The Seven Sequels bundle

by Orca Various

  Webb finally stopped for breath. He gave the man in the wheelchair a calm smile and said, “That about cover it?”

  “Dang,” Lee said.

  Irvine threw his head back and laughed with enthusiasm. Then he shook his head from side to side in wry admiration of Webb’s slam dunk.

  “All right,” he said. “As long as it’s nothing too personal, what questions can I try to answer for you gentlemen?”

  SEVENTEEN

  They followed Derek as he wheeled into the back of the store and made a right-hand turn to move into a windowless office where there was a desk and a monitor. The desk had been modified so that the wheelchair fit in a space directly in front of the monitor and keyboard, leaving space on both sides for the papers strewn across the top. Two small chairs sat opposite it.

  Derek made a tight turn with the wheelchair and sat behind his desk, motioning for Webb and Lee to take the chairs across from him.

  Webb noted the photos on the walls as he sat. Mainly of a yacht, taken at different times of day. Derek was on the deck in his wheelchair, his wife and children with him. The photos showed the family in different stages as the children grew older.

  Yacht. So Derek had money. Plenty of it.

  Webb guessed the antique shop didn’t make Derek enough money to buy a yacht and figured that Derek came from a wealthy family. Maybe he’d grown up in one of the mansions south of Broad Street. Generations back, there’d have been slaves in the household.

  Webb wondered if Lee was thinking the same thing about Derek’s wealth, and it didn’t take long to learn that the answer was yes.

  “That’s you as a boy?” Lee said. He pointed at a photo Webb hadn’t noticed. There was a kid on the deck of the yacht, grinning against the sun. Standing on two sturdy, tanned legs.

  “Better days,” Derek said.

  “Your family has been here a while?” Lee asked.

  “Almost since Charleston was founded.” Derek pronounced it Chah-l-ston. He smiled. “Half of what’s in the antique shop comes from my aunts and uncles and their kids. I’m not in the business to make money. More like a hobby. Go back far enough in my family, you’ll find pirates and smugglers.”

  And maybe slave traders, Webb thought. He waited for Lee to show some anger. Waited for Lee to say something like, “Go back far enough in my family, might be able to find slaves who worked for your family.”

  What Lee said, though, surprised Webb.

  “Not a lot of officers put themselves in danger of getting hurt like you did, and I believe it would have been an honor to serve under your command,” Lee said. “Your friends think you were crazy, signing up to serve our country?”

  “I didn’t believe in the war,” Derek said. “Most of them didn’t either. What we disagreed about was what it meant to serve. Military duty was a tradition in our family. Still is.”

  “They went to college and you went to the rice paddies,” Lee said.

  Derek nodded. “And I’m still trying to make sense of what happened there. My father served in Korea, and my grandfather in the Pacific against the Japanese. Seemed more clear, what they needed to do. Soldiers against soldiers. Not soldiers who often had no idea who the real enemy was in the next village. In ’Nam, we were boys, doing the best we could. That about sum it up?”

  “Yeah,” Lee said. “A lot better than the essay that Webb here just recited.”

  Webb shrugged. It had still been an impressive slam dunk.

  “So how about you ask your questions,” Derek said. “I don’t mean this harshly, but there are still nights I wake up with the smell of nitrate in my nostrils, and the sooner we finish this, the better. Shrinks call it post-traumatic stress disorder and say you should talk it out. Me, I’m done talking.”

  Derek glanced at Webb, a good indication that it didn’t make sense to him why Webb and Lee were the odd couple. “I don’t even want to be curious about why you’re asking these questions.”

  “Two men in your platoon,” Lee said. “Jesse Lockewood and Casey Gardner. One died, one deserted. Anything you can tell me about either solider would be helpful.”

  Derek raised his eyebrows. “Maybe then I am curious about why you’re asking these questions.”

  Derek looked at Webb and waited.

  “My grandfather might have known Jesse Lockewood,” Webb said. “My grandfather’s dead, but I’m trying to figure some things out about his past. Mr. Knox is a Purple Heart vet and has agreed to help me out.”

