he grand opening began later that afternoon, the General shaking hands with well-wishers while chatting easily and smiling incessantly. Like a shark who must keep swimming to live, a politician—which was what the General had become—had to keep his lips constantly moving. The constituents, in this case, were old colleagues, followers, soldiers, and friends, a platoon of thirty or so middle-aged men whom I had rarely encountered without their uniforms until our time in the refugee camps on Guam. Seeing them again in mufti, a year later, confirmed the verdict of defeat and showed these men now to be guilty of numerous sartorial misdemeanors. They squeaked around the store in bargain-basement penny loafers and creased budget khakis, or in ill-fitting suits advertised by wholesalers for the price of buy-one-get-one-free. Ties, handkerchiefs, and socks were thrown in, though what was really needed was cologne, even of the gigolo kind, anything to mask the olfactory evidence of their having been gleefully skunked by history. As for me, even though I was of lesser rank than most of these men, I was better dressed, thanks to Professor Hammer’s hand-me-downs. With just a bit of tailoring, his blue blazer with gold buttons and his gray flannel slacks fit me perfectly.

Thus smartly dressed, I made my way through the men, all of whom I knew in my capacity as the General’s aide. Many once commanded artillery batteries and infantry battalions, but now they possessed nothing more dangerous than their pride, their halitosis, and their car keys, if they even owned cars. I had reported all the gossip about these vanquished soldiers to Paris, and knew what they did (or, in many cases, did not do) for a living. Most successful was a general infamous for using his crack troops to harvest cinnamon, whose circulation he monopolized; now this spice merchant lorded over a pizza parlor. One colonel, an asthmatic quartermaster who became unreasonably excited discussing dehydrated rations, was a janitor. A dashing major who flew gunships, now a mechanic. A grizzled captain with a talent for hunting guerrillas: short-order cook. An affectless lieutenant, sole survivor of an ambushed company: deliveryman. So the list went, a fair percentage collecting both welfare and dust, moldering in the stale air of subsidized apartments as their testes shriveled day by day, consumed by the metastasizing cancer called assimilation and susceptible to the hypochondria of exile. In this psychosomatic condition, normal social or familial ills were diagnosed as symptoms of something fatal, with their vulnerable women and children cast as the carriers of Western contamination. Their afflicted kids were talking back, not in their native language but in a foreign tongue they were mastering faster than their fathers. As for the wives, most had been forced to find jobs, and in doing so had been transformed from the winsome lotuses the men remembered them to be. As the crapulent major said, A man doesn’t need balls in this country, Captain. The women all have their own.

True, I concurred, though I suspected nostalgia had brainwashed the major and the others. Their memories had been laundered so thoroughly as to be colored differently from mine, for never had they talked so fondly about their wives in Vietnam. Have you ever thought about moving, Major? Maybe you and your wife could get a fresh start and rekindle your romance. Get away from all reminders of your past.

But what would I do for food? he said in all seriousness. The Chinese food is best where we live. I reached forth to straighten his crooked tie, which matched his crooked teeth. All right, Major. Then let me take you out. You can show me where the good Chinese food is.

My pleasure! The crapulent major beamed. He was a bon vivant who loved food and friendship, someone without an enemy in this new world, except for the General. Why had I mentioned the crapulent major’s name to him? Why hadn’t I given the name of someone whose sins outweighed his flesh, rather than this man whose flesh outweighed his sins? Leaving the major behind, I made my way through the crowd to the General. I was ready for some political boosterism, even of the most calculated kind. He was standing by Madame next to the chardonnay and cabernet, being interviewed by a man waving a microphone between the two of them as if it were a Geiger counter. I caught her eye, and when she amplified the wattage of her smile, the man turned around, a camera hanging around his neck and a retractable pen with four colors of ink peeking from his shirt pocket.

