“It ain’t dope, if that’s what you’re asking,” Harris said, “but you go fucking around with it, and those three cowboys you see standing up the sidewalk, they’ll hustle your weak ass down an ally and your mama won’t ever see you no more.”
“Got cash in there, huh,” Elmore said, backing away from the jeep, looking at the Vietnamese gunslingers who had their eyes trained on him.
“Yeah, man,” Harris said. “American green. More than you ever see in your life. We pick it up two and three days a week. You’re here to drop off your payment. I know that all along. You come up here all jive ass acting like you on top of me still. Brian be dealing with you in a few minutes, and I’m gonna laugh watching you dance for the Snowman.”
“Word tell he got suitcases full of greenback Americans over at his ranch in the Patch,” Elmore said, still eyeing the drab-green canvas valise.
“You ever think about grabbing some of all that money he got stashed there?”
“Never cross my mind,” Harris said. “First place, Pitts don’t fuck over his people. So I don’t want to fucking rip him off. He make it worth my time to play straight with the dude. All his cowboys know that, too. They kill your lame ass for just thinking about copping any of that money. That’s cause Pitts give us all a good share of the wealth. When I go home, I go a rich man.”
“I don’t do bad my own self,” Elmore said, holding open his front pocket to let Harris see the wad of cash he had folded there. That’s just my walking-around money. You know, for tips and drinks and pussy and shit. Got Snowman’s money here in this paper sack, his cut of what I make last month. I be sitting fat, too, you know. You not the only nigger here be gettin’ rich.”
Brian Pitts shook hands with the policeman, passed him a small, brown paper bag that he took from a briefcase, and then turned back to look at the street where Harris and Elmore stood talking.
“So where’d you get the jeep?” Elmore said, running his hand down the vehicle’s front fender and picking at the white painted numbers across the side of the hood. “Steal it? MPs keep a list of stole vehicle numbers. They nail your ass they see you.”
“Ain’t stole,” Harris said. “Snowman’s people down in the Patch made this jeep.”
“Fuck you, no way,” Elmore said, eyeing the vehicle front to rear. “This ain’t no homemade jeep.”
“Fender here, bumper there, seat here, hood there, all come together one piece at a time,” Harris said. “Jeeps all the time getting fucked up over here. South Vietnamese Army or Americans, they be junking out the shit, and the Vietnamese be scarfing it up fast as they junk it out. We got parts floating in all hours. They be building a six-by truck for Pitts right now.”
“Fuck no, you shitting me, man,” Elmore said, smiling his gold tooth at Harris and looking at the jeep with admiration. “So these numbers ain’t on nobody’s list, and it ain’t no stole jeep, so nobody be looking for it. You clean, man. You real clean!”
Harris smiled proudly, seeing his old dope boss from the flight line now sincerely impressed. Then he caught the eye of Brian Pitts, standing in the shadows of the bar’s doorway, and nudged Elmore to take note. Pitts then motioned with his index finger for the gold-toothed Marine to come inside.
“Who’s the asshole watching us across the street?” Pitts said to Elmore as soon as the Marine walked through the doorway.
“Nobody, man,” Elmore said, looking over his shoulder to see a sandy-haired enlisted Marine with his hat cocked to the back of his head now walking across the street to where Harris again sat in the jeep’s driver’s seat.
“Looks to me like he followed your ass,” Pitts said, seeing the Marine shake a cigarette from a Marlboro pack as he sauntered to where Harris sat.
“You got a light?” the sandy-haired stranger said to Harris.
“Sure, here,” Harris said nervously, and pulled out a cigarette, too, after he had handed the fellow his Zippo lighter.
“Where you from?” the Marine asked as he lit his cigarette.
“Chicago,” Harris said, taking the lighter back and touching off his cigarette, too.
“I mean your unit here,” the sandy-haired man who seemed just a bit too old for a corporal said.
“Oh, man, sure,” Harris said. “I work over at the Da Nang Press Center. I shoot pictures and shit.”
“Wow, hey, that’s something else, man,” the curious stranger said, sucking smoke from the cigarette and looking at Harris, the jeep numbers, and the canvas bags in the backseat and on the front floor. “You want to take my picture and write a story about me for the
Sea Tiger
?”
“Not right now, man,” Harris said, acting cool. “I got my lieutenant doing shit today, and I got to drive his ass around all over Da Nang. Give me your name, and I’ll get one of the guys to check you out.”
