Monkey on a Chain (25 page)

A few minutes later I had to stop. A second pickup, facing us, with its headlights on, blocked the road ahead. There was no way around it. The trees were too close.

April was shaking. “What do we do now?” she asked.

“We wait.” I turned off the lights and the engine.

The truck behind us stopped twenty yards back. The engine was turned off, but the headlights stayed on us. I heard a door open and slam shut, and someone scurried into the trees to the left. I kept my hands on the steering wheel and waited. The only sound was April’s ragged breathing.

A shot sounded ahead and to the left. I was too blinded by the headlights in my eyes to see any flash. I waited.

“Get out of there, you son of a bitch!” The voice sounded young.

“Slowly,” I told April. “We don’t want to startle anyone.”

We climbed out very cautiously and held our hands above our heads.

An older man spoke behind us. “Walk forward and stand in front of your car.”

We did as he ordered.

He called out again, “Watch them, Juan! If they try anything, you shoot! Okay?”

“I’ll shoot, Tio.” It was the young voice. It sounded nervous.

Behind us, I heard the door of my car open and the bumper settled against my legs. A minute later, I heard, “Sons of bitches have guns in here!”

The one in front of us came closer until he was silhouetted by the headlights. “You want me to shoot them?” he called.

“No!” I said.

“Not yet,” the older one answered. I hoped it wasn’t just because he’d realized he was in the line of fire. The bumper shifted behind my knees as the one in the car crawled out.

He walked around to the side and I could begin to make him out. A man, maybe in his mid-fifties. But he carried himself as though he were in good condition. He spent a minute thinking. “Lay down, both of you,” he ordered. We lay in the dirt.

“I’m going to search them,” he told the young man. “You shoot if they try anything!”

“I don’t want to shoot the girl,” the younger one said.

“Don’t shoot her,” I said.

“You shut up!” A boot caught the side of my head, but it wasn’t a strong blow. I winced. “You shoot the one that moves first. Even if it’s the girl.”

His hands patted me down carefully. Then he moved over to April. I heard her gasp once but she didn’t move. He walked back out of the line of fire. “They don’t have no more guns on them,” he told the other. “You stand up now,” he said to us. “What do you want here?”

I stood slowly and helped April to her feet. She was still trembling. I murmured a question at her and she nodded. She was all right.

“I want to see Sissy,” I called to them. “Juan Cisneros. I’m a friend.”

“You’re gonna have to see him,” the old one said. “He’ll decide if you’re a friend.” He stepped up by the boy and whispered to him. Then they both backed away and he told us to start walking.

We passed the second pickup and then walked slowly down the center of the road. It was hard to see at first, but the trees began to thin out and soon there was more light.

We walked in silence with our hands up at chest level. We could hear footsteps behind us and the owl, now very faint, far behind us. After half a mile or so, there was a light ahead. We walked into a wide clearing. Several bright lights were set on poles around the clearing. A garage, a barn, and several corrals were scattered around it. They all glowed with the silvery sheen of very old wood. The house was directly ahead, a sprawling one-story adobe. We headed for the front door.

The older man growled, “Stop here.”

We stopped. The young man ran around us and opened the door. A woman peered out. I caught only an impression of middle age and worry before she whispered, “Are you all right, Juanito?” He nodded and told her to move back.

“Take them to the den,” she said. “He’s waiting.”

The boy stood to one side and gestured with his rifle, an old .30-30. We entered. There was a modern kitchen to the left. The woman stood just inside and stared at us as we walked past her. She was wearing a house dress. I heard a sharp intake of breath when she saw April clearly. “A girl!”

We followed the hall past a living room to the den. A large room, fifteen feet by about thirty. Dark pine covered the walls. The man sitting on a long horse-hide sofa at the far end held a revolver loosely in his left hand. He was almost fifty years old now. His hair was still thick, but it held some silver. His face showed a quiet strength I had never seen in Saigon. When we entered, he picked up a cane, stood with difficulty, and limped toward us. He stopped ten feet away and looked us over with unfriendly eyes.

“You don’t look dead,” I told him.

He nodded and said, “Rainbow.”