It took a moment for the recognition to register. I had last seen Son Do, or Sonny as he was nicknamed, in 1969, my final year in America. He was likewise a scholarship student at a college in Orange County, an hour away by car. It was the birthplace of the war criminal Richard Nixon, as well as the home of John Wayne, a place so ferociously patriotic I thought Agent Orange might have been manufactured there or at least named in its honor. Sonny’s subject of study was journalism, which would have been useful for our country if Sonny’s particular brand were not so subversive. He carried a baseball bat of integrity on his shoulder, ready to clobber the fat softballs of his opponents’ inconsistencies. Back then, he had been self-confident, or arrogant, depending on your point of view, a legacy of his aristocratic heritage. His grandfather was a mandarin, as he never ceased reminding you. This grandfather inveighed against the French with such volume and acidity that they shipped him on a one-way berth to Tahiti, where, after supposedly befriending a syphilitic Gauguin, he succumbed to either dengue fever or an incurable strain of virulent homesickness. Sonny inherited the utter sense of conviction that motivated his honorable grandfather, who I am sure was insufferable, as most men of utter conviction are. Like a hard-core conservative, Sonny was right about everything, or thought himself so, the key difference being that he was a naked leftist. He led the antiwar faction of Vietnamese foreign students, a handful of whom assembled monthly at a sterile room in the student union or in someone’s apartment, passions running hot and food getting cold. I attended these parties as well as the ones thrown by the equally compact pro-war gang, differing in political tone but otherwise totally interchangeable in terms of food eaten, songs sung, jokes traded, and topics discussed. Regardless of political clique, these students gulped from the same overflowing cup of loneliness, drawing together for comfort like these ex-officers in the liquor store, hoping for the body heat of fellow sufferers in an exile so chilly even the California sun could not warm their cold feet.

I heard you were here, too, Sonny said, gripping my hand and unwrapping a genuine smile. The confidence I remembered so well radiated from his eyes, rendering his ascetic face with its antiseptic lips attractive. It’s great to see you again, old friend. Old friend? That was not how I recalled it. Son, Madame interjected, was interviewing us for his newspaper. I’m the editor, he said, offering me his business card. The interview will be in our first issue. The General, flush with good cheer, plucked a chardonnay from the shelf. Here’s a token of appreciation for all your efforts in reviving the fine art of the fourth estate in our new land, my young friend. This could not help but prompt my memory of the journalists to whom we had given the gift of free room and board, albeit in a jail, for speaking a little too much truth to power. Perhaps Sonny was thinking the same thing, for he tried to decline the bottle, conceding only after much insistence from the General. I commemorated the occasion with Sonny’s hulking Nikon, General and Madame flanking him while he cupped the bottle that the General grasped by the neck. Slap that on your front page, the General said by way of farewell.

Left alone, Sonny and I traded brief synopses of our recent lives. He had decided to stay after graduation, knowing if he returned he would likely receive a complimentary airplane ticket to the tranquil beaches and exclusive, invitation-only prisons of Poulo Condore, built by the French with characteristic gusto. Before we refugees had arrived last year, Sonny had been reporting for an Orange County newspaper, making his home in a town I had never visited, Westminster, or, as our countrymen pronounced it, Wet-min-ter. Moved by our refugee plight, he started up the first newspaper in our native tongue, an effort to tie us together with the news that binds. But more later, my friend, he said, grasping me by the shoulder. I have another appointment. Shall we meet for coffee? It does my heart good to see you again. Bemused, I agreed, giving him my number before he departed through the thinning crowd. I looked for the crapulent major but he had disappeared. Except for him, most of our fellow exiles had been shrunken by their experience, either absolutely through the aforementioned maladies of migration, or relatively, surrounded by Americans so tall they neither looked through nor looked down on these newcomers. They simply looked over them. For Sonny, it was the opposite. He could not be ignored, but for different reasons from those in the past, in our college days. I could not remember him being as gentle or generous then, when he pounded on tables and ranted the way the Vietnamese foreign students in Paris in the twenties and thirties must have done, the original crop of communists to lead our revolution. I, too, differed in behavior now, although how so was subject to the vagaries of my memory. The historical record had been expunged, for while I kept journals as a student, I had burned them all before returning, fearing to bring with me any incriminating traces of what I really thought.

I breakfasted with the crapulent major a week later. It was an earthy, quotidian scene, the kind Walt Whitman would have loved to write about, a sketch of the new America featuring hot rice porridge and fried crullers at a Monterey Park noodle shop crammed full of unrepentantly unassimilated Chinese and a few other assorted Asians. Grease glazed the orange Formica tabletop, while chrysanthemum tea stood ready to be poured from a tin pot into chipped teacups the color and texture of the enamel on human teeth. I supped in a measured fashion while the major gorged with the undisciplined enthusiasm of a man enamored with food, mouth open and talking simultaneously, the occasional fleck of spit or rice landing on my cheek, my eyelash, or my own bowl, eating with such relish I could not help but love and pity the man in his innocence.

