CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The male passenger gets out of the pedicab and moves over to the gate, peers through it for a moment, waves.

“What’s he doing?” I ask.

“He must know about the camera,” Samuel says, waiting for Tex to answer his cell.

“Samuel?” Tex’s tinny sounding voice.

Mai steps up to her father’s window. “What is going on, Father?”

Samuel lifts his hand to silence her. He says something into the phone and Tex replies, his last word, Lu.

Samuel looks at me and then at Mai.

“Father, what is the pedicab doing—”

“Tex thinks the woman is Lu,” he says.

I strain to see. “Lu? Why would he be—”

He holds up his index finger, frowning at whatever Tex is saying. “No, no,” he says, finishing in Vietnamese.

Could this language barrier be any more frustrating? What the hell is going on? If Lu is in the pedicab—

“Okay,” Samuel says into the phone. Then to us, “Tex says he zoomed in on the pedicab and he is sure it is Lu. Asleep, he thinks.” He pauses to listen to Tex again, then mouths to me, “Blood,” and points at the top of his head.

“On Lu?” Mai says, her face in the window, her voice barely constrained. “Blood on Lu?” She starts to head that way.

“Mai, stay here,” Samuel snaps. “Stay here until I find out what is happening.”

Before we hit the warehouse, Samuel said that Lu was worried because he thought Lai Van Tan’s people were getting suspicious about all the questions he was asking. He said that someone had hit him. Maybe the boyfriend, or maybe someone else figured out that he was relaying info to us. Is that the boyfriend at the gate?

Samuel shakes his cell. “Tex? Tex? Lost my connection,” he says irritably. He snaps his cell shut and reopens it. The –Superman theme sounds before he can poke anything.

“Tex?”

Samuel frowns. The tinny voice isn’t Tex. Samuel covers the mouth piece, and whispers, “Phong Tran.”

Phong Tran? Oh, the guy sitting at Lai Van Tan’s side in the board room. He’s Samuel’s contact person and the one I thought might be sympathetic to us.

In their conversation I think I hear the caller say “Lu.”

“What is it, Father?”

Samuel waves Mai off and focuses on the caller. “Cám ơn,”he says.

“What, Father?” Mai asks impatiently when he closes his phone.

“Phong Tran says that Lu was beaten tonight and he thinks killed.” Mai gasps, covering her mouth with her palm. “He also says that,” he pokes a button on his cell, “that men are going to attack the house.”

“When?” I ask.

“He said that…” Samuel looks at his phone. “Come on, Tex. Pick up.” He looks at me. “Phong Tran said the attack is…” He frowns slightly as if having trouble translating Vietnamese to English. “… imminent.”

“The gate,” Mai says. “Opening. Who is opening—”

Samuels growls at the phone. “Tex. Pick up!”

“Look,” I say, pointing through the windshield. “The motorbike policeman. He’s turned on his headlight.”

The sky is beginning to lighten, but it’s still so dark on this tree-lined street that I can’t make out the officer or the bike. Just the light.

“He must know something,” Samuel says.

The motorbike’s headlight is splashing the walls on the right side of the street, then the wall around Samuel’s house on the left, then the right side of the street again.

Samuel floors the Volvo toward the pedicab where the driver is leaping off his seat.

The bike banks toward the gate and into the lights. What the hell?

“The bike!” I shout. “The cop. He’s not on it!”

The riderless motorbike continues on it’s projection, careening toward the pedicab, leaning farther and farther over as it does. Something on the bike’s right side grinds into the pavement sending up a rooster tail of white sparks. An instant later, the entire bike lays down, sliding at least forty miles an hour and doubling the size of the fiery tail.

“It’s going to hit the pedicab,” I shout. “Slow down, Samuel. It might bounce this way.”

The back wheel of the motorbike hits the pedicab’s front right wheel hard enough to launch the remaining passenger face-first onto the pavement. I get just a glimpse, enough to see that it’s a woman wearing an áo dài. Lu? The bike ricochets off the wheel and begins a fast, fiery slide directly toward us. Samuel swerves the car to the right but not soon enough. The motorbike collides with our front left side, instantaneously engulfing the hood and Samuel’s side of the windshield in flames.

“Back up,” I shout, twisting in my seat to look out the rear window. “Hit the brakes and back up as fast as you can. Watch out for the van, it’s coming up on your left.”

Samuel anchors the car and pops it into reverse. The Volvo bumps and scrapes over the motorbike, the metal on metal making a horrific screech. When the car breaks free, Samuel accelerates us backwards so fast that the passing van appears stopped. For an instant, I see Cong’s face pressed against the window, his mouth open.

