Poisoned Hearts (The Vietnam War Book 4) by Steven Hardesty

Author:Steven Hardesty
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Stevens & Marlin Publishing, LLC
Published: 2015-08-06T23:00:00+00:00

1987

Sandi Tarbuck, a thousand miles away from Jack Pinch’s grave, stood at the street corner letting the traffic lights switch from green to yellow to red. She let it all happen again. Again. She stared across at the machine parts warehouse where Rubén Stick worked, ex-radioman from Crazy Company. Why carry on with this search? The answers were becoming all wrong. She was beginning not to want to hear them. But she was a woman on autopilot. She could not stop herself.

Sandi went into the small building in which the parts it distributed were small parts – micro-pitch roller chain for fine machines or for adjusting cameras in space satellites, tiny cogs and gears, the little things of machine-life that can drift into forgotten corners but without which great machines stall and industries founder. They let her into the warehouse. She watched a man walk the length of the building toward her. He had a jutting goatee and the flash of a diamond stud in one earlobe. Tattoos up his neck. Walking with the heavy gracelessness of a man in steel-toed boots and hardhat whose muscles had thickened and slowed with the repetition of a lifetime of heavy routine.

They sat at a table cluttered with used paper cups. Rubén Stick laid his bare forearms on the table, hunched toward her, watching. “Told you everything I know on the phone,” he said.

“It helps me to see people when I talk to them,” Sandi said.

“Don’t help me having them look at me. Bothers me. I like the phone.”

“If your name’s Stick, why did they call you ‘Spiker’ during the war?”

“I spike basketballs.”

“Johnny loved basketball.”

“We played some one-on-one.”

“How well did you know Johnny?”

“Didn’t know his name was Johnny until you told me. Knew Gravy pretty well. We had beers. Talked in Spanish when we didn’t have nothing to do. His Spanish was okay. Went to a few cathouses. Took me first time to a place owned by Sergeant Castor. Think Gravy got a cut on each guy he brought in. I tried to work the same deal with Castor but he wouldn’t do it. The place was all right. Old Castor kept his girls fattened up. None of that scrawny stuff you got everywhere else. Washed them, too. Fresh rubbers. But I can’t tell you that kind of stuff. You were his girl.”

“Did Johnny tell you that?”

“Don’t remember that he told me.”

“Did he show you my pictures?”

“Can’t remember. Wasn’t important even then.”

“Did he show you photos of a girl in an orange bikini?”

“He showed me pictures of naked girls, no bikinis. Some wasn’t so nice, what he had her doing. He had lots of pictures. He had lots of girls back in high school and down in Saigon. I saw he had plenty right there in basecamp – whores, bargirls, Red Cross dollies, all of them. He was good with girls. They liked his dancing. They liked everything about him, especially how he could use his tool.”

“Can you remember their names?”

“How could I remember their names? They were just girls.

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