When he spoke, she could tell by his voice that he was very, very interested.
âWhat did your mother do then?â he asked.
âShe pursued it, of course. She wouldnât give up. She hounded the CIA. Air America. She got nothing out ofthem. But she did get a few anonymous phone calls telling her to shut up.â
âOr?â
âOr sheâd learn things about Dad she didnât want to know. Embarrassing things.â
âOther women? What?â
This was the part that made Willy angry. She could barely bring herself to talk about it. âThey impliedââ She let out a breath. âThey implied he was working for the other side. That he was a traitor.â
There was a pause. âAnd you donât believe it,â he said softly.
Her chin shot up. âHell, no, I donât believe it! Not a word. It was just their way to scare us off. To keep us from digging up the truth. It wasnât the only stunt they pulled. When we kept asking questions, they stopped release of Dadâs back pay, which by then was somewhere in the tens of thousands. Anyway, we floundered around for a while, trying to get information. Then the war ended, and we thought weâd finally hear the answers. We watched the POWs come back. It was tough on Mom, seeing all those reunions on TV. Hearing Nixon talk about our brave men finally coming home. Because hers didnât. But we were surprised to hear of one man who did make it homeâone of the crew members on Dadâs plane.â
Guy straightened in surprise. âThen there was a survivor?â
âLuis Valdez, the cargo kicker. He bailed out as the plane was going down. He was captured almost as soon as he hit the ground. Spent the next five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp.â
âDoesnât that explain the missing body? If Valdez bailed outââ
âThereâs more. The very day Valdez flew back to theStates, he called us. I answered the phone. I could hear he was scared. Heâd been warned by Intelligence not to talk to anyone. But he thought he owed it to Dad to let us know what had happened. He told us there was a passenger on that flight, a Lao who was already dead when the plane went down. And that the body in the cockpit was probably Kozlowski, the copilot. That still leaves a missing body.â
âYour father.â
She nodded. âWe went back to the CIA with this information. And you know what? They denied there was any passenger on that plane, Lao or otherwise. They said it carried only a shipment of aircraft parts.â
âWhat did Air America say?â
âThey claim thereâs no record of any passenger.â
âBut you had Valdezâs testimony.â
She shook her head. âThe day after he called, the day he was supposed to come see us, he shot himself in the head. Suicide. Or so the police report said.â
She could tell by his long silence that Guy was shocked. âHow convenient,â he murmured.
âFor the first time in my life, I saw my mother scared. Not for herself, but for me. She was afraid of what might happen, what they might do. So she let the matter drop. Untilâ¦â Willy paused.
âThere was something else?â
She nodded. âAbout a year after Valdez diedâI guess it was around â76âa funny thing happened to my motherâs bank account. It picked up an extra fifteen thousand dollars. All the bank could tell her was that the deposit had been made in Bangkok. A year later, it happened again, this time, around ten thousand.â
âAll that money, and she never found out where it came from?â
âNo. All these years sheâs been trying to figure it out.Wondering if one of Dadâs buddies, or maybe Dad himselfââ Willy shook her head and sighed. âAnyway, a few months ago, she found out she had cancer. And suddenly it seemed very important to learn the truth. Sheâs too sick