“Talk about dumb luck. If these guys would have just gone back to the barracks, like so many other people would have done, and let their buddy just get listed as absent, failing to return from liberty, we wouldn’t know a damned thing other than a body fitting the description of Pitts turned up dead.”
“Hmm, maybe our luck has changed,” the lieutenant said and cracked a smile. “Any hope of getting our hands on some physical records telling us a little more about Pitts?”
“I doubt it. I’d sure like to see his SRB, medical and dental files, but most likely they got shipped to St. Louis many moons ago, him being a longtime deserter and all,” Gunny Jackson said. “Ten to one they’re not here, if our luck lately holds true to course.”
“The body they found in Dogpatch this morning had Pitts’s dog tags and ID card on it,” the lieutenant said, reading the report on the corpse and then looking up with a big smile at his noncommissioned officer in charge. “Besides religion, service number, and name, a man’s dog tag has his blood type imprinted on it, like his ID card.”
“Bingo!” the gunny said, and laughed. “I guess even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then, doesn’t he? Maybe our luck has changed! Be a hell of a note if the blood type of the body is not the same as the blood type listed on Pitts’s ID card and dog tags.”
“Tell you what I’m going to do,” the lieutenant said, snatching the telephone on his desk and putting it to his ear. “I’m having a copy of this Lance Corporal M. J. Scott’s medical and dental files sent to Hawaii with that body. We may not have Pitts’s records right now, but we do have this missing lad’s. At least they can bounce the physical data they collect from the body to what this boy has on his medical and dental charts. If it matches, then we’ve located our missing soul, and it answers the Pitts identity question, doesn’t it.”
BY NOONTIME, THE March heat in Da Nang had both the lieutenant’s and the gunny’s uniforms soaked with perspiration. Staff Sergeant Tommy Lyons and Sergeant Billy Knight also sweated in their civilian clothes as they walked behind the uniformed officer and senior NCO. Two Vietnamese policemen stood watch over the section of Dogpatch dirt alley while a Naval Investigative Service detective who had arrived ahead of the four CID Marines squatted next to a dried blood puddle, poking the ground with his pocket knife.
“Mister Walters, I see you’re hard at it,” Lieutenant Biggs called to the man as he ducked under the ropes strung across the alley, barricading the crime scene.
Special Agent Bill Walters looked up and smiled. “Good job here by your sergeants. They roped off the area immediately, and preserved the scene intact before Major Toan’s hamsters could fuck it up beyond value.”
“Gunny Jack taught them well,” Lieutenant Biggs said, and then knelt by the NIS investigator. “What you digging up?”
“Blast particles from the shotgun,” Walters said, and then showed the Marine officer the speck of black residue he had plucked from the ground. “Our man was shot lying down. Check out the splatter pattern. We have body materials spread in a twelve-foot circle. Right here, we have spent powder and other debris from the shotgun blasts. Definitely, our guy died lying on his back right here.”
“Could he have been dead beforehand, and just shotgunned here?” the lieutenant suggested, and then looked around at the many windows that viewed the alley. “Of course, no witnesses, right?”
“Nobody’s talking, and I don’t expect any of the good citizens of Dogpatch to step forward either,” the forty-year-old naval investigator grumbled. “I guess it is possible that he died elsewhere, but judging from the massive volume of blood puddled here, it leads me to believe that his heart pumped for a while after he took the two blasts to the face and hands.”
“Unconscious then,” the lieutenant said, surveying the bloody scene as the three sergeants stood above him.
“Could be that he got hit from behind, knocked to the ground, and then shotgunned,” Walters said, standing and giving Gunny Jack a smile and a handshake. “Probably the most likely scenario. Then, too, just about as likely, someone could have clubbed the guy elsewhere, kept him alive, and brought him here to kill him. A lot of trouble to go through to stage a pretty scene for us.”
“My thoughts from the get-go,” Gunnery Sergeant Jackson said. “This ain’t Brian Pitts we’re talking got clipped here. We’re talking about a kid named Michael Scott who looks a lot like Brian Pitts, and they killed him here to throw us off Pitts’s trail so he can beat feet out of the area.”
Bill Walters slapped the gunny on the shoulder and smiled at the lieutenant. “The man has a point. It also explains a hell of a lot more than that dirt-bag Toan’s hare-brained theory of a reprisal over a dead whore and a cowboy.”
