Weldmesh over the windows protected the army bus from a grenade attack on the highway to Saigon, and helped concentrate Shorty’s mind on the case.
He made a register of suspects in the death of Sergeant Caution, but there were no individuals, only groups: the nogs, the VC, the villagers, the National Committee for the Defence of the Dead – whoever they were. He gave another page of his notebook to people he thought might be the Mamasan. The list read: Moreau, Mr Anh, Sam Singh, Ginger Meggs, Caution, Nashville.
There was a chance, Shorty realised, that Caution had been killed by somebody Shorty had never met, or even heard of – the family or friends of Nguyễn Van Tran, for instance, or perhaps a personal enemy in the US Army.
Shorty read through his notebook as if it were a mystery written by somebody else. There were no women on the list.
Fermez la porte, he thought, although he meant Cherchez la femme.
It was early evening when Shorty arrived in Saigon, with a leave pass in his pocket and a packet of condoms the sergeant had insisted he carry, as he didn’t realise Shorty had both a girlfriend and a fiancée in South Vietnam.
The air in the city centre tasted of gasoline. There were more real cars on the roads, big black beasts like the Captain’s Cadillac, and every driver sounded his horn, drowning the birdsong at dusk. Buildings rose taller than the trees, and none higher than Shorty’s hotel. He had been supposed to bed down at a cheap pub in Cholon, but had instead booked himself into the Caravelle, where reporters and diplomats met to exchange lies. It cost Shorty his savings, but he’d been told the rooftop bar would be the place to find the man who might help Nashville.
Shorty stood with a beer in his hand and looked down from the tenth floor at the Opera House, the Hôtel de Ville and the spires of Notre Dame Cathedral, fractured pieces of gothic France. Among the crowd of lizards, soldiers, spies and whores in the bar, Shorty noticed a familiar face under a memorable yellow hat. He wound his way cautiously to a table at the balcony, where a small man with a big cigar tapped his spats to the music in his mind.
‘Izzy?’ asked Shorty.
‘E is,’ said Berger, and smiled. In his youth, Berger had spent a season as a stand-up comedian in the bars of Kings Cross, and this had been his catchphrase, although it had never actually caught on.
The two men shook hands, and Berger motioned for Shorty to sit.
‘I thought you’d gone back to Sydney,’ said Shorty.
Berger scratched his chin, as if he’d thought the same thing and was surprised to find himself at the Caravelle. ‘Saigon is a city of opportunity, Shorty,’ he said, ‘and the Deal figured he should play the cards he’d been dealt. Which turned out, incidentally, to be a pair of aces and three kings.’
Berger called for a waitress and whispered in her ear. She giggled, and returned with a bottle of vintage burgundy wine and three glasses. Diane Arouse came out of the bathroom to join them. She was wearing an ao dai, with her hair up in a beehive, like a local bar girl.
‘Hi, cutie,’ said Diane Arouse, and kissed Shorty on the cheek.
Shorty did not have a chance to ask what Berger was doing; Berger immediately began to tell him.
‘They say variety is the spice of life,’ said Berger, ‘and, as a former variety performer myself, I am forced to agree. However, irony is the relish on the side. And so it is, ironically, that I find myself in the capital of the free nation of South Vietnam, managing the very same business with which the late Sergeant Caution so recently attempted to rob me of my livelihood and, indeed, my twelve hundred dollars.’
The waitress poured a glass of wine for Shorty, then held it to his lips so he could drink.
‘Isaac and I are supplying escorts for Allied officers,’ said Diane Arouse.
‘And we are making – if I may say so – a fucking fortune,’ said Berger. ‘For everyone.’
He clinked glasses with Diane Arouse, then invited Shorty to join the toast.
‘We never went back to the Cross,’ said Berger. ‘We brought the Cross to Saigon.’
Shorty told Berger about Nashville’s arrest, and the case and the clues, including the massacre of chickens in the village.
‘Ah,’ said Berger, ‘I might be able to help you there.’
Berger turned to Diane Arouse. ‘I’d appreciate it if you could leave Shorty and I alone for a while,’ he said, ‘and perhaps turn a trick with the mug in the dark suit at the bar who is, if I’m not mistaken, the first secretary at the Australian embassy.’
A thin man with brown hair stared silently into his whiskey sour.
‘It’d be good for business if you could get to know him and blow him,’ said Berger to Diane Arouse. ‘Doesn’t matter in which order.’
Diane Arouse walked over to the first secretary and asked if she’d seen him before. She had moved in diplomatic circles in Sydney, and thought she might recognise him from a party. Did he perhaps own a leather mask?
The first secretary looked shocked. Diane Arouse assured him she was kidding.
Shorty held his wineglass to the light, as he had seen other men do – although he didn’t know why.
‘You might remember, Shorty,’ said Berger, ‘my difficulty at the Grand Hotel where, in my first night in Vung Tau, I was cunningly tricked into fucking a man in the ass. Although I was philosophical about this by the time you’d been clubbed and robbed by a cartoon character, I’d felt less lyrical after the ass-fucking in question. Hong had made a meal of the Deal, just like Caution had taken me for a fall guy, so I decided to kill him.’
