Jungle Rules (2 page)

I came to know John Reynolds in New York City in 1986 while I lived and worked there. We became good friends. During that time he told me many stories about cases that he and others tried in Da Nang, and about a riot that took place in the brig on Freedom Hill in August 1968.

As those war stories amassed and grew more interesting, before long the idea for
Jungle Rules
began to take hold. In 1987, as I drafted the first outline for the
Jungle Rules
project, first envisioning it primarily as a motion picture screenplay, John Reynolds answered my questions and clarified issues about the circa 1968 military justice system, and the way things were done at First MAW Law.

Although we had fun developing the outline, and sometimes argued over trivial ideas, the project never really got anywhere. John Reynolds even went to the trouble of registering the outline with the Writers’ Guild in New York in 1987, as a potential motion picture, but nobody at that time expressed any interest in a project about a brig riot and lawyers in Vietnam. In time, our interests in the project also waned, and the outline soon took residence in my file drawer for nearly twenty years.

I left New York in 1990, and that is the last time I saw or heard from John Reynolds. In the summer of 2004, when at long last I knew that
Jungle Rules
would finally be a book, I tried to find my old friend and tell him the good news. Despite my repeated efforts through every means I could imagine, as of publication of the book I have not been able to locate him.

I feel bad that we did not stay in touch after I moved from New York City. I hope that today John Reynolds is well and happy.

 
Charles Henderson

Chapter 1

FIRST LOOK

DOGPATCH.

To get there from anyplace in Da Nang, just follow the smell.

Rusted tin, cardboard, broken stucco, discarded cars, mud and thatch. All of it pinned, nailed, or wired together by desperate hands of humankind’s abandoned. A patchwork blanket of crap that spreads a square mile. Shacks, hovels, junk piles, hardly any of them providing real shelter, but all of them representing the overcrowded homes for the slum’s wretched inhabitants. Mostly shoved wall against wall, their roofs overlapping, these haphazard dins offer just enough space out front for a bicycle pushed by a skinny person to squeeze past.

Slime-caked trenches carry a constant trickle of sewer water running alongside the narrow, hard-pac pathways that meander through the ramshackle maze. Flowing over or through the decaying body of a dead cat here, a dead rat there, spilling out of the ditch into big puddles that gather at every turn, the pestilent runoff wreaks a foul stench that adds a pronounced flavor to the dank, smoke-enriched air that wafts across Da Nang.

Pigs, chickens, half-naked kids dart about the dark alleys of Dogpatch. A black-toothed old grandma tosses out a pan full of liquid, feeding the putrid trench in front of her home, while inside the dismal little warren where she had emerged, another black-toothed woman squats on the dirt floor by a charcoal fire, stirring with a stick a boiling concoction of catch-as-catch-can stew. Tromping in the shadows, a dog with mangy blotched skin stretched over rib bones, spine, and hips looks warily for a handout. Dusty and sad, he may try to steal a grab-and-run meal while dodging a fate that could land him in a soup kettle. Like everyone else in Dogpatch, luck of the moment is all he has.

Poverty, filth, and disease live in Dogpatch. So does corruption.

Crime bosses stockpile heroin, guns, and black-market booze here, often in the backs of dope-den bordellos that overlook galleries surrounding blood-spattered plyboard arenas where around-the-clock gambling takes place: dog and cock fights, pitched battles between snakes and mongooses, and once in a while a death match between human combatants, kick-boxing to the finish. Whatever the game, here they play for keeps.

In Dogpatch, it’s all for sale. Flesh, lives, homicide, oblivion.

Need a matchbox, lid, or kilo of pot or something stronger? Hash or opium? Something more refined? Pills perhaps? Blues, yellow jackets, reds, uppers, downers? How about some LSD? Perhaps an ounce or two of H? Take your pick, China rock, Burma white, or regular old brown shit, dealers have ample stocks. Little shops with lots of incense burning in their fronts to attract hungry clients, sell the dope both retail and wholesale from under the counter. Out back, the storekeeper may just be finishing bagging out a fresh batch of Buddha, opium-soaked marijuana, a particular favorite among American GIs. A few tokes of a pin joint and the blue bus cruises into Wonderland.

