Along the esplanade, girls in leaf hats carried fat bags of dark, silver-breasted fish, balanced like the scales of justice on bamboo poles. An MP marched up to the driver’s side of Nashville’s jeep. Nashville recognised him as one of the fucking new guys.
‘You ain’t answering your radio,’ he said to Nashville. ‘Captain wants to see you. Said I’d find you outside Le Boudin.’
Nashville took the coast road, past fishing boats that flew the flags of no nation, coloured orange, blue and green. A man in black robes waded out to his sampan, unravelling an invisible cord. On the beach, fishermen darned their nets or others scraped at their traps with scythes.
Nashville left Shorty with Hauser at the boom gate of the PMO. The Captain met Nashville with a grim smile, as Nashville stood to attention like a cigar-store Indian.
‘Where in hell are we,’ asked the Captain, ‘with finding Sergeant Caution?’
‘We ain’t anywhere, sir,’ admitted Nashville.
‘And the Mamasan?’ asked the Captain.
‘We still ain’t sure who she is, sir,’ said Nashville, ‘but we’ve figured out a number of people who she ain’t.’
‘Such as myself, General Westmoreland and Bob Hope?’ suggested the Captain.
‘Among others, sir,’ agreed Nashville.
The Captain nodded, although not in agreement, and showed Nashville an Australian newspaper.
‘Do you know what’s in this?’ the Captain asked him.
‘Nothing?’ ventured Nashville.
The Captain held the paper open at a story written by ‘Our man in Phuoc Tuy province’, which described how the body of a South Vietnamese civilian had allegedly been dug out of his grave by American soldiers, who had cut off his ears, broken his limbs, taken him into a Vung Tau bar and shot him.
In response to the crime, Buddhists in Saigon had formed a National Committee for the Defence of the Dead, which was to supply militiamen to guard Vietnamese cemeteries from American graverobbers. The committee’s symbol was a pair of ears, which had begun to appear on buildings associated with the foreign presence in Vung Tau, apparently applied using paint stolen from the US Army itself.
‘What the hell is that Aussie reporter doing,’ asked the Captain, ‘snooping around town in his stupid yellow hat?’
Nashville had noticed men seemed infuriated by Izzy Berger’s hat. It was taken as a mark of disrespect for the war. If a little guy like Berger could float around Vung Tau wearing a brightly coloured target, then what was the point of all the razor wire and guns?
‘The hat guy’s not a reporter,’ said Nashville, ‘he’s an impresario.’
‘A female impersonator?’ asked the Captain.
‘He’s Australia’s P T Barnum, sir,’ said Nashville.
‘Does he have any midgets?’ asked the Captain.
‘I don’t think so, sir,’ said Nashville. ‘He’s here to arrange a concert for the guys. With Caution, who he thinks is our entertainment manager.’
The Captain dropped his head into his hands, and rubbed it vigorously. ‘It’s a circus,’ he said. ‘It’s the Ringling Brothers.’
Nashville felt sorry for the Captain, who would have been happier out with the grunts, getting killed over who controlled a bit of hill.
‘I can understand the motives of whoever wrote the note,’ said the Captain. ‘I can see why somebody – or anybody – would set up Sergeant Caution and lure him to Le Boudin, to shock him or scare him or set him up for something worse. I can grasp that the appearance of a corpse at the table might be an anomaly even in that drinking hole of the damned, and Sergeant Caution might feel moved to make certain it was actually dead by killing it some more. But what I cannot figure out is why he would then be so taken with guilt, regret or fear that he’d disappear. You and I both know he’s done far worse in this town and stuck around.’
Nashville chewed, although his mouth was empty.
‘Whenever I have a difficult case, sir,’ said Nashville, ‘I think to myself, What would Doctor Watson have called it? And this one, I guess, he might’ve named “The Adventure of the Asshole Who Shot the Dead Guy with No Ears and then Disappeared”.’
The Captain scowled.