  “Don’t need you trying to make me look good,” Lee said to Webb. “Things I don’t want to discuss either. I been through that stage already. No sleep. No eating. Just anger. Now, at least, I eat and sleep.”

  Derek still squinted at Webb, ignoring Lee.

  “You’re Canadian,” Derek said.

  Webb nodded.

  “You said oot and aboot. Dead giveaway. Canadian tourists come in here all the time. We love them. Everybody loves Canadians.”

  “Oot and aboot?” Webb said.

  Derek nodded. “You said you’re trying to figure some things oot aboot your grandfather’s past.”

  Webb thought it wasn’t the time to mention that the person in the room with the real accent was the guy who turned any r in a word into an h, as in Chah-l-ston.

  “I really didn’t want to be curious about this,” Derek told Webb, “but now I can’t help it. How about this? If you find out anything worth knowing about Jesse Lockewood and Casey Gardner, you let me know. I’ve often wondered about those two.”

  “Yes, sir,” Webb said. He was in the south. Calling Derek “sir” seemed natural.

  “Something unusual made you wonder?” Lee said.

  “I was the platoon sergeant,” Derek said. “Both of them were in my squad. Our captain, Nathaniel Warwick, came from Albuquerque. He’s a congressman now. Hope he’s a better congressman than he was a captain. Lots of things fell on my shoulders that he should have handled.”

  Webb reminded himself that a platoon of thirty-six men had three squads of twelve.

  “Nathaniel ignored advice, sent us into a firefight, trapped between Viet Cong pouring bullets at us from both sides,” Derek said. “Almost like he wanted most of us to die. My radioman went down as we retreated, and the only way we could call in support from the air was to get that radio. Casey Gardner didn’t hesitate. He was almost back with the radio when tracers found him. Jesse Lockewood ducked heavy fire and dragged Casey and the radio back to us. Made it back on one leg, dragging the other.”

  “Posthumous Bronze Star for Lockewood, right?” Lee said. “Gardner deserted.”

  “That’s the official story,” Derek said. “I never bought it entirely.”

  Derek ran his hands through his hair. Rubbed his neck. Looked up and to the right, closed his eyes briefly.

  “Thing was,” Derek said a few moments later, “both were taken away in the same medivac. To me, it looked like Gardner was bleeding out, and I never expected him to make it. Lockewood took some bullets in the calf of the leg he was dragging. That shouldn’t kill a man. But word reached me that Lockewood died from infection two days later. And Gardner, he was true red and white and blue. He’s the last guy I figured would bolt, but two weeks later, he’s listed as a deserter. Of the two, I would have figured Jesse Lockewood to go native.”

  Lee asked the logical question. “Why’s that?”

  “A lot of soldiers made promises to Vietnamese women to get them stateside after the war, but when he was on leave, Lockewood guaranteed it for his girl by getting married in a Catholic ceremony, church and all. So if he died in action, she’d still be able to become an American. She had a name that wasn’t easy to forget. Loan. Saigon family. Rumor had it she was connected to local gangsters. We liked to tease him about his gangster girl. Can’t remember her first name, but the last name, Loan, that never struck me as Vietnamese, even though I later found out it wasn’t uncommon over there. She had a younger brother.”

  Webb had two other identifi
cation cards in his pocket. The ones he had not left with Lee Knox to get destroyed in the house fire.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out the card with the photo of a Vietnamese woman on a Vietnamese national identity card.

  “Quang Mai Loan?” Webb asked, reading the name beside the photo.

  “Can only remember the last name,” Derek said. “Sorry.”

  Webb handed the identification card to Derek, who didn’t need to do much more than glance at it.

  “That’s her,” Derek said, puzzled. “Jesse Lockewood’s wife. Gangster girl.”

  EIGHTEEN

  A quiet restaurant overlooking harbor waters. The soft light of candles. A booth at a window. Ali across the table from Webb, her gorgeous face framed by long dark hair, a smile on her face as she gazed at him over a dish of succulent lobster.

  The perfect evening.

