Saizarbitoria continued to study me as Marie pushed the door open with a tray that I assumed was lunch. “What about the quarters?”
We’d been warned against tiring him, so I plucked my hat from my bent knee, put it back on my head, and stood. “I asked Ned about that. He said that they would bring the girls in, some of them as young as ten, and lock them in a manufacturing building that had been cordoned off into little twelve-by-twelve rooms. Then they were...” I glanced at Marie. “Trained—and told they owed Trung Sisters twenty thousand dollars apiece for their transportation to the U.S. and that they would work off the debt and be released. They were given twenty dollars a week in quarters, so that they could eat and drink from the vending machines in the building.”
The Basquo let out a long slow breath.
Vic handed the rest of the report to me as she and Lucian stood. “What happens to Ngo now? ”
“The people from INS picked her up about an hour ago and flew her back to Los Angeles under a Temporary Protected Status. Under the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, it looks like she’s going to be granted a T-Visa and citizenship through adoption.”
Saizarbitoria watched as his pregnant wife rolled a stand and tray table over to his bed and removed the stainless covering from his lunch—it looked ghastly. No wonder he was trying to bribe all of us into bringing him food from the Busy Bee. “Adopted by who?”
I stuffed the thick file under my arm. “If I were a betting man, I’d say the sheriff of Los Angeles County has two daughters and is about to acquire a third.” I smiled at Marie as she seated herself as comfortably as she could in the corner chair and gestured for the staff to follow me as I crossed and opened the door. “We’ll leave you to your lunch and your wife.” I smiled at her again. “When, exactly, are you due?”
She rested her hands on the sides of her stomach. “November. ”
I ushered Vic and Lucian out—the old sheriff was having lunch with Isaac Bloomfield, but the rest of us were on our own. I began closing the door behind me.
"Hey, boss?”
I stopped and leaned back in. "Yep?”
Santiago looked down at the boiled meat, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t what he was contemplating. "I...” He stopped, looked up, and then started to say something again.
“Don’t worry about it, Sancho.”
Vic rolled down the window of her eight-year-old unit in the parking lot of Durant Memorial. “I guess that leaves only one more mystery.”
I opened the door of my truck and watched as Henry moved the bags of groceries to the center and climbed in on the other side; Dog was asleep in the back. “Not really. Mai Kim had given birth to Ngo Loi’s grandmother three years before I ever got to Tan Son Nhut.”
“I guess you’re off the hook.” She flared the canine tooth at me and started her truck. “You’re fast, but not that fast.” She slipped the vehicle into gear. “You do remember that you have a debate tonight.”
I pulled out my pocket watch and checked the time. “Yep, but that should be over by eight.”
"So?”
I tucked my watch back in my pocket and considered the fact that I was about to ask my deputy out on a date in front of Henry. It was enough to curdle my fortitude, but I figured it was time to get the thing out in the open. “I was wondering...?”
She didn’t say anything.
I glanced back at the Cheyenne Nation, who continued to watch us. “Henry has to tend bar and Cady and Michael have plans, since he’s leaving tomorrow, so I was thinking...”
She studied me. I thought I should say something else, but then she started to speak and I stopped. “I’m washing my hair.”
I stood there looking at her drive away, her vehicle barking the rear tires as she turned out of the parking lot. I tried to figure out what I’d done wrong. I knew I was out of practice, but the response seemed a little abrupt. I started the Bullet and put my seat belt on. Henry sat there without saying a word; Dog didn’t speak either. “What?”
He turned his head to look out the windshield. “Nothing.”
"What?”
I watched as he tried not to smile. “Just a small piece of advice.” He turned and looked at me again. “Next time, try not to make it sound like you have nothing better to do.”
Tan Son Nhut, Vietnam: 1968
I didn’t have anything better to do, so I figured I might as well get drunk.
My right shoulder still hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, but I found that after a little practice, I could drink with my left hand. I’d been practicing steadily since being released from the base hospital two hours ago. I wasn’t wheels-up till 1820 hours; the flight itself would be only twenty minutes back to BHQ, and then the provost marshal wanted a personal debriefing on my investigation. He wouldn’t be happy that I was drunk, but he wasn’t going to be happy with me anyway, so I figured what the hell. I stared at the empty piece of paper on the piano bench next to me and knocked back another whiskey. It was not my usual weapon of choice, but I was in a hurry. Things were just starting to pick up at the Boy-Howdy Beau-Coups Good Times Lounge, and the place was getting crowded, but nobody came near me.
If you’re unlucky enough in life, there’s a time when people will start associating you with death.
I had written three letters already, and I was getting depressed writing about dead people. Le Khang promised to deliver this one to a girl who knew someone near the village where Mai Kim’s family supposedly lived. Would the letter actually get there? Would the family care? Did any of it really matter?
I picked up the bottle, refilled my glass, and struggled with the wave of regret, depression, anger, and disgust that continued to churn under the flood of alcohol. I thought that there should be somebody in the place that I should say good-bye to, but there wasn’t anybody left.
Letter number one would go to San Antonio, Texas. Baranski had indeed shot Mendoza in the back of the head along Highway 1.
Letter number two would go to West Hamlin, West Virginia. The one-eyed sergeant’s name had been George Seton, and he’d survived another four days after his two rounds of AK fire had taken most of Baranski’s chest. Before he succumbed to the wounds he’d sustained during what they were now calling the Tet Offensive, he’d made a statement to the 377th Security Investigators that had exonerated me in the death of Baranski. I was probably going to end up getting a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart for my efforts in driving back the offensive; I figured that, and a dime, would get me a phone call.
Letter number three would go to the Airwing of ARVN to be delivered to Hoang’s parents in Saigon. I attempted to put a brave and honorable face on why their son had bled to death in the back of a jeep on the way to Tan Son Nhut Air Force Base.
Letter number four was the one I hadn’t written yet. I set the shot glass down and stared at the chipped keys of the piano. There was no other music in the Boy-Howdy Beau-Coups Good Times Lounge, because I had ripped the electric cord from the bar’s jukebox and thrown it into the bamboo outside. I extended an index finger and hit an F, listening to the tone of it resonating through my life.
In Mai Kim’s memory, I launched into a one-handed version of Fats Waller’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” I’d made the bridge and was into the chorus in a dirgelike manner when I noticed that a short soldier was standing by the piano and was singing along.