‘But then I ask myself, Would Watson have been right?’ said Nashville. ‘Maybe it’s too complicated. Every mama-san, papa-san and cowboy-san in the street hates Caution’s redneck guts for the way he throws his weight around the bars. He’s conned Aussies out of their dough and they’ve sent a little man in a yellow hat to chase him. That’s reason enough for anyone to go AWOL.
‘So I think we’ve got two separate stories, sir: “The Adventure of the Asshole Who Disappeared” and “The Adventure of the Dead Guy with No Ears”. They just happened to meet in Le Boudin, like the railway line to Covington meets the line to Collierville in Memphis, Tennessee.’
‘I don’t know . . .’ said the Captain.
‘What about the grunts who found the body, sir?’ asked Nashville.
‘They’re dead,’ said the Captain. ‘They flew back to the 173rd Airborne the next day, and got greased at Dak To. One boy had half a nose in his pocket, but no ears.’ The Captain shook his head.
Nashville had noticed the Captain fell easily into despair, and hoped he would soon allow Nashville to leave. But there was another reason the Captain had wanted to see him. He had heard enthusiastic reports of Nashville’s talk on Communism and venereal disease, and was keen to have him repeat the lecture to the guys in Long Binh and Saigon, as part of the military police education program.
‘I didn’t know we had one, sir,’ said Nashville.
‘It hasn’t previously been a priority,’ said the Captain, ‘as I didn’t feel we could afford the manpower.’
‘What’s changed?’ asked Nashville.
‘I’ve realised you can do it,’ said the Captain. ‘And I’ve got the strong feeling that your absence from the streets of Vung Tau will have no effect on military discipline or public order.’
Nashville had no wish to visit any US base forward of Vung Tau. Generally, he found the rest of Vietnam to be a depressing place, torn apart by a bloody and intractable local conflict in which outsiders had no useful part to play.
‘You mean the war?’ asked the Captain.
Nashville shrugged. He felt persecuted. ‘What have I done to demerit this, sir?’ he asked.
‘It’s not a punishment,’ said the Captain. ‘You’ve done nothing wrong. In fact, as far as I can tell, you’ve done nothing at all.’
Nashville shuffled in the boots his hoochmaid had shined that morning.
‘Go to Long Binh on Friday night,’ said the Captain, ‘and pretend to be a military policeman.’
‘I believe, sir, that may be an offence,’ said Nashville.
‘Not,’ said the Captain, ‘when it’s your fucking job.’
Nashville drove angrily back from the PMO, past a bar girl walking to work in sunflower shorts and stag-beetle sunglasses.
‘If I were on patrol with an American,’ he said to Shorty, ‘I might look at Natalie Susan Mitchell over there and say, “Nice ass.” And he might answer, “I’d like to see what that ass is made of.” Or, “I could bounce a dime off it.” Or he’d simply repeat, “Nice ass.”
‘You might want to try that,’ said Nashville. ‘Or you might feel moved to make a fucking joke. Or tell me about a broad you knew in Australia who had an ass just like that, or an ass not like that.’
Spots of perspiration gathered on Shorty’s brow.
‘You might share a story,’ said Nashville, ‘about the time you met a hoochmaid who let you take her up the ass. I enjoy stories like that.’
Shorty shook his head and wiped his eyes.
‘I also,’ said Nashville, ‘take pleasure in memories that start, “Before I joined the military, I spent one happy year selling life insurance to lonely housewives . . .” ’
‘But I worked on the farm,’ said Shorty.
Nashville punched the dashboard. ‘For Christ’s sake, Shorty!’ he shouted. ‘You have got to get laid, buddy. Let’s go buy you that fucking suit.’
The tailors of Vung Tau were Indians who had come to Vietnam to dress the French. Their shops were clustered in Tran Hung Dao, with window displays cut from magazines of men with ambiguous smiles. Legless, headless mannequins modelled sports jackets, shirts and ties, like mine victims blown up on their way to a wedding.
The leader of the tailors was Sam Singh, who had negotiated with the Mamasan and the VC to allow the tailors to stay once the French had gone. He spoke English, French, Vietnamese, Gujarati, Sindhi and Cantonese. He had known Moreau in another place, and once a year the men met to drink and remember it.
