Swan Dive - Jeremiah Healy (15 page)

I heard Braxley open and close the car door above us.
Terdell said, "Honkie, you make it through this here, and
somebody ask you what the closest you ever come to dying, you tell
’em about tonight, huh?"

Lifting my head was the best I could manage, but
through the parade-rest space between Terdell’s legs I saw a
mirage. Or better, a hallucination. A short, skinny man shot out of
the pipe mouth behind Terdell, approaching in silence despite his
legs chuming at insect speed. He held a snub-nosed revolver, and
rapped the butt just to the rear of Terde1l’s right ear. The big
man let out a breath, but no noise, sinking to his knees as he
reflexively held onto the wood. The little man sapped him again, and
Terdell fell flat forward, breaking his nose on the edge of the
two-by-four that preceded him to the ground.

The little man whispered, "Can you walk?"
His Spanish accent was so thick it came out, "Khan jew wok?"

I said, "With some help."

He got me up, tugged my arm around his shoulder, as
if I had a leg wound, and hustled and dragged me into the concrete
pipe. He shifted and adjusted my weight, and we hopped and scraped
through the pipe, then took a junction to the right and one to the
left, after which I stopped noticing or caring.
 

FOURTEEN
-♦-

Dios mio, man, you a fucken mess."

The numbness from Terdell’s stick work was melding
into that throbbing pain that says it’s bruised, but not broken. I
rolled my head slowly and watched my savior drive. The lights we
passed by and under flickered strobe-like over his face, which
belonged on an olive-skinned twelve-year-old. He had short, kinky
hair and delicate features, smudged here and there with grime and
sweat. On his right hand near the knuckles were two homemade tattoos,
faded blue crosses with the initials "H.R."

After we had wound through the maze of pipes, he had
led me back out into the night, across a deserted road to his car.
He’d helped me into the conservative white Oldsmobile 98, and I was
dripping mostly mud and a little blood onto the white leather
upholstery.

“
I’m gonna be three days with the Armor-all, you
know it?"

"Sorry. And thanks for getting me out of there."

"Oh, man, you with turdball Terdell for like an
hour, was the only human thing to do."

"Mind me asking how you came to be in that
pipe?"

"Long story, man. I call you office, but you not
around, and I couldn’t leave no number for you ’cause I was
covering my territory, and I don’t believe in no phone in the car
like some fucken bloods think they exec-u-tives fooling the people
watch them go by, you know? So, I stake out you house, wait for you,
and I see J .J. and the Godzilla setting something up. I figure, lay
chilly, see what happen. When they put the grab on you, I just follow
along."

"I had a message from a Hector Rodriguez."

"That’s me." He extended his hand. "But
you ever got to find me on the street, you ask for Nino, huh?"

We shook. "You pimped for the dead girl."

He returned his hand to the wheel, frequently
checking side and rearview mirrors. "Oh, harsh word, man. More
like a broker. You gotta win the ladies’ respect but let them keep
some of it. No rough stuff, no dom-i-na-tion shit from me."

"You seemed to dominate Terdell pretty well back
there."

"That was different. Coming out the pipes, it
was like being back in the Nam." He looked at me, judging
something. "You over there?"

We were winding down some of the same streets Terdell
had used on the way in. "For a while."

"Thought so. You got the look. Who you with?"

"MPs. Mostly street patrol."

"Combat?"

"Some."

"You there for Tet?"

"Yeah."

"Bad shit."

"It was."

 
"I was before that. Iron Triangle with
the Hundred Seventy-third Airborne. You a Cubano grunt and come in at
five-five and maybe one twenty-five with ammo, they call you Nino and
make you a tunnel rat. You ever go in one?"

"Not till tonight."

"Oh, walk in the park compared to the dinks
underground. They dig miles of tunnels, man, they fucken lived in the
tunnels. It was like that movie, you know it? Science fiction thing
with the foxy Yvette chick?"

"The Time Machine?"

"Yeah, yeah, it was like that. We was the
beautiful people, the boo-coo beautiful American soldiers, man. But
we was living on top of all these ugly dinks, digging their way to
Saigon."

"Last I heard, they made it."

"Not while I was there, man." Nino warmed
to it.

"One of the bro’s, he’d hear digging, see?
It’d happen like that, you be taking live, next thing you know,
it’s like the fucken earth itching itself inside. The bro’ would
call me over, we wait it out, then punch through into the tunnel. We
short on time, we just frag it. Took us months to see that didn’t
do no good. Fucken tunnels stronger than iron, man, after that gook
gunk bake in the fucken sun."

He seemed to want to talk about it. "What if you
had more time?"

"Oh, if we long on time and heavy on equipment,
we blow some smoke into it, see what happens. We long on time, but
short on equipment, I go in."

"With a forty-five?"

"Shit, no, man. Too much noise, fuck up you
ears. I had a thirty-eight, some guys even go down to a twenty-two,
but that was too fucken small for me."

“
You wear a flak jacket or what?"

"Neg-a-tive. Too hot. You take off anything that
clinks, leave you in the tee shirt, fatigue pants, and boots. Then
you take the thirty-eight, a flashlight, and a stick. You tie the
light to the stick with some commo wire or det cord, let you hold it
out from you, trick the dink into shooting first where you ain’t.
Then you take the knife so you can feel around in front of you, find
the booby traps before they find you."

I said without inflection, "Sounds great."

“
Man, it was . . . it was like going back inside
you mama, you know it? You move real slow, hands and knees, ’cause
the dinks, they wasn’t building no indoor tracks. The tunnels maybe
a yard by a yard and a half, max, unless you got into one of the
chambers."

"Chambers?"

