“Breaking the law in those days had a certain charm to it,” he said. “That?s probably where Titan?s
power started.”
I had never thought about it before, but Stick was probably right. That?s where the patronage had
begun. God knows where it had spread.
“What do you think of Titan?” I asked.
“The toughest seventy-five-year-old man I ever met,” he said emphatically.
Twenty years had transformed Thunderhead Island from a deserted, marshy wonderland to a
nightmare of condos; stark, white, three-story monoliths that lined the river to the north, while to the
south, the marsh had been dredged out, cleaned up, and concreted into a sprawling marina. There was
hardly a tree in sight, just steel and stone, and the masts of dozens of sailboats, endlessly bobbing up
and down, up and down, like toothpicks.
I wondered who got rich—or richer—when they plundered this piece of paradise.
The Stick interrupted my angst.
“I had the computer pull the military files on everybody in the Triad who was in Nam,” he said.
“Costello was in Saigon for about six weeks on some legal thing. The rest of the time he was in
Washington. Adjutant general?s office. Big shot. A couple of their musclemen did time too. But
Harvey Nance—that?s his real name, Harvey—he?s another case entirely. He was in Nam for two
years. He was in CRIP, operating out of Dau Tieng. You know about CRIP?”
“Headhunters,” I said, with a nod.
“I know this is gonna sound strange,” Stick said, “but I still have this funny feeling about guys from
Nam. You know, the chemistry. After a while you get so used to a guy, he starts a sentence, you finish
it. And when he?s hurting, you know he?s hurting. Like you are now.”
I knew what he was talking about. Once, just after I came back from Nam, I was in San Francisco and
I went to the movies and when I came out there was this top-kick sitting on the stairs. He had
hashmarks up to his shoulder and I don?t think I ever saw so many decorations and he was sitting
there crying so hard he was sobbing. People were walking by, looking at him like maybe he was
unglued. Well, maybe he was, he probably had the right. Anyway, I sat down beside him and put my
arm around him and he looked up and all he said was “Ah, Jesus,” and we sat that way for a long time
and finally he got over it and said thanks and we left the theatre. He went that way and I vent this, so I
knew what Stick was talking about.
And he was right, I was hurting.
“You lose track of reality fast,” I said. „When I first went into combat, the Hueys took us into U Minh
Forest. It was a free-strike zone. The B-52?s had done it in that afternoon, and there was this old man