Sam Singh shook hands with Nashville and bowed. A tape measure circled his shoulders like the snakeman’s python. Nashville introduced Shorty.
‘He is very tall,’ said Sam Singh.
‘You could hang a flag off him,’ said Nashville, with a father’s pride.
The tailor measured Shorty’s leg, shaking his head.
‘How’s business?’ asked Nashville.
‘Very bad,’ said Sam Singh. ‘Nobody is having the big balls any more. There is no société in Vung Tau. Now there is only Australians.’
He looked at Shorty sadly, as if he had driven away the French.
‘Also, there is the problem at Le Boudin,’ said the tailor. ‘You have turned this town into a brothel. The VC accept this, but they do not like it. When they win, they will close down the whorehouses and send the bar owners into camps.’
‘They won’t win,’ said Shorty.
‘Until then,’ said Sam Singh, ‘we must all continue our business and try to get along.’
He gave Shorty his pattern book. Shorty chose a dark suit with a three-button jacket and narrow lapels, while Sam Singh talked over his shoulder at Nashville.
‘Cooperation is a matter for all of us,’ said Sam Singh. ‘Including your Sergeant Caution. He was out of control even before he shot the body. It was noticed, Nashville. The people of this town have had enough of him.’
‘Is he dead?’ asked Nashville, fishing for an excuse not to look for him.
‘Do not interfere with corpses,’ said Sam Singh.
Clouds gathered over the hills, as Shorty and Nashville drove down Highway One to Long Binh, in a jeep with an M60 machine gun mounted on the back. They had a driver – PFC Simpson, from Simpson, Illinois, who worked as the Captain’s batman – and Eagle came along as their gunner. Shorty had volunteered to join the convoy because Betty was ‘busy’ at the hospital that night, even though it wasn’t her shift.
Simpson from Simpson said he had the best job on the base, as it meant he could drink the Captain’s liquor and smoke his pipes. He had even worn the Captain’s underwear to fuck the Captain’s hoochmaid. Every GI in Vung Tau was jealous, which is why he kept being lent out for bullshit details such as escorting Nashville to Long Binh.
The jeep joined a circus of US Army trucks and tankers with thick tyres, heavy smoke and dull, green armour, the war rolling in and out of Saigon. Shorty felt a sense of common purpose, the idea that he was part of the same invincible fighting force that had helped save Europe from the Nazis and Australia from the Japs. He thought the US Army was his army. Nashville hated all this military stuff.
‘Remember when I got attacked by all those VC?’ Shorty asked Nashville.
‘You never fucking shut up about it,’ said Nashville.
‘And they tried to drag me into their hole —’
‘It was junior VC, wasn’t it?’ asked Nashville. ‘Schoolboys? Must’ve been their youth wing.’
‘Well, I’ve been thinking,’ said Shorty, ‘maybe that’s where they’re keeping Sergeant Caution. Underground, in the sewers.’
Nashville smiled. ‘The idea appeals to me,’ he said, ‘because TJ is a sewer rat. But, like the curious incident of the dog in the night-time, it hinges on a single fucking absence: there are no sewers in Vung Tau.’
Shorty mused unentertainingly about the identity of the Mamasan. He believed the Mamasan was a male, who had adopted a female title to throw people off the scent. Shorty always suspected somebody was trying to throw him off the scent, although Nashville had yet to get a sniff of any scent at all.
Shorty also had a number of irritating theories about Izzy Berger, with whom he had spoken several times at Le Boudin without gaining any deeper understanding of his story. Berger seemed to think Caution was being hidden from him on a US base. Shorty’s idea was Berger had been robbed by the Mamasan – whose clutches, in Shorty’s mind, spread all the way to Kings Cross – who had abducted Caution and chained him up in her dungeon in the non-existent sewers of Vung Tau, so that he might take the blame for the disappearance of Izzy Berger’s investment.
