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“You know, Chuck, one of the things I wanted you to do was bring out the worst in me. Then when you did, I freaked. We were borderline depraved, some of the stuff we did.”

“We had our moments.”

She smiled through a smear of mascara and tears, a little wickedness in her, even now. Linda was always game, he thought. In the end, a little too game with her dealer, a few too many nights with the sun coming up and the blues rolling in to claim her like a cold, dark tide. In the end, we all skipped the fun and went straight to the weird. We were all just willing victims of the age. The whole spoiled, rich, gutless, fucked-up generation.

Strange, he thought, it’s all part of another time now.

“You ever—?”

“No more.”

“That’s good. You were always stronger.” Linda picked up her cigarette butt and shook her head. “I hate these things. One habit for another. Well, I’ll go now. God’s truth is I wanted to see you again. It’s going to be a while, Chuck. When this is final, Ken and I are going—”

“I don’t want to hear about it.”

For one terrible moment he saw Linda steering her old convertible up the driveway, her hair flying and her Wayfarers on, saw her walking up to the cave-house looking so good, smiling at Denise. Then he saw her heading down a gray cold street in New York City, crying like she was now. There just has to be a better way, he thought, to treat the people we love. “I’m glad things are working out for you. In my own weird way, I’m always gonna love you, Linda.”

“Me too. Got another girl?”

Frye thought of Cristobel. “Not exactly.”

“I’m just shattered, about Li. Anything new?”

Frye told her everything he could, which wasn’t much. No sense, he thought, getting someone else involved. He expressed confidence in the FBI and Minh, but she must have heard his insincerity.

She wiped away a tear. “What about all the kids she brings over from the camps?”

“I guess they’ll have to wait.”

“Is that why they took her, to stop that?”

“I don’t think so.”

A blade of anger flashed in Linda’s lovely, red-rimmed eyes. “They should have thought about those children. She brought more of them over here than anyone else ever did. The time she took me to LAX to pick some up, it just took my heart away, these little rugrats pouring down the ramp and she was the one they ran to. She was the one they needed when they got here. The bastards who kidnapped her should have seen those faces. They might have thought twice about ruining all that. How are the last batch doing — Trinh and Ha and that little girl with the speech problem?”

“I think they’re all okay.”

Linda wiped her eyes with a tissue, then tossed it into the briefcase. “Li can make it through. She’s like a nail wrapped in silk and perfume. Benny’s probably taking this like a good Marine, isn’t he?”

“That’s Benny.”

“That’s the Fryes. You’re all just goddamned Marines, when it comes down to the way you live your lives. Give my love to them anyway.” She stood in the doorway, the bright morning sun and the tan hills of Laguna Canyon behind her shoulder. “Good-bye, Chuck. I wish... I wish we both could have settled for a little bit more.”

“Me too. Good-bye, Linda.”

Just before noon the phone rang. It was Julie at the Asian Wind. She was looking for Bennett. She’d called everywhere she could think of and couldn’t find him. “He asked me to call him if General Dien did anything out of the ordinary. He has set up a meeting in my private room. He often does his business here. He has requested the room for a party of four, just one hour from now.”

Frye hesitated a moment. “I don’t know where Benny is.”

“I’m not sure why he wanted me to keep an eye on the general. I only told him I would let him know. I trust your brother. The general, I do not.”

“How good is that one-way window of yours?”

“How did you know about that?”

“I found it when I was in the dressing room.”

“It’s very good. The FBI installed it eight years ago, because they believed that Communist agents were using my club as a meeting place. The light fixture on the ceiling contains a listening device. They used it a few times, then quit coming in.”

“Does Dien know about it?”

“Of course not. I’ve told no one that they were being spied on in my cabaret. I’d have taken it all out, but it would be expensive.”

Frye thought again. “How about if I take Benny’s place?”

“I wish you would.”

“I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

Frye sat on Li’s dressing room chair. Julie reached into the wardrobe and pushed the button. The wall panel slid back to expose the window.

Julie fiddled with a tape recorder. “Why do you want me to record this, Chuck?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m fishing, and I feel lucky.”

“If the general hears it, he would take severe revenge on me.”

“He’s the last one who’ll hear it.”

Ten minutes later, the party started. First into the room was one of Julie’s waiters, carrying menus. Then the general, followed by a thin, wolflike Asian in a gray suit.

“His name is Tòng,” whispered Julie. “But he is called Willie. In Saigon before the fall, he sold women. He tried to sell me.”

Then a chubby Vietnamese man, short, with the serene baby face often seen on deported religious leaders.

“Mr. Dun,” she said. “He is in the narcotics business. He lives in San Francisco. They are gangsters.”

Three young men in suits and sunglasses came in next. Each took a wall and crossed his arms; one carried a briefcase. Stanley Smith’s Gậy Trúc, thought Frye, in living color — the Vietnamese Mafia down from San Francisco.

Julie excused herself, checked her makeup, then slipped quietly out of the room. The microphone picked up the shuffle of feet and bodies, the sliding of chairs on the floor.

The last one in was Burke Parsons, cowboy hat, grin and a newspaper in his hand. “Well, ain’t this the cutest lil’ o’ room in Little Saigon? Dien, you know your way around here, I’ll give you that.” He looked straight at Frye, took off his hat, smoothed his hair.

Julie brought in a bottle of champagne and uncorked it. Willie the pimp rested a hand on her hip as she stood beside him, Dien jabbered something at her. She put the bottle back in its bucket, bowed slightly, and left.

The four principals sat, the three bodyguards stood at ease. After a round of small talk, attention drifted to Burke.

He raised his champagne glass and studied Willie, then Dun. “To success,” he said. “Thanks for coming by. I know y’all are busy men, so I’ll make this brief. You two gentlemen are in a good position. We’re all in good positions. You know what we got here in Orange County? We got good weather, hard-working people, and more hard-working people just dying to get in and live here. We got L.A. an hour north, we got more beaches than all get-out, and there’s plenty of money to keep the gears lubed up right.”

Frye checked the tape recorder. The red light was on, the tape turning slowly behind the plastic window.

“Now, gents,” Burke continued, “when you get a lot of people clamoring to live in the same place, you see your real-estate prices get high. I mean sky-high. This here county’s one of the prime hunks of ground in the world right now, and a little bit costs a bunch. You get out to the coast, you’re talking even higher.”

“How much per acre?” asked Dun, his pudgy hand pouring tea.

Parsons laughed. “It don’t sell by the acre, Dun, it sells by the foot. Varies. I drove past a crooked little patch of weeds in Laguna Beach yesterday, way up in the hills. Right on the road. Sixty by sixty. So slanted all you could build on it would be a billboard, and the askin’ price was a hundred thousand. That comes to a hair under twenty-eight dollars a foot. And that’s the lot, Mr. Dun — it ain’t got nothin’ on it but the for-sale sign.”