Free Heat Lightning by John Sandford Page A

they're high-fliers."
    "Well, if they are, somebody's got them on a pretty friggin' tight expense account--either that, or they're putting down twenty percent for tips and keeping the cash."
    "They're that kind of guys?" Virgil asked.
    "They're, uh . . . They're some guys I wouldn't fuck with," George said.
    "You're fuckin' with them now," Virgil said.
    The bellhop looked startled. "You're not going to tell them."
    "No. I just wanted to see if you'd jump," Virgil said, standing up, stretching. "You did, which means, you know, maybe you're not bullshitting me."
    "You watch yourself, cowboy," the bellhop said. "Them Japs is some serious anacondas." He made a pistol shape with his thumb and forefinger, poked Virgil above the navel, and shuffled away.
    VIRGIL HAD SPENT a good part of his life knocking on doors that had nobody behind them, entering rooms that people had just left, so he was mildly surprised when a slender man with longish hair, combed flat over the top of his head, and apparently nailed in place with gel, opened the door and said, pleasantly, "Yes?"
    "Virgil Flowers, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension," Virgil said, flipping open his ID. "I talked to Mead Sinclair a while ago, he said you might be able to help me with some Vietnam-related stuff. Are you Mr. Tai?"
    "Yes. Well . . . Okay, come in," Tai said. He was thin, with a face that was delicate but tough. The splice lines of a major scar cut down his forehead, another white scar line hung under his left eye, another below his lip. "We're working right now, it's coming up on early morning in Vietnam, the markets are opening . . ."
    "Just take a couple of minutes," Virgil said.
    He followed Tai into the suite's main room, where another Asian man sat on a couch, with a laptop on his knee and a telephone headset on his head. He was shoeless, wearing a T-shirt and blue silky gym shorts. "My partner, Phem," Tai said.
    Phem didn't look up from his laptop but said, "What's up, eh?"
    He said the "eh" perfectly: Canucks, Virgil thought, not Vietnamese.
    Tai pointed at a chair, and Virgil settled in and said, "Have you ever heard of the Vietnamese, uh, what would you call it . . . custom? The Vietnamese custom of putting a lemon in a man's mouth, as a gag, before they execute him?"
    Tai had arranged his face in a smile, which vanished in an instant. "Jesus Christ, no. What's up with that?"
    "You guys are from . . ."
    "Toronto," Tai said. "Born and raised."
    "But your parents must have been from Vietnam?"
    He nodded. "Saigon. Got out just before the shit hit the fan. I spoke Vietnamese until I was three, lucky for me. Hard language to learn later on," he said. "It helps when you're running around the rim. Phem the same, except he started English a little later."
    "The rim?"
    "The Pacific Rim," Tai said.
    "Ah . . . so . . . well, heck, I just about used up my questions," Virgil admitted. "That lemon thing is really bugging me. Have you seen the stories on TV, or the papers, about the guys who were murdered and left on veterans' memorials?"
    "Something about it, but we usually mostly read the financial pages."
    Phem nudged Tai, tapped his computer screen. Tai leaned over to look and said, "No way," then turned back to Virgil.
    "There's some connection with Vietnam," Virgil said. "One of the murdered men was going to meetings with a Vietnam vet group, and he'd talked to Sinclair, and I know nothing about Vietnam. Hell, I've never been much further away from here than Amarillo, Texas."
    Tai said, "Amarillo? You ever have the chicken-fried steak at the Holiday Inn?"
    "Oh, Lord, I have," Virgil said. "That one right on Interstate 40?"
    "That always has some soldiers hanging around?"
    "Ah, man, that's the one. . . ."
    They talked about the effects of the chicken-fried steak for a minute, the effects lasting, depending on which direction you were going, at least to Elk City, Oklahoma (east), or Tucumcari, New Mexico (west).
    When the talk died down and he couldn't think of