The traffic crept, fettered by convoys, and the jeep arrived at Long Binh minutes before dusk.
Shorty was disappointed by the US base. He had imagined tall buildings with thousands of eyes. Instead, he found another sprawling campsite, swelling with snaking aluminium sheds like giant slaters, monster insects half-buried in the sand. He saw a shadow of enemy prisoners, gathered behind razor wire.
The jeep was met by an MP spec 4, who told Nashville they were late, the show had already started, and they should hurry backstage to put on their make-up.
‘I think there’s been a misunderstanding,’ said Nashville.
‘Are you Corporal John Grant, the VD guy?’ asked the spec 4.
Nashville agreed that he was.
‘You’re on next,’ said the spec 4.
Nashville told Simpson and Eagle to grab themselves a beer, and he and Shorty followed the spec 4 to a low stage overlooking a wide piece of waste-ground, where a couple of hundred GIs were assembled like chequers: whites on one side, blacks on the other.
‘Where’s your costume?’ the spec 4 asked Nashville. ‘I heard you pull a condom over your head.’
‘I do not,’ said Nashville.
The dressing room was a large tent. The spec 4 opened the flap, then turned his back to the entrance.
Inside, a naked white woman was polishing her breasts with baby oil.
‘I find this very fucking difficult to believe,’ said Nashville.
Two other women were painting lipstick on their nipples. All the girls were blonde, but only recently. They had pale skin, caked whiter still by their make-up.
The woman with shining breasts noticed Nashville, stood up and shook his hand. ‘You must be the VD guy,’ she said.
‘Yes, I am,’ said Nashville to her breasts.
Shorty couldn’t speak.
‘My name’s Diane Arouse,’ said the breasts to Nashville.
Shorty’s chest tightened at the sounds of her voice. She was an Australian naked woman. In Vietnam.
‘Are you going to go on stage like that?’ Diane Arouse asked Nashville.
‘I do feel a bit fucking overdressed,’ Nashville admitted.
The woman giggled. ‘Oh, these aren’t our costumes, darling,’ she said, and she touched Nashville on the chest.
The stage manager, a US Army nurse dressed in orange shorts and a white blouse, held up five fingers, to show Nashville he had five minutes before he was to speak.
‘Who’s your cute friend?’ Diane Arouse asked Nashville.
Shorty blushed hot and red, like a sunset.
Nashville introduced them. The naked woman shook Shorty’s hand too. She told him she was from Randwick, New South Wales.
Diane Arouse would not let go of Shorty, so he tried to ask her about the case. Yes, she had heard of Izzy ‘the Deal’ Berger but they had never met, and around Kings Cross, where she was occasionally employed, he was better known by his more common name, ‘the Twat in the Hat’.
‘What is a twat?’ asked Nashville.
Diane Arouse pointed, which gave Nashville permission to look.
Shorty looked too. Diane Arouse caught him staring and smiled. The rest of the time she spoke to Nashville, she looked at Shorty.
‘I’ve never seen a VD guy,’ said Diane Arouse to Nashville. ‘Is it your own act?’
‘I’m the only one in Asia,’ said Nashville.
‘And your friend?’ asked Diane Arouse. ‘Is he unique too?’
‘I ain’t never met no one like him,’ said Nashville.
Shorty realised he had lived all his life in the company of men. Here he was, outnumbered for the first time by women. Their world was soft and pink. It sounded musical and smelled sweet.
The stage manager signalled one minute to go, when the tent flaps shook open, and a lumbering, precarious drunk balanced in the doorway, leering. The girls waved and giggled and pretended to cover up. The drunk fell towards Nashville, holding out his hand. His fingers quivered.
‘Glad you could make it,’ said the drunk, ‘corporal sick motherfucker.’
He had boiled eyes and red, peeling skin, as if he’d been buried up to his neck and left to die in the sun.
‘Shorty,’ said Nashville, ‘I’d like you to meet somebody.’
Shorty dragged his eyes from Diane Arouse.
‘This,’ said Nashville, ‘is the late Sergeant Timothy James Caution.’