Abandoned: MIA in Vietnam (18 page)

CHAPTER 26

Wolfe wove his way between the mental patients who sat, wandered, or stood in the open area. Some appeared normal, others far from it, talking to themselves and/or gesturing to unseen acquaintances. He turned right in the first hallway and stopped at the third door on the left. The door stood open. A tall, thin, vaguely familiar black man with reddish gray hair and a bushy, gray, handlebar mustache and beard lay in the single bed staring at the ceiling. He wore khaki pants, a sleeveless undershirt, and sandals. Tattoos covered both forearms and deltoids, but their pigments had faded and they were difficult to interpret on his dark skin. The room smelled of disinfectant.

From the hallway, Wolfe said, “Chief Fulton?”

The man sat up in the bed and looked at Wolfe. “Are you the physical therapist?” he asked, swinging his feet to the floor.

“No,” Wolfe said. “I’m Addison Wolfe. You and I were on
Oriskany
together in 1967. In Vietnam.” Wolfe had a vague memory of a younger version of this man, one of two sailors in dungarees and chambray shirts who sat at a table in front of a cash box. A chief, dressed in khakis with a thick wad of cash in his hands, stood behind him. “Weren’t you in disbursements? S-4?”

A smile creased the retired chief’s face. “Why, yes. Yes, I was. Where did you work? I don’t remember you, but we have all changed in the last forty years. No?” He expressed himself with a mild southern accent. Atlanta, if Wolfe remembered correctly. He laughed a hearty laugh. “At least I have.”

“Hangar deck,” Wolfe said. “I was on
Oriskany
from June until December, 1967. Went to
Ranger
after
Oriskany
left Hong Kong.”

Fulton’s face clouded immediately. His voice dropped in pitch. He clipped his words. “So, you knew Byrnes,” he said. “Is that why you are here? To kill me?”

“Whoa,” Wolfe said, puzzled. “Hang on, Chief. I’m not going to kill anyone.” He held his hands out to show Fulton they were empty. “I want to talk with you about Jimmy.”

“He’s killed my friends, you know?”

“Who killed your friends, Chief?” Wolfe asked, confusion worsening.

“Byrnes. Serves us right, of course; we deserve it,” Fulton said. He leaned into the wall next to the bed and crossed his legs, Indian style in front of him on the bed. Lifting his head, he stared at the corner of the ceiling next to the window. Wolfe watched him cock his head, as if he listened to a noise, or voice. “I thought he’d come himself, not send an assassin.”

“Mind if I sit?’ Wolfe asked, pulling a chair from under the desk inside the room to his left. He sat without waiting for Fulton to reply. “I don’t think Jimmy could have killed your friends. It looks like he’s been dead for a while, killed by an airstrike in South Vietnam in 1970.”

“Not true. I’ve seen him myself. He killed my friends.”

“When did you see him?” Wolfe asked, hoping to dispense with the man’s delusion and move on to other questions.

“About two weeks ago. He told me to put medication in Clemons’s intravenous.”

“And where did you see him?” Wolfe asked.

“He was in the emergency room. I saw him as I entered the hospital to visit Clemons. He pointed out the syringe lying on the red cart. Said I would die next if I didn’t do what he said,” Fulton said. He appeared to be more agitated the longer they talked about Byrnes.

“Okay,” Wolfe said, “I’ll concede you might have seen him. Why would he task you with pushing medicine into Clemons’s intravenous?”

“Payback.”

“Payback for what?” Wolfe asked.

Fulton dropped his head. No longer staring at the corner of the ceiling. He stared in his lap. Wolfe thought he saw a tear fall onto the bed sheet. He said, “We beat him up, threw him overboard.”

“We?” Wolfe said.

“Deke Jameson’s gang. The guys who embezzled from supply. We had leather flight jackets we sold, tool sets, ice cream, clothing. You name it; we trafficked in it at some point during Vietnam. At one point we had a hundred M-16s for sale. But we never got into drugs. No heroin. We were clean, man.”

Suddenly, Wolfe understood. He said, “So when Byrnes caught Jameson red-handed stealing laundry, he interrupted a large smuggling operation. And put a dent in your profits?”

Anger swelled in Fulton’s throat. He clenched his teeth briefly, jaw muscles bulging. Taking a deep breath, he relaxed and said, “Jameson couldn’t keep from showing off. He told someone that no one would report him, no matter how blatant he was. He had too much power. What a laugh. Hell, we had to lay low until the cruise ended. He probably cost us a half million dollars over those six months,” he said.

“I guess you had reason to be furious,” Wolfe said. “If Jimmy survived the beating and being tossed off the ship, he also probably had grounds for revenge.
If
he survived. Why are you so sure he killed your friends?”

Fulton stood suddenly. He marched toward Wolfe, made a sharp turn to his left, and opened a closet, from which he pulled a scrapbook. He laid the six-inch thick, red-leather book on the desk in front of Wolfe. Orange, nylon, navy shot line bound the front and back covers of the book together. “It’s all in here,” Fulton said, returning to sitting on his bed and staring at the ceiling.