“Naw, that’s okay, man,” the Marine said, “I’m just bullshitting you. I don’t do nothing but type shit and make coffee.”
“Fuck, that’s cool, man,” Harris said, relaxing back in his seat.
“Hey, you working over at the press center, you gotta know Staff Sergeant Jordan, and Corporal Dye and Thurman, and what’s that other dude over there?”
“Fast Eddie?” Harris said.
“Yeah, that’s the guy,” the stranger said.
“We all peas,” Harris said. He had no idea who Fast Eddie was, but Brian Pitts had given him several press center names to remember, and that was the one the suspicious fellow did not say.
“You see them, say that Gustav said hi,” the Marine said.
“I’ll be sure to tell them,” Harris said, and watched the man walk down the block and disappear down a side street.
“That a CID tail?” Pitts said to Elmore, watching the Marine talk to Harris.
“You know me, Snowman,” Elmore pled, his eyes darting in all directions, “I always make sure nobody follow me when I see you. That dude just needed a light and shot the shit a minute.”
“That turn out to be a narc, and you know what I will personally do to you?” Pitts said, locking his eyes on Elmore’s shifting peepers.
“He ain’t no tail, man,” Elmore whined. “Here, man. This what you after. Just don’t fuck with me no more.”
“My guys dropped your shit at the laundry this morning, so you can pick it up anytime. Its all wrapped and ready. Here’s your receipt. Just give it to the clerk, and don’t open the package until you get someplace you can unpack six kilos,” Pitts said, handing the green paper slip to Elmore.
“Snowman, when you open that bag, don’t get all pissed off and shit,” Elmore said, seeing Pitts now looking inside the paper sack he had just handed to him.
“What the fuck is this shit?” Pitts said, pulling out a handful of South Vietnamese piaster notes mixed with government script.
“Hey, that shit’s money, too,” Elmore said. “You got thirty-five hundred in cool green American, and another twelve-hundred-fifty bucks in funny money. It still spend.”
“You spend the shit then,” Pitts growled. “I don’t have time nor do I want to go through the hassle of fucking with this Monopoly money. We’ve been doing this shit a long time, fuck-stick, and you know the rule. No funny money. Just cold American green. You got until Friday to bring me fifteen hundred in Stateside cash. You got that?”
“Man it’s only twelve-fifty,” Elmore pled.
“That’s two hundred fifty bucks worth of penalty,” Pitts said, stuffing the sack under his arm and handing Elmore the piasters and script. “After Friday, its another five hundred dollars interest, on top of the fifteen hundred. You got that?”
“Fuck man, that’s gonna break my ass to pay you that kind of interest,” Elmore whined. “I get this shit change to American green right now, get you pay off now. I bring you twelve-fifty today. How ’bout that?”
“You’re already late. Fifteen hundred by Friday,” Pitts said.
“Why you do that to me, man?” Elmore pled. “I treat you right for damned near a year now, and you fuck me like this.”
“You don’t pay me, my cowboys will come and get you. No matter where you try to hide, they’ll find you, and drag your worthless ass to the Dogpatch,” Pitts said cooly. “Then, while you piss your pants and cry, I will personally carve you a second smile under your nasty little chin and pull your tongue out the hole. Understand?”
“Don’t fucking worry, Snowman,” Elmore said, backing out of the shadows in the doorway, stepping into the sunshine, and fighting the urge to run. “You’ll have that fifteen hundred on Friday. Just like you say. American green cash money. I promise.”
“I ain’t worried,” Pitts said. “You need to worry.”
“GET YOUR ASS in here now, dipshit,” the sandy-haired Criminal Investigative Division narcotics officer disguised as an enlisted Marine told James Elmore after the dope-dealer-turned-snitch had ditty-bopped down the street and around the corner following his encounter with Brian Thomas Pitts and James Harris.
“Hand over that flash roll, and that green paper that this character gave you,” a uniformed Marine gunnery sergeant wearing a gold policeman’s badge said. “He really a first lieutenant, or did he just dress the part?”
“He no officer,” Elmore said, climbing into the backseat of a white passenger van.
“What’s the story?” the sandy-haired narc said, looking at the laundry receipt.
“That’s the drop,” Elmore said. “We go down that laundry and pick up the dope. That’s how it works.”
