“Kim isn’t going to Paris, and neither was Li. The music is going to Vietnam, and so are those crates. Li couldn’t take them, so Kim did. And Minh knew I took her to the airstrip. He knew. When I was leaving his office, Paul DeCord was walking in.”
Bennett nodded, looking down at the cottage floor. “Okay. Okay.”
Frye took a deep breath and got his right fist ready to slam into Bennett’s face if he had to. “What the hell is going on out there, Benny? What’s in those crates and how come Paul DeCord’s taking pictures and running to Minh?” Frye stood up and put about three feet between his brother and himself. “I watched the video. DeCord paying off Nguyen. What are you guys doing?”
Bennett looked long and hard into Frye’s eyes. But the spark of violence was gone, replaced by assessment, caution, control. “Chuck. Brother Chuck. I wish you’d just believe in me the way I believe in you.”
“What shit.”
Bennett’s face took on a softness now, the same expression he had last night at the Asian Wind when Li glided on stage and smiled into the lights. He climbed onto Donnell’s bed and leaned against the headboard. For a long moment he closed his eyes, breathing deeply. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet.
“It’s amazing how simple people can make simple things so complicated.” Bennett crossed his thick arms. “We’re trying to help people who don’t have a country anymore, Chuck. We send them recordings of Li’s music, because it feeds their hearts. It helps to keep them going. It reminds everyone over there of the way things used to be. They listen to it. The people in the refugee camps listen to it. The villagers listen to it. It’d be like us ending up in Vietnam, Chuck. What would you want to hear — our music, or theirs? But it’s not just music, Chuck. There are other voices on those tapes. A son’s birthday wishes to a father still in the camps. A wife’s love to a husband who never got out and lives under the Communists now, too afraid to move. Greetings. Gossip. News from the refugees here. Encouragement for those still over there. Plans for bringing them out. Li always felt like she wanted to help the ones who weren’t as lucky as she was. I always felt the same. Is that so hard for you to understand?”
Frye shook his head.
“You saw these crates. How long were they, Chuck, how many feet long?”
“Three, four.”
“They’re forty-inches long, exactly. What would fit in a case that size, Chuck? Be honest now, tell me what would fit perfectly in a forty-inch wooden crate?”
“Guns. Arms.”
“Ah, somehow I thought you’d say that. Arms, sure. But what about legs?”
Frye didn’t get it.
Bennett looked down, grasped one of his stumps in both hands and lifted it up. Frye looked at the dirty padding on the bottom, a kind of special wad that Li sewed into Bennett’s pants to protect the tender ends of his legs. “What do you see besides a stump?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s exactly what a lot of those people over there have to stand on. That’s why we send those crates over. Legs. They cost almost a thousand dollars apiece, but we buy a lot of them and get a good price. It’s not the hardware that costs so much, it’s the doctors you need to fit them and show those crippled people how to use the damned things. They’re better than nothing sometimes, Chuck. Believe me. Yeah, there are arms in there too, and feet and hands. There are hooks and crutches, bandages, antibiotics, pain killers, vitamins, cortisone, and enough tape to wrap everybody in the country from head to toe. Any of that meet with your approval?”
Frye nodded.
“I’m happy to hear that. Now, why am I giving you a tape of DeCord paying money to Nguyen? Simple, Chuck, part of the money for those supplies comes from DeCord, I’m just keeping the accounting clean. If it’s ever necessary — and I hope it won’t be — I need to be able to prove where it came from. There is a lot of money involved. You must understand that.”
“Where’s DeCord get it?”
“Foreign sources, Chuck. Sympathetic to a free Vietnam. It’s nobody’s business, especially yours, who those donors are.”
“Why’s DeCord taking pictures of the airstrip?”
Bennett’s gaze shifted past Frye to the window. He looked at the black pane as if trying to read an answer there. “I don’t know yet. That’s why the video is important. It’s insurance. That’s where you come in. That’s why I’m asking you to trust me now. That’s why I’m hoping and praying I can trust you to take care of it. Have you?”
“It’s safe.”
Bennett smiled. “Things are pretty simple, when you slow down and look at them correctly. Aren’t they?”
“It’s just kind of embarrassing to be the last one to find out what your own brother’s doing.”
“I had to bullshit you a little, Chuck. The longer you thought she was going to Paris, the better. Chuck, what Li does — what we do — is outside official channels. It isn’t illegal, but sometimes it isn’t approved, either. There are some uncharted areas out there, and that’s where we work. But we have to keep things quiet.”
Frye got up, paced the tiny guest house, looked out the window to the back yard. I had Eddie Vo in choking distance. And I let him get away. “I’m sorry about Eddie. I was just trying to do something... something goddamned right for a change.”
“I know you were.”
Frye sat down on the bed. “I’m sick of being a liability to my own family, but you punch me again, I’m going to tear you apart. I mean it.”
Bennett reached out and touched Frye’s head, near the stitches, then placed his hand gently on his neck. “No one believes that, unless it’s you. I know what you’re thinking. Don’t blame yourself for Debbie. It wasn’t your fault. I know that, even if you don’t.”
“I don’t want to talk about her, Bennett.”
Bennett looked down to the floor, ran his fingers through his thick dark hair. “Can’t you just understand, Chuck, that there’s some things you can’t do anything about? You can’t do anything about our sister. You can’t do anything about Li.”
“I can. I will.”
“You’re right. You can keep an eye on that tape I gave you. You can find out about John Minh. You can help me out when I need you, Chuck, I need you to be there for me.”
Frye looked at his brother. Somewhere just behind the skin, just inside those dark blue eyes, he could see Debbie: her spirit, her face, her blood. “I can’t do nothing, Benny. Don’t ask me to sit there again and do nothing.”
“Then tell me what you found out about John Minh.”
He told him everything.
Back in the living room he sat with Crawley and Nguyen, organizing the notes that Hy’s people had collected. Michelsen and Toibin looked on. One hundred and fifteen interviews, and basically it all boiled down to nothing.
Edison called and Bennett put the telephone speaker on. The sound-activated tape recorder started up.
Edison cursed the slowness of the FBI for a moment, then presented Pat Arbuckle’s first solid lead: He’d found a young lady who’d seen Eddie Vo’s car arrive outside the Dream Reader Sunday night. Inside were three men — she didn’t know them — and Li. According to the witness, Li wasn’t struggling at all, but standing up straight, head high, apparently part of a fortune-telling excursion. Arbuckle had determined that two of the men had stayed quite close to her. “With a gun to her back is my guess,” said Edison.
“Her blouse was torn and she only had one shoe,” said Bennett. “Didn’t the lady think that was unusual?”
“Apparently not. Maybe they gave Li a coat.”
“But they didn’t go into the Dream Reader?”
“The lady didn’t bother to watch them. They must have been switching cars, before they delivered her to Vo.”