It seemed as if the bus back to Dalat had no springs. It was certainly overloaded, and despite a sign — albeit a small one — warning of fines for expectorating on the people’s buses, Ray Baker could hear the loud guttural rumbles of spitters about to take aim through the open-air windows.
Some of the children in the back of the bus were yelling with glee as the vehicle bumped and rattled on its way to Dalat. It made Ray Baker nervous. All the noise and the disease of Saigon had spread to the north — ghetto blasters blasting everything within earshot, the sound amplified by the interior of the ramshackle bus. He suddenly had a case of déjà vu — a bright morning like this, bodies pressing up hard against one another, the smell of people jammed together, engine fumes and dust, kids squalling then screaming, an American collapsing in the aisle, eyes bulging, falling flat on his face, adults screaming, reaching for their children to get them away from him, the American facedown, a knife protruding from his back, no one helping him. Baker had been unable to reach him because of the stream of hysterical passengers pouring from the bus as it skidded to a stop, several passengers climbing out the open side windows. A stampede, no one but him wanting to help the American, no one wanting to get involved.
Suddenly, the flashback over, he turned around. A baby saw his face from less than a foot away and began screaming. There were only other children and harried parents trying to maintain some sense of order while balancing the various fruits, vegetables, and village wares they were taking to Dalat. It was then that he saw the boy from yesterday running by the bus, sending out a long crimson stream of betel juice and waving happily to him.
“Oh yes,” Baker said, smiling maliciously at him. “I want to see you too, you little bastard!” It was the boy who must have fingered him, or at least suckered him away to the market while they did over his room, whoever they were.
When Baker got out of the bus, the boy was nowhere to be seen. Then, on his way back to the hotel, he saw the boy nonchalantly coming toward him, not even pausing as he spat the next stream of betelnut juice onto the dusty street. Baker wanted to ask the youth a pile of questions, but all that came out was “Hi!” in response to the boy’s greeting. Only then did Baker ask, “Who are you?”
“Friend, Bac Baker. Friend of Americans. Okay?”
True, the kid had indirectly got him the info about a couple of MIAs, but how about the woman and the lemon? Baker confronted the boy: Wasn’t that just a dead end to allow whoever was paying him time to ransack his hotel room?
The boy didn’t understand “ransack,” but thought he understood after Baker had given him another dollar.
“I don’t know who did this,” he said.
To believe him or not? Baker wondered. He asked the boy who had hired him this morning, or did he just happen to rum up at the bus stop at that particular time? The boy was astounded by the question. Whether something had been lost in the translation or not, Baker didn’t understand. But in any event the boy said, “Same man yesterday, today. Same man, Bac Baker.”
“Yeah, all right, but who?”
The boy shook his head. “I tell you that, no more money. Bad for me. Okay? You understand, Bac Baker?”
“Yeah, yeah. So are you going to tell me why you’re here at the market, right now?”
The boy spat a long, crimson stream at a bug crawling on the sidewalk, missed, and told Baker, “He say to tell you Salt and Pepper be back.”
Baker felt a surge of exhilaration with an overlay of panic. “Salt and Pepper will be back?”
“No, be back.”
“You mean they are back.”
“Yeah, sure, that’s what I tell you. Okay?”
“Okay,” Baker said. He suspected the warning as well as the initial contact made with the note came from the villager’s son, “Saigon.”
“Tell whoever hired you, thanks.”
“Sure, okay.” Baker gave him another ten thousand dong. The boy snapped the bill and smiled, showing his brown-stained teeth.
As Baker walked across the pedestrian overpass from the Mai Building on a deliberate roundabout route to his hotel, he told himself to calm right down, as his mom used to tell him. “Just calm right down — don’t get so excited, all worked up.” Yes, it looked like the first solid info on MIAs he’d had in years, but it might be bullshit too. People everywhere wanted to make a buck and would tell you anything, right? But then how about the hotel room all messed up, and the damn snake in the village? All right, buddy boy, calm down. Call Saigon— not the guy, Ho Chi Minh City — tell them what you have, the people you’ve seen and so on.
