More Deaths Than One (17 page)

“You done yet, dude?” The young man thrust
his face close to Bob’s. “I got me some business to attend to.”

“Did I mention that Robert Dunbar’s been
calling for you?” Hamburger Dan said. “He wants you to get in touch
with him. Says it’s about a game of golf you promised him. I have
to go, but come see me when you get back, okay? We’ll talk.”

Bob hung up.

“It’s about time,” the young man sneered.

Bob trudged across the parking lot to where
Kerry waited. He got in the car and scrubbed his hands over his
face. He could feel the rumble of the engine as Kerry drove
away.

“Did you see that?” she asked.

Bob lifted his head. “See what?”

She pointed to the white van that had pulled
up close to the phone he had been using. Two men jumped out of the
vehicle. They grabbed the surly young man and bundled him into the
van.

“What do you think they want?” she said. Then
she let out a gasp. “You! They thought he was you.”

With an odd feeling of detachment, Bob said,
“I think you’re right.”

“Then we better get out of here.”

“Act casually. We don’t want to attract their
attention.”

She nodded, her knuckles white as she gripped
the steering wheel.

Bob could sense her alarm and knew that
somewhere deep in his mind he felt alarmed too, but his struggle to
comprehend Harrison’s death overrode everything else.

He stared out the window at the passing scene
and saw not Denver but Saigon, where they had met.

Chapter 14

As Bob headed out of the NCO club in Saigon,
he could hear Harrison saying, “Two South Vietnamese generals got
in a fight. This was not a matter of fisticuffs, you understand,
but a mini war with heavy gunfire and bombing raids . . .”

The door closed behind Bob. For a second his
ears felt empty. When they adjusted to the silence, the usual muted
night sounds intruded: the rumble of traffic, the reverberation of
distant helicopters, the chirping of insects.

He was trying to decide whether he should
leave or comb his hair differently, put on a pair of
non-prescription eyeglasses, and go back inside, when he heard
voices wafting toward him. He could not make out the words, but he
could hear the urgency behind them.

Glancing casually about, he caught sight of
two men: Sergeant Major Jim Cole and Staff Sergeant Andrew Bishop,
both of whom were involved with the Khaki Mafia. Cole disappeared
into the rear door of the club; Bishop hopped into a jeep and drove
away.

Bob hurried to his own jeep and took off
after him.

Bishop drove sedately through the base, but
once outside the perimeter, he sped along the streets, careened
around corners, and several times barely missed running into
pedestrians.

They soon arrived in a section of Saigon Bob
had never seen before. The muddy, unpaved streets—alleys,
really—weren’t flat, but sloped toward the center, forming shallow
ditches for the run-off of raw sewage. The shacks lining the alleys
looked like the sort of houses small children build out of
toothpicks and Popsicle sticks. People and animals spilled out of
the shacks into the alleys, impeding Bob’s progress.

He parked his jeep. Even before he climbed
out of his vehicle, children swarmed all over it.

Gagging on the smell of human waste, decaying
vegetable matter, and rotten fish, Bob followed Bishop who drove by
fits and starts toward a huge group of unkempt men milling around
outside a bar/whorehouse. Most of the men carried weapons.

Bishop stopped and got out of his jeep. One
of the men marched forward to meet him.

Unable to hear what they said, Bob inched
closer. Seeing Bishop look around, he froze.

Bishop wrinkled his nose. “This place is a
sewer.”

“It’s better than the fucking army,” the
other said in a New York accent.

Bob inhaled sharply, almost choking on the
effluvia. Now he knew where he was. He had heard of this area where
U.S. deserters, South Vietnamese criminals, and even VC
congregated. Whenever the M.P.s tried to round up the deserters,
pitched battles ensued.

He watched a rough-looking Vietnamese man
approach the New Yorker. The two conferred for a moment, then the
New Yorker said, “We have plenty of M-16s. We need ammunition.”

“We don’t want to get involved with that,”
Bishop responded.

An argument broke out. So many men talked at
once Bob heard only a jangle of voices.

Finally, Bishop held up a hand. “Okay, but
it’s going to cost you.” He leaned forward and spoke softly.