This, an informant? Hard to believe, but then he might be such a sly character as to be the perfect plant. The more logical conclusion was that the General had bolstered the Vietnamese tendency for conspiracy with the American trait of paranoia, admittedly with my help. Never had the crapulent major exhibited any particular skill at deceit, covert maneuvering, or politicking. Back in Saigon, his function in the Special Branch had been to analyze Chinese-language communication and to keep track of the subterranean subterfuges of Cholon, where the National Liberation Front had constructed an underground network for political agitation, terrorist organizing, and black market smuggling. More important, he was my source for the best Chinese food in Cholon, from majestic palaces with spectacular wedding banquets, to rattling carts roaming the unpaved streets, to elusive ladies who carried their bouncing wares on a yoke across their shoulders and set up shop on the sidewalks. Likewise in California, he had promised me the best rice porridge in Greater Los Angeles, and it was over a silky smooth white pottage that I commiserated with the crapulent major. He was now a gas station attendant in Monterey Park, paid in cash so he could qualify for welfare benefits. His wife, sewing in a sweatshop, was already reduced to nearsightedness from staring so intently at the puzzle of cheap stitching. My God, she can talk, he moaned, hunched over his empty bowl with the reproachful countenance of an unfed dog, eyeing my uneaten cruller. She blames me for everything. Why didn’t we stay at home? What are we doing here where we’re poorer than before? Why did we have kids we can’t afford to feed? I forgot to tell you, Captain, my wife got pregnant in camp. Twins! Can you believe it?

Heart overcast but voice bright, I congratulated him. He appreciated the offer of my untouched cruller. At least they’re American citizens, he said, chewing on his doughy treat. Spinach and Broccoli. Those are their American names. To tell you the truth, we hadn’t even thought about giving them American names until the nurse asked. I panicked. Of course they needed American names. The first thing that comes to mind is Spinach. I used to laugh at those cartoons where Popeye ate his spinach and became superpowerful all at once. No one will mess with a kid named Spinach. As for Broccoli, it just came logically. A lady on television said, Always eat your broccoli, and I remembered that. A healthy food, not like what I eat. Strong and healthy, that’s what these twins will be. They’ll need to be. This country isn’t for the weak or the fat. I need to go on a diet. No, I do! You’re too kind. I am quite aware I’m fat. The only good thing about being fat, besides the eating, is that everyone loves a fat man. Yes? Yes! People love to laugh at fat men and pity them, too. When I applied at that gas station, I was sweating even though I had walked just a couple of blocks. People look at a fat man sweating and they feel sorry for him, even if they feel a little contempt, too. Then I smiled and shook my belly and laughed as I told my story about how I needed a job, and the owner gave it to me on the spot. All he needed was a reason to hire me. Making people laugh and feel sorry always does the trick. See? You’re smiling right now and feeling sorry for me. Don’t feel too sorry, I have a good shift, in at ten in the morning and out by eight, seven days a week, and I can walk to work from home. I don’t do a thing except punch buttons on the cash register. It’s great. Come by and I’ll give you some free gallons. I insist! It’s the least I can do for you helping us escape. I never did properly thank you. Besides, this is a tough country. We Vietnamese have to stick together.

Oh, poor crapulent major! That night, at home, I watched Bon clean and oil the.38 Special on the coffee table, then load it with six copper bullets and lay it on a little throw pillow that came with our sofa, a tawdry, stained red velour cushion on which the pistol rested like a gift to deposed royalty. I’ll shoot him through the pillow, Bon said, cracking open a beer. Reduced noise. Great, I said. Richard Hedd was being interviewed on television about the situation in Cambodia, his English accent a stark contrast to the interviewer’s Bostonian one. After a minute of watching this, I said, What if he’s not a spy? We’ll be killing the wrong man. Then it would be murder. Bon sipped his beer. First, he said, the General knows stuff we don’t. Second, we’re not killing. This is an assassination. Your guys did this all the time. Third, this is war. Innocent people get killed. It’s only murder if you know they’re innocent. Even so, that’s a tragedy, not a crime.

You were happy when the General asked you to do this, weren’t you?