Wolfe opened the loose-leaf book. The names of the men listed on the inside of the front cover were the same as those listed on the last page in Clemons’s black book. Next to each name was a date and a page number. Clemons’s date was the most recent. Wolfe turned to the page indicated. He found three newspaper articles about Clemons’s death, including one Wolfe had found where the police had detained Fulton.

The clippings about Holden’s death in Puget Sound mirrored Chief Noble’s recollections. Holden, then a first-class petty officer in administration, left a bar late one night and had driven toward the ferry on his way to Seattle. Another vehicle had crossed the centerline of the highway and smashed into his car. He died at the scene. The owner of the other car had reported it stolen two days prior. Blood found in the second vehicle did not belong to the automobile’s owner. The police never found the second driver. They assumed he was intoxicated, had survived, and walked home. Or, he had died in the woods trying to get home. They did not recover a body. They were unaware of any missing persons at that time. The hit and run case remained open and unsolved.

On October 12, 2000, Chief Petty Officer George Little died on the USS
Cole
in Yemen when terrorists exploded a bomb near the ship. The guided missile destroyer had been refueling in Aden. Fulton had collected fourteen pages of newspaper and magazine clippings concerning the bombing. Little had been scheduled to retire at the end of the cruise, after nearly thirty five years on active duty.

Deke Jameson had the misfortune to be in a liquor store during a robbery that went sour. Held as a hostage, he died of a gunshot wound when one of the thieves used him as a shield and attempted to flee the scene. Ten pages were devoted to clippings about his death. Most of them mentioned the fact that the San Francisco Police Department did not recover the weapon that fired the bullet that killed him, even though they detained all the suspects in the robbery. An investigation cleared the police of any liability in Jameson’s death.

Wolfe closed the scrapbook. “This is your proof that Byrnes is killing your friends?” he said. He realized that Fulton suffered from some form of mental disease, possibly Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a psychosis, or both. Still, Fulton should have recognized that these men died from accidents. “These look like accidents.”

“Byrnes designed them to look like accidents,” Fulton said.

“Sailors who drink a lot of alcohol, frequent bars, and drive while intoxicated, die from accidents more often than sober civilians,” Wolfe said. “Servicemen put themselves in harm’s way. They die in combat, like Little in Yemen and Montgomery in Kuwait.” He doubted the logic impressed Fulton. The man might never be rational again.

“No! No!” Fulton yelled. “Byrnes did this. Can’t you see? Are you all blind?” He jumped from his bed and began to swing his fists at Wolfe.

Wolfe blocked the blows and backed out of the room without retaliating. Fulton followed him, ineffectual blows blocked by Wolfe’s arms. “Nurse!” Wolfe yelled.

Two large muscular men in white pants and shirts came to his rescue. They restrained Fulton and walked him back into his room. “Sorry, sir,” one of them said. “His medication seems to be wearing off. Maybe you should have a seat the waiting room.” Wolfe agreed.

CHAPTER 27

“Is it okay if I put you on speaker phone, Mr. Young?” Wolfe asked the man on the other end of the telephone conversation. “That would make it easier to take notes.”
And to keep the phone plugged in for recharging,
he thought.

“Sure, Dr. Wolfe,” said the other man. “Can you speak a little louder?”

“I’ll try,” Wolfe said. “It may be the poor reception here where I live. If it’s too bad, I’ll drive to Starbucks, or somewhere else so we can talk more easily.”

“Actually, you sound better on speaker,” Young said. “Call me Steph, though. In your email, you said Tammy Byrnes gave you my name and email address?”

Wolfe nodded, circling Young’s name on a nearly blank sheet of paper. The man was the first to agree to talk about Byrnes. “Okay, Steph, call me Addy. That’s right. Her last name is Kimura, now, though. Tammy Kimura. She said you and Jim were friends? Is that true?”

Young laughed. The speaker option on Wolfe’s cell phone made the laugh sound tinny. “Yeah. I suspect I was his only real friend at Hammond High School, with the exception of Emily.”

“The girlfriend he broke up with after he left Annapolis?”

“They were pretty much broken up before he dropped out,” Young said. “He came home one weekend sophomore year on crutches, leg in a cast. You could tell something was eating at him. Normally he had a huge smile on his face.
The inscrutable Oriental
we called him. Always smiling. You never knew what he was thinking, though. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not being racist. My mother is also Japanese. My father was in the air force. Met her after the war.”

“So you had a lot in common with Jimmy, Steph,” Wolfe said.

“Yeah,” Young said. “Except my father stayed put a lot more. He had four- and five-year tours in SAC and the Pentagon. I had been at Hammond all four years. Jimmy showed up at the beginning of senior year. He didn’t expect to finish high school there, either. He thought his family would be moving between semesters. But his mom chose to stay in Alexandria when the navy transferred his father. I guess they had some marital problems.”

