by Wiley Brooks
“You’ll also need a pair of casual dress shoes,” Big Willie continued. “Chinn will know what’s best. And you’ll want some sneakers. Maybe Nikes. Again, Chinn will know which brand will make the best statement.”
“I have decent sneakers already,” Joey said.
“This is a new you. I know more about this stuff than you. Just do as I say. Okay?”
Joey nodded yes.
Willie Chirathivat, the tailor, told Joey to come back late the next afternoon for a first fitting. He was going to make the young man two suits and a couple pairs of slacks, plus three or four dress shirts. He told Joey that in the meantime, he should go shopping for nice casual clothes.
“Buy underwear and dress socks,” Big Willie said. “Keep them tasteful. You’re a businessman now.”
Joey asked the clothes he already had, adding that he had some things he liked.
“I’ll tell you what, Joey,” Big Willie said, “go home tonight and make two piles of clothes. In one pile put the stuff you really like and want to keep. In the other pile, put everything else. Then throw the second pile away. All of it. We’re building a new you. We’ll go through the first pile together.”
As Joey was about to leave, Big Willie called after him. “You still live in the place I visited last year for dinner?”
“Same place.”
“I remember it was a nice place, but I should visit it again. At some point, she’ll want to see your place. We need to look at how it reflects on you the young businessman. Tomorrow evening won’t work for me. How about the next day?”
“Sure. I’ll make dinner.”
“And tomorrow here for your fitting.”
“Yes. I’ll be back here around four o’clock tomorrow.”
“I heard back from the White House about Anderson,” Jonathan said to Fitz in the older man’s office later that day.
“They knew who he was?” Fitz asked, knowing that if Jonathan got an answer that quickly that there had to be a reason.
“Big time Reagan contributor,” Jonathan said. “Big time. He gave $100,000 in the ’80 campaign and $225,000 in ’84.”
Fitz whistled.
“He attended an inaugural ball for the first term. He was invited for the second one, too, but declined.”
“Were they able to say anything else about him?”
“A little. The guys at the RNC had some background.”
“Self-made,” Jonathan continued. “He’s a big-time commercial real estate developer. Very successful. He has projects in Tampa-St. Pete, as well as Miami, Fort Lauderdale and the Disney World area.”
“Wife?”
“She died ten years ago. Cancer.”
“War record?”
“I’m still waiting to hear back from DOD. One of the guys at 1600 said he thought he might have been a chopper pilot in Nam.”
“What about other kids?”
“She was it.”
Fitz grimaced.
“Thanks Jonathan. Someone will have to deliver this news in person. I need to tell the Secretary and see who he thinks should do it. I’m sure it will be me. God, tomorrow is going to suck. Why don’t you call Mr. Anderson’s office before it gets any later and see what his schedule looks like tomorrow. Tell his secretary that you don’t have any details but that it is important. They’ll want to know how long. Tell them it would be best if he could clear his schedule for the afternoon. They’ll push back, but they’ll do it.”
“I’m on it. And if he’s out of town, I’ll find out where he is.”
Fitz nodded his approval. He told Jonathan that he’d like to arrive in late morning, then return at the end of the day.
“Consider it done,” Jonathan answered.
Joey had never owned dress shoes, nor dress socks, for that matter. He walked out of A. Chinn & Son wearing his new Nikes with two pair of dress shoes in a bag. He felt good about himself. When he got home, he threw all his old clothes on the floor. “I have a lot of clothes,” he said to himself, then started making the two piles. After about thirty minutes, he moved it all into one big pile and started carrying it out to the garbage. He saved just one pair of jeans, some shorts and five shirts, three of which were new tee-shirts, plus clean boxers to wear until he could buy the new ones.
Day 5
Jonathan met Fitz at the Eastern Airlines gate at Washington National.
“I was able to get a fair amount of info for you. Some of it is hard to look it.
“Crime photos?”
