Chester took a drag of his cigarette, removing a piece of tobacco from his tongue. “Keeled over in the yard. Doctor told him he better lay off the fat. He sat down one Saturday to a big plate of bacon and eggs, fried sausages, and hashed browns, four cups of coffee, and a cigarette. He pushed his chair back, said he wasn’t feeling so hot, and headed out to his place. Never even reached the stairs. ‘Coronary occlusion’ is the term they used. Autopsy showed an opening in his artery no bigger than a thread.”
“I take it you don’t think his death is related to the break-in.”
“I don’t think he was murdered, if that’s what you’re getting at, but there might be some connection. Indirectly,” he said. He studied the ember on the end of his cigarette. “You have to understand something about my old man. He was paranoid. He liked passwords and secret knocks, all this double-o-seven rigmarole. There were things he didn’t like to talk about, the war being foremost. Once in a while, if he was tanked up on whiskey, he’d rattle off at the mouth, but you ask him a question and he’d clam right up.”
“What do you think it was?”
“Well, I’m getting to that, but let me point this out first. You see, it strikes me as odd, this whole sequence of events. Old guy dies and that should have been the end of it. Except Bucky gets the bright idea of applying for these benefits, and that’s what tips ’em off.”
“Tips who?”
“The government.”
“The government,” I said.
He leaned forward, lowering his voice. “I think my old man was hiding from the feds.”
I stared at him. “Why?”
“Well, I’ll tell you. All the years since the war? He never once applied for benefits: no disability, no medical, no GI Bill. Now why is that?”
“I give up.”
He smiled slightly, unperturbed by the fact that I wasn’t buying in. “Clown around if you like, but take a look at the facts. We fill out a claim form … all the information’s correct … but, first, they say they have no record of him, which is bullshit. Fabrication, pure and simple. What do you mean, they don’t have a record of him? This is nonsense. Of course they do. Will they admit it? No ma’am. You following? So I get on the phone to Randolph — that’s the Air Force base where all the files are kept — and I go through the whole routine again. And I get stonewalled, but good. So I call the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. No deal. Never heard of him. Then I call Washington, D.C. … we’re talking the Pentagon here. Nothing. No record. Well, I’m being dense. I’m not getting it myself. All I know to do is raise six kinds of hell. I make it clear we’re serious about this. A lousy three hundred dollars, but I don’t give a good goddamn. I’m not going to let it drop. The man served his country and he’s entitled to a decent burial. What do I get? Same deal. They don’t know nothin’ from nothin’. Then we have this.” He jerked a thumb toward the garage apartment. “See what I’m saying?”
“No.”
“Well, think about it.”
I waited. I didn’t have the faintest idea what he was getting at.
He took a deep drag from his cigarette. “You want to know what I think?” He paused, creating drama, maximizing the effect. “I think it took ’em this long to get some boys out here to find out how much we knew.”
This sentence was so loaded, I couldn’t figure out which part to parse first. I tried not to sound exasperated. “About what?”
“About what he did during the war,” he said, as though to a nitwit. “I think the old man was military intelligence.”
“A lot of guys worked in military intelligence. So what?”
“That’s right. But he never admitted it, never said a word. And you know why? I think he was a double agent.”
“Oh, stop this. A spy?”
“In some capacity, yes. Information gathering. I think that’s why his records are sealed.”
“You think his records are sealed. And that’s why you can’t get verification from the VA,” I said, restating his point.
“Bull’s-eye.” He pointed a finger at me and gave me a wink, as though I’d finally picked up the requisite IQ points.
I looked at him blankly. This was beginning to feel like one of those discussions with a UFO fanatic, where the absence of documentation is taken for proof of government suppression. “Are you saying he worked for the Germans, or spied on them for our side?”
“Not the Germans. The Japanese. I think he might have worked for ’em, but I can’t be sure. He was over in Burma. He admitted that much.”
“Why would that be such a big deal all these years later?”
“You tell me.”
“Well, how would I know? Honestly, Chester, I can’t speculate about this stuff. I never even knew your father. I have no way of guessing what he was up to. If anything.”
“I’m not asking you to speculate. I’m asking you to be objective. Why else would they say he wasn’t in the Air Force? Give me one good reason.”
“So far you don’t have any proof that he was.”
“Why would he lie? The man wouldn’t lie about a thing like that. You’re missing the point.”
“No, I’m not. The point is, they’re not really saying he wasn’t there,” I said. “They’re saying they can’t identify him from the information you submitted. There must be a hundred John Lees. Probably more.”
“With his exact date of birth and his Social Security number? Come on. You think this stuff isn’t on computer? All they have to do is type it in. Press Enter. Boom, they got him. So why would they deny it?”
“What makes you think they have all this data on computer?” I said, just to be perverse. This was hardly the issue, but I was feeling argumentative.
“What makes you think they don’t?” I barely suppressed a groan. I was hating this conversation, but I couldn’t find any way to get out of it. “Come on, Chester. Let’s don’t do this, okay?”
“You asked the question. I’m just answering.”
“Oh, forget it. Have it your way. Let’s say he was a spy, just for the sake of argument. That was forty-some-odd years ago. The man is dead now, so why does anybody give a shit?”
“Maybe they don’t care about him. Maybe they care about something he has. Maybe he took something that belongs to them. Now they want it back.”
“You are making me crazy. What it?”
“How do I know? Files. Documents. This is just a hunch.”
I wanted to lay my little head on the table and weep from frustration. “Chester, this makes no sense.”
“Why not?”
“Because if that’s the case, why call attention to it? Why not just pay you the three hundred bucks? Then they can come out at their leisure and look for this thing … this whatever you think he has. If he’s been in hiding all these years … if they’ve really been looking and now they know his whereabouts, why arouse your suspicions by refusing to pay some dinky little three-hundred-dollar claim?”
“Four hundred and fifty with interment thrown in,” he said.
I conceded the arithmetic. “Four fifty, then,” I said. “The same question applies. Why cock around?”
“Hey, I can’t explain why the government does what it does. If these guys were so bright, they’d have tracked him down years ago. The VA application was the tip-off, that’s all I’m saying.”
I took a deep breath. “You’re jumping to conclusions.”
He stubbed out his cigarette. “Of course I’m jumping. The question is, am I right? The way I see it, the boys finally got a lock on him, and that’s the result.” He tipped his head in the direction of the garage apartment. “Here’s the only question I got … did they find what they came for or is it still hidden somewhere? I’ll tell you something else. This Rawson fellow could be part of it.”
This time I groaned and put my head in my hands. This was making my neck tense, and I massaged my trapezius. “Well, look. It’s an interesting hypothesis and I wish you a lot of luck. All I offered was to see if I could locate a set of dog tags or a photograph. You want to turn this into some kind of spy ring, it’s not my line of work. Thanks for the sandwich. You’re a genius with bologna.”
Chester’s gaze suddenly shifted to a spot just behind me. There was a sharp rap at the back door, and I felt myself jump.
Chester got up. “Police,” he said under his breath. “Just act normal.”