Vato, Blood, and Thi Anh Tran: Equal Business Partners

Vato, Blood, and Thi Anh Tran are equal partners in V & B Tow Company, but their relationship begins not as a business arrangement of their own making. Vato and Blood inherit an obligation from Gorman Flaff, a wartime associate whose testament names them as responsible for Thi Anh. They first meet her among the Vietnamese refugees at Pendleton in May 1975; fulfilling Flaff’s obligation brings her into the company, where her work and authority transform a duty into a partnership. The result is a three-way relationship in which practical dependence and a debt inherited from the past coexist with Thi Anh’s command of the firm’s finances.

An Obligation Inherited from Flaff

During the war, Vato and Blood were associated with Gorman Flaff, known as the Ghost, in his elaborate currency operations involving money orders and piastres. They entered his financial enterprise at a moment that allowed their participation to appear, in retrospect, almost like a providential intervention. Flaff was superstitious, and he came to trust them; in his will, he made them successors to his obligations toward Thi Anh Tran.

The obligation had a history of its own. Flaff had paid for Thi Anh’s education at an Ecoles des Jeunes Filles in Saigon and sent her a small monthly allowance. The reason for this support was uncertain. One circulating account held that Flaff had killed her parents and felt guilty, but the narrative treats that explanation as rumor, not established fact, and suggests that neither the alleged act nor the supposed remorse seemed characteristic of him. What is certain is that Flaff had supported Thi Anh and that, after he died from going too close to the wrong place, his testament transferred responsibility for her to Vato and Blood.

At their base, a chaplain delivered the letter containing the will. Thi Anh’s name appeared there for the first time in their lives. Vato and Blood sat with the news, drinking warm Coca-Cola as Phantom aircraft passed over the jungle and helicopters stirred the humid air. Their silence marks the moment when a previously abstract testamentary duty acquired a person’s name. Years later, they encountered the person herself.

From Refugee to Equal Partner

By the time Vato and Blood found Thi Anh at Pendleton, she had grown up and obtained an accounting diploma. She was among thousands of Vietnamese refugees who had arrived after the fall of Saigon, waiting in a military tent intended for twenty-five people. She smoked menthol cigarettes and listened to rock and roll on the radio while waiting for the process to run its course. The account presents her first in a setting of displacement and waiting, then shows how the inherited obligation gives her a route into the men’s business.

Vato and Blood initially hired Thi Anh as their bookkeeper in their role as her sponsors. Her professional value soon altered the arrangement: they made her an equal partner. That change is more than a promotion from clerical work. The financial records of V & B came to rest in her hands, and she knew its affairs from beginning to end. The men understood that those records could concern not only tax authorities but other organizations far less forgiving about theft. Their business therefore depends on Thi Anh’s expertise, while her position gives her substantial authority over information with consequences beyond ordinary bookkeeping.

The partnership joins two different kinds of obligation. Vato and Blood’s responsibility originates in Flaff’s will; Thi Anh’s standing in the company rests on the value of her own work and the authority she acquires there. The narrative does not describe a formal negotiation or spell out how she came to control the accounts. It does make the progression plain: sponsor and employer become business partners, and the men’s initial duty develops into an arrangement in which they are acutely conscious of her power.

Authority, Apprehension, and the Birthday Plan

The three-way relationship is visible in a small episode organized around Thi Anh’s birthday. Blood had discovered the date by chance in her file, and he and Vato agreed that a surprise would be welcome. Choosing a restaurant, however, becomes unexpectedly difficult. Blood rejects Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, and Polynesian food on the assumption that Thi Anh has had enough of those cuisines; Vato proposes a Mexican restaurant, Taco Carajo, where mariachi music and hot antojitas are available. The exchange produces no easy solution: each choice seems capable of offending her, and neither man wants to provoke her anger.

Their anxiety is not simply social awkwardness. By this point, Thi Anh controls the details of the company’s finances, including information that could attract the attention of tax authorities or more dangerous interests. Vato and Blood deny being afraid of her, but the narration makes clear that both are. The birthday plan thus turns a gesture of appreciation into a revealing test of the partnership: they want to honor her, yet approach the decision as men who know that their business depends on a partner they are reluctant to cross.

A later office encounter gives that apprehension a routine, comic scale. Blood tells Vato that Thi Anh wants to speak with him, and Vato wonders whether the reason is an hamburger and fries he charged to the company credit card. He spends ten minutes in her office. Nothing can be heard from outside—not voices or other sounds—and he emerges shaking his head. The episode does not disclose what Thi Anh said or whether the charge was the issue; it leaves the private exchange private. But Vato’s suspicion shows how readily he imagines that even a small personal expense might require an account to be settled with her.

When Blood asks whether anything has gone wrong, Vato answers by admiring Thi Anh, and Blood agrees that he already knows her worth. Their response closes the gap between fear and esteem without resolving it into either simple affection or simple intimidation. Thi Anh is a business partner whose command of the accounts makes the men cautious, but their preparations for her birthday and their unqualified admiration also register recognition of what she brings to the firm.

The Partnership’s Meaning

The relationship’s structure is shaped by a sequence of transfers: Flaff’s financial support for Thi Anh, his testamentary transfer of responsibility to Vato and Blood, the men’s hiring of her, and her rise to equal ownership. The chain begins in an opaque wartime past, with rumors about Flaff’s motives that remain unconfirmed; it ends, in the evidence available here, with a working partnership whose balance of power is unmistakably affected by Thi Anh’s financial command.

Vato and Blood do not simply discharge a duty and move on. They bring the obligation into their business, where Thi Anh’s accounting skills make her essential and her equal status makes that dependence explicit. Their caution around her, from the restaurant deliberations to Vato’s worry over the company-card meal, gives the partnership its distinctive texture: she is the person they once had a duty to assist, now also the partner whose judgment they respect and whose authority they do not take lightly.