“No way,” the New Yorker shouted.

He pushed Bishop. Bishop pushed back. The
other men held their weapons at the ready.

Bob felt a ripple of movement. He looked
be-hind him. The bystanders melted away, leaving the streets empty.
Then he noticed a long line of military vehicles approaching.
M.P.s.

He inched his way back to his jeep, waited
until the cavalcade of military vehicles had passed, then made a
tight U-turn.

Behind him, the first shots rang out.

***

Bob was sitting at a table with a man who
kept calling him Jimmy Ray, when Harrison breezed into the NCO
club. Bob watched in amusement as the seasoned soldiers gravitated
toward the journalist. In no time at all, Harrison was the center
of a large group.

All at once, Bob felt the skin on the back of
his neck crawl. He looked around.

Andrew Bishop was staring at him.

Wondering if Bishop had noticed him last
night, Bob drew in his shoulders. The staff sergeant was only 5’9”
or 5’10”, but he had a powerful build with thick wrists, a massive
chest, and hands that looked able to crush a larynx without any
effort at all. His hair was cropped close to his skull, and a
perpetual scowl compressed his face.

Still feeling Bishop’s stare, Bob rose and
strolled over to where Harrison held court. He pulled up a chair
and sat, glancing back as he did so.

He did not see Bishop.

The next day, deciding it would be a good
idea to get as far away from Saigon as possible to give Bishop time
to forget his face, Bob drove to Da Nang.

As usual, Harrison hitched a ride.

***

On Bob’s last night in Da Nang, he noticed
Harrison moving around the club, clapping some men on the back,
giving others complicated handshakes, laughing with some, listening
gravely to others, all the while gulping copious amounts of
beer.

Harrison slipped into a seat next to a young
man blubbering over a drink. The young man, with his freckled face
and his shock of unruly blond hair, seemed no older than a junior
high school kid.

“What’s wrong?” Bob heard Harrison ask.

“Jamie, my fiancée, broke up with me,” the
kid said between hiccups. “She says she saw on the news that we’re
killing babies. She says she can’t marry a baby killer.”

Bob heard the soft murmur of Harrison’s
voice. Then in a normal tone the journalist said, “Do you want me
to write Jamie a letter? Tell her you never killed a baby in your
life?”

The kid looked at him with hope shining in
his eyes. “You mean it? I know she’d believe you.”

Harrison dug a notebook and pen out of his
pocket. He wrote for a few minutes, ripped out the pages, and
handed it to the kid, who accepted it with a broad smile.

Then Harrison moved on to someone else.

Bob stood and made his way to the can. As he
finished urinating, the door opened.

A second later, a heavy weight crashed into
his back, a vice gripped his head, and he was slammed against the
wall above the urinal.

Pain exploded behind his eyes. As the first
shock dissipated, he realized someone had one powerful hand at his
back and the other on his head, keeping him glued to the wall.

Then he became aware that a second person
held the tip of a knife to the soft spot beneath his ear.

He heard a toilet flush, footsteps moving
rapidly across the floor, the door opening and closing.

“Who are you?” a voice growled in his ear.
“I’ve seen you before. Are you following me, maggot?”

Bob recognized the voice. Staff Sergeant
Bishop.

“Not following you,” he said, trying to move
his jaw as little as possible. “Following orders.”

The weight disappeared from his back, while
the pressure on his head increased.

He could feel Bishop groping through his
pockets.

“What orders?” Bishop asked.

“I’m doing a survey of typewriters—”

“What kind of candyass job is that for a
man?” the person with the knife asked.

The knife dug deeper into Bob’s neck, and he
could feel a trickle of blood.

“I’m supposed to find out how the typewriters
are holding up under tropical conditions—”

“I can read, dumbass,” Bishop said. “It’s all
here.”

Bob could hear the soft whisper of paper
fluttering to the floor, followed a moment later by a muffled
thud—probably his wallet.

“How come I keep seeing your face all the
time?” Bishop demanded.

“I do my job,” Bob said. “After that I stop
for a drink or two. What else am I going to do?”