As I’d hoped, the gasoline that was burning on the hood and window, rolls off the front of the car to burn on the pavement.

“Get out,” I shout. “There might be fire underneath.”

I bail out, squat, and duck walk around the back of the car checking the undercarriage.

“No fire,” I say, as Samuel looks under the car on his side.

Mai is running back to us, her gun in hand. “Are you okay? Father, Sam, are you okay?” Cong is running behind her.

Samuel raises his palms “We are fine, daughter. Please, go back. Hurry. The pedicab driver and the man went inside the gate.”

Samuel turns his head toward the far side of the street where someone is moving quickly toward us. I think it’s the guy who had been sitting against the wall. Samuel makes a we’re-okay wave, and the man heads back to his post.

Flipping open his ringing cell, Samuel motions for me to follow him to the gate where Mai is kneeling by the person who was thrown from the pedicab.

“It is Lu,” she shouts. “He is barely conscious.”

Lu, wearing a blood-splattered, sky blue áo dài, is lying on his front, his face turned to the side. Blood trickles from his nose and left eye, and one side of his wig is matted with it. “Help me turn him over,” Mai says.

“He will have to stay here,” Samuel says, the phone still at his ear. “It might be safer than inside the gate.”

“Grab the seat cushion from the pedicab, Sam,” Mai says.

Lu stirs, clearly in pain. We slip the cushion under his head. Small comfort.

“Come on,” Samuel says calmly. “Inside. Tex and the second-story post report that there are men coming over the south wall.”

*

“Where’s Tex?” I whisper rhetorically.

Mai and I are on one side of the stairs that lead into the house and Samuel is on the other, his cell pressed to his ear. Mai’s right foot is one step up from her left, which tugs up her pant leg a little to expose the bottom couple of inches of her ankle holster. She had the gun out a few moments ago, but Samuel doesn’t want any of us to use firearms unless there is absolutely no choice. She’s tucked it into the small of her back.

In Bien Hoa, we were in a large warehouse area two or three miles from the city. We did our thing, we got out as quickly as possible, and we didn’t see any police. But Saigon is an incredibly densely populated city and has a strict no-firearms policy. If we were to use a gun here, even in self-defense, the government bullies would be on us like white on rice.

“Not picking up” Samuel whispers. “He must have opened the gate from the monitor room, thinking the men were here to help Lu.”

“I need to get to Mother’s room,” Mai whispers worriedly.

“Yes, you do,” Samuel says, moving up the steps. “But we need to clear the living room first. Mai, you and Sam enter to the left and I will go right. From there, we will move to the archway.” He turns and says something to Cong, Phat Ho, and Dung. “Phat Ho and Cong will go into the dining room to check on the backyard. Dung will stay here to secure this door. Son?”

“Agreed.”

Bam!

Mai and I slam ourselves against the wall at the top of the steps, and Samuel takes cover behind the wall on his side of the door. Mai’s retrieves her Glock.

“Came from inside, back of the house,” Samuel says. “Heard a thump after the shot, maybe someone falling onto the floor.”

“I heard it too” Mai says. “I am going in.”

“You are staying here.” Samuel’s tone makes it clear that there is no discussion this time. “I will go.”

With that he moves quickly through the foyer, his head turning left and right. Meeting no resistance, he dashes across the room and through the archway.

A long minute later, Mai lifts her vibrating cell to her ear. “Father, how is…” Mai’s face relaxes. “Yes. Yes. Okay.” She turns to Cong, Phat Ho, and Dung, and rattles something off. To me, “Father wants Dung, me, and you to go to the back of the house, and Phat Ho and Cong to secure the dining room.”

“What happened? What was that shot?”

“Linh shoot man,” she says, her face drained of color.

Linh, the timid one who needed protecting? “Where did she get the gun?”

“Hurry,” she says, curling around the doorway. Dung lumbers behind me. We move across the living room, over the thick rug with the interwoven blue dragon, its mouth open and talons reaching, and stop before the archway. For a moment, my mind flashes back to the archway in the boy’s house in Portland, the one that led to the stairwell, which led to the second landing, which led to—a flower. A white rose.

“We go,” Mai says, moving around the archway. Dung and I follow.

“Your mother is fine,” Samuel calls from the end of the hall where he is standing over a man lying face down, arms along his sides, legs together. “Holster your weapon, Mai. Dung, li đây.”

Crying coming from somewhere, probably that room to Samuel’s right. A bedroom?

