So, Dickie was home where he wanted to be, but I couldn’t get the old in and out going. Susan sensed this and moved her hips up and down.
I think we had simultaneous orgasms, or maybe simultaneous muscle spasms, followed by a brief period of unconsciousness. When I woke up, I was still on top of her. I got out of bed and shook her awake.
I practically carried her into the bathroom and turned on the shower. There was a sliver of soap on the sink, and we got in the small fiberglass stall together. We let the tepid water run over our bodies, then dried off with small hand towels.
We staggered back to the bed and flopped down side by side. Susan yawned and asked me, “Did we have sex?”
“I think so.”
“Good.” She yawned again and said, “Are we friends?”
“Of course.”
She stayed quiet for a while, and I thought she was sleeping. I turned off the lamp.
In the dark, she asked me, “Where’s the gun?”
“Under my pillow. Leave it there.”
She stayed silent for a while, then said, “Everything I told you about my personal life is true.”
“Good night.”
“The other stuff… well, what choice did I have?”
“I don’t know. Sweet dreams.”
She stayed quiet, then said, “I have a photo pack with me, Paul.”
This woke me up. I asked, “A photo pack of the victim?”
“Yes. And of the possible murderer.”
I sat up and turned on the light. “And?”
“And that’s it. They’re both young men, in uniform, and the photos are not captioned.”
“Where are the photos?”
“In my backpack.”
I got out of bed and opened her backpack at the foot of the bed. I completely emptied it out on the bed, finding no second pistol, which made me feel better.
I found the photo pack, a vinyl-bound and plastic-wrapped album that held single shots on each page. I took the album to the lamp and held it under the light. I started flipping through the pages, and the first ten photos, in color and black and white, were all of the same man in various uniforms— khakis, stateside fatigues, green dress uniform, and even one in a blue formal uniform. In some photos, the guy was bareheaded, and in some he wore a helmet or the appropriate headgear for the uniform. I could see from the rank insignia that the guy was a lieutenant, and he wore the crossed rifle insignia of an infantryman. In one photo, he was in jungle fatigues, and I could make out the shoulder patch of the First Cavalry, and the patch of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam. He was about twenty-five, maybe a little younger. He had sandy hair, cut short, big innocent eyes, and a nice smile.
I knew, even without the rank, that this guy was not the killer; he was the victim. He looked like a lot of guys I’d known in ’Nam who had something in their smiles and their eyes that told you they wouldn’t be around long. Truly, the good died young, and everyone else had a fifty-fifty chance. I imagined that these photos came from the man’s family.
The second group of about ten photos showed a guy with captain’s bars. He, like the other guy, wore the crossed rifle insignia of the infantry, and in a few photos, he wore jungle fatigues with the same two shoulder patches as the lieutenant.
I studied this man’s face, but my eyes were blurry, and my mind was half asleep. Yet, there was something familiar about his face, though I couldn’t place the face in the proper context, and nothing was jelling — except that I knew the face.
In one photo, the captain was in a green dress uniform, and with the tie on, the face looked more familiar. He was a rugged-looking man, with dark hair, cut military short, dark, piercing eyes, and a smile that was put on, but could pass for sincere.
On his green dress uniform, I could make out two rows of ribbons, and I recognized most of them, including the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, like my own, but also the Silver Star, which showed bravery above and beyond the call and so forth, plus the Vietnamese Service Medal, indicating, like the medals for bravery, that this photo was taken post-Vietnam. This guy also had the Purple Heart, but since he was in uniform, post-’Nam, it was not a disabling wound. Whoever this guy was, he’d come home in honor and glory, and might still be alive, if he hadn’t gone back to ’Nam and run out of luck. Of course he was alive; that’s why I was here.
I stared at the photograph of the captain in his green uniform, and I looked into his eyes, which seemed to be far away, like the eyes of a man whose mind was elsewhere. Whoever this man was, someone in the CID and/or the FBI thought he was a murderer.
I flipped through the photos again, and this time I concentrated on the uniform nametags that were visible in some of the photos. Not one of the nametags was readable, and I had the distinct impression the photos had been retouched to blur the names. Interesting.
Susan asked, “Do either of them look familiar?”
I made eye contact with her and replied, “No. Why should they?”
“Well… I thought we discussed that one of them might now be famous.”
I didn’t respond to that, but said, “Maybe our witness can identify one or both of them, though it’s a long shot.”
I put the photo pack on the night table. I needed to sleep on those photos, and maybe it would come to me. I had the feeling that Susan could put name captions on both those men.
I turned off the light and fell into bed.
Susan was saying something, and I could hear a sentence that began with, “Tomorrow,” and ended with “conclusion,” which was a good place for me to pass out.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
I dreamt of my farmhouse in Virginia; a light snow was falling outside my window. I awoke at dawn to a different reality.
Susan was awake and said to me, “If we went back to the States together, I think we could put all this behind us.”
I said, “Let’s get back to the States.”
She took my hand and said, “And when people ask us how we met, we can say we met on vacation in Vietnam.”
“I hope this is not your idea of a vacation.”
“Or we can say we were secret agents on a dangerous mission, and we’re not allowed to talk about it.”
I sat up. “We have to get moving.”
She squeezed my hand and said, “If something happens to me, and you get out of here, will you visit my family and tell them about this? About… the last few weeks…?”
I didn’t reply. I’d made that promise to three Boston area guys in ’68, and one of them didn’t make it back, so when I’d gotten home, I kept my promise and visited the parents in Roxbury, and it was the longest two hours of my life. I truly would rather have been back in combat than there. Mom, Pop, two younger brothers, and one sister, about four years old, who kept asking me where her brother was.
“Paul?”
I said, “I will. Do the same for me.”
She sat up and kissed me, then got out of bed and went into the bathroom.
I got dressed, then squared away all our gear, and stuck the pistol in the small of my back.
Susan came out of the bathroom. As she got dressed, she asked, “What’s the plan?”
“We’ll be Canadian tourists and take a look around.”
We left the motorcycle in the room and walked out of the motel onto the street, which was the road we’d come in on.
It was cool and partly overcast, and in the daylight, I could see that most of the buildings were French colonial, set among lush vegetation. There were dozens of people walking and bicycling on the dirt road. The men wore pith helmets, like the North Viet soldiers had in ’68, and those helmets still sent a shiver down my spine. The Viet women wore conical straw hats, and the Montagnards, who seemed to make up the majority of the population, wore the traditional garments of at least two distinct tribes.