Bob felt a slight draft as the door
opened.

“Come back later,” Bishop snarled.

“I need to take a leak,” Harrison said in an
overloud voice. There was a faint flick as if he were brushing lint
off a shoulder. “I can see you’re in the middle of something, but
do you mind waiting until I’m through? I’d prefer not to get blood
on my suit. I just got it cleaned.”

Bob heard the sound of a zipper, then a
steady stream of water hitting the urinal.

The pressure of the hand on Bob’s head
increased, but otherwise neither of his assailants moved a
muscle.

He could hear the sound of a zipper again,
the splash of water in the sink, then footsteps moving toward the
door.

The door opened.

“By the way, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t
hurt him too badly. He’s my ride.”

The door closed.

“I don’t like you,” Bishop said, breathing
hotly in Bob’s ear. “If you see me again, you better run, you puke,
because next time I won’t be so nice.”

He pulled Bob’s head back, slammed it into
the wall, and released it.

Bob had to put out his hands to keep from
falling. He waited until Bishop and his sidekick left, then he
pushed himself upright.

Noticing that his penis was still hanging out
of his pants, he tucked it in and zipped up. He touched a hand to
his neck and gazed at the blood smeared on his fingers.

After a moment he went to the sink, where he
washed his hands and neck. He gripped the basin and bowed his head,
waiting for the pain behind his eyes to subside.

The door opened. He turned to see Harrison
step into the room and close the door behind him.

“You okay, pal?”

“I’m fine.”

Harrison nodded. Bob retrieved his wallet and
his papers. Together they left the room.

***

Bob closed his eyes against the harshness of
the Denver sun. First Hsiang-li had disappeared from his life and
now so had the man who’d been more than a brother to him. He
thought about the last time he’d seen Harrison and wondered how he
could have missed seeing the symptoms of his illness.

“I don’t believe in conspiracies,” Harrison
had said, banging his fist on the table in The Lotus Room.

“I know,” Bob replied. “You’ve told me
before.”

“And why don’t I believe in
conspiracies?”

“You say whenever more than two or three
people know a secret, always someone will let something slip.”

“Abso-fucking-lutely right!”

Bob peered at him. In all the years he had
known Harrison, he had never heard him talk like this.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“No, I’m not all right,” Harrison shouted. He
lowered his voice and repeated softly, “No, I’m not all right.”

“Are you sick?”

Harrison remained silent for so long Bob
thought he might not answer, but finally Harrison said, “No.” After
another long silence he added, “Not physically, anyway.”

“Being mysterious is not like you,” Bob said.
“The Bill Harrison I’ve always known never hesitated to blurt out
whatever is on his mind.”

“That Harrison never stumbled onto such a big
story.”

Bob grew still. “Tell me about it.”

Harrison shook his head. “Just knowing about
it might put you in danger.”

“I’ve been in danger before.”

Harrison studied him for a moment, then he
smiled. “So you have. I’d forgotten you were once the imperturbable
James Bond.” His smile faded. He looked to the right and to the
left, then leaned forward. “I discovered something that happened
during Vietnam.”

“A lot of things happened back then.”

Harrison settled back and toyed with his
beer. “Do you know Donald McCray?”

“The big redheaded guy who owns a small air
freight business?”

“That’s the man. Shortly before my last trip
to New York, I was sitting in a booth at O’Riley’s when Donald
approached me and said he’d heard of my interest in stories about
Vietnam. He said he was tired of carrying the burden of his secret
all by himself and thought he’d be safer if someone else knew.”

“Knew what?” Bob asked when Harrison fell
silent again.

Harrison pinched the bridge of his nose
between a thumb and forefinger. “He claimed a private trauma
hospital outside of Manila had experimented on soldiers during
Vietnam. I couldn’t verify it at first. Everyone I talked to,
including a couple of generals, claimed to know nothing about the
hospital. They also denied any knowledge of experiments. But
someone had to have cut the orders.”

“Even if you’re right and there was some sort
of conspiracy, it’s nothing new. Soldiers have often been played
with and manipulated in the name of science.”