Tin Soldier: The Seven Sequels Page 6

  “If I was black, you’d ask for help, no problem,” Webb said. “That it? So you think it’s wrong for a white person to be prejudiced against a black man for the color of his skin, but it’s okay for a black man to be prejudiced against a white man for the same reason?”

  “There’s no doubt I’m an angry black man,” Lee said. “In general, I’ve got good reason for it, but you’re not interested in why, and I’ll try to leave it be. In specific, right now I’m an angry black man because someone burned my house down. And I’m also angry at myself because you’re a good kid and I could have found a better way to get you to see the world from my point of view. I’m asking forgiveness. You got that in you?”

  Webb took a deep breath. The man beside him was proud; asking this could not have been easy.

  “I got it in me,” Webb said. “As long as you don’t tell me to watch any more old movies.”

  Lee grinned. Like he understood Webb was trying to break the tension.

  Lee said, “Won’t tell you to do anything again. But I’ll ask. Would you please watch just one more? And if you do, I’ll buy you a steak dinner—biggest, most expensive steak you want. Tonight. After we talk to Jesse Lockwood’s father in Gainesville.”

  Webb let out a long sigh and turned back to the Camaro.

  “Lobster,” Webb said over his shoulder to Lee. “Going to cost you a lobster on top of that steak.”

  “Then I drive the next shift and you take the iPad.” Lee grinned. “The movie is Ocean’s Eleven. The original from 1960. Starring Frank Sinatra. You have heard of Sinatra, haven’t you, Grasshopper?”

  Webb could have gotten mad again, but he knew Lee was teasing, and it didn’t feel bad.

  “Keep your pebble,” Webb said. He hoped he’d have an appetite by evening. “I’m only in this for steak and lobster.”

  THIRTEEN

  Lee stopped the Camaro at a corner that led to a culde-sac in an old neighborhood in Gainesville. They’d made it from the rolling hills of Atlanta to the Florida state line in about three and a half hours, and the last ninety miles south from the state line had been all scrub bush and swamps and palmettos, the interstate jammed with semis and motorhomes.

  In this subdivision, the pavement was cracked and patched with tar, and the houses were bungalows with faded stucco, dwarfed by the palmettos in the yards.

  As Lee shut down the engine, Webb looked up from the iPad.

  “You were buried in that thing,” Lee said. “What did you do, watch the movie twice?”

  “Didn’t enjoy Sinatra quite as much as Bogart,” Webb said, “so the answer is no. Last hour, I’ve been hitting Facebook. Hope you have a good data plan.”

  “Borrowed that iPad from one of the women who works for me,” Lee said. “If I used my own device and my own data plan, chances are we could be tracked. Facebook?”

  Webb tapped the iPad. “I think I found him.”

  “Him?”

  “Matt Lockewood,” Webb told Lee.

  Webb tilted the iPad toward Lee and showed him the photos on the Facebook account.

  “Facebook?” Lee said. “He’s a bit old for that, wouldn’t you say?”

  “For a guy who doesn’t like getting judged by appearances, you’re quick to—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Lee said. “Get over it.”

  “I might have to,” Webb said. “I wasn’t talking about his account. I think I found his daughter’s account. Natasha Bartlett in Sandpoint, Idaho. Small town. Don’t think it would have two Natasha Bartletts. Especially two with a father named Matt Lockewood.”

  Lee pulled the keys out of the ignition. “We’ll see if the photo matches the man we’re about to see.”

  “I take it we’re in front of his house,” Webb said.

  “He’s around the corner,” Lee said. “I don’t want him to know what vehicle we drove. Thought before we knocked on Lockewood’s door, I’d give you a heads-up on our planned approach. You know, so you won’t feel like the grasshopper here.” Lee spread his hands, palms upward, like a magician trying to convince his audience that nothing was up his sleeves. “The new transparency. Like it?”

  “Convenient transparency,” Webb answered. “I notice that you pick and choose. If it was total transparency, you would have mentioned that Roy Hawkins has been following us since the last time we stopped for gas. He’s—what, a block behind us? In a green Chevy half-ton, parked behind the moving van on the right-hand side of the street? Ali on the passenger side? Motorcycle strapped in place in the back of the truck?”