Need a man dead? Hits for hire come cheap in Dogpatch. Just ask one of the cowboys leaning in a shanty door with his opium stare and a gun stuffed in his waistband, under his shirt.

Tucked within the slum, large villa-style houses surrounded by high, concrete walls with razor wire on top lay hidden here and there, obscured from most prying eyes. Quiet little whore farms. Ranches, they call them in Dogpatch-savvy American lingo. Prostitutes raised, trained, and put on the streets from these urban spreads. A steady flow of girl children bought or snatched from hungry, displaced families keeps the flesh trade fueled with a fresh array of new talent, made ready in Dogpatch for the street hustle in Da Nang.

Guarded by a crew of armed cowboys, the rancher, usually a crime boss, dope-dealing, Murder, Inc., pimp, lives here in luxury with his harem. He dictates the rules. He writes the laws. He makes it worthwhile for the local constabulary to leave his territory alone. Not even the Communists bother him.

That’s because people come here to get lost. To avoid. To disappear beneath the putrid tide. They don’t come here to fight anybody’s war. If anything, they come here to escape it.

Dogpatch is the Deadwood of Da Nang. A haven for outlaws, addicts, and misfits desperate to get away.

 
IN THE LATE fall of 1967, James Harris ran to Dogpatch after slipping off the leash of a dimwitted brig chaser. The indolent fatso guard had flopped into the jeep’s front seat, and casually left his prisoner to bounce on the back cargo floor, unwatched, sitting on his cuffed hands, while they drove from the Freedom Hill lockup to a preliminary hearing at the First Marine Aircraft Wing head shed, for Harris to face charges of dope peddling and insubordination.

Before his jeep ride that morning, the ratty-looking Marine lance corporal had managed to grab a shower and a shave with a dull, donated razor, but still wore his same old oil-stained and dirt-encrusted utility trousers, and sleeveless, green T-shirt from the Da Nang Air Base flight line, where two days ago a pair of narcs from CID had stung him in a fake buy. They nailed him dead to rights with three dozen pin joints of Buddha, a couple more loose ounces of the stuff twisted in a plastic bag, a dozen packets of Zig-Zag regulars and big Bambu’ rolling papers, a hash pipe, some roach clips, and a thick pile of cash.

As the undercover narcotics cops hustled him from the flight line, Harris mouthed off to his squadron’s adjutant, a first lieutenant from Freeport, Texas, named Clyde Brazwell, who had sicced the rat dogs from the Criminal Investigation Division of the III Marine Amphibious Force Provost Marshal’s Office on the troublesome Marine. They had wasted no time sending two shaggy-haired dirtbags to make the buy and bust.

Various rumors about Harris peddling dope had surfaced off and on among the senior enlisted and junior officers since he had landed in the squadron. Then this morning, while sipping coffee and gazing out his office window, thoughtlessly watching the flight-line mechanic who idled away most days smearing epoxy goo and paint over minor bullet and shrapnel damage on airplanes parked between sorties just outside the squadron’s hangar, the lieutenant saw two other lowlife dregs take up residence by Harris’s big gray tool chest. There in broad daylight, in plain sight, squatting in the shade of the airplane wing, the trio exchanged a handful of cash for a handful of dope that Harris took from a cigar box he kept stashed inside the big gray chest.

The former Marine sergeant who had fought his way out of the enlisted ranks by going to college at nights and earning a regular officer’s commission, despite the blatant prejudices stacked against men of his color, had never liked the ditty-bopping shit bird in the first place. Nor did he like the man’s bushed-out, Jimi Hendrix-style Afro hair or his insolent, mouthy, big-city attitude. First Lieutenant Clyde Brazwell didn’t even bother going to the squadron commander first. He saw what he saw, and needed no guidance, nor did he need anyone’s permission to finally burn this waste of skin. The middle-aged mustang officer called CID on the spot, then told his boss.