Closer now, I can see that the man on the floor is the pedi-cab driver. Judging by the neat position of his arms and legs, he died instantly, falling face-first onto the stone floor with no kicking or thrashing about. Maybe Linh shot him through his medulla oblongata, the point under his nose, or through his ear hole, or just under the lobe. Any of those will kill the medulla oblongata part of the brain as well as the body before the recipient hits the floor. When I shot the tweaker in Portland right under his nose, it ended his life in an instant, which prevented him from shooting the shop owner.

Samuel speaks to Dung. Then to Mai, he says. “Your mother and sister are fine. Linh acted appropriately.”

As Dung squats and jerks the dead man into a seated position, Mai squeezes around them and disappears into the room. Now all three women are talking; I think that’s Linh I hear crying. Samuel shouts into the room.

“Yes, Father,” Mai says. He probably told her to stay with them.

Dung pulls the man all the way up and drapes him over his shoulder. I see the driver’s face for just an instant before it drops down along the big man’s back. I was right, the bullet punched through just below his nose.

“Is that the gun?” I ask, watching Samuel shake live rounds out of the cylinder of a Smith and Wesson 357 revolver. He leaves the spent shell in.

“Yes, mine. When they heard the man coming down the hall, Mother told Linh where I keep it. Dung will put it in the man’s hand when he lays him out front.” He stuffs the weapon into Dung’s front pocket. “The man, was armed, you see. There was a struggle in the driveway, his gun went off, and he was struck.”

Now we’re moving bodies to different locations and planting fake evidence. Could this night be any more loony tunes? Are the police here that inept or is Samuel relying on help from his friend, Captain Harry?

“A little of both,” he says. “Okay, we need to see what is going on. Mai will be fine. She has her gun as a last resort.”

While Dung creates the “scene of the shooting” outside, Samuel and I quick-peak around the archway. The living room remains clear.

I whisper. “We going to the dining room?”

“Slowly,” he says.

When I start to move around the archway, Samuel’s hand on my arm stops me. He takes the lead. My pop, always protecting me. When we reach the dining room archway, Samuel quick-peaks around the corner for a moment then motions for me to follow him.

Light from the living room and kitchen seeps into the darkened room. Phat Ho is pressed against the wall next to the sliding glass doors as Cong kneels next to a prone man who looks like the pedicab passenger. Cong is jamming his right arm straight up, the elbow joint locked in a standard police control hold. One I’ve taught for years. Each time the arm is simultaneously pushed toward the man’s head and downward into his shoulder socket, a thousand pain receptors ignite in the joint, making the intruder kick his feet against the floor like a toddler having a tantrum.

“Did he have a weapon?” Samuel asks in English so I understand.

“Knife,” Cong says, indicating with a jerk of his head a long curved blade in his own belt. “Khmer Rouge.”

It’s the same type of blade the man in the warehouse held over his head when he charged Cong and Mai. Nasty looking. So far these guys have shown themselves to be nothing more than scary looking dudes with piss poor tactics. Thankfully.

Samuel speaks to Phat Ho who shakes his head without looking away from the yard. “He does not see anything out there,” Samuel says. He kneels down and says something to the prone man that doesn’t sound like Vietnamese. The guy’s reply sets off a twitch in the corner of Samuel’s mouth. The intruder had better soften his words because Samuel’s this close to—

The man screams at Samuel, sending spittle flying from his mouth onto the floor. Oh boy, don’t need a translator to know he chose his words none too wisely.

Samuel snatches the man’s upraised arm away from Cong and slams it so hard toward the man’s head that the horrific sound of crunching bones and ripping tendons can probably be heard out in the yard.

Incredibly, not only does the man not cry out, he twists onto his right side, his dead arm underneath him, and kicks at Samuel. The blow is easily blocked, but because he’s kneeling on one knee, the force knocks Samuel off balance and onto his rear. Before the intruder can even think of a follow-up, Samuel grabs the man’s ankle with one hand and his shirt front with his other. Then in one smooth, fast motion, Samuel draws his knee back to his chin in a tight chamber then thrusts his foot straight into the man’s right side.

Silence. One thousand one, one thousand two…

The man screams, and it just might set off the Richter scale. I’ve been kicked in the liver a couple times and I’ve landed a few shots there on opponents. Most often, there is no reaction for a second or two, then that horrific pain and debilitation come calling.

His scream abruptly stops and his eyes glaze over.

“Is he…”

Samuel shakes his head. “No. He is going into shock.” Dung lumbers into the dining room. “Dump him out onto the street, Dung.” The big man looks at him, confused. “Oh,” Samuel says, and repeats his order in Vietnamese. Guess crushing a man’s liver makes a guy forget which language he’s speaking.