  Lee stared at Webb, and then a huge grin crossed his face. “Not bad, son. You do pay attention.”

  Webb didn’t know if he liked the fact that he enjoyed getting compliments from Lee. Webb didn’t want to get into the habit of trying to earn the older man’s approval.

  “He’s our backup,” Webb said. Not a question.

  A big black bug flew into the windshield of their motionless vehicle, bounced away and kept flying. Webb thought that’s what life was all about. When things hit you out of nowhere, you pick yourself up and do your best to pretend nothing happened. Nobody’s business how you felt.

  “Yes, he’s our backup,” Lee said. “When the BTK guy showed up at the Civil Rights Memorial, that told us the Bogeyman was tapping my cell conversations. When Ali scooped you out of there, it told the Bogeyman that I was expecting him to tap my cell. When they didn’t go to Roy’s junkyard, it told me and Roy that the Bogeyman didn’t need to take the chance there because he had other ways to track us that were less dangerous.”

  “He figured out ahead of time that the junkyard was a trap.”

  “Which tells us something else,” Lee said. “The Bogeyman has good intel. He’d been able to dig deep enough into Roy’s military records to know you don’t want to mess with him. Man, if we’d been able to close those junkyard gates on the Bogeyman, let me tell you, by the time Roy was finished, we’d have learned everything we needed to know. Unless the Bogeyman was legit and called in some major firepower. But if the Bogeyman was legit, he would have just walked in and badged us.”

  “So since nobody has badged us yet, the Bogeyman is someone with good intel, who can’t work in the open.”

  “Exactly,” Lee said. “That works in our favor. Sooner or later, he’s going to show up, or send someone to show up, not knowing Roy is behind us, ready to rock and roll and do some old-fashioned head thumping.”

  An image flashed into Webb’s mind of massive Roy Hawkins holding some guy by the neck, the guy clawing uselessly at Roy’s biceps as the guy’s air supply diminished. Then Webb pictured himself in Roy’s grip, because Roy had decided he didn’t like the way Webb had held on to Ali through some of the turns on the motorcycle. Not so good.

  Lee opened the car door and the smell of citrus hit Webb. “How about we walk from here?”

  Webb stepped out on his side and stretched.

  Not even the end of December, and the air was gloriously warm. Maybe summer would be too hot in Gainesville, but Webb could handle a few weeks here now. Sit on a front porch, listen to the crickets, play his guitar.

  No, wait—that wouldn’t work. He was dodging someone with the power to tap phones and the motivation to burn houses. All because his grandfather might have been a spy or, worse, a traitor. That thought messed with his enjoyment of the weather and the outline of palmetto leaves etched against blue sky.

  “What I’m hoping,” Lee said as they walked around the corner, “is that Marcus was up front with us in Atlanta and that the Bogeyman has zero idea we even know about Jesse Lockewood’s father. I’d rather see if Matt Lockewood can tell us anything now and save Roy’s ability to head-thump for later, when we know more about the situation.”

  “We just knock on the door?” Webb asked.

  “Better than calling ahead,” Lee said. “Don’t want to give warning. It would be smart to work on the assumption that the Bogeyman tapped Matt Lockewood’s phone to cover all bases, guessing that sooner or
later we’d learn about him. It’s why we have to make all our visits in person. We have to assume the Bogeyman can tap into any phone, anytime.”

  “Dingdong,” Webb said. “Hello, sir. Interested in buying some cookies? And by the way, I hear your son Jesse died in Vietnam. Can you tell us why his photo is on two different identification cards?”

  “Grasshopper,” Lee said. “You forget who I am.”

  “Angry black man,” Webb answered. “Longtime civil-rights activist.”

  “Also a successful insurance broker. How about dingdong, here’s my business card, I’m from State Farm. Mind if I ask you a few questions about your son Jesse? That buys us time inside the house to look for photos on the walls. Anything we learn from questions is a bonus.”

  “Dishonest,” Webb said. “Hoping he’ll assume the insurance thing is related to his son and maybe he’s got some money coming for an old policy.”