“I knew him as an enlisted man in the navy, after he left Annapolis,” Wolfe said. “What was he like in high school?”

“He had a lot of inner dragons, not demons like Caucasians,” Young said, laughing again. “Your first impression of him was he had a chip on his shoulder, or he was arrogant. But he wasn’t. He was very, very reserved, even for a Japanese. Except for Emily and me, I doubt anyone ever saw him open up, relax, and be himself.”

“Was Emily Japanese, too?” Wolfe asked.

“No. She was short like an Asian. But she was a natural blonde, with a dynamite body. And she was smart. Editor of the school newspaper her senior year, the year after Jim and I graduated. Even she had a hard time getting him to open up at first. She traded her kisses for his information, I believe.”

“Because he was new or because he was half-Japanese?” Wolfe asked. “He had no problems with speaking his mind in the navy. On the ship, some people may not have liked his honesty or candor, though. And when he drank he could really get wound up.”

Young thought for a minute before continuing. Wolfe heard him talk to someone in the background. He continued, “He didn’t drink in high school. His mother kept a tight rein on him. If you went to visit his home, and you were of Japanese descent like me, you saw him bow to his parents. His sisters bowed to him and their parents. All Japanese are made aware of their station in life. It’s part of being Japanese, like eating pizza is part of being American. Captain Byrnes didn’t go to church. Mrs. Byrnes took the kids to temple. She talked with the monks and Buddhist priests a lot.

“His dad instilled a lot of Annapolis in him, I’m sure, but his mother wanted him to be a Samurai. They even had two Samurai swords that hung over the mantel place. One was his father’s. On graduation from the Academy, they were going to give him the other.”

“Did you play football with him?”

“No. Thank goodness,” Young said.

“Why
thank goodness
?”

“They said he was a demon on the field. He had played offensive and defensive lineman in some small high schools as his dad moved around the country. Playing against larger guys, he learned how to hit really hard and to take punishment and protect himself in collisions. I think he only weighed 135-145 pounds as a senior, too. On our team, they made him a cornerback. I rowed crew, but I used to hear the other players in the locker room complain about how hard he hit in practice. They went 6-4 that year. Hammond seldom had winning seasons.”

“Did you two hear many racial slurs, Steph? He seemed to attract bigots in the navy,” Wolfe said.

Young paused, then admitted, “There were some rednecks at school. I assume he converted all those on the football team.” Young laughed. “It’s hard to insult a guy who lays you out flat, especially if you outweigh him by fifty pounds. Some kid in homeroom called him a
gook
once. The football team held a rally at that student’s locker later that day. They bent up the door to his locker so badly that the school had to replace it. The kid kept his mouth shut from then on.”

“Was he comfortable in high school? His sister talks as if they both hated America.”

“You have to understand there are great cultural differences between the United States and Japan,” Young said. “Jimmy referred to us as mutts. He and his sister interpreted for their mother until her English improved. They grew up quickly. Their father was rarely home. They saw their role as protecting their mother and little sister. It was a burden, I’m sure.

“The Japanese are a monolithic culture. They revere the emperor, worship him as a god. My mother and his mother tried to impart Japanese cultures to us. My mother insisted that I was put on this Earth to make her miserable. I’m sure his mother felt the same way. We both rebelled at home. But neither of us felt comfortable enough to dissent at school. We were different. Different stands out. American high schools are intimidating, even for full-blooded American kids. And full-blooded Japanese are yin-yang anyway: loyal vs. treacherous; non-accessable vs. accessible; militaristic vs. aesthetic; submissive vs. resentful. You get the idea. We didn’t fit in, in either culture. I still don’t.”

“I appreciate your taking the time to talk with me, Steph,” Wolfe said. “I’m sure I’ll think of more questions as I dig into this a little more.”

“What, exactly are you investigating?” Young asked.

“Initially, I was interested in finding out why someone would use Jimmy’s name while trying to kill a dead man. I told you about that in the email. Then I wanted to make certain his family knew what a fine young man he was when I knew him. Then some asshole CIA agent told me I shouldn’t have an interest in MIAs from the Vietnam War. That made me mad as hell. I may have to travel all the way to Vietnam to find out for myself what happened to him. I’m sorry I didn’t know twenty years ago what I know now. By the way, have you kept in touch with Emily Rose?”

“She is Emily Thornton, or was until she divorced the jerk. Max Thornton was a star basketball player in her class at Hammond. They got married after college, had two or three kids and a divorce about ten years later. I expect she has remarried,” Young said. He paused. “You know, I believe I know someone who has her email address. I have your email address; I’ll send you all the information I can dig up. I’m curious myself as to what she’s doing these days. Good talking to you, Doctor.”

“Addy’s fine,” Wolfe reminded him. “Thanks, Steph. Keep in touch. Bye.”

“Bye, Addy.”