  Except for the fact that Roy Hawkins sat beside Ali and Lee Knox sat beside Webb.

  Four of them. Not two.

  Still, it was nice he’d been able to make Ali smile.

  “Just so I understand,” Webb had said, thinking about a recent email that someone had sent him with a top-ten list called Why Canadians Wonder About the United States, “here in America, politicians talk about the greed of the rich…at campaign-fundraising events where people pay $35,000 each for their dinner tickets?”

  Lee wasn’t smiling. He was groaning.

  “Please, please,” Lee said. “Don’t get redneck Roy going on all this.”

  “You think it’s redneck to be upset by Webb’s question?” Roy said. He had a piece of steak on a fork, and he jabbed it at Lee. “Think about it. We have a black president and a black attorney general—two of the most powerful positions in government—and at the same time, twenty percent of the federal workplace is black when the general population of blacks is only fourteen percent. And you say government still discriminates against black Americans?”

  “When blacks still have double the unemployment rate that whites do,” Lee fired back, “I’d say we have a problem here.”

  “I have an idea,” Ali said. “Why don’t you two arm wrestle to see who’s right?”

  “Yuck,” Roy said. “And hold hands with Lee? Cooties.”

  Lee settled—a bit. He finished a bite of steak and turned his attention to Webb. “You going to eat your lobster?”

  Webb had had a few bites. Mainly he’d ordered it so that Lee would have to spend money. “Maybe later,” Webb said. “Unless you want it.”

  Lee jabbed the lobster with his own fork and moved it onto his plate.

  “You know what the problem is?” Lee said, cutting at the lobster. “Bumper-sticker armies. Complex arguments reduced to a sentence or two that hit people emotionally. We stop thinking about things and we stop discussing things and big issues get reduced to two sides, each shouting at the other.”

  “Amen,” Roy said. “I’ll agree with my buddy here on that one.”

  Lee jammed a piece of steak into his mouth and began to chew with enthusiasm.

  “Even though,” Webb said to Roy, “Lee just reduced the problem to a bumper-sticker statement that says bumper-sticker statements cause the problem?”

  Roy stopped chewing and squinted at Webb.

  “See?” Lee said to Roy. “That’s what I have to deal with all day, driving with this kid. Today he asked me if I care about helping poor whites as much as I care about helping poor blacks.”

  Lee turned to Webb. “Here’s my answer. I sell insurance to everybody.”

  “No,” Roy groaned. “Not the insurance lecture.”

  “It’s a nice bonus,” Lee said, ignoring Roy. “My insurance business has helped me get ahead financially. But that’s not the reason I’m in it. When I got out of the army, I was burning to do something about civil injustice. I didn’t want to be one of those guys out there making speeches and looking for television time whenever the black community was treated unfairly, but someone who helped people in the community, even if it meant doing it under the radar. I figured if I could get poor families buying adequate insurance—help save them from insurance scams at the same time—it would make a big difference in their lives. Life insurance, health insurance, saving up money for college. It’s not the system that’s so bad, it’s that those who don’t know how to use the system don’t get as far ahead as those who do use it. I’d rather see what I can do, one person at time.”

  Webb knew all about that. Grasshopper, when you can snatch the pebble from my hand…

  Roy said, “In fairness, much as I hate his insurance lecture, I should point out that Lee’s been known to pay insurance premiums for families, just to give them a head start.”

  Lee said, “I’m not the good guy here. Roy’s been known to send me money for a fund for those families.”

  Ali said, “Isn’t this cute? Now they’re holding hands instead of arm wrestling. And all it took was for one to save the life of the other back in Vietnam for them to realize skin color doesn’t matter.”

  For Webb, the banter felt good, like he was now part of a group. He wasn’t normally a group person. Okay, until now he was never a group person.

  “Enough about that,” Lee said to Ali. “I promised to tell you about our day.”

  Lee took a few minutes to describe the meetings with Marcus Johnson and Matt Lockewood and Derek Irvine.