‘You decided to kill Sergeant Caution?’ asked Shorty.
‘No,’ said Berger. ‘I decided to kill Hong.’
The waitress filled Shorty’s glass.
‘I went back to my room and put on some clothes,’ said Berger. ‘I took the piece from my American friend and stuck it down the back of my pants. The girls at the bar told me Hong would have gone home to his village, so I jumped on a Lambretta and had the driver drop me by the rice fields. I prowled into Long Tâm Thu like a commando, Shorty. Not like an impresario. I was a wild animal. I would’ve hated to bump into me and try to make me fuck me in the ass at that moment. Of course, it was pitch dark in the village, because the Vietnamese have never invented electric light to make sure men can’t distinguish between pussy and ass. But I knew which hut belonged to Hong because the Lambretta boy pointed it out to me, so I crawled and crept and I got past the chickens and the dogs and I sneaked right into his shack, which was as empty as a mug’s wallet. So I sat there with my pistol trained on the door, waiting for him to come home. But I fell asleep.’
Suddenly, Shorty understood. ‘When did you shoot the chickens?’ he asked.
‘That morning,’ said Berger. ‘They were squawking. They gave away my position. But that was the end of it. I used up all my ammo on the chicken and the village boys heard me and they chased me off with sticks.’
‘So you didn’t kill Caution?’ asked Shorty.
‘I didn’t kill Caution and I didn’t kill Hong,’ said Berger. ‘All I killed were some chickens.’
Shorty nodded.
‘The chickens,’ declared Berger, ‘were red herrings.’
Shorty offered him a quarter-smile, just to show he’d got the joke. ‘But what I don’t understand,’ he said, ‘is why, when you went to bed with Hong, you didn’t pat the pussy first. I always pat the pussy first, even though it costs a dollar more.’
Berger raised an eyebrow, gently rocking his yellow hat.
‘I think the key to the case is the Mamasan,’ said Shorty, although he had a feeling he might’ve said this before.
‘Fifteen minutes ago, you thought it was the chickens,’ said Berger.
‘Do you know who she is?’ asked Shorty.
Berger shook his head. ‘I imagined a big fat sheila with enormous tits,’ he said.
‘Do you think she killed Caution?’ asked Shorty.
‘Smothered him, maybe,’ said Berger.
Shorty frowned. ‘So who did kill him?’ he asked.
Berger took a breath, to signal the start of a lecture.
‘Look at the statistics, Shorty,’ said Berger, ‘read the newspapers. In real life, the only person who hates a bloke enough to neck him is his wife. So if Caution had a broad, she did it. After his dame, the squarehead most likely to knock a fella is his best mate, but Caution didn’t have any mates in Vung Tau. That leaves enemies. Generally speaking, you’re safe with your enemies: if they’re going to knock anybody, it’ll be their wives or their best mates. But you can never rule them out, because not all your enemies will have read the statistics.’ Berger nodded in agreement with his own observation.
‘Then there’s business killings,’ said Berger. ‘In some commercial situations, men might settle a dispute outside the courts. If one side feels the other has fraudulently obtained an advantage over them in a joint criminal enterprise, the injured party might resort to murder. But more commonly – and it’s a funny thing, this – the bloke who’s committed the fraud will knock the defrauded fella, for fear he’ll come after him if he doesn’t.’
Shorty watched Diane Arouse leave the bar with the first secretary.
‘In war, of course, there’s always the chance the enemy might’ve done it,’ said Berger. ‘Especially if you had dealings with them which, my intuition tells me, Caution probably did. I wouldn’t have thought an American MP in Vung Tau would be much of a target for the VC – unless, of course, he’d robbed them. But I don’t think even Caution would risk that.’ Berger scraped his chin.
‘The last possibility,’ he said, ‘is an accident. Although I’ve never heard of an accident that left a bloke halfway up a mountain with both his ears cut off.’
The bottle of burgundy was empty. Berger ordered two beers.
‘Do you think the Mamasan killed Caution?’ Shorty asked again.
‘If he was fucking her, maybe,’ said Berger. ‘If he was her friend, maybe. If he robbed her – or she robbed him – maybe. If not, I think it’s more likely Nashville necked him. Or you.’
Berger’s wisdom had run dry.
‘But can’t you help me?’ asked Shorty.
By an unpredictable accident of fate, Berger could.
Although it dismayed Berger to find himself in the sexual entertainments business, as his goal had always been to help make careers for recording artists, the sex trade in Saigon came with benefits Berger had never imagined. His girls slept with every important person in town, and the pillow talk in the Caravelle was different from that in the Cross, in that the mugs in South Vietnam liked to discuss matters of international importance with prostitutes they had recently met.