Is that bad? he said. He put the beer down and picked up the.38. As some men were born to handle a paintbrush or a pen, he was born to wield a gun. It looked natural in his hand, a tool of which a man could be proud, like a wrench. A man needs a purpose, he said, contemplating the gun. Before I met Linh, I had purpose. I wanted revenge for my father. Then I fell in love, and Linh became more important than my father or revenge. I hadn’t cried since he died, but after my marriage I cried at his grave because I had betrayed him where it mattered the most, in my heart. I didn’t get over that until Duc was born. At first he was just this strange, ugly little thing. I wondered what was wrong with me, why I didn’t love my own son. But slowly he grew and grew, and one night I noticed how his fingers and toes, his hands and feet, were perfectly made, miniature versions of mine. For the first time in my life I knew what it was to be struck by wonder. Even falling in love was not like that feeling, and I knew that this was how my father must have looked at me. He had created me, and I had created Duc. It was nature, the universe, God, flowing through us. That was when I fell in love with my son, when I understood how insignificant I was, and how marvelous he was, and how one day he’d feel the exact same thing. And it was then I knew I hadn’t betrayed my father. I cried again, holding my boy, because I’d finally become a man. What I’m saying, why I’m telling you all this, is that my life once had meaning. It had a purpose. Now it has none. I was a son and a husband and a father and a soldier, and now I’m none of that. I’m not a man, and when a man isn’t a man he’s nobody. And the only way not to be nobody is to do something. So I can either kill myself or kill someone else. Get it?

I not only got it, I was astonished. It was the longest speech I had ever heard from him, his sorrow and rage and despair not only cracking open his heart but loosening his vocal cords. Those words even succeeded in making him less ugly than he objectively was, if not handsome, emotion softening the harsh features of his face. He was the only man I had ever met who seemed moved, deeply, not only by love but also by the prospect of killing. While he was an expert by necessity, I was a novice by choice, despite having had my opportunities. In our country, killing a man—or a woman, or a child—was as easy as turning a page of the morning paper. One only needed an excuse and an instrument, and too many on all sides possessed both. What I did not have was the desire or the various uniforms of justification a man dons as camouflage—the need to defend God, country, honor, ideology, or comrades—even if, in the last instance, all he really is protecting is that most tender part of himself, the hidden, wrinkled purse carried by every man. These off-the-rack excuses fit some people well, but not me.

I wanted to persuade the General that the crapulent major was no spy, but it would hardly do to disinfect him of the idea with which I had infected him in the first place. More than this, I knew I had to prove to the General that I could correct my ostensible mistake, and that I could be a man of action. Not doing something was not an option, as the General’s demeanor made clear to me at our next meeting the following week. He deserves it, the General said, disagreeably obsessed with the indelible stain of guilt he saw stamped on the major’s forehead, that tiny handprint of the major’s doomed mortality left there by me. But take your time. I’m in no rush. Operations should be performed patiently and painstakingly. He affirmed this in a storeroom that channeled the dispassionate atmosphere of a war room, the walls newly decorated with maps showing our sinuous, narrow-waisted homeland in all its splendor or its parts, each suffocating behind plastic sheeting, red markers dangling on strings next to them. Better to do it well and slowly than quickly and poorly, he said. Yes, sir, I said. What I had in mind was—

No need to bore me with details. Just let me know when it’s done.

So the major’s demise was written. Nothing was left me but to create a believable story where his death was neither my fault nor the General’s. I did not have to think very hard before the most obvious story came to me. What we had here was your usual American tragedy, only this time starring a hapless refugee.

Professor Hammer invited me to dinner the next Saturday night at his house, the occasion being Claude’s imminent return to Washington. The only other guest was the professor’s boyfriend, Stan, a doctoral student my own age at UCLA, writing his dissertation on the American literary expatriates of Paris. He had the white teeth and blond hair of a model in a toothpaste ad, where his role would be the young father of toothsome cherubs. The professor’s homosexuality had been mentioned to me by Claude before I matriculated at the college in ’63, because, Claude said, I just didn’t want you to be surprised. Never having known a homosexual, I had been curious to see how one behaved in his natural environment, which is to say the West, as the East apparently had no homosexuals. Much to my disappointment, Professor Hammer seemed no different from anyone else, aside from his acute intelligence and impeccable taste in all things, extending to Stan and the culinary arts.