He dialed 01-8, then moved his body so that Ha Ha, the good friend of the police permit department, on shift again behind the counter, couldn’t tell the number he was dialing in old Saigon.
“United States Legation. How may I help you?”
“Jean, it’s Ray Baker here. Got some info on MIAs.”
“Shoot!”
“I hope not,” he joked, aware of the .45 in his coat pocket.
“What?” Jean asked.
“Nothing. Listen, I might be a bit soft-spoken and oblique here, but try to follow me. All right?”
“Roger.”
“Two MIAs. No evidence, only verbal, but a bit of monkey business with yours truly.”
“A lot of business, Ray?”
“Not so far, but definitely business.”
“You want us to extend your personal liability coverage?”
“Let me see. Hmm… could you do that by tonight?”
“Might be difficult, Ray. We’re sort of busy up north.”
“Yeah, of course. Ah, don’t worry about it. I’ve got enough coverage for tonight.”
“You sure? I could always try our Hanoi rep.”
“Nah, I’ll be fine. I might even grab a flight down tonight.”
“I can tell you now they’re full — a lot of civil officials transferring south.”
“Okay. I’ll book tomorrow. I’ll be fine. Friends coming around anyway.”
“You sure?”
“Positive. One more thing, Jean. There’s been a complaint. Same two MIAs ran with the opposition. Now info is they’re guides for that movie The Killing Fields. They’re apparently doing a remake.”
“In their own studio?” Jean asked, right on the ball.
“Nah,” Baker replied. “Apparently they want to use the opposition’s.”
“Oh. So is that all?”
“No. They’re known as Salt and Pepper.”
“Oh?”
“One black, one white. That’s all for now. See you tomorrow night.”
“You sure about the extra liability coverage?”
“Yeah. ‘Bye.”
Yeah, sure he was sure about extra liability coverage. Like hell he was, but what did it sound like to Jean — scaredy-cat! Look, the .45 was in his pocket. What the hell anyway? There’d be enough damn beetles on the floor, you’d hear anyone tiptoeing in. Besides, he’d crush up newspapers and throw them about — they’d make a hell of a rustle if someone tried to sneak in. And he’d use the dead bolt, sit with the .45 in his lap — on the toilet too. No way he’d take a shower or bath.
After he walked up and put the key in the door, he took a couple of steps to the side so he was braced against the wall and pushed the door open with his toe. A few dead roaches, a couple of them live but stumbling. Everything looked normal. He did a check on the chest of drawers, having put a hair where the second drawer closed on the first before he’d gone to the village. The hair was still there.
He went into the bathroom and washed his face, surprised by how dark the bags under his eyes were. He put a finger under each eye and pulled out to the sides. It took at least ten years off him. Was he vain enough to get a face-lift? He had always wondered why people bothered, but now, in his early fifties, he had a different perspective on it. He was starting to go bald — not a lot, but he could tell the difference. Jean was going bald too, and right now she was his best chance for a relationship.
After a shave, a meal of cha ca—charcoal-broiled fish fillets with roasted nuts — salad, noodles, and fish sauce washed down by a bottle of Tsing Tao beer — the Chinese were being a real pain in the ass, but they sure as hell could make beer — he felt a lot better. The dangers he’d imagined during the day now seemed grossly overblown, and he contemplated the difference a good meal could make to one’s disposition.
He ordered coffee and started worrying about how much he’d already gotten through to Jean in his semiplain language code. He decided to book out on the earliest flight available— the next day at noon.
In his room, coat off, in his undershirt and trousers, Baker sat up on the bed as if on a desert island, ready to indulge one of his sins, and lit up a Camel no-filter, sucking the smoke in so he could feel it deep in his chest and see it flowing lethargically out in curlicue patterns, then watching it slowly dissipate above the land of the roaches. And if any creeps came through the door or from the side veranda, he would pump the bastards “so full of lead” that, in the words of James Cagney, when they fell they’d write!
Later, the night clerk said that the beer had probably made him sleepy. Whatever it was that put him temporarily off guard, by the time Ray Baker got off one shot, his throat was cut, blood bubbling from the carotid artery, his attacker having slid up from behind, coming out from under the bed. He was dead inside a minute.