So Izzy Berger knew many secrets about the war, none of which interested him. His sympathies, in so far as they existed, lay broadly with the Viet Cong. Berger knew the US generals believed the guerrillas were on the edge of defeat but would never stop fighting, and so were industriously engaged in devising new ways to kill them off more quickly. The diplomats despaired of ever reaching a rapprochement with the North Vietnamese, who seemed to be running the show as surely as the cops controlled the Cross. Many important South Vietnamese were double agents, a handful of American journalists worked for the CIA, and one Australian reporter seemed to be in the pay of the Chinese.
Berger knew who was sleeping with whom (generally, it was Diane Arouse), who was betraying whom and who was manipulating whom, but the only thing that actually concerned him was the possibility of staging pop concerts in the Opera House. However, he promised Shorty he would find the name of Nashville’s important ally before the end of the next day.
Nashville’s guard for the evening was Doom, who pulled up a seat by the side of his hospital bed, and stuck the barrel of his gun into Nashville’s ear.
‘You know what your problem is?’ Doom asked the beaten, bound prisoner, who had been accused of murder by the US Army and passed into the custody of men determined to kill him.
Nashville appeared to consider the question.
‘No,’ he said, eventually.
Doom withdrew his weapon and allowed himself an inferior smile.
‘You’re too clever,’ he said.
Nashville was prepared to accept this.
‘Now, I ain’t stupid,’ said Doom. ‘Just because there’s brawn in my arms don’t mean there ain’t a brain in my head. You don’t get to be a spec 4 at twenty years of age if you ain’t smart, Nashville. But it seems to me there’s big a difference between smart and clever.’
Doom stroked his chin in the manner of a thinker.
‘For example,’ said Doom, ‘when there’s a war to be fought and his country calls, and a smart man steps up to do his duty, he don’t need to spend time puzzling over which side he’s on. If he’s born under the stars and stripes, a smart man thinks, Hey, I must be on the American team. In a fight between caucasians and negroes, a smart man’s only got to look in the mirror to figure out where his loyalties lie.’
Nashville showed no signs of hearing him.
‘But for a clever guy,’ said Doom, ‘the questions are a whole lot more complicated. A clever guy thinks, But what if the good guys are bad guys and the bad guys are good guys? What if black is white and white is black? What if men’re the children of monkeys and the Earth is millions of years old? What if I know better than the government and God?’
Doom shook his large head and smiled with hostile sympathy.
‘So, where a smart guy sees duty, a clever man sees choices. He don’t have to do what he’s supposed to do, because he’s’ – Doom read Nashville’s name from his medical chart – ‘John Ulysses Grant and that makes him the general of his own fucking army. But you know what, Nashville? The trouble with that is, you ain’t got no one else on your side.’
Doom made as if to scan the room for Nashville’s men.
‘You made choices that weren’t there, buddy,’ he said. ‘You took a path that don’t exist. There ain’t no such person as a white man who murders another white man because he hurts a retarded yellow boy.’ He poked his pistol back into Nashville’s ear. ‘Least there won’t be,’ he said, ‘for very much longer.’
Shorty had only been in bed for a couple of hours when he heard his hotel-room phone ring, then the voice of Izzy Berger chattering excitedly in his ear – as far as Shorty knew, Izzy Berger never went to sleep. Berger told him that a colonel in the Judge Advocate Division of the US Marine Corps had taken an interest in the incidents at Vung Tau. The colonel was a liberal and, Berger believed, a Jew. He had not met Nashville, but he was unhappy that the KKK were organising on military bases, and concerned their influence should not spread to Vung Tau, where they might come into contact with marines on R&R. He did not believe Nashville had murdered Caution, as he had received intelligence that the killing was a local political matter. He was using marines on his own staff at the Free World Forces Headquarters to try to keep Nashville safe. Unfortunately, there were other officers whose political sympathies might lie elsewhere, so the colonel’s influence was limited until he could prove there was more to the case than a personal vendetta between two rival psychopaths from the state of Tennessee.
Berger offered to come to Shorty’s room and discuss the matter further over another bottle of Moët, but Shorty said he would meet him for lunch once he’d spoken with the colonel.
That morning, Shorty was the only man in the hotel to take breakfast at the buffet. He ate his bacon and eggs in lonely silence, then rang the Free World Headquarters. The line was dead.
He took an elevator down to the empty lobby, where he asked the concierge to call him a cab to the Free World Forces Headquarters.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the small Vietnamese, ‘there are no cars.’
Shorty looked out of the bulletproof-glass doors and saw the rank was empty. ‘Where is everybody?’ he asked.
‘Free World Forces Headquarters,’ said the concierge.
Shorty thought he had misunderstood the question.
‘This morning there was a bomb,’ said the concierge. ‘The Free World Forces Headquarters are gone.’
Izzy Berger found Shorty in the hotel coffee shop, warming himself over a pot of tea in the icy air conditioning. The Free World Forces Headquarters were still standing, he said, but the front wall had been blown away. Men were digging in the rubble for the body of Nashville’s colonel.