In his heyday, Chen was a fast dealer in hardware and selected soft goods. For a price he could obtain and deliver anything from an M-74 tank to a jeepload of uncut Scotch whiskey. With the jeep thrown in as a bonus if you wanted it. From his looks now, he couldn’t scrounge a pair of discarded sneakers from a trash heap.
“Sorry about the looks of this place,” Bu Chen grinned. “I’m working on a deal. Need a warehouse if it goes through. This is the best I could find on short notice.”
I thought he was putting up a front. The way governments were handing out front-line weapons, markets for war surplus had just about dried up for private entrepreneurs. He saw the doubt on my face and changed the subject before I could challenge him. “What sort of service are you looking for?”
“We’d like you to put us in touch with Keith Martin.”
“Martin? Martin. Yeah, I know him from when he was a wild-assed major back in ’Nam. You want to know what he’s been up to here in Bangkok.”
I nodded.
“You’re willing to pay, of course,” It was a demand rather than a question.
I felt like giving the son-of-a-bitch a fist in his grinning chops. Here he was, plainly living off fish heads and noodles, yet brazen enough to push his weight around. Sure, I was willing to buy his information. Willow had told me that Bu Chen had leads to privately-cultivated sources unduplicated anywhere else in Southeast Asia. It was worth a lot. It was just that the mercenary bastard had us and was getting too much pleasure watching me squirm under the milking process.
Willow interpreted my reaction correctly. She stepped in flailing Bu Chen with a torrent of spitting, sharp words. She quickly overrode his protests. She turned to me smiling and quoted to me in English the haggled-down price. I accepted it after she explained further that Bu Chen would forego payment until I was completely satisfied.
Willow had spent most of the two and a half hour Air India flight convincing me that only through contacts similar to Bu Chen could any American hope to succeed in infiltrating any of the war-torn Southeast Asian countries. Caucasians like Martin and myself stood out like cockroaches in a bowl of cooked white rice among the brown and yellow races. White men were highly visible.
It was no wonder that Bu Chen had had little difficulty in learning through the street grapevine that Martin was in Bangkok. It sounded even more reasonable when Bu Chen told us that he had tight connections with most of the bordello operators who kept him posted on foreign visitors. Whorehouse patrons were screened. Ordinary sailors from ships anchored in the harbor were ignored. Well-dressed white men who might be business executives or the occasional diplomat were horses of a different wheelbase. The underground telegraph sounded loud and clear whenever a well-heeled stranger ventured into the Alley of a Thousand Pleasures.
“Have you got a better fix than that?” I asked.
Bu Chen replied promptly. “Yep,” he drawled. “Madame Peacock’s the place where a man who sounds pretty much like Martin was seen.”
Two thoughts crossed my mind. Keith Martin seemed to be uniquely attracted to the haunts of harlots — first the posh apartment of Melissa Stephens, the high-priced pro, then the run-down cottage of Gloria Grimes, the free-bee nympho. Now it was a bagnio in Bangkok. That sounded like Martin, all right. On the other hand, I figured that all white men looked pretty much alike to most Thais, so I asked: “What makes you sure it was Martin?”
“Ya gotta understand that I haven’t run across Martin personally. I got the word from an outlaw flat-backer working the street. She tells how this big Yankee comes around to Madame Peacock’s place looking for a whore from Saigon. Some snatch from a dive on Penchu Street that was closed the day after the Commies moved in. Like the rest of us with the smarts, the B-girls faded. The top talent who had a hard mack with money enough go out pronto. Some were shipped to Macao. Others as far as Rangoon, but with the Americans still here and comin’ down from Udorn and Utaphao, the best bottom women were set up here in Bangkok. The minute I heard what this stateside Romeo looked like and what he wanted, I knew this Yank had to be Martin wanting to get back together with his special girl. He really had the hots for her.”
“You got to be kidding,” escaped me.
“Yeah... real flakey, isn’t it. I never could figure the action even back in ’Nam. Just like Madame Butterfly.”
“That’s beautiful,” sighed Willow.
“That’s crap,” I countered.
“Wait a minute!” said Bu Chen, sounding like a pitchman about to lose a mark. “Check it out. Half the GIs who were around Saigon back then knew about it. Laughed at first, but you didn’t laugh at a guy like Major Martin very long. Who knows? Maybe he did fall in love and wanted to take her away from her sordid life... Word was that she was gung-ho on him. There’s gals around still using the refugee dodge to get to the land of the big PX and find their rich American soldier boy. It can work in reverse, too, though it isn’t likely. Which is what makes this such a noticeable thing.” It was a long speech for Bu Chen.
“It doesn’t make sense,” I said, trying to reconcile what I knew to be substantiated reports from Hawk with a romantic street story that was in ridiculous contrast to a succession of three murders in Hanoi. “Finding Martin shacked up in a brothel with an old flame—” I was confused.
“What else would you think?” asked Bu Chen. “It takes time for your legation here to shuffle the necessary paperwork to get anyone out of the country... legally, that is. He should have come to me.”
I refused to swallow the story. It was a good one, a carefully worked out cover plan that would account for Martin going underground in Bangkok where he could put his paid assassins into motion. The extra bit about waiting around for the local State Department clerks to process exit papers for a girl was a neat, added touch. Checking out that lead could be a waste of time. Staff personnel in the consulate sections of American embassies were a bunch of closemouthed incompetents who seldom knew the answer to a question if they were allowed to discuss immigrant cases. “When did this touching story start circulating?” I shot at Bu Chen.
“Let’s see. It was yesterday... night before last.”
I figured back. I’d been on the move so much, the past two days and nights were all run together. I’d crossed the International Date Line which made yesterday tomorrow or some such nonsense. The supersonic trip across most of the Pacific had made the sun back up for Willow and myself. According to the clock, we had arrived in Hong Kong earlier than we had taken off from Honolulu. The minimum-stop trip from San Francisco to Bangkok had permitted us to catch up with Martin so that he was now little more than twenty-four hours ahead of us.