  “And burning down a house isn’t dishonest?”

  Maybe later, Webb would tell Lee about the lesson Webb learned when he went to the North. That if you attack a monster the same way the monster attacks you, the danger is that you will become like the monster.

  Webb said, “I’d prefer to be up front, tell him that I’m from Canada and that my grandfather might have known his son and would it be okay to ask a few questions. That should work. All across the world, people love Canadians.”

  “Someone of his generation sees me, and I don’t show him a business card and let him see I’m a respectable businessperson,” Lee said, “chances are he’s going to think I’m there to rob his house. We won’t get past the doorstep.”

  “You are racist,” Webb said. “Not all whites are like that. Besides, people love Canadians. After I introduce myself, maybe he’ll think you’re an African-Canadian instead of an African-American. It’ll all be good.”

  “Very funny, you are.” Lee shrugged as they stopped in front of the final house on the street. “Try it your way then.”

  The house had been painted pink a long time ago. The stucco was cracked. The lawn was patchy. There was a weathered hammock hanging from supports on the front porch.

  They walked to the front door.

  Webb rang the bell.

  They heard footsteps. A stooped man who had once been tall answered the door and only opened it halfway, still wearing a housecoat although it was past noon. He had a couple days’ worth of gray stubble on a face that was an unhealthy gray. He didn’t quite look like his Facebook photo but close enough.

  “Hello, Mr. Lockewood,” Webb said.

  Matt Lockewood looked past Webb and glared with suspicion at Lee. He pushed the door partially closed, leaving just enough space to peer at them, and spoke with a chill in his voice. “Not interested.”

  “My name is Jim Webb,” Webb said.

  “You need a haircut,” Matt told him. “How did you know my name?”

  “Facebook,” Webb said.

  “Farcebook,” Matt spat. “Bad enough families get together for Thanksgiving. Then my daughter sets up an account for me and expects me to put stuff on it. Yeah, today I had a big bowel movement. Should post that for the world.”

  “I’m from Canada,” Webb said, feeling an ache from holding a fake smile in place. “I think my grandfather knew your son, Jesse. Would it be okay if I asked you some questions about him?”

  Matt shut the door on Webb and Lee. As Webb took that opportunity to notice the fissures in the dry wood of the door and the varnish that flaked from it like yellowing cellophane, Matt’s muffled voice came through the door.

  “You’ve got thirty seconds to get off my property,” Matt said, “or I call the cops. And I’m starting the count now. Thirty. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight…”

  Webb and Lee were out of earshot by the time the countdown reached fifteen.

  As they moved past the gate and onto the street, Lee turned to Webb. “Tell me that part again, how all across the world, people love Canadians.”

  FOURTEEN

  Lee’s iPad pinged. He was on the passenger side, working Google as Webb drove. They were on Highway 301, heading north to Jacksonville. Webb liked all the moving. Different landscapes, different towns. The hum of highway, flashing of power poles on the side of the car.

  And silence.

  Lee didn’t need to listen to the radio or a CD, and he didn’t talk unless something needed discussing. Webb was fine with that. It didn’t hurt that he was driving a black Camaro with tinted windows. Except for the gnawing worry about his grandfather’s past, Webb loved the sense of adventure that came with moving, moving, moving. Maybe that was something he had to learn about himself, that he wasn’t going to be the kind of guy who wanted a nine-to-five job and a house with a picket fence. His grandfather hadn’t wanted that either. His grandfather had always been…moving. This shared restlessness gave Webb a sudden new appreciation for his grandfather.

  For a second, he didn’t realize Lee had been talking to him, and Webb swam upward from his deep pool of thought and broke surface, returning to the moment.

  “Next stop, Derek Irvine,” Lee said. “Lives in Charleston. How’s your American geography?”

  “Saskatoon, Saskatchewan,” Webb said, hiding in a grin.

  “What kind of foreign language is that?” Lee asked, not joking. “Or did you just sneeze?”

  “Name of a city and province in Canada,” Webb said. “If you’re going to test me on American geography, I’ll do the same for you. What’s the name of our president?”

  “Nice try. Prime minister.”