  “Marcus got back to me,” Lee said. “The contact they used in DC is a woman who works in Veterans Affairs. Webb and I are going to keep driving north and find out what we can from her. I think her position is too low-level to make her the Bogeyman. We need to find out who she talked to.”

  Webb began pushing his steak around his plate. He noticed that all of them were staring at him.

  “Lee,” Roy said, “when I was his age, that steak would have been gone in seconds. You been sneaking him snacks on the road?”

  “It’s probably a rock-star thing,” Lee answered. “Stay skinny. Goes with the long hair.”

  Webb cut off a portion of his steak and dropped it onto Roy’s plate. “Dive in. No sense letting it go to waste.”

  “Thanks,” Roy said.

  “Maybe you can answer a question while Roy finishes that steak,” Webb said to Lee. “It’s about Derek Irvine. You assumed he had a choice about going to war in Vietnam, and you assumed he would be an officer. Why?”

  “I’ll take this one,” Roy said to Lee. “Otherwise Canuck boy here might assume you’re prejudiced.”

  “And Canuck boy isn’t a term of prejudice?” Ali said.

  Roy waved away her objection and spoke to Webb. “During the war, the best way to avoid the draft was to stay in college. Meant most of the fighting was done by those of us too poor to have that option. And college kids and rich kids who did go tended to take officer training. Gave them a much higher survival rate. Drove us nuts, having some snooty kid with stripes, who knew nothing about the field, telling us what to do and costing lives in the process.”

  “Lots of them liked to lead from the back,” Lee said. “Safer for them. Meet a vet in a wheelchair, like Derek Irvine, you know he wasn’t out there waiting for grunts to clear a minefield for him.”

  “So,” Webb said, pushing his plate away, “you’ll tend to trust him when he remembers that Jesse Lockewood married a Vietnamese woman?”

  Lee nodded.

  “Then maybe I should show you some screen-shots I took on the iPad,” Webb said. “Just before we drove into Gainesville.”

  “Screenshots?” Roy said.

  “Daddy,” Ali said, “you hold down the Home button and press the Power button at the same time. It takes a photo of whatever is on the screen.”

  “Home button?” Roy said, then grinned at Ali’s pretended disgust.

  “Lee was telling you that the Facebook account of Matt Lockewood’s daughter disappeared not long after he shut the door on us,” Webb said. “When Lee and I talked about it on the drive here to Charleston…”

  Lee
took the cue. “It was an easy conclusion that Matt Lockewood mentioned the Facebook connection to someone right after we talked to him. By telephone. Tells us his phone was tapped too. So one of the big questions is, who did he call? His daughter? Bogeyman? Bigger question is, why? What could be dangerous about someone like us seeing the Facebook account?”

  A text pinged on Webb’s iPhone. He glanced down and read it.

  “I think I might have the answer,” he said.

  NINETEEN

  Webb held up his iPhone. “My cousin Adam put me in touch with a computer-geek friend of his named Leon. I’ve been texting him all day, asking for help. It just arrived. The questions I sent him were based on information from Matt Lockewood’s daughter’s Facebook account.”

  “That has disappeared,” Lee said.

  “Not exactly,” Webb said.

  Ali leaned forward. “Webby, if I’m guessing right, you took screenshots of her Facebook account?”

  Webb liked that, her calling him Webby.

  “And you’re telling me now?” Lee said to Webb. “Thought we were a team.”

  “I’m just a simple grasshopper,” Webb said.

  Lee pulled out his iPad and searched the photo album. “I don’t see any screenshots of Natasha’s Facebook page.”

  “I emailed them to my photo account in the cloud and deleted them from the iPad,” Webb answered. “They’re safe if the iPad is stolen or lost.”

  Webb reached for the iPad. He used a web app to get to his photos. “Actually, Lee, nothing about the photos struck me as strange until we met Derek. I thought I’d bring this up over dinner for all of us to discuss.”

  Webb passed the iPad across the table to Roy. “Look at this. Notice anything unusual?”

  Roy fumbled in his shirt pocket and pulled out a pair of reading glasses. “Not a word about old age,” he warned Ali before he examined the photo.