by Andrew Lanh
“My God, Dustin.”
“I know, I know. So they knew it for a while. Letters back and forth, hints in letters, I guess.”
“Why didn’t they call the authorities?” Hank asked, anger lacing his words.
Dustin spat out, “The Commies.”
“I don’t follow,” I said.
He fiddled with his eyeglasses. “You know, everybody talks of finding missing soldiers. The American government is…like crazy for remains. MIAs, you know. Years after the war, you know. Organizations promise huge money. Rewards. People in the villages talk of it—whisper about it. A path of gold, they say.”
Hank sneered, “Jesus Christ.”
Dustin’s words were clipped. “Why shouldn’t my family have the money? They found the body, hid it away in a box, didn’t tell anyone.”
“Dustin, do you hear how crazy this sounds?” I said.
“I guess so. But a month ago Uncle Binh told me they didn’t know how to get the reward.”
Hank was confused. “What reward?”
“Promises of big money for remains,” I told him. “For the return of solders held prisoners. Common enough during the war.”
“And afterwards,” Dustin added. “The problem is the Commies. You can’t let them know.”
“Of course they have to know,” I said. “They run the country.”
He was shaking his head vigorously, but stopped. “Could I have a glass of water, please?”
“Dustin, finish this story.”
“I’m thirsty.”
I got up and poured him a glass of water. He drank it down in huge gulps, slopping some of it onto his shirt, then held out the glass. “Another.” I poured him another, which he sipped slowly. His hands trembled as he raised the glass to his lips.
“Okay, Dustin. Go on.”
He stood up, surprising us, and I thought he was going to run out of the apartment. Instead, he walked to the front window and stared down into the dark street. “It’s so quiet here,” he said. “In the projects there’s noise all the time. Gunfire. People shoot into the sky. Did you know that?”
“Yes,” I said. “Dustin.”
He walked back toward us but paused by my bookcases. Suddenly he took a leather-bound volume from a shelf, held it in the palm of his hand as if weighing it, then rubbed his fingers along the spine. “Soft,” he said. “Why don’t they make books like this anymore?”
“Dustin, sit down.”
“Someday I will have a bookcase filled with books like these. Soft. They look like they could crumble if you open them.”
I smiled. “Some of them will, Dustin.”
His spun around, his face contorted. “What am I gonna do?” His face stark, pale. “What am I gonna do?”
“Tell us.”
“The Commies.”
I pointed to the sofa. He sat down, took another sip of the water, and then, startling me, reached over and broke off a chunk of Gracie’s Bundt cake. His fingers simply snapped a piece off, and he stuffed the cake into his mouth. Crumbs dropped to the floor, rested in the corner of his lips.
“For Christ’s sake,” Hank stammered. “What’s going on?”
“The Commies.” A sliver of a smile. “In the village they whisper about people in other villages who found body remains. American soldiers. Rumors of rewards. The money promised. But everyone talks of how you gotta tell the local Commie authorities, and suddenly they are the ones with the cars, the villas on the South China Sea, the trips…you know…the guy who found the body gets squat. You can’t open your mouth. The Commies call the Americans who have a committee or something to deal with this—they are hungry to get bodies back, even now, years later—and the money—millions and millions of dollars—goes to the Commies. Nothing you can do about it.”
“So your family…”
“Didn’t know what to do,” he finished for me. “How to contact the people offering the reward and skip by the Commies until they had to know—after the fact.”
“Dustin, there’s lots of fakery. People show up with pig or cow bones, with phony dog tags and bits of clothing, and demand money. Not uncommon. Most turn out to be scams. Dustin, let me tell you something—the American government does not pay a reward for remains.”
“They don’t?” Wide-eyed, mouth open.
“No,” I said firmly. “That’s a myth. Everybody wants American money. Dishonest folks traffic supposedly real bones to innocent folks who think they’ll become rich—get a visa to America. Piles of hidden gold handed over. The Vietnamese Office for Seeking Missing Persons fields hundreds of such fake remains. Manufactured dog tags. Evil bone dealers dig up Vietnamese graves—hand over the bones of old women.”