  “Points to you,” Webb answered. “Charleston. South Carolina, right? Civil War started there.”

  “Good job. Fort Sumter. Cannon fired there started it all. But freeing the slaves wasn’t enough. A hundred years later—” Lee stopped himself. “Sorry, Grasshopper.”

  “Look,” Webb said, “now that you’re giving me a choice, I’m cool talking about what matters to you. Just not cool about watching Sinatra again. I don’t get why people liked him in movies.”

  “Dang,” Lee said. “I knew there was a reason I was beginning to like you.”

  “Those movies were a test?”

  “Yup,” Lee said.

  Webb waited for more of an explanation, but it didn’t come. Instead, Lee tapped his phone.

  “We’re headed to DC,” Lee said. “From here, it’s maybe eleven hours up Interstate 95.”

  Webb nodded. They were going to DC to visit the next person up the chain with information on Jesse Lockewood and Benjamin Moody, hoping it would lead them to the Bogeyman who’d burned down Lee’s house.

  Lee continued, “I’ve been googling Lockewood’s platoon, trying to locate a soldier in his squad.”

  Again, Webb nodded. Lee had explained that there were four platoons to a company, thirty-six soldiers to a platoon and three twelve-soldier squads per platoon. That broke down further to three four-soldier fire teams. Lee and Roy had been on the same fire team.

  “Found two of them,” Lee said. “One in Wyoming, one in Charleston, South Carolina. Going to Wyoming takes us thirty-six hours west, and then another thirty-six hours east to DC. Or if you want, we can head for Charleston and Derek Irvine, which is only a small detour off Interstate 95 on the way north.”

  “Wow. Another seventy-two hours in a car with you if we chose Wyoming?”

  “Not that you’re the princess of fun,” Lee said. He set the iPad in his lap and leaned back in the passenger seat. He rested his hands behind his head and stretched out his elbows, the picture of a man satisfied with a job well done. “My travel app shows we should get to Charleston about 6 PM. Hopefully, we can see Lockewood’s squad mate tonight. ”

  Webb said, “Before or after the steak and lobster you owe me?”

  “Your choice,” Lee said. He was looking at the iPad. “What the—?”

  “What the what?”

  “The Facebook account for Matt Lockewood’s daughter? It’s disappeared.”

  The
Bogeyman, Webb thought, is everywhere. And he didn’t feel like making a joke about it.

  FIFTEEN

  “Let’s talk about long hair,” Lee said.

  “How about not?” Webb answered. “Sixty miles left to Charleston. I want to enjoy the scenery.”

  It consisted of thick stands of pine trees on each side of the interstate. And billboards. Not spectacular. But better than talking about Webb’s hair.

  “I want to apologize,” Lee said. “It bothers me that when I met you I called you a long-haired punk. Maybe you tell me more about why you like it long, and I’ll tell you why I can’t help but react when I see it long on a kid.”

  “Apology accepted,” Webb said. “Time for me to enjoy the scenery.”

  “No other way to say this, but when I see long hair today, I see a kid trying to be cool.”

  “Look at those pine trees,” Webb said. “Oh boy.”

  “When I was in ’Nam, kids your age were protesting the same war I didn’t believe in fighting. They were part of a generation questioning all the values of the generation before them. Grew their hair long out of rebellion. At least they had the guts and passion to protest in peaceful groups. I wish kids today cared about something more than sitting in front of a television or a video game. At Kent State, National Guard shot into a crowd of antiwar protesters. Killed a few of them. Can you believe that happened in this country?”

  “It’s a good thing,” Webb said, finally allowing himself to be drawn into the conversation, “that it’s so hard to believe.”

  “Good thing?”

  “Be a bad thing if it wasn’t shocking. Like when I found out about those Sunday-school girls getting killed by a bomb in a church in Alabama. So wrong, it’s hard to imagine. But stuff like that is happening in Iraq every day, and you get numb to it. There. Not here.”

  “But there’s still lots to do,” Lee said. “Discrimination has shifted from not allowing black people to sit in the same restaurant to black people earning less than white people, getting fewer jobs than white people, going to jail more than white people. That’s what makes me angry.”