“We never turned up even a shoebox of money stashed in that villa of Pitts’s, either,” Jackson said, looking at the lieutenant. “Elmore the magnificent claimed the Snowman had a room full of seabags stuffed with American cash. How many seabags is yet to be seen, but I think the snitch may have a basis of truth underlying his bullshit. Pitts did have a major corner in Dogpatch, and did a lot of dope business, so we’ve come to learn. We check his hooch and find no dope and no money. Just a nervous old broad with a string of whores. My point is this: he saw us coming and got his shit out of Dodge. He killed this poor kid to try to throw us off his trail. Somewhere, he’s out there with a shitload of cash, and maybe a bunch of dope, too, and he needs to get someplace where it can do him some good.”
BRIAN PITTS CLOSED his eyes, pulling the rice-straw conical hat over his face, shielding it from the afternoon sun as he bounced in the center of the bench seat inside the cab of the baby-blue dump truck loaded with pig manure atop the half-dozen duffel bags stuffed with three million dollars in American cash, zipped inside nylon-reinforced, black polyurethane body bags. Once the truck had made its way past Duc Pho and Phu Cat, the fugitive crime lord relaxed and began to doze off, sitting between Chung, who drove the old diesel, and Ty, who rode shotgun. The Snowman felt much safer once they had entered the central military region of South Vietnam, overseen by U.S. Army forces and ARVN units from its Second Army Corps headquartered at Pleiku. Here, these soldiers didn’t know him, weren’t looking for him, and cared nothing about Brian Pitts.
When the blue diesel finally rolled through Nha Trang and turned southwestward toward Saigon, the Marine deserter felt euphoric. Seeing a seafood restaurant on the outskirts, he had Chung pull to the roadside, and the trio strolled inside the establishment and casually ate a magnificent dinner of broiled prawns and fish stew. A few more hours down Highway One, and they would make the turn westward toward a village near Cu Chi and their new home where Huong, Chung, and Bao’s grandparents and his two uncles awaited their arrival.
While Brian Pitts, Chung, and Ty enjoyed their seafood dinner with ample cold beer to wash it down, James Harris, Huong, and Bao ate warmed-over rice with salt pork for flavoring.
“This shit, hangin’ out in the hooch ain’t cuttin’ it, man,” Harris complained, choking down the rice dinner. “Why we ain’t got some beer and real food?”
Huong looked at Mau Mau and then tossed a hunk of salt pork from his bowl to Turd. Bao took a kettle of hot tea from the stove and refilled Huong’s cup and then his own. He took a step toward James Harris, to refill his cup, but the black man glared at him so he stopped, and set the kettle back on the stove.
“This tastes like your sister washed her hair in it,” Mau Mau said, sipping the last of his tea, and then setting his cup on the floor next to where he sat in one of the straight-back chairs. He fought back his inclination to throw the cup across the floor, along with his bowl of rice. His memory of the day he saw Huong kill the cowboy for cheating at mah-jongg kept him from any excessive belligerency.
Turd wagged his tail, and James Harris fed him his piece of salt pork, too. Huong smiled at the gesture as he scraped his rice bowl clean.
“When we goin’ to find that rat fuck Elmore?” Harris then said to Huong.
“We do soon,” Huong said, sipping his tea and going to the wooden porch across the front of the frame house with the thatched roof. “We need know where Elmo stay now. Then we see if we can make good plan. We kill him then.”
“What if they got him protected?” Harris said, walking outside, too. “I ain’t gonna just walk off.”
“We kill Elmo if we can do,” Huong said, and then looked cooly at James Harris. “We no kill him if no can do.”
“Fucking double-talking motherfucker!” Harris exclaimed, and glared at Huong. “Why ain’t you talkin’ English that makes some sense? We kill if we can do it, we no kill if we no can do it. That’s just bullshit. We gonna kill that motherfucker. I make sure of that!”
“No do if no can do,” Huong said and walked away from Harris.
“There ain’t any no can do, motherfucker,” Harris snarled.
Huong wheeled at Mau Mau and pulled his .45 Colt semiautomatic pistol as he moved. He had it cocked and pointed under Harris’s chin before the deserter could take another step.
“We no fucking kill Elmo if we no get fucking chance, motherfucker!” Huong snarled, pausing between each word so that his American cohort could clearly understand him. “Pitts say we no take chance. We kill Elmo if we can do okay, but not if it make us big trouble. You no like? Then maybe I kill you, motherfucker.”
The pistol’s barrel left a circular imprint under Harris’s chin as the Vietnamese cowboy took it away from the man.