In less than an hour, two shaggy dudes wearing dirty, sleeveless T-shirts, scuffed-up boots, bleached-out, fluff-dried utility trousers, and their long, bare hair blowing in the breeze, ambled to the airplane where James Harris had resumed his piddle, wiping more epoxy goo on a bullet hole. Seeing the likely duo, he jumped down to his toolbox and flipped up the lid. While one dirtbag held out a handful of cash, and Harris thumbed open the cigar box, the other dirtbag snatched the cool lance corporal by the free hand and stepped behind him, twisting his arm like a rag and nearly breaking off his thumb as he doubled his wrist backward. The other dirtbag snatched the cigar box, and took that hand as their new prisoner dropped to his knees. Just like that, the CID narcs had their man, and cuffed him clean. No struggle.

Brazwell stood in the shade of the squadron headquarters hangar, his arms folded and a big smile on his face as the two undercover CID Marines led their prisoner away.

“Fucking Oreo brother motherfucker,” James Harris said to Brazwell, seeing the lieutenant standing there so cool, so smug, and so very satisfied. “You’re black on the outside but white through your middle.”

“That’s disrespect to a commissioned officer,” the senior CID Marine said to Harris, lifting him by his handcuffs, raising him to his tiptoes. “Keep it up, clown, and we’ll write even more charges.”

The jailers took possession of James Harris’s two-inch-long, hand-carved ebony fist that he wore on a leather thong, dangling around his neck, along with his blue bandanna that he kept tied around his head, and his wallet, a pocket knife, and loose change. The cigar box full of dope and cash went into a large brown envelope, marked “evidence,” and he knew he would never see it again. He figured that the narc rats working inside CID would quickly absorb the cash, and smoke all but a few representative joints.

“Fucking wingers with your long hair, sideburns, and big-ass Afro hairdos. What are you trying to be, a Navajo tying that rag around your head? Fucking hippies, all of you air wing shit birds. You get back from your court hearing, and get formally charged, we’re going to have ourselves a party, shaving that nappy scruff off your skull,” a staff sergeant guard said to Harris as they walked him to his cage. “What do you think about that, Slick?”

Harris stared coldly at the white Marine MP, and said nothing as the heavy-gauge expanded-steel-mesh door slammed shut. He vowed to say nothing more to anyone. From here on out, they would have to read his mind. Last time he had stood before a judge, his fast mouth had jumped him onto a new set of tracks that led him to where he was today.

Back then, two years ago, the Chicago magistrate told the young, Blackstone Rangers gang lord from the Windy City’s South Side that he had a choice between going to prison and continuing on a path of personal destruction, or seizing hold of a new beginning by enlisting in the Marine Corps. That day Harris talked way too smart and way too much, he later discovered, playing on the old white man’s sympathies toward the underprivileged black youths of his city. With no lawyer to beat the assault charges, stemming from a street fight, he talked smart enough to get the offer of four years’ military service rather than six months in jail. He felt so wise at the time. Beat the system. Yes, sir! he thought.

James Harris snapped at the chance to avoid hard labor behind bars, but quickly discovered at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina, that dragging chain in Cook County Jail would have been a cakewalk compared to the life into which he fell. Harsh discipline meted out by brutal drill instructors put the fear of God in him for a while. At least until a week after graduation. Then his old, salty self came slowly back to life. His attitude seemed to grow with the thickness of his hair. He smarted his way into airframe mechanics’ school and slid downhill from there.

“White man’s world, white man’s rules, white man’s war,” he had reminded himself as he sat in his cage for two days, waiting for his initial hearing. Then the fat chaser cuffed him extra tight, and threw him in the back of the jeep. While his wrists ached with the pain that the manacles brought, their hard, sharp edges twisting into his flesh, James Harris kept a steely face and told himself that one day he would even the score.