“Yeah. He slashed her neck and I mean slashed. Her naked body was crumpled on the bed. Lots of blood. I can’t imagine you would want to show it to Mr. Anderson. I included the photos because they were part of the police report that arrived in the pouch from KL. I knew you’d want to see them.”
At thirty-five thousand feet, Fitz reviewed the full file. First, he read a summary Jonathan had prepared, then studied the supporting documents.
Bob Anderson was a war hero from his two tours in Vietnam in the sixties. He flew Hueys on medevacs. He was part of the famed 57th Medical Detachment. The Army promoted him to major shortly before the end of his second tour. That would have been ’67. Not many of the pilots made it to major while still flying missions, Fitz thought. He figured Bob must have been fearless.
The file noted many commendations. Most notable was a Bronze Star with the V Device for valor in combat. A Purple Heart. Shot down three times.
Bob started his company developing office buildings in 1967, the same year he left the service. Amanda was just two at the time. She was probably the reason he became a civilian, Fitz concluded.
Bob’s wife, Juliet, had died of ovarian cancer in her mid-thirties. Jonathan had noted that it was rare for a woman her age, but that it’s more aggressive in younger women.
A copy of a business section profile of Bob from the Tampa Tribune was at the back of the file. It had been written two years ago. It told of his Vietnam years, but mostly focused on the office towers he had developed. His flying days didn’t end in Vietnam. The story included a photo of him at the controls of his Bell helicopter, which he flew most days from his home north of Tampa to the helipad he made part of the design of the downtown skyscraper that housed his company’s offices.
Bob told the reporter that he had always dreamed of being a helicopter pilot. Why copters? No logical reason beyond a child’s fascination that he didn’t outgrow. Toward the end of his senior year at the University of Florida, he met recruiters. The Army struck him as his best path to flying copters. He took a series of tests and did well enough that the Army flew him to Fort Bragg to do more tests and interviews. A few weeks later the Army called to offer him a commission in Army Airborne. The Army gave him a report date of September 1, which meant he’d have a few months after graduation.
He put it to good use. He and Juliet had been college sweethearts at Florida. They married shortly after earning their degrees. With the help of his parents, they found a nice home in the Temple Terrace suburb. The house was near King High School, where she would teach history. They just got settled in when he had to head out for training.
The world was a peaceful place when Bob signed on with the Army in 1961. John Kennedy was the new president and America was filled with hope and promise. Who could see just how awful the sixties would become? He had expected he’d be stationed in Germany. He told his college buddies while on leave back in Tampa that Germany had been good enough for Elvis and it would be good enough for him. He never made it to Germany.
President Kennedy quietly was increasing the number of US troops in Vietnam. Technically, they were “advisers.” But their numbers were growing. Advising meant they were embedded with the South Vietnamese regulars who were taking the fight to the insurgent Viet Cong.
In the spring of 1963, the Army sent Bob to Vietnam. He was part of the first deployment to the war by the 57th Medical Detachment. By the end of the year, the number of US advisors had grown from a few hundred early in the Kennedy adminis
tration to sixteen-thousand.
During that year-long tour, about eighty percent of the wounded soldiers he swooped in and took to hospitals were South Vietnamese soldiers. His copter was downed while landing in a firefight. Lieutenant Anderson suffered a flesh wound while defending the location until help arrived. His co-pilot, Sgt. Thomas Wilson, of Lancaster, PA, though, was shot jumping out of the copter. He died on the spot. He would lose other crew on future missions. Being on a medevac crew was among Vietnam’s most dangerous assignments.
His tour ended after thirteen months, broken only for one R&R in Hawaii with his wife. Bob returned to the States and was posted to Fort Bragg, the big Army base in North Carolina where he had been flown when in college. Juliet joined him there and took a teaching job at Fayetteville High School.
Amanda was born in September of 1965. Juliet quit her job to be a fulltime mom. Then early the next year, Bob returned to Vietnam for another thirteen-month deployment. Juliet and Amanda moved back to Tampa to be near family. The following year, Juliet was able to resume teaching.
