offensive of 1968, and was the only English journalist present immediately after the disputed events in the hamlet of Ia Thuc which resulted in the court-martials and eventual acquittals of two American soldiers. Mr. McKenna left the world of print journalism in 1971, when he returned to England to write the first of a series of international thrillers that quickly made him one of England’s most prominent and best-selling authors.
“He was on the goddamned helicopter,” Pumo said out loud. Clive McKenna had been on the helicopter that brought the reporters into Ia Thuc, William Martinson had been on the helicopter, and no doubt the French reporters had been on it too.
Pumo removed the microfilm and replaced it with that of the microfilm of the French newspaper. He could not read French, but in the prominent black-bordered article on the first page of
A square masculine head with brown eyes behind large grey glasses appeared around the side of Pumo’s carrel. “Excuse me,” it said. It poked a few inches further past the divider, exposing a polka dot bow tie. “If you cannot control yourself or your vocabulary I shall have to ask you to leave.”
Pumo felt like hitting the pompous ass. The bow tie reminded him of Harry Beevers.
With a self-conscious awareness that most of the people in the Microfilm Room were looking at him, he gathered up his coat and handed the film in at the desk. In a furious rush he ran down the steps and out through the library’s great front doors. Snow swirled about him.
Pumo turned downtown on Fifth Avenue and marched along, his hands in his pockets and a brown tweed cap from Banana Republic on his head. It was very cold, and this helped. Random violence was much less likely when everybody was trying to get indoors as fast as possible.
He tried to remember the reporters at Ia Thuc. They had been part of a larger group that had come to Camp Crandall from further down in Quang Tri province, where the brass wanted them to see various dread object lessons. After they filed their obligatory stories, or so army theory went, they could choose less embattled areas for their follow-up stories. About half of the big contingent said fuck it and went back to Saigon, where they could get smashed, smoke opium, and make fun of Rolling Thunder and the so-called “MacNamara Line” that was supposed to replace it. All the television reporters went to Camp Evans so they could get to Hue easily, stand on a pretty bridge with a mike up their chops, and say things like “I am speaking to you from the banks of the Powder River in the centuries-old city of Hue.” A lot of the others had stayed in Camp Evans, where they could be flown a few klicks north and write stirring stuff about the helicopters landing at LZ Sue. A handful had decided to go out into the field and see what was happening in a village called Ia Thuc.
Pumo’s enduring impression of the reporters was of a crowd of men in very deliberate almost-uniforms surrounding a ranting Harry Beevers. They had resembled a pack of dogs, alternately barking and gulping bits of food.
Of the men who had surrounded Harry Beevers on that afternoon, four were now dead. How many were left alive? Pumo put his head down, walking fast down Fifth Avenue in a dry swirl of windblown snow, and tried to focus on the number of men standing around Beevers. They were a numberless pack, remembered that way, and he tried instead to see them as they left the helicopter.
Spanky Burrage, Trotman, Dengler, and himself had been carrying bags of rice out of the cave and stacking them beneath the trees. Beevers was jubilant, among other reasons because they had discovered boxes of Russian weapons underneath the rice, and he was spinning around like a dancing toy. “Get those children out,” he was shouting, “stack them next to the rice, and put the weapons right beside them.” He was pointing at the helicopter, which was flattening out the grass as it settled swaying toward the earth. “Get ’em out! Get ’em out of here!” Then the men had begun leaving the Huey Iroquois.
In his mind he saw them jumping out of the Iroquois and bending over as they ran toward the village. Like all reporters, they were trying to look like John Wayne or Erroll Flynn, and there had been … five of them? Six?
If Poole and Beevers got to Underhill in time, maybe they could save at least one life.
Pumo looked up and saw that he had walked all the way to 30th Street. Looking at the street sign, he at last clearly saw the reporters jumping out of the Huey Iroquois and running through the grass blown down like cat’s fur rubbed the wrong way. One man had been followed by a pair of men, then another single man loaded with cameras, and another who ran as if his legs hurt him, and one bald man. One of the reporters had spoken in soft, fluent, rattling Spanish to a soldier called La Luz, who had muttered something that included the word
Cold shadows were already spilling across the street, and within the shadows layers of dead snow lifted and spun. He got them all over to Singapore and Bangkok, the reporters, he figured out a way to pluck their strings and get them to come to him. He’s a spider. He’s a little smiling child with an outstretched hand. The streetlamps clicked on, and for a second the middle of Fifth Avenue, crowded with taxis and buses, looked discolored, bleached. Pumo tasted the bite of vodka on his tongue and turned off on 24th Street.
2
Until Pumo had finished two drinks, he had taken in only the row of bottles behind the bartender, the hand giving him the glass, and the beautiful glass itself, filled with ice and clear liquid. He thought he might even have closed his eyes. Now his third drink had appeared before him, and he was still coming out of it.
“Yeah, I was in AA,” the man beside him was saying, evidently continuing a conversation that had been in progress for some time. “But do you know what I said? I said fuck it. That’s what I said.”
Pumo heard the man saying that he had chosen hell. Like everyone else who had chosen hell, he recommended it very highly. Hell wasn’t as bad as it was cracked up to be. His friend’s purple face sagged and his breath stank. Demons jabbed out their little fists and forks inside his fallen cheeks and lit yellow fires in his eyes. He put a heavy dirty hand on Pumo’s shoulder. He said he liked his style—he liked a man who closed his eyes when he drank. The bartender barked and retreated into a smoky cave.
“Did you ever kill anybody?” Pumo’s friend asked. “Pretend you’re on television and you have to tell me the truth. Ever waste anybody? My money says you did.”
He pushed his hand down hard on Pumo’s shoulder.
“I hope not,” Pumo said, and gulped a third of his new drink.
“So so so so
Pumo pulled himself free of the man’s hand and turned away.
“You think that counts?” the man asked. “It does not. Except in one way. When I ask you, did you ever kill anyone, that is to say, have you ever taken a life in the way you take a drink or in the way you take a piss, I am asking if you are a killer. And everything counts, even if you killed while in the uniform of your country. Because then technically you’re a killer.”
Pumo forced himself to turn again toward the man’s blazing face and the stench of his body. “Get away from me. Leave me alone.”
“Or what? You’ll kill me like you killed ’em in Vietnam? Look at this.” The demon-man held up a fist. It looked like a dented grey garbage can. “When I killed him, I killed him with this one here.”
Pumo felt the walls of the cave focusing down in on him like the lens of a camera. Smoke and foulness darkened the air, streaming toward Pumo from the demon-man.
“Wherever you are, see, that’s where you are,” the man said. “You’re not safe. I know. I’m a killer too. You think you can win, but you can’t win. I know.”
Pumo backed away toward the door.
“Roger,” the man said. “Roger wilco. Wherever you are, get it?”
“I know,” Pumo said, and yanked bills out of his pocket.
When he got out of the cab, the windows on the second floor were full of light. Maggie was home, oh thank you God. He looked at his watch and was astonished that nine o’clock was so near. Many hours had disappeared from his day. How long had he spent in the bar on 24th Street and how many drinks did he have there? Pumo remembered the demon-man and thought he must have had a lot more than three.
He propped himself against the wall as he worked his way up the narrow white staircase. Pumo unlocked his door and let himself into warmth and mellow light.
