Better To Rest

EIGHTEEN

“I love younger men,” Jo said, bouncing into Wy’s house an hour later. “Give your friend Mr. Wiley my compliments, and tell him I said so.”

“First thing on my list,” Liam said.

Jo peered at Wy. “You look like you’ve been up all night.”

“So do you,” Wy said, and shoved a cup of coffee at her and another one at Liam.

Jo perched on the stool next to Liam’s. “Your father is a piece of work,” she told him.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” he said before he thought, and then scowled away any lingering trace of willingness to discuss his father with the press, or with anyone, for that mattter.

Jo sipped her coffee, looking at him over the rim of her mug. “He came here planning on retrieving that C-47.”

Liam sent Wy a warning glance, and