Eddie Vo sat in the other room, his feet up on a desk, hair still gelled into a top-heavy Elvis kind of deal, reading People magazine.
“Come out here, Eddie. I won’t lie for you any more. We have a witness.”
“Fuck you,” he said. He glared at Frye. “Fuck you, too.”
Frye looked at him. High cheekbones, smooth dark skin, eyes deeply set and suspicious, their narrowness less epicanthic than fearful. Something like the Vietcong lieutenant in the famous news photo, with the pistol at his head and the first breeze of death blowing through his hair. Frye regarded Eddie Vo with some wonder: These people are harder than us.
“I remember you from the show, man,” Eddie said.
“Li’s married to my brother.”
“I know that. I know everything about her, except where she is. I split before it went down, man. I’m innocent.”
Smith implored Vo to turn himself in, bear the interrogation and clear his name. Eddie listened with a glacial look on his face.
“If you go to the police, it will look good for you,” Smith continued. “If you make them find you, it can only be bad.”
Eddie stood up, walked past them into the main office and looked out the window. He sat down and looked over at Frye. “With him?”
“You don’t have a car, Eddie. He can take you back home to change your clothes, then to the police. It’s your only choice, really. The police will look until they find you.”
“They’ll shoot me. When they came to my house, they had their guns out. So I ran.”
“American police are not gangsters, Eddie.”
“I watch TV. I know what they do.”
It took Smith another ten minutes to convince Eddie to ride back to Little Saigon with Frye, and turn himself in for questioning. Frye saw that Vo, despite his petulance, was bright enough to know that his professor was right. Smith finally sighed and sat back in his chair. “I feel a lot better now. Please, Eddie, tell them you came to me after the police did. Say, noon. I don’t want to be arrested for harboring a fugitive.”
“I’ll lie. I’m good at lying.” Eddie stood up, went to Smith’s wardrobe and threw open the doors. Frye could see the clothes inside: black leather vests and jackets, studded pants and belts.
Smith looked from the wardrobe to Frye, his pink cheeks going a shade brighter. “Thank you. I’m glad you came.” He reached into his desk and brought out a thick manuscript. “You might like to read a draft of my book. There is a section told to me by Li. Any comments you have might be useful. I’m aiming for a lay audience.”
“I want these!” said Eddie. His back was to Frye.
Frye took the padded envelope and thanked the professor. He looked again at the chilling portrait. It looked less like a man’s face than some special effect. What’s so compelling about the horrid, he wondered, and why does the horrid wear sunglasses? “What’s that?”
Smith appraised the face. “Colonel Thach. It is proper that his name rhymes with ‘attack.’ He’s part of Hanoi’s Internal Security force. He is in charge of crushing the tiny pockets of rebellion in Vietnam. I thought his ruined face was the perfect counterpoint to Li’s beauty.”
“What happened to him?”
“Some say napalm, some say white phosphorus. Some say he was left to die and that rats... partook of his flesh. He spent years in the tunnels around Saigon, so his eyes are ruined. He must wear dark glasses in daylight.”
Eddie slammed the wardrobe shut. “Man, these are cool!” He made two fists and held out his arms, brandishing two new silver-studded bracelets on each wrist.
Exactly like the dead gunman’s at the Asian Wind, thought Frye. He looked from Eddie back to Smith. “You give away a lot of those?”
“Oh, of course. Gifts of goodwill. Would you like a set?”
“Did you give away any recently?”
Smith considered. “Well, yes. To some friends of Eddie’s, in fact.”
Vo stared sullenly at Smith. “The Dark Men aren’t my friends, Stanley. Get your facts right.”
“Loc was practically a brother to you for ten years.”
“I hate him. I hate you. Let’s go, Frye, I’m sick of this place.”
“Thanks for the book,” Chuck said.
“You’re welcome. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a set of bracelets?”
“Gee, I really would.”
Smith nodded, then went to the wardrobe and pulled out a pair. Frye took them. “Thanks for everything.”
“Tell me what you think of the manuscript.” Smith rose and placed a hand on Eddie’s shoulder, but Vo turned away and walked out.
Eddie was at the radio of the Cyclone before Frye even got the engine started. He pushed the knobs, found a Pretenders song, turned it up loud, and started tapping the dashboard. “I love music, man. That’s where I got my name. After Eddie Van Halen.”
“What’s wrong with your real one?”
“It’s Dung, man. How come you don’t have a tape deck? You poor or something?”
“Guess so.”
Frye headed back down the 405 freeway while the sunset gathered above the hills, turning the exit signs to mirrors of gold. Vo lit a cigarette and stared out the window.
“What do the cops want?” he asked.
“They want Li.”
“I don’t have her! I’m innocent of all things. Hell, man. Shit.”
“Where’d you polish up your English?”
“UC Irvine. My grades were bad, so I dropped out and opened the record store. I was getting Cs. This country doesn’t like Vietnamese who get fucking Cs. You’re not smart, or a beauty queen like that Tuy girl, you’re just a gook.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“You don’t know about shit, Frye.”
“I know I saw you in the parking lot after the shooting. What were you doing in that station wagon?”
Vo looked at him, then blew a mouthful of smoke out the window. “Getting a new tape, man. The one I had got all tangled up. I took my friends for protection. I love Li Frye, man. I’m her biggest fan. I got a lot of her stuff. I wrote her love letters, but I knew she’d never write back.”
Just one night with her in my bed. I wouldn’t be a brother.
“Did you know something like this would happen?”
Vo glanced at him. “No.”
“The gunman who was killed had the same bracelets that Smith just gave us. Who is this Loc guy?”
Vo looked at him again, turned down the radio. “He’s just a punk I used to know. But Loc would never touch Li Frye. He knows I would kill him if he did. I am her official protector from the gangs. Ground Zero is devoted to her.”
What I need from Minh, thought Frye, is a positive ID on the gunman. “What do you know about John Minh?”
“That he’s a cop and you can’t trust cops. Especially the ones that don’t wear uniforms. They’re all gangsters, like me.”
“You deal with him before?”
“He’s new. He’s trying to be powerful. They say the cops here are different than in Vietnam. I don’t believe it. They’re all gangsters, just like in Saigon.”
“How long have you been in the States?”
“Ten years. I was in Saigon when the war ended. Then the camps in Thailand. That’s where Ground Zero started. I was six, and we were small thieves. Where were you, Frye?”
“Flunking college.”
They got off the freeway in Westminster. Eddie’s house was a mile from Saigon Plaza. When Frye turned onto Washington Street, Eddie leaned forward to stare at a white Chevy parked along the curb. Frye could see someone behind the wheel.
“The Dark Men?” Frye asked.
Vo shook his head, but continued staring as they passed.
Eddie’s place was an old two-bedroom home with a dead lawn, a starving orange tree out front, and weeds everywhere.