The three-course meal was prepared by the professor himself, a salad of mixed greens, duck confit with rosemary potatoes, and a flaky tarte Tatin, preceded by martinis, accompanied by pinot noir, and finished off with single malt scotch. All was served in the meticulously restored dining room of the professor’s Craftsman bungalow in Pasadena, everything from the double-hung windows, to the art deco chandelier, to the brass hardware of the built-in cabinetry either an original from the early twentieth century or a faithful reproduction. Every now and then the professor rose from the dining table and replaced the record on the turntable, choosing a new selection from his extensive jazz collection. Over dinner, we talked about bebop, the nineteenth-century novel, the Dodgers, and America’s upcoming bicentennial. Then we repaired with our scotch to the living room with its massive fireplace of river rock and its stately Mission furniture of angular wooden frames and leather cushions. Books of all heights, widths, and colors lined the walls in a democratic parade of individualism, arranged as haphazardly as they were on the walls of the professor’s campus office. Ensconced thus by letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, pages, chapters, and tomes, the evening was a pleasant one, memorable for the exchange that took place after we assumed our seats. His nostalgia stimulated, perhaps, by the literature around him, the professor said, I still remember your thesis on The Quiet American. That was one of the best undergraduate theses I’ve ever read. I smiled demurely and said thanks while Claude, sitting beside me on the sofa, snorted. I didn’t care too much for that book. The Vietnamese girl, all she does is prepare opium, read picture books, and twitter like a bird. Have you ever met a Vietnamese girl like her? If so, please introduce me. All the ones I meet can’t keep their mouths shut in or out of bed.

Oh, Claude, the professor said.

Oh, Claude, nothing. No offense, Avery, but our American friend in that book also happens to look suspiciously like a latent homosexual.

It takes one to smell one, Stan said.

Who wrote that one for you? Noël Coward? His name is Pyle, for God’s sake. How many jokes can you make with that name? It’s also a pro-communist book. Or at least anti-American. Same thing, anyway. Claude waved his hand at the books, the furniture, the living room, presumably the whole well-appointed home. Hard to believe he was once a communist, isn’t it?

Stan? I said.

No, not Stan. Were you, Stan? I thought not.

That left the professor, who shrugged his shoulders when I looked at him. I was your age, he said, putting his arm around Stan’s shoulders. I was impressionable, I was passionate, I wanted to change the world. Communism seduced me like so many others.

Now he’s the one doing the seducing, Stan said, squeezing the professor’s hand, a sight that made me squirm just a little. For me, the professor was a walking mind, and to see him as a body, or having a body, was still discomfiting.

Do you ever regret being a communist, Professor?

No, I do not. Only by making that mistake could I be what I am today.

What is that, sir?

He smiled. I suppose you could call me a born-again American. An irony, but if the bloody history of the past few decades has taught me anything, it’s that the defense of freedom demands the muscularity only America can provide. Even what we do at the college has its purpose. We teach you the best of what was thought and said not only to explain America to the world, as I have always encouraged you to do, but to defend it.

I sipped my scotch. It was smoky and smooth, tasting of peat and aged oak, underscored by licorice and the intangible essence of Scottish masculinity. I liked my scotch undiluted, like I liked my truth. Unfortunately, undiluted truth was as affordable as eighteen-year-old single malt scotch. What about those who have not learned the best of what was thought and said? I asked the professor. If we can’t teach them, or if they won’t be taught?

The professor contemplated the copper depths of his drink. I suppose you and Claude have seen more than your fair share of those types in your line of work. There’s no easy answer, except to say it has always been thus. Ever since the first caveman discovered fire and decided that the ones still living in darkness were benighted, it’s been civilization against barbarism... with every age having its own barbarians.

Nothing was more clear-cut than civilization versus barbarism, but what was the killing of the crapulent major? A simple act of barbarism or a complex one that advanced revolutionary civilization? It had to be the latter, a contradictory act that suited our age. We Marxists believe that capitalism generates contradictions and will fall apart from them, but only if men take action. But it was not just capitalism that was contradictory. As Hegel said, tragedy was not the conflict between right and wrong but right and right, a dilemma none of us who wanted to participate in history could escape. The major had the right to live, but I was right to kill him. Wasn’t I? When Claude and I left near midnight, I came as close as I could to broaching the subject of my conscience with him. As we smoked farewell cigarettes on the sidewalk, I asked the question that I imagined my mother asking of me: What if he’s innocent?

He blew a smoke ring, just to show he could. No one’s innocent. Especially in this business. You don’t think he might have some blood on his hands? He identified Viet Cong sympathizers. He might have gotten the wrong man. It’s happened before. Or if he himself is a sympathizer, then he definitely identified the wrong people. On purpose.

I don’t know any of that for sure.

Innocence and guilt. These are cosmic issues. We’re all innocent on one level and guilty on another. Isn’t that what Original Sin is all about?