The older man came in and stood to one side. He carried the M16 and the .45 in his left hand. The other hand held a 30.06 hunting rifle. Sissy glanced at them, then back to me.

“You bring weapons to see an old friend?” he asked.

“I brought more than that. I brought your daughter.”

His eyes widened. “My daughter?” He looked at April.

Behind us, the woman gasped. “Madre de Dios!”

April said, “Hello.”

“You want to talk?” I asked.

He nodded. “Maybe we better.” He turned and limped slowly back to the sofa and sat. He called to the boy, “Bring chairs, hijo.”

The other man put my weapons in the corner and kept his rifle on us while the chairs were brought and arranged. Sissy waved in his direction. “My brother, Tony,” he told me. “Did they have any other guns?” he asked Tony.

“No. Just these.”

“Then I think you can put your rifle away.”

We sat. The woman came and stood beside Sissy. “What does he mean, your daughter?”

“Be quiet, Anna,” he told her. “I don’t know what he means. I don’t have a daughter.”

“Miss Phoung’s daughter, then,” I said.

“You aren’t my father?” April asked in a small voice.

He studied her, glanced at his wife, then shook his head. “No. Roy told me she was going to have a baby. But it wasn’t mine.”

“Then whose?” I asked.

He laughed softly. “Who can say? Maybe yours.”

I was getting angry. “You know better than that.”

“I don’t know a damned thing. I was taken out before the end, remember?”

“You were around when she was started.”

“When?”

“July. Just before Luzon.”

“Roy told me it was later than that,” he said slowly.

“He lied.”

Sissy turned to April. “Why are you here?” he asked. “Why aren’t you home?”

She started crying.

I was watching Sissy carefully. He seemed confused, but I’d figured out a piece of it. “You knew she was in California.”

He looked down at the gun in his hand. “Okay,” he said. “Sure, I knew it. When I found out that Phoung was dead, I decided her kid should get a cut. I went to Toker. He was the only one who could take care of a kid. I told him about it and he agreed to try to find her. Five, six years later, I almost forgot about it, and I heard from him again. He’d found a girl in Hong Kong. He said she was Phoung’s baby. I told him to bring her back, and he did. There was no way I could see her, but I made sure she was taken care of.”

“You didn’t tell me this,” the woman said. “You should have told me.”

“I couldn’t, Anna,” he said. “You never understood about what happened in ’Nam. I told you I had a girl over there. You didn’t talk to me for two weeks.”

“A little baby is different.”

“She isn’t mine,” he said. “I did it for Phoung. For her memory.”

“That’s worse, Juan,” she said. “It means you loved her.”

“It was a long time ago, and she was dead before I met you.”

“Still,” she said. She gave April a look I couldn’t interpret. “Are you sure this isn’t your daughter?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“You know. She couldn’t have been.”

“I see.” She looked troubled.

April had stopped crying. She sat there studying Sissy. “Who?” she demanded. “Who was he then?”

“I don’t know. Roy said he thought it was that son of a bitch Corvin.”

“Max Corvin?” She sounded forlorn.

Sissy looked surprised. “You know about Max?”

“There are some things you have to know,” I said.

“Then tell me. Start with those.” He waved at our weapons.

“You first. What’s with the guards? And the revolver?”

He tightened his grip on the pistol and looked belligerent.

“We used to trust each other, compadre,” I said softly. “Remember?”

He continued staring at me, but his expression changed. “I remember,” he said, “but it’s been a long time. I’ve been in hiding for a long time.”

“Tell me about it.”

“When I got this—” he slapped his hip “—after you left us on the beach, Roy and I spent the night in the jungle. After that Filipino guy left us, we spoke of what had happened. It looked like we were set up. It looked like Corvin did it.”

I nodded. “It had to be him.”

“So we decided there was only one way to protect our group. I had to die. Pretend to die. But Roy would let Corvin know I wasn’t dead. And if he made another move against the group, I’d blow the whistle on him. I was the safety man.

“They got me to Manila, to a doctor friendly to the guerrillas. He took out the bullet and fixed me up as well as he could. I spent six weeks in his house. Then Roy came back. He had a passport I could use one time. I made it back to Santa Fe and called my father. We had a family council. They brought me back here. I’ve been here ever since.”

