Another Man's Moccasins

“No, just meet us at the bar.”

Static. “Roger that; out.”

I looked at Henry again as we drove the winding road back toward Powder Junction. “I don’t think my staff is completely happy with me.” He shrugged as I keyed the mic again. “Base, this is unit one.” I didn’t wait for a response; instead I sang, “I gotta gal and Ruby is her name. Ruby, Ruby, Ruby baby / She don’t love me but I love her just the same. . . .”

Static. “I told you to stop that.”

“But I haven’t gone through my entire litany of Ruby songs yet.”

Static. “Oh, yes, you have.”

I keyed the mic. “Any word from the young Philadelphians? ”

Static. “They just finished lunch.”

“Am I in trouble? ”

Static. “Not if you get back up here for dinner.”

“How’s the sleeping giant? ”

Static. “Not sleeping. Double Tough made it in to relieve Frymire, but Lucian is back there again playing chess, so he left.” There was a pause. “Please don’t sing again; I don’t know if my ears can take it.”

Tan Son Nhut, Vietnam: 1968

He had gotten the staples out of his earlobes, but the duty sergeant wasn’t particularly happy to see us again. He was a lot more helpful this time, however, and much more understanding of the severity of a homicide investigation. He said that Hollywood Hoang had gone into Saigon on a three-day.

Mendoza asked if he could be a little more specific about Hoang’s exact location, and I picked up the stapler.

He said that Hoang was known to frequent a place in the red-light district on Tu-Do Street. I put the stapler back down.

The three of us stood there in the close humidity of the Southeast Asian night. I stared at the two of them as Baranski tried to make up his mind. “This is a bad idea. We don’t have any jurisdiction there, and we’re under maximum alert since 0945 this morning and a security condition red since 1730, and we’ve got just as good a chance of being shot by the good guys as the bad.”

Mendoza nodded. “Yeah, but...”

Baranski shoved his hands in his pants pockets and trapped his mustache with his lower lip. “It’s going to be like looking for a needle-dick in a Vietnamese haystack.”

After a moment, the Texan spoke again. “Yeah, but...”

Baranski pulled out a cigarette without offering one to anybody else and lit up. “Why is this suddenly so fucking important to you?”

Mendoza gestured toward me. “Well, Mother Green here is going to be leavin’ on a jet plane tomorrow morning . . .”

Baranski interrupted him, switching his cigarette to the other hand and sticking out a finger, tapping him in the chest. “No, I said you. Why is this shit so suddenly important to you?”

The shorter man looked up at him, his dark eyes steady. “I don’t know, man.”

“You don’t know?”

I watched the Texican’s jaw moving. “Hey, maybe this is it, man. Maybe this is the one thing we’ll be able to look back on in this great big shitty mess and be proud of.” He turned and studied me. “The cowboy here is short and headed back to the real world—after the shit he’s pulled in the last few hours, he ain’t gonna be making a career out of the Corps.” His eyes stayed on Baranski as he reached under the front seat of the jeep and handed me my sidearm and holster. He finally looked at me. “If we don’t take you, you’re going to walk into the city, aren’t you?”

I nodded. “Yep.”

He sighed and glanced back at Baranski. “I thought the zipper-heads were on a truce?”

The redheaded man nodded, continuing to smoke his cigarette. “They are, but there have been some bullshit attacks up north.”

Mendoza stood there for a minute and then climbed into the jeep, the decision made. “I’m having trouble keeping up with all these damn holidays. What’s this one?”

Baranski threw the rest of his smoke onto the ground and himself into the driver’s seat as I climbed in the back again. “Lunar New Year.”

The Texican looked at the main gate with its guard shack, which would have been more at home at a public pool in Southern California, and down the busy four-and-a-half-mile road that led to Saigon. “Yeah, but what do the Slopes call it?”

Baranski started the jeep. “Tet.”

Phillip Maynard was MIA.

We were sitting in the café section of the Wild Bunch Bar, waiting on Tuyen, sipping iced tea, and studying the menus. “He didn’t show up for work?”

“No, and this is only his sixth day, so he may end up getting his ass fired.” Thinner than the rattler I’d encountered earlier and just about as tolerant, Roberta Porter had bought the bar back in ’98 and had had trouble keeping staff ever since. “No call or nothing. I was by his place and didn’t see his motorcycle but could hear the TV. I beat on the door, but he didn’t answer.”

I looked at Henry as he perused the menu, his voice smoothly modulating from behind the single sheet. “Did he work last night? ”

“If you’d call it that.”

She pulled a pencil from somewhere in the suspiciously blonde tangle of her sixty-two-year-old hair and yanked a pad from the back pocket of her jeans as I ventured an opinion. “Maybe he’s hungover? ”