True enough, I said. I let him go with a handshake. The airing of moral doubts was as tiresome as the airing of domestic squabbles, no one really interested except for the ones directly involved. In this situation, I was clearly the only one involved, except for the crapulent major, and no one cared to hear his opinion. Claude, meanwhile, had offered me absolution, or at least an excuse, but I did not have the heart to tell him I could not use it. Original Sin was simply too unoriginal for someone like me, born from a father who spoke of it at every Mass.

The next evening I began reconnoitering the major. On that Sunday and the following five, from May until the end of June, I parked my car half a block from the gas station, waiting for eight o’clock when the crapulent major would leave, walking slowly home, lunch box in hand. When I saw him turn the corner, I started the car and drove it to the corner, where I waited and watched him walk down the first block. He lived three blocks away, a distance a thin, healthy man could walk briskly in five minutes. It took the crapulent major approximately eleven, with myself always at least a block behind. During six Sundays, he never varied his routine, faithful as a migratory mallard, his route taking him through a neighborhood of apartments that all seemed to be dying of boredom. The major’s own diminutive quadriplex was fronted by a carport with four slots, one vacant and three occupied by cars with the dented, drooping posteriors of elderly bus drivers. An overhanging second floor, its two sets of windows looking onto the street, shaded the cars. At 8:11 in the evening or so, the morose eyes of those bedroom windows were open but curtained, only one of them lit. On the first two Sundays, I parked at the corner and watched as he turned into the carport and vanished. On the third and fourth Sundays, I did not follow him from the gas station but waited for him half a block past his apartment. From there, I watched in my mirror as he entered the carport’s shadowed margin, a lane leading to the bottom apartments. As soon as he disappeared those first four Sundays, I went home, but on the fifth and sixth Sundays I waited. Not until ten o’clock did the car that parked in the vacant spot appear, as aged and dinged as the others, the driver a tired-looking Chinese man wearing a smeared chef’s smock and carrying a greasy paper bag.

On the Saturday before our appointment with the crapulent major, Bon and I drove to Chinatown. In an alley off Broadway lined with vendors selling wares from folding tables, we bought UCLA sweatshirts and baseball caps at prices that guaranteed they were not official merchandise. After a lunch of barbecued pork and noodles, we browsed one of the curio shops where all manner of Orientalia was sold, primarily to the non-Oriental. Chinese chess sets, wooden chopsticks, paper lanterns, soapstone Buddhas, miniature water fountains, elephant tusks with elaborate carvings of pastoral scenes, reproductions of Ming vases, coasters with images of the Forbidden City, rubber nunchaku bundled with posters of Bruce Lee, scrolls with watercolor paintings of cloud-draped mountain forests, tins of tea and ginseng, and, neither last nor least, red firecrackers. I bought two packets and, before we returned home, a mesh sack of oranges from a local market, their navels protruding indecently.

Later that evening, after dark, Bon and I ventured out one more time, each of us with a screwdriver. We toured the neighborhood until we reached an apartment with a carport like the crapulent major’s, the cars not visible from any neighboring windows. It took less than thirty seconds for Bon to remove the front license plate from one car, and myself the plate from the rear. Then we went home and watched television until bedtime. Bon fell asleep immediately, but I could not. Our visit to Chinatown reminded me of an incident that had taken place in Cholon years before with the crapulent major and myself. The occasion was the arrest of a Viet Cong suspect who had graduated from the top of our gray list to the bottom of our blacklist. Enough people had fingered this person as a Viet Cong for us to neutralize him, or so the major said, showing me the thick dossier he had compiled. Official occupation: rice wine merchant. Black market occupation: casino operator. Hobby: Viet Cong tax collector. We cordoned off the ward with roadblocks on all streets and foot patrols in the alleys. While the secondary units did ID checks in the neighborhood, fishing for draft dodgers, the major’s men entered the rice wine merchant’s shop, pushed past his wife to reach the storeroom, and found the lever that opened a secret door. Gamblers were shooting craps and playing cards, their rice wine and hot soup served for free by waitresses in outrageous outfits. On seeing our policemen charging through the door, all the players and employees promptly dashed for the rear exit, only to find another squad of heavies waiting outside. The usual high jinks and hilarity ensued, involving much screaming, shrieking, billy clubs, and handcuffs, until, at last, it was only the crapulent major, myself, and our suspect, whom I was surprised to see. I had tipped off Man about the raid and fully expected the tax collector to be absent.

VC? the man cried, waving his hands in the air. No way! I’m a businessman!

