Another Man's Moccasins

I thought about the girl’s face, the cyanosis discoloration, the hemorrhaging of the skin around the eyes. I guessed there would be small, linear abrasions at the throat, either from the perpetrator or from her attempts to dislodge the attacker’s arm or hands.

I thought about her bone structure, which was the big tip-off as to her nationality. If you spend any time in Southeast Asia, you pick up the basic differences pretty quickly, and I sure had spent time in Vietnam.

Tan Son Nhut, Vietnam: 1967

“No beau-coups, you scat riki-tiki baby-san. He a Marine and they no boom-boom. He a Marine and they no boom-boom, just kill.” Baranski laughed, enjoying his own charm, elegance, and immense style.

I smiled, shrugged at the young woman, and took another swig of my Tiger beer, her image swimming in the blown-out sweat and strangeness. She shook her head and placed a provocative leg forward to test the theory. “He no killa.”

Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” pounded the room as the tiny Vietnamese woman swayed to the driving rhythm. Baranski crossed his ankles on the chair in front of him and belched loud enough to rattle the windows in the Boy-Howdy Beau-Coups Good Times Lounge, if it’d had any—windows, that is. The lounge was just outside Gate 055 near the old French fort known simply as Hotel California. I had been in California a short while earlier and, from my perspective, I could not see the resemblance.

The concrete walls of the old fort were twenty feet high and three feet thick, forming a whitewashed rectangle. Each of the arch-ways had solid iron gates, and I expected Franchot Tone and his troop of French legionnaires to march through at any minute. There was an Army of the Republic of Vietnam company posted to the fort, but the real action was just outside the lounge, where there was a civilian mortuary and a cemetery with thousands of white grave markers. It was strange, having the local bar next to the cemetery, but I’d seen stranger things since arriving in Vietnam. Boy howdy.

“Little sister, you sabe specialists in Uncle Sam’s fi ghting forces?” Baranski gestured toward me. “This numba one killer.”

She smiled at him and then reconsidered me, but not her opinion. Her eyes were hard, but her smile was dazzling; good teeth, something you didn’t see much over here. “What your name, numba one killa?”

I ambled to a six-and-almost-a-half-foot standing position as quickly as the heat and eight Tiger beers would allow, all my mother’s lessons moving past the alcohol and to the fore. “Lieutenant Walt Longmire, ma’am, from the great state of Wyoming.”

Baranski lit another Camel and smiled. “Killer, hell, he’s a cowboy.”

Mendoza raised his head just long enough to make one statement. “Bullshit, I’m from Texas, man, I’m the cowboy.”

Baranski removed the cigarette from his mouth and spoke with absolute authority. “You’re a beaner, asshole.”

Mendoza’s voice was muffled against the sticky surface of the table. “What’a you know, you fuckin’ Hoosier?”

I turned back to the girl as she snapped a finger and pointed it at me, practiced at diverting conflict. “Cowboy better than killa. USA, numba one.”

I smiled back. “You bet.” She laughed a short burst and sought more monetarily advantageous pursuits at the bar, or the row of powder-blue fifty-five-gallon fuel drums and plywood that made up the bar. “Hey?”

She glanced back with a lascivious wink. Her voice was husky. “You change mind, cowboy?”

“No, miss. I just want to know your name.”

Her eyes softened, and she turned completely around to make a formal introduction of herself. “Mai Kim, I am please to make acquaintance. ” Her head bowed, and I suddenly felt like a visiting dignitary instead of a Marine investigator making the outrageous sum of $479.80 a month.

“The pleasure is mine, Mai Kim.” She paused there for a moment, considered the surroundings and her situation, her eyelids slowly blinking in shame, then turned and walked away. She didn’t strut.

I looked at the landscape of empty bottles to allow her an unstudied retreat and noticed that there was an old broken-down upright piano beside the bar.

“Tell ’em to turn down that spook music while you’re over there, Mai Kim!” Baranski shouted as he took another sip of his 33 Export. “Damn, I been here for almost two months an’ never knew her name.”

I continued to study the piano as a few of the black airmen stared at our table. I set my beer bottle down and looked at Baranski and decided to go right up the middle. “So, what is the local drug problem?”

He smiled. “Not enough drugs, that’s the problem.” I didn’t smile back, so he felt compelled to continue. “What have you heard?”

“A lot of personnel are passing through here and turning up self-medicated. ”

He shook his head and sighed. “That’s the provost marshal’s view?”

I peeled the label of my beer with my thumbnail. “Yep.”