“Hey, man, you shoot me and Turd won’t have a daddy,” Harris said, offering a smile with his attempt at humoring the cowboy. He knew that Huong would kill him in a heartbeat.
“LANCE CORPORAL ELMORE!” Gunny Jackson shouted as he walked inside the hooch in the Marine Aircraft Group Eleven compound where James Elmore lived. The frightened dope dealer turned snitch had erected barricades of footlockers, wall lockers, and wooden freight boxes around his cubicle and bunk. When he peeked around the corner, he smiled his gold front tooth at the two men he saw approaching.
“Yo, gunny,” Elmore said, and stepped from behind the wall of wooden boxes. Then he recognized the Marine captain who entered with the CID gunnery sergeant.
“You remember your lawyer, Captain O’Connor,” Gunny Jackson said, pointing to Terry O’Connor.
“Sho, man,” Elmore said and put out his hand. “How’s it hangin’, Skipper?”
Terry O’Connor looked at the gunny. “You mind if we have some private time?”
“Sure, sir, take your time,” Jackson said, “I’ll just have a smoke outside. However, sir, please remember we have a chopper flight to catch.”
“Where you goin’?” Elmore asked, ushering Terry O’Connor inside his rabbit-warren cubicle.
The smell of the stagnant air within the confined space and the stench of the man’s pile of filthy clothes left the lawyer wanting to talk outside the rancid den. O’Connor tried to stomach the odor but finally broke down.
“Tell you what, let’s step outside, too,” O’Connor said, and led James Elmore out the back of the hooch, where the two men then stood on a gravel walkway.
“Now to answer your question a moment ago,” O’Connor said, looking around to see who watched them, “I’m not going anyplace. You are moving to Chu Lai.”
“Ho, man, whoa! No I ain’t goin’ down at Chu Lai,” Elmore squalled.
“We think that Brian Pitts may be dead, or he may have committed a murder to make it appear that he is dead, all in the aftermath of your informing on him,” O’Connor said to the lance corporal who flicked out a Kool cigarette from a flip-top box and popped it between his lips.
“What else is new?” Elmore quipped, flipping open the top of a Zippo lighter and igniting a four-inch-high flame that made the smart-talking snitch flinch back from it as he lit his smoke.
“If Pitts is not dead, but has murdered a Marine in an attempt to make us believe the corpse is his, then it is highly likely he will be looking for you,” O’Connor said, and finally snatched Elmore’s chin with his hand so he could lock eyes with the man.
“Yo, man, I heard you!” Elmore shouted, and pulled away from O’Connor’s grip. “I know he be lookin’ for me the day I give his ass up.”
“If Pitts is not dead, he could be anywhere, just waiting for the chance to kill you. Does that make sense to you?” O’Connor said, stepping in front of the elusive lance corporal.
“Yeah, man, I heard that,” Elmore said, and then looked at the captain. “No word on Mau Mau?”
“You mean James Harris?” O’Connor said.
“Yeah, man, Harris,” Elmore said, sucking on his cigarette.
“No word on him or the several cowboys loyal to Pitts,” O’Connor answered, fighting back his frustration.
“See, I told these motherfuckers,” Elmore said, looking in every direction, wondering who might watch him without his knowledge. “Pitts might try to kill me if I step in the open while he still loose. That Mau Mau, he one crazy motherfucker, though. He might try comin’ on base, lookin’ for my young ass.”
“That’s why we want to move you to Chu Lai. No one will know you’ve gone there,” O’Connor said, now holding the man’s attention. “Are you high or something?”
James Elmore laughed, and looked at the captain.
“You too cool, man,” Elmore said, and laughed more. “Fuck, yeah, I’m high. How you think I deal with this shit? Fuck yeah, I be stayin’ high, too. I got my peas and my bros here, man. They cover my ass. I stay here.”
“No, you have to go to Chu Lai, because Pitts and Harris both know where you live. You cannot stay here because they will kill you,” O’Connor snapped back. “Pack your shit, now! That’s an order, lance corporal.”
Chapter 9
CHINA BEACH PARTY
A FLASH OF daylight alerted the three Marine lawyers leaning against the bar inside the Da Nang Officers’ Club that someone had just walked through the outside door. Celestine “Ax Man” Anderson’s defense team suspended their Friday afternoon conversation about the trial slated to begin on Tuesday and that would likely end by next Friday, and turned their heads to identify the new arrival. The sight of a woman, a Western woman, a tall and shapely woman, stopped them cold.