A very good one, too, the major said, hefting a garbage bag filled with the casino’s cash.

So you got me there, the man said, miserable. He had an overbite and three long, lucky hairs sprouting from a mole the size of a marble on his cheek. Okay, take the money, it’s yours. I’m happy to contribute to the cause of the police.

That’s offensive, the major said, poking the man’s gut with his billy club. This is going to the government to pay your fines and back taxes, not to us. Right, Captain?

Right, I said, the straight man in this routine.

But as to future taxes, that’s a different matter. Right, Captain?

Right. There was nothing I could do for the tax collector. He spent a week in the interrogation center being beaten black and blue, as well as red and yellow. By the end, our men were convinced that he was not a VC operative. The proof was incontrovertible, arriving in the form of a sizable bribe the man’s wife brought to the crapulent major. I guess I was mistaken, he said cheerfully, handing me an envelope with my share. It was equivalent to a year’s salary, which, to put it into perspective, was actually not enough to live on for a year. Refusing the money would have aroused suspicion, so I took it. I was tempted to use it for charitable activity, namely the support of beautiful young women hampered by poverty, but I remembered what my father said, rather than what he did, as well as Ho Chi Minh’s adages. Both Jesus and Uncle Ho were clear that money was corrupting, from the moneylenders desecrating the temple to the capitalists exploiting the colony, not to mention Judas and his thirty pieces of silver. So I paid for the major’s sin by donating the money to the revolution, handing it to Man at the basilica. See what we’re fighting against? he said. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, droned the dowagers. This is why we’ll win, Man said. Our enemies are corrupt. We are not. The point of writing this is that the crapulent major was as sinful as Claude estimated. Perhaps he had even done worse than simply extort money, although if he did it did not make him above average in corruption. It just made him average.

The next evening we were parked down the street from the gas station by seven thirty, wearing the UCLA sweatshirts and caps. If anyone noticed us, they would see, hopefully, UCLA students. My car had the stolen license plates affixed to it, my legitimate ones in the glove compartment. Every little bit of distraction helped, but most important of all were the distractions we did not control but which I had anticipated. With my window rolled down, we could hear distant explosions from the city’s fireworks show, as well as the pop-pop of occasional small arms fire as an individual celebrated independence. Smaller fireworks exploded closer, illegally detonated somewhere in this neighborhood as people lit cherry bombs, launched the occasional streaker into the low sky, or burned through ammo belts of Chinese firecrackers. Bon was tense as we waited for the major, his jaw clenched tight and shoulders hunched, refusing to let me turn on the radio. Bad memories? I said. Yeah. For a while he said nothing more, both of us watching the gas station. Two cars pulled in and gassed up, then left. This one time outside Sa Dec, the point man stepped on a Bouncing Betty. A little pop when it bounces. Then a big bang. I was two guys behind him, didn’t get a scratch. But it blew his balls off. Worst part of all, the poor son of a bitch lived.

I mumbled regretfully and shook my head, but otherwise had nothing more to offer, castration being something that was unspeakable. We watched two more cars gas up. There was only one favor I could perform for the crapulent major. I don’t want him to feel anything, I said.

He’s not even going to see it coming.

At eight, the crapulent major left the station. I waited until he turned the corner, then started the car. We drove to his apartment using a different route so he would not see us passing him. The fourth parking slot was open, and I parked the car there. I checked my watch. Three minutes, eight more until the major came. Bon took out the gun from the glove compartment and popped the cylinder open one more time to inspect the bullets. Then he clicked the cylinder into place and laid the gun on the red velour pillow in his lap. I looked at the gun and the pillow and said, What if some of the stuffing gets blown onto him? And pieces of the cover? The police will see it and wonder what it is.

He shrugged. So no pillow. That means there’ll be noise.

Somewhere down the street, someone set off another string of Chinese firecrackers, the same kind I had enjoyed so much as a little boy during New Year’s. My mother would light up the long red string, and I would plug my ears and screech along with my mother in the patch of garden next to our hut while the serpent leaped this way and that, consuming itself from tail to head, or perhaps it was head to tail, ecstatically ablaze.

It’s just one shot, I said after the firecrackers ceased. No one’s coming out to see what happened, not with all this noise.

He looked at his watch. All right, then.