"Yeah, you wouldn’t believe it, you didn’t
see it. Some of the tunnels go down into dormitories, hospitals. I
even heard some guys in the Big Red One found some kinda stage thing,
like a theater, down one of their holes."

"How the hell did you keep track of where you
were?"

"You fucken counted, man, counted and
mem-o-rized like the teachers in second grade want you to, ’cause
you forget how you come in, you ain’t coming out next to your
squad. You maybe coming out into some other outfit, who sees this
little guy covered with dirt and sweat and shit. They see what looks
like a dink coming out of a hole they didn’t see a GI go into, they
fucken open up on you, don’t give you no chance to show ’em you
speak the English with a nice Cubano edge on it."

"You actually see many enemy in the tunnels?"

"You don’t see that much, man. Mostly you hear
and you smell. Madrén, you think Terdell not nice to be near, you
try some of the holes the dinks live in for months. I hit a tunnel
had some rotten rice once, thought I was gonna die. Mostly you
listen, though. You hear something, you stop everything, moving,
sweating, breathing. Usually be some fucken animal, like a snake.
Shit, you got so you could hear centipedes and spiders, it was so
quiet and they was so big."

"And if it wasn’t an animal?"

“
Turns out to be a dink, man, you try to take him
with the knife first, so maybe you get another one without the other
one getting you. Sometimes it’s a cold hole, no dinks, but you hit
the jackpot, on weapons, medicals, all that good shit. Man, you think
you a king, the king of the fucken tunnel rats. Other times you crawl
three fucken miles and don’t find nothing."

Nino stopped and took a breath. "Ain’t talked
about those days in a long fucken time."

"Some of them are hard to forget."

He looked over at me, confidingly, hands lying easy
and capable on the wheel of the Olds. "You always be what you
was then, you know it? You had the cojones, the balls, then, you got
’em now. You chickenshit then, you the same now."

"What did you want to talk with me about?"

“
Huh?"

"When you called me. What did you want?"

"Oh, yeah, right. The Angel, she was a good
worker, man. She free-lance a lot, but that’s the way I run my
ladies. Nobody got a slave collar on her."

"You the one introduced her to Marsh?"

"No. The ladies, they pick up the free-lance
dudes on their own. She make me good money, though, and I looking for
a little re-im-burse-ment."

"I didn’t kill her. Or Marsh."

"Man, I believe it. I check you out. You so
straight, the nuns take you back right now, no questions asked."

"So what’s your angle?"

"Marsh have some of J.J.’s shit on him when he
cooled. I could do some things with that stuff, move it somewhere it
don’t wreck no school kids while I make my profit."

"If I didn’t kill Marsh, I don’t know what
happened to the cocaine."

"Yeah, but you per-sis-tent, man. Word is you a
fucken bulldog."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning, I think you gonna find the stuff, but
it might take a while, and I can’t follow you ’round every day."

"So you get me away from Terdell and J.J .,
hoping I’ll tell you if I find it before they do."

"Hey, man, I figure you owe me a favor for
pulling you dick out of the fire." He took a card from his
pocket and handed it to me. Just his name and a telephone number. "So
maybe you pay me back with a little tip when the time come."

"To make up for you losing Angel."

"Fucken A."

"My friend, I’m not about to tip you about any
drug stash. I’m just interested in finding out who killed Marsh and
the Angel so I can get off the hook."

"Hey, so maybe I can help you there. You want to
talk with some of my other ladies, maybe they can tell you things
about the Angel."

I thought about it. Couldn’t hurt. "When?"

"As they say in the Hollywood, let’s do
lunch."

"Jesus."

"Tomorrow. Say late, ’round one-thirty."

"Okay. Where?"

"I got a favorite place. La Flor. On Sommer off
Appleton."

"South End?"

"You got it." Nino looked at me again. "You
talk with her girlfriend yet?"

"Girlfriend?"

"The Angel, she like to see all the life can
offer, man. She have this butch chick, name of Goldberg, Reena
Goldberg."

"How do I find her?"

"South End. Just a coupla blocks from La Flor.
She in the book."

"Thanks."

Nino scratched under his chin. "You didn’t
know about the girlfriend, you ain’t seen the Angel’s place yet
either."

"That’s right. The cops aren’t exactly
sharing notes with me."

He started to say something else, then stopped and
said, “I got a key. To her apartment. You wanna see it?"

"Yeah."

"Tomorrow night, maybe. We talk about it at
lunch."

He pulled up two blocks from my building, saying,
"Sorry about the service, but if J.J. watching you place again,
I don’t want Terdell making me as the one who put him down."

"Your secret’s safe. And thanks."

I got out of the car gingerly, then left my door
open.

"You looked pretty professional, sapping Terdell
tonight."

“
Man, you small as me, you gotta learn how to stop
guys like him. Without killing them, I mean."

"Mind telling me where you were when I got hit
Monday afternoon?"

He laughed and nailed the
gas, using his acceleration to close the door as he moved out.

* * *

I walked toward the condominium building slowly,
partly because of my aching body and partly because of watching for
J.J . and Terdell. Aside from a couple walking hand in hand, I didn’t
see anybody.

When I reached the front stoop, a shadow began to
move in the shrubbery. I registered a black face and started before I
recognized him.

"Sergeant," I said.

Dawkins nodded. "You looking a little ragged,
Cuddy."

I brushed at some of the mud, now caking dry here and
there. "Want to come up?"

"That’s what I’m here for."

He climbed the outside and inside stairs behind me,
waiting patiently as I fumbled with the keys at each door. I motioned
him into the living room. "I’m going to change before I sit on
my landlord’s furniture. Help yourself to the refrigerator if you
want."