“Why didn’t he tell the rest of us?”

“You know Roy. There was no reason to tell you. Besides, you couldn’t talk about what you didn’t know. As long as I was alive, you were safe from Corvin.”

“And in return for providing us with this service, you were to get…what?”

“The payoff money. And one of Roy’s two shares.”

I thought that sounded generous for Roy. But of course he had the third delivery up his sleeve. He hadn’t shorted himself. He had come out ahead. That was Roy.

“Was it worth it?”

“I visited my own grave, man!” He grinned at me. “Not many men can say that!” But then he sobered. “Of course, there was a price.”

“You had to hide for the rest of your life.”

“Yes…” He closed his eyes for a moment. “It wasn’t so bad. Roy came through for me. I got all this.” He waved his hand around, vaguely including the house and the four thousand acres it sat on. “And there was Anna. My son, Juanito, over there. And my brother, my family. They helped.”

He looked at me directly. “It wasn’t such a bad bargain, my friend. When I die, my family will have something that will last for generations. How many men can say that? It was worth a leg, I think.”

“And a life in hiding?”

“I don’t have to hide all the time. The people in the village accept me as Mr. Romero. The ones who know, who have known my family for generations, they look out for me. There was only one danger.”

“Corvin.”

“Yes. I don’t think he ever stopped looking for me. If he could find me, he could go after the rest of you, one at a time. And then he would be safe. But he didn’t come for a long time. Sometimes, in the early years, I would go into the village, to the church or to a baile, a dance, you know? That was how I saw my Anna the first time.” He patted the hand she lay on his shoulder. “I was pretty safe for a long time.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. Last week I got two telephone calls. People were looking for me in Santa Fe. So I pulled in, holed up.”

“That was me,” I told him. “Me and someone else.”

“Max?”

I shrugged. “It seems likely.”

“What is all this about? Why is this happening?”

“People are dying.”

“Like who?”

“Toker was first.”

“He’s dead? Who killed him?”

“Not me. Not April. Did you?” I heard his son shift angrily behind me.

“Easy, Juan,” Sissy told him. “It is a question that he had to ask.” He turned to me. “I haven’t been out of New Mexico since I came home,” he said. “Even when I met Roy, I only went as far as Albuquerque. I had to be careful.”

“Why didn’t Roy come here?”

“He only knew about Santa Fe. He didn’t know where I ended up. We figured it would be better that way, back there in the jungle on Luzon. After that, he never asked and I never brought it up. When he needed to see me, he sent a post card to my cousin, Steve, in Santa Fe.”

“When did you learn about Miss Phoung?” I asked.

“Maybe ‘seventy-five? Just about the time of the fall of Saigon. We signed off on some property, and we were just sitting around, bullshitting about the old days. We were in a funny mood. Real…well…I can’t describe it. You know?”

I nodded. I’d been in a funny mood, too, the month of the fall of Saigon. I’d read every paper and magazine I could find and put my fist through a couple of walls, and then I hadn’t read a damned thing for maybe six months.

Sissy continued, “Anyway, I asked Roy how Phoung ended up. He’d always promised me he’d take care of her, you know? And then he said she was dead. Shot. He didn’t know who. Maybe the VC, he said. I asked him about it, and he let it drop that there was a baby. Man, I almost killed him! He promised me he’d take care of her. Promised me! All those years I thought she was doing good, married or something, and then he says she’s dead and, oh, by the way, there was a baby. I almost killed him.”

“‘Seventy-five. That’s a long time to go without asking.” I shouldn’t have said that. I had never asked either.

“I know.” He spun the cylinder of his revolver idly. “But there was Anna. And little Juan. And it was so far away. I guess I didn’t know how close it still was, until the fall.”

April cleared her throat. She was sitting stiffly, her eyes glued to Sissy. “You did care about my mother,” she said.

He looked at her and smiled weakly. “I loved her,” he said softly. “I would have gone back to Saigon for her. I might have married her, if I hadn’t died on Luzon. Yes, I loved her. But I’m not your father. I’m sorry.”

I couldn’t tell if the apology was to April or his wife, who was gazing across the room at nothing in particular. The son, perhaps.