Hank was watching Dustin’s face. “Reward?”
I answered. “Stories of rewards up to a million or more. From private sources. Like the POW Publicity Fund. Black market dealings. Word-of-mouth promises of money.”
Dustin protested, his voice strident. “But this was real. That’s why they sent a piece of bone to America. For the shrine. Proof. The American—part of him—back home. In a shrine. Worship. The long journey home.”
Hank grumbled, “The cheeseburger.”
Dustin gave a phony laugh. “American food for the American journey. Keep the G.I. happy as can be.”
“And you didn’t know this?” I asked.
“I thought it was, you know, because they didn’t have oranges or something. When I found it today, it creeped me out. That’s why I’m telling you.”
Suddenly Dustin shot up, pulling open his book bag. “I just remembered.” He extracted a crumpled sheet and handed it to me. A yellowed, torn sheet of fragile paper. I smoothed it out.
“This was in the shrine.”
A reward leaflet, typical of millions dropped by planes over Vietnam, during and after the war. A line drawing of a stereotypical Vietnamese man shaking hands with an American soldier. Much of the cheap ink had faded but what little I could discern talked of a two-million-dollar reward for the return of an MIA prisoner, proven, documented. Or proof of death. The process for contacting a committee called America Homeward. In big letters: “2,000,000 dollars. U.S. Dollar.” Some of the language I couldn’t understand, and I handed it to Hank.
“This is from during the war,” he said. “Also rewards for information about the Viet Cong strongholds, rewards for firearms turned in, for secrets, a whole laundry list of reimbursement.”
I was shaking my head. “Whole mythologies have sprung up about MIAs. Fake reports, fake leaflets, fake sightings, eating into the hopes of those back home who miss their loved ones. Foolishness. Greed.”
Dustin had been following the conversation, his head going back and forth. His eyes traveled to the cake and he started to reach for a piece. I held out my hand, grasped his forearm.
“Dustin, what is your role in all this?”
He swallowed. “None—I mean—a little. They knew about this for some time, I guess. The relatives in Nam counted on them. There are lots of black market groups who work under the radar, cut around Commie crap, U.S. government crap even, to bring home soldiers. Pay out money. Private donors. But they were afraid to tell anyone.”
“So they told you?” I said.
He nodded. “Last resort, I guess.” He waved a hand in the air. “They couldn’t trust anyone. Uncle Binh no longer has, you know, contacts. They…”
“Who else knows?” Hank interrupted.
“No one. Uncle Binh, Aunt Suong, and my mother.” Another phony laugh. “And they probably didn’t wanna tell me.”
“Your brothers?”
He rolled his eyes. “Christ, no. Mom told me that Uncle Binh said they were loose cannons. Talkers, greedy. It would be all over the neighborhood.” A sweet smile. “She said they could take care of themselves when the three of them returned to N
am.” A pause. “In style.”
“So that was their goal?”
He made a sarcastic face. “Yeah, of course. The land of soymilk and honey. My loser brothers would be in the way.”
“What about you?” Hank asked.
Dustin started, then jerked his head back. “They could care a fuck about me. I’d be left behind, too.” A harsh laugh. “I’m just the travel agent.”
“What were you to do?”
“Use the Internet—they called it the machine in my room—to locate people to contact. Nobody in the Vietnamese community could know. Only me—I promised them. So they had to trust me.”
“But you couldn’t find an answer?”
He made a fist and slammed it into his palm. “How the hell was I to know? There’s so much crap online. I didn’t know where to start. Shit, a body hidden in a shed?”
Hank stood up and paced the room. When he faced Dustin, his voice was filled with anger. “Do you know what you did?”
“I didn’t do…”
Hank’s hand flew up, traffic-cop style. “Stop. Don’t bullshit me. You’re a part of this craziness, Dustin. Don’t bullshit me.”
Dustin whimpered, “Hank, I mean…I mean…”
Calmly, I leaned into him. “So you turned to Ben Winslow?”
