit. He put on the T-shirt Lola had given him at the citadel. It was the only article of clean clothing in sight. He was glad for his short hair, which he combed with his fingers.

At six-thirty they split up. Trin took the van to scout the villa again during Broker’s meeting with LaPorte. He’d pick Broker up in front of the restaurant at eight sharp. Then they’d hit the villa.

Broker joined the strollers on Le Loi. A cyclo driver rose lizard-like from his cab and approached. “Buddha cigarette?” he offered in a casual voice.

“Didi mau—fuck off,” said Broker. Apparently smoking grass had survived the revolution. The disco across the street was still playing the same damn song. Maybe it was the new Communist anthem. He hailed a cyclo. The driver nodded when he said La Cafard and they set off.

Hue was still a city of bicycles and some of the old Le Loi ambience lingered; except, now, the clouds of female students on their bikes were dingy from exhaust from all the motorbikes. Now the bursts of flowering frangipani, flamboyants, and the tall old tamarinds squeezed between the new billboards. The same bleached Colonial buildings lined the avenue like the mustard and ivory bones of France and somewhere in the city, according to Trin, the last Vietnamese mandarin sat in the dark behind shuttered windows and chain-smoked and guarded his dusty Imperial mementos.

The cyclo driver’s sturdy legs propelled Broker beneath gaudy neon tiaras strung from light poles. Across the river, the ramparts of the flag tower were decked in more lights that were layered like a wedding cake. The lights popped like flash cubes for the eyes and blunted the dragon teeth in the sunset forming over the Annamite Mountains.

Rock and roll pumped from the cafes and a group of teenage girls strutted to the beat in designer jeans. Some of them wore red pins with little yellow stars.

The rosy early evening air was sticky as cotton candy and Hue swung its ass in American denim and sweated to American music and Broker, way past irony, stared straight ahead as he trundled down the midway of Coney Island Communism.