“He is Khmer Rouge,” Samuel says, as Dung hoists him up over his shoulder. “He was ordered to kill my family. All of us. The man in the hall was given the same order. That one will no longer have to think about it. This man will think about it when he goes into surgery for his crushed liver, and when his body struggles to fight infection, and when he is treated for gastrointestinal problems.”

Geeze.

Phat Ho jerks his head toward something out in the yard. Samuel moves quickly over to the other side of the glass doors and peeks around the door facing. “There is someone lying over by the heavy bag,” he says.

I move over next to Samuel and Cong steps behind Phat Ho. There’s just enough illumination coming from one of the triplex’s exterior lights to see a little of the yard.

“Two men,” I say. “One down and another by that palm tree to the left.”

“Lam,” Samuel says, sliding open the door. “He is pointing his gun at the one who is down. But where is my friend?” He taps in a number, listens, and disconnects. “Tex is not answering”

I point toward the closest end of the triplex, and whisper, “Over there. Someone crouching in the shrubs, not moving. I think he’s looking toward the monitor room.”

Samuel nods. “You and I will move there together. I will watch the man and everything on the left side of the yard, beginning at that second palm tree. You follow and watch everything on the right side of that palm. Phat Ho, Cong, you go to the right and stay in the shadows along the south wall.” They nod that they understand his English. “That wall is the only weak point.”

The tree. The second day I was here that teenage burglar climbed it to get into the yard and was caught by Samuel’s teacher, Shen Lang Rui. Mai had said it was going to be removed, but not for another two or three days.

He inches the door open and we slip out onto the porch in a low crouch and move down the steps. Phat Ho and Cong move off to the right.

The crouching man’s back is to us, looking like he is waiting, or trying to decide what to do. The cobblestone walkway between the long shrub and the triplex is well lit, so maybe he’s afraid to expose himself… Okay, I guess that isn’t it because now he’s duck walking out onto the cobblestones.

As the man starts to stand, a lone figure drops from the tiled roof onto his head and shoulders.

“Ah, there is Tex,” Samuel whispers, relieved.

The intruder lands hard on his side and Tex lands lightly on his hands next to him. The man quickly sits up, shakes his head clear, and begins drawing his legs under him to stand. Tex has other plans. He slaps the guy’s closest support arm out from under him, which drops him once again onto the concrete.

Tex springs onto the man’s chest so fast that the intruder can’t begin to sit up. I remember how surprisingly heavy the legless man is. The intruder throws a wild punch, which Tex shield blocks with one arm. Before he can get off a second one, Tex slaps his face with all the power he’s developed from over thirty-five years of walking on his hands. The skull-jarring impact partially flips the man over, launching Tex onto the cobblestone where he lands gracefully on his hands again, his upper body swinging back and forth for a moment like a pendulum. He hand-steps over to the dazed man and shifts his weight to one arm.

“Tex,” Samuel says calmly, just as his friend is about to slap him again.

The legless man looks up at us with eyes that are scary dark. “You want me kill man?”

“No. Just hold him.”

Tex quickly scoots around so that he’s behind the man’s head. He cups the sides of the intruder’s face, places his thumbs on the scrunched-closed eyes, and says, what I’m guessing is, “Don’t move or I will press your eyes into you brain and move my thumbs in circles like a swizzle stick stirs a cocktail.” I wonder how that control technique would go over in cop-hating Portland?

Samuel places the hard edge of his red Converse against the man’s shin, and calmly speaks to him while at the same time grinding his weight into the tender, nerve-rich flesh. With Tex’s thumbs ready to do mayhem in the man’s eye sockets and Samuel’s shoe slowly rubbing his pain receptors against his shinbone, the hapless man starts talking like a Chatty Kathy doll.

“Three came over the wall,” Samuel translates. He asks the man another question. No response.

Samuel gestures to Tex, who leans forward onto his thumbs. Not a lot, but enough to make the man scream and buck. With his leg and head pinned, bucking his hips and thrashing his free leg is all he can do. He utters something through his trembling lips.

“He says there are more of them and they are coming. He does not know why they did not all come at once.”

Probably part of Lai Van Tan’s psychological warfare.

“Wait,” I say. “Three came in? Lam has one out there by the bag.”

“I fuck him up boucoup good,” Tex says. “He breathe, but not go nowhere.”

“One here,” Samuel says. “That means one is unaccounted for.”

We look through the bushes to check on Cong and Phat Ho. The morning gray light is beginning to dissolve the shadows so that we can just barely see the two old soldiers across the yard by the south wall.

“They haven’t made contact with anyone,” I say. So where could… “My room! Bobby!”

The door is ajar.