Dustin gnawed at the corner of his thumb as he gazed toward the front window. Small pellets of sleet suddenly pinged the window, a rat-a-tat-tat that reminded me of firecrackers exploding in Chinatown. Dustin kept blinking his eyes at the windows, adjusting his eyeglasses.
Calmly, he answered me now. “I trusted Professor Winslow. I mean, he was friendly and funny and—and he liked me. He praised my paper. He told me—come see me if you got a problem. So I did. I felt good. I trusted him.”
“But why ask him for help?”
“Because he was…like sympathetic. In class I knew he was anti-war, you know. He talked of protesting American imperialism, as he called it. Iraq, Afghanistan, hot spots all over the world. Fighting, fighting. He was a pacifist, he said.”
“And that led you to trust him?” Hank sounded bewildered.
“That, and the fact that he talked about protesting the Vietnam War way back when. Like when he was a teenager, I guess. He protested in the streets. Carrying signs and stuff. He even got this picture on his office wall—did you ever see it?—of himself as a teenager carrying a sign somewhere. ‘Hell No We Won’t Go.’ A riot. He looked so—young. Like one of us. I didn’t really understand the war until I read about it the other day. I knew he didn’t like what happened in Nam. I thought—he’d help us.”
“But he didn’t.” My voice dropped.
He scrunched up his face. “He got real mad. Furious. I mean, he scared me. ‘This isn’t right,’ he kept yelling. ‘A family gotta have their son back home. Wrong, wrong, wrong.’”
Hank fumed. “It is wrong, Dustin. You know that.”
Weakly, sighing, “I guess so. Yes. I know. But he said I had to call the authorities right away, give them the information. I said the Commies would take the money. He said, ‘Who the fuck cares? Do the right thing.’ But I thought of my mother and what she wanted and…”
“And you didn’t want to disappoint her.” From Hank.
“I wanted the whole thing to go away. He said he wanted me to do it, but if I didn’t he would call someone. I begged him not to. I lied—told him to give me time. He said—he’d give me two days. Period. He promised me he’d keep quiet.”
“What?” I asked.
“Because when I first went to his office, I said—‘If I tell you something, will you promise not to tell anyone?’ He said yes. So he was gonna break his promise.”
“He couldn’t keep that ridiculous promise. Dammit, Dustin,” Hank swore.
Wonder in his eyes. “Why not? A promise is a promise. I trusted him.”
“You were foolish.”
He wrapped his arms around his chest. “I was an asshole.”
“True,” I said. “There is that.”
He watched me closely. “I didn’t know what to do. I told him—okay. I’ll take care of it. But I didn’t, and he kept after me. For two or three days we kept—arguing. I had to keep him quiet. He gave me a deadline. If I missed it, he was going to call the FBI. That scared the shit out of me. I was afraid my mother, the others, would get in trouble. Relatives back in Nam would get punished, tortured maybe.”
“Then you’d be in trouble.”
Helpless, an exhausted look on his face. “I couldn’t sleep those nights. I went to his place. I fought him. Like—screaming at him. I was running off in every direction.”
“You could have made a phone call.”
He screamed out at me, “It’s easy for you to say. You don’t have a whole fucking world in Vietnam waiting for you to do something.” His voice broke. “A family that asked me to do something.”
“Something wrong,” Hank shot out.
“Yeah, I know that now. But the last time I saw Professor Winslow I told him he was right. I said, ‘The day after I finish finals, okay? I promise.’ He was relieved and said he’d help me through it all. A nice guy. ‘It’s better if you do it. You, Dustin. I’ll be there with you. We’ll call together.’ Dustin’s eyes got moist as he dipped his head into his chest. “He wasn’t mad at me any more. Like we were yelling at each other and then he smiled at me. ‘Merry Christmas,’ he said. ‘I’m a Buddhist,’ I told him. ‘Sort of.’ You know what he said? ‘We’re all Buddhists at heart.’ I liked that.” He breathed in. “I liked him.”