He slipped on a pair of latex gloves and kicked off his sneakers. I opened my door, got out, closed it softly, and took my position at the other end of the carport, next to the path leading from the sidewalk to the apartment’s mailboxes. The path continued past the mailboxes to the two ground-floor apartments, the entrance to the first one ten feet down. Poking my head around the corner, I could see the lights of the apartment through the curtains of the living room window, pulled shut. A tall wooden fence lined the other side of the path, and above it rose the wall of an identical apartment complex. Half of its windows were bathroom windows, and the other half were bedroom windows. Anyone at the windows on the second floor could see the path leading to the apartment but would not be able to see into the carport.

Bon walked on socked feet to his position, in between the two cars nearest to the path, where he knelt down and kept his head below the windows. I looked at my watch: 8:07. I held a plastic bag with a yellow happy face and the words THANK YOU! on it. Inside were the firecrackers and the oranges. Are you sure you want to do this, son? my mother said. It’s too late, Mama. I can’t figure a way out.

I was halfway finished with a cigarette when the major appeared at the carport for the last time. Hey. His face broke into a puzzled smile. He carried his lunch box in his hand. What are you doing here? I forced myself to smile in return. Lifting the plastic bag, I said, I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop this off.

What is it? He was halfway to me.

A gift for the Fourth of July. Bon emerged from behind the car by which the major was walking, but I kept my gaze on the major. He was within three feet when he said, Do they give gifts on the Fourth of July?

The expression on his face was still puzzled. When I offered him the bag with both hands, he leaned forward to peer at its contents. Behind him Bon walked up, noiseless on his socked feet and gun in hand. You didn’t have to, said the major. When he put his hands on the bag, it was the moment for Bon to shoot. But instead of pulling the trigger, Bon said, Hey, Major.

The major turned around, gift in one hand, lunch box in the other. I stepped to one side and heard him start to say a word when he saw Bon, and then Bon shot him. The report echoed in the carport, hurting my ears. The major’s skull cracked when his head hit the pavement, and if the bullet had not already killed him, perhaps the fall did. He lay flat on his back, the bullet hole in his forehead a third eye, weeping blood. Move, Bon hissed, tucking the gun into the waistband of his pants. As he knelt down and rolled the major onto his side, I leaned over the body and picked up the plastic bag, its yellow happy face freckled with blood. The major’s open mouth was wrapped around the shape of his last word. Bon tugged the wallet out of the major’s hip pocket, stood up, and pushed me toward the car. I looked at my watch: 8:13.

I pulled out of the carport. A numbness descended on me, beginning from my brain and my eyeballs and extending to my toes and fingers. I thought he wasn’t going to see it coming, I said. I just couldn’t shoot him in the back, he said. Don’t worry. He didn’t feel a thing. I was not worried about whether the crapulent major felt a thing. I was worried about whether I felt a thing. We said nothing more, and before we reached our apartment, I pulled into an alley where we replaced the license plates. Then we went home, and when I took my sneakers off I saw spots of blood on the white toes. I took the shoes into the kitchen and wiped them off with a wet paper towel before I dialed the General’s number from the phone hanging by the refrigerator, its door decorated with the twin columns of my divided self. He answered on the second ring. Hello? he said. It’s done. There was a pause. Good. I hung up the phone, and when I returned to the living room with two glasses and a bottle of rye, I found that Bon had emptied the contents of the major’s wallet onto the coffee table. What do we do with this? Bon asked. There was his Social Security card, his state ID (but no driver’s license, as he did not have a car), a wad of receipts, twenty-two dollars, a handful of change, and some photos. A black-and-white one showed him and his wife on their wedding day, very young and dressed in Western garb. He had been fat back then, too. There was also a color photo of his twins at a few weeks of age, genderless and wrinkled. Burn them, I said. The wallet I would dispose of tomorrow, along with the license plates, the plastic bag, and the ashes.

When I handed him a glass of rye, I saw the red scar on his hand. Here’s to the major, Bon said. The medicinal taste of the rye was so awful we had a second drink to wash it away, then a third, and so forth, all while watching television specials celebrating the nation’s birthday. It was not just any birthday, but the bicentennial of a great, brawny nation, a little punch-drunk from recent foreign excursions but now on its feet again and ready to swing, or so proclaimed the chatterati. Then we ate three of the oranges and went to bed. I lay down on my bunk, closed my eyes, knocked my knees against the rearranged furniture of my thoughts, and shuddered at what I saw. I opened my eyes but it made no difference. No matter whether my eyes were open or shut, I could still see it, the crapulent major’s third eye, weeping because of what it could see about me.