“How come you didn’t tell us about this place right off, when we arrested you last night and you wanted to make a deal? We could have had it staked out this morning and nailed him red-handed at the drop,” the narc said.
“Every few weeks a different place, mostly laundries. The Snowman, he like laundries for drops. But the last six times, I go at six new places. The Snowman, I think he gettin’ paranoy,” Elmore said, relaxing in the van’s backseat and lighting a cigarette. “I go where the receipt say. Hand the paper to the gook ’hind the counter, and he give me the dope, all wrap like laundry.”
“Other people pick up dope when you get yours?” the narc asked.
“Could be,” Elmore said, stretching out his squatty legs and leaning his head back as he sucked smoke. “Could be laundry, could be dope. It all wrapped in brown paper, so how’s I gonna know?”
“You talked about seabags full of heroin getting shipped out in air force cargo planes, dope crammed in tires, body bags, and camera lenses, how do you know all this? I mean, you don’t even know most of the drop zones, so how do you know all this?” the Marine gunny said, slapping Elmore in the back of his head and making him sit up.
“He got that street name, Snowman, don’t he? Sure’s shit not ’cause he like Christmas. He call Snowman ’cause he sellin’ smack. Mostly Burma white, ain’t hardly got cut, neither. Snow by the ton. Nearly all it go Stateside, too. I know where the dude live, man. I show you,” Elmore said, rubbing his head and picking up his hat that the gunny had knocked to the van’s floor.
“He got a ranch in Dogpatch, a whole string of fine-ass whores,” Elmore continued. “I go there for a luau a few months back, and this fat American dude he tell me all about this shit and that shit, how he and Snowman tight. He tole me the dude’s got suitcases full of American cash stacked in his closets. Snowman give free dope and pussy at that party for anyone wants it. Bowls full of smack, you like that shit. Weed, too. Lots of weed. Ain’t no back-street hustle got shit like that, man. Dude called Snowman ’cause he deal shit big time.”
“Where’s this fat American now? Think he’ll talk?” the CID narc asked.
“Fuck if I know,” Elmore said, pulling a drag off his cigarette. “I just got invite that one time, and seen the dude then. They lots of fat white dudes in the ville if you open your eyes. One fat white guy look like any other. Take your pick. He a contract dude, though, I know that much. He build shit for the government.”
“You think Harris will talk to us if we cut him a deal?” the gunny asked.
“Fuck, that nigger ain’t talkin’ nobody,” Elmore said, sucking more smoke. “Mau Mau have his little club of Blackstone Rangers going on. They don’t talk. They kill.”
“Harris killed a dude?” the gunny said.
“Fuck if I know he kill somebody. Probably. He kill a dude, fuck him over, that for sure,” Elmore said, and then looked at the sandy-haired narc. “You give me immunity on this shit, but now I think about it, I need something more.”
“What’s that?” the narc said, looking over a clipboard filled with pages of notes he had taken.
“I needs protection, man,” Elmore said. “Snowman, he a Marine deserter just like Mau Mau. Brian Pitts his real name. He tole me today he kill me I don’t pay up on that funny money I try to hand him. He waste me for that, I know he kill me for sure I rat him out. Harris kill me, too. They got cowboys, and dudes go hunt me down. Snowman say he gonna cut my throat, pull my tongue out the hole.”
The sandy-haired CID narcotics investigator and the military police gunny sat quietly in the van. Then the officer who had disguised himself as an enlisted Marine and had gotten the light off Harris and talked with him spoke.
“Here’s the deal. Go to court, and testify, and we’ll make sure that Pitts and Harris get nowhere near you. Connect them to all the dope traffic and racketeering that you described to us, and for that we will give you immunity in the case we have against you now, and no jail time,” the narc said, not taking his eyes off his notes.
Then he looked at Elmore. “What you gave us today, this bullshit, eyeballing these two guys, doesn’t do a thing.”
The narc glanced at the gunny. “Did your dick get hard with any of this, Jack? You even get a tingle? Mine sure didn’t.”
Then he stared straight back at Elmore. “What have we got? A couple of deserters joyriding in a jeep, a couple of stolen cameras, and a sack of money. That ain’t shit. You talk about murders of local civilians and military personnel. You talk about heavy dope traffic, and I don’t mean the lightweight bullshit in the bars and on the flight line you do, but the major tonnage that flies out of here. You make all that shit good, go to court as witness to those crimes, and we will take care of you.”