“But then he was murdered.”
“That’s what I’m telling you. This got nothing to do with that. The police gotta look somewhere else. He had enemies, you know.”
“Everybody has enemies,” I told him. “But they don’t shoot you to death.”
He shivered. “Some do. Obviously.”
“True.”
“The funny thing is that Professor Laramie warned me to stay away from Winslow. When he saw me getting chummy with him, he talked to me. ‘Don’t trust him. He’s an atheist.’ Imagine saying that. ‘He’ll betray you. If you’re godless, you care only about yourself.’ Laramie is this born-again Christian.”
I turned to Hank. “Laramie hated Ben because Ben fought against him getting tenure.”
“No, not true.”
“Then what?”
“He hated Winslow because he was anti-war and stuff. Especially because he opposed the Vietnam War.”
“Years ago?” I questioned. “So what?”
“Because Professor Laramie told me that his father was a soldier who died in Vietnam.”
I started. “What? He told you that?”
Hank yelled out. “Holy shit.”
Dustin sat up straight. “Yeah, more than once. In fact, he talked about that dumb photo Winslow had in his office. How it bothered him. He asked me if I was Vietnamese. I said yes. And he told me about his dad. He was a little baby then, I guess. His dad was killed parachuting into Da Nang.”
I caught Hank’s eye. “A new wrinkle in that bitter man’s portfolio.”
Dustin went on. “You know what he said to me. He said, ‘You’re here in America because my father died in Vietnam. Don’t you find that ironic?’ I mean, that sort of made me dislike him. Like he wanted me to feel guilty for something I had nothing to do with.”
“Christ, Dustin.” Hank was frowning.
“But every time I saw Laramie, he gave me a look that said—you killed my father.”
“Did your mother and Uncle Binh know you talked to Ben?” I asked.
“Yeah, but they weren’t happy about it. I told them he could be trusted. We needed his help. He was on our side.”
“But he wasn’t,” Hank threw out.
Dustin’s voice dropped. “When I told my mother he wouldn’t h
elp, that he was talking FBI, they got crazy. Uncle Binh said he was probably a Communist. But I told them I’d handle it. I lied and said Winslow said it was up to me—that I told Winslow it was a story I made up. Like for English. A stupid story. I told them the matter was dead. They relaxed. I even found some dumb address on the Internet and said I was contacting the people. Me, taking care of it.” He waited a moment. “So they were okay. I was taking care of things. My mother said God was answering her prayers. The key.”
“The key?” From Hank.
“Yeah, the Gospel of Wealth Ministry, you know. My mother told me that the first letter from Vietnam arrived about the time they were going to hear Reverend Simms. When he talked of God hiding the key to vast wealth and waiting for you to discover it, she thought the letter was a sign from God.” Dustin smiled. “I guess Buddha could only take you so far. Jesus has to pick you up for the rest of the journey.”
Hank smirked, “A cheeseburger is a cheeseburger is a cheeseburger.”
“A shrine to greed and evil. McDonald’s.”
“Mom thought she was doing the right thing.”
“Yeah,” Hank was sarcastic, “a human bone resting in the belly of Buddha. Talk about your indigestion.”
A gust of wind blew a spray of ice pellets against the window. Dustin jumped, nervous.
“Dustin,” I was ready to end this talk, “you did a wrong thing. Not only this plot with your relatives but keeping your mouth shut. By holding back on this story you messed up the police investigation into Ben’s death. Everyone assumed you were involved because…”
He broke in. “That’s why I’m telling you. Something else is going on there.”
“But your stubbornness clouded the investigation.”
“I couldn’t betray—my promise.” He closed his eyes for a second. “Okay, tell them. The cops.”
“Oh, I plan to.” I added, “Here’s what’s going to happen. Tomorrow I’m making a few phone calls. It’s Christmas Eve and then Christmas—there may be a day or so delay here. But I’m going to get the ball rolling. FBI. Whoever. You’re going to have to talk to people. You’re going to have your mother, maybe Uncle Binh, tell what they know.”