Between his two tours, Bob was promoted to captain. When he arrived in South Vietnam, he found it to be a much different war.
To begin with, American involvement in Vietnam had soared since his first tour. In 1963, American troops were primarily providing support for the South Vietnamese Army, which did most of the fighting. Four years later Americans were deep and broad in the war. It was largely President Johnson’s doing. Johnson had become president when John Kennedy was assassinated in late ’63.
In August 1964, though, just three months before America was to elect a president, the Johnson administration greatly exaggerated an incident to whip Congress into giving him broad powers. A US destroyer, the Maddox, was “attacked” by three small North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin in international water off the North Vietnamese coast. While that incident, to some extent, actually happened, the Johnson administration made up a subsequent Tonkin attack a few days later.
Their propaganda campaign was so successful that the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution quickly passed Congress. There was little debate and virtually no opposition. In November, Johnson was reelected in a landslide against an arch-conservative Republican named Barry Goldwater.
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution opened the floodgates for US troops involvement in Vietnam. In 1965, there was a nine-fold increase in the number of US troops on the ground there. By 1966, troop strength doubled again. One in every three troops on the ground was an American. US forces were everywhere.
The picture was starker if you looked at combat deaths. In all of 1963, just one-hundred-sixteen Americans died. In 1966, the war claimed six-thousand-one-hundred-forty-three American lives. Bob found that four out of five injured soldiers that he airlifted out of battles were Americans.
It was in 1966 that his actions earned him a Bronze Star with V device, the highest honor for a soldier short of a Medal of Honor. An Army unit set out to find and destroy tunnels used by the Viet Cong in a vast network in and around Cu Chi. VC in the area ambushed the unit. The soldiers were pinned down and taking heavy casualties.
Captain Anderson flew his Huey medevac into the firefight to ferry wounded soldiers to a hospital near Saigon, a short distance away. He made five trips to the besieged unit, taking heavy fire each time. On the fifth rescue mission, his copter was able to land, but was crippled by enemy artillery. It burst into flames.
There were three crew members onboard at the time. All three were injured in the hard landing and fire that erupted almost immediately. Captain Anderson carried each away from the chopper. He suffered a gunshot wound to his leg as he lifted the last man from the burning aircraft, but still managed to get him to safety. A month later, he was back in the pilot’s seat rescuing more injured soldiers.
One hell of a war record, Fitz said to himself. The man’s courage and sacrifice made him proud to be an American.
Fitz finally turned to the police report from Mersing. Apart from the grisly pictures, it shed little light. Amanda had checked in to the Happy Song Hotel in the late afternoon of the previous day. She was with another single girl and a couple. The two other women were from the States and the fellow from Germany.
The three others left the hotel early the next morning. They walked to the nearby docks to catch a fishing boat that would take them to Tioman Island. Amanda’s body was found in her room later that day. The report noted that the three had not been interviewed since they had left Mersing before the body was found. They apparently were not seen as suspects by the short-handed Mersing police.
The report reconstructed the group’s activities the evening they arrived in Mersing. The group of young travelers had dinner that evening in a restaurant near the Happy Song called the Portside Café. The bartender remembered the group and said that Amanda came in after the others.
After a couple hours, Amanda’s other three friends left, but she stayed later with one of the men. The bartender said he first thought the fellow might be Malaysian but didn’t totally look it. He added that the young man spoke, dressed and acted like an American. He put the man’s age at mid- to late-twenties.
The bartender said Amanda asked him to tune into TV3, the new Malaysian network that aired current American TV shows in English. The two watched L.A. Law on the set above the bar, then left together shortly after the show ended. They were not kissing or holding hands or acting in any other way like a couple. The bartender said he had the impression that perhaps they had only recently met.
The report noted that police contacted other hotels in the area. None reported having a registered guest that night fitting the young man’s description.
The murder itself appeared to have been swift. The single gash across her neck was deep and well placed, clearly meant to both silence and kill her. There were no other signs of injury or a struggle. The report noted that her vagina area had been cleaned. It speculated that perhaps she had cleaned herself in the bathroom after sex and that the killer took her as she stepped out of the bathroom.
Fitz closed his eyes and envisioned how he would tell Mr. Anderson about his daughter. There was no way to do it but to be direct.
Joey showed up for his fitting with Big Willie at four o’clock. He walked in wearing a new pair of jeans with a brown leather belt and a nice Polo shirt. After the fitting, Big Willie handed Joey a large manila envelope.
“What’s this?” Joey asked.
“A new US passport, driver’s license and credit cards for Joseph Thomas Jackson of Bentonville, North Carolina,” the big man said. “Check them out. Much higher quality than the passport you’ve been using. It also has immigration stamps to support your story. The passport shows you arrived in Kuala Lumpur six months ago. You've also been to Singapore twice for a few days each time and Thailand once, but you stayed a month there.
“Your story is that after you finished college, you took a job in Charlotte,” Big Willie continued. “Your American dad died this past year – your mom had died a few years ago – and you felt it was time to revisit your roots and to explore Southeast Asia. About a month ago, you got the idea to build and run your own bungalow.”
He told Joey that the passport showed the two in-and-outs for Singapore. If asked, that when he went there to set up his company.
“Everyone knows that Singapore is a much safer, business-oriented place,” Willie said.
As for the month in Thailand, it was pure pleasure.
“You’re an American backpacker. Of course, you’re going to spend time in Thailand. You need to think about where in Thailand you’ve been. Have you ever been to Thailand?”
Joey said he’d been a few times, His first trip was to Koh Samui. So many backpackers had been that he felt he needed to see what it was like. It was the same reason he went to Koh Phi-Phi.
“I took the train up to Bangkok last year. Hated it. Stayed for five days. Too big and too crowded. Sorry, I know your family is from there, but it wasn’t for me.”
Big Willie told Joey he’d need two or three days to finish his clothes, then said he was looking forward to a checking out Joey’s apartment the next night.
“I’ve become quite the cook,” Joey said.
“Just so you have cold beer,” Big Willie answered.
The view from the thirty-sixth floor of the Bayview Tower was stunning. Looking southwest across Old Tampa Bay, one could see MacDill Air Force Base at Tampa's far south end. Beyond the B-52s, the view continued all the way to the newly reopened Sunshine Skyway Bridge. The bridge, an engineering marvel, connects the southern tip of St. Petersburg with Bradenton. To the west of the bridge is the open water of the Gulf of Mexico.
From the high perch, Fitz could follow Bayshore Boulevard. The roadway lined the Old Tampa Bay heading south. Fitz was too young to have visited Havana before Castro took over. He imagined, though, that the Cuban capital might have a similar gently curving boulevard. The boulevard separated stately old Spanish-styled mansions from the water. Hundreds of palm trees that lined the drive lazily moved in the breeze.
“Mr. Fox,” a thirty-something well-dressed and attractive woman said, approaching him. “Mr. Anderson will see you now.”
Fitz took a deep breath and followed her back to Bob Anderson’s office. It was understated, yet personal. One wall boasted photos of Bob with various political leaders. There were, of course, photos of Bob with President Reagan. One showed Bob and a teenaged Amanda with Ron and Nancy Reagan at an inaugural ball in 1981.
But the wall didn't just show Bob with Republicans. He clearly had spread his money around to Democrats, as well. There was a picture of him with former Governor Bob Graham, now one of the state’s two senators. Another was more intriguing. It showed Bob and former Senator Lawton Chiles walking along a highway. Chiles, who everyone called Walkin’ Lawton, won election by famously walking from one end of the state to the other. Looks like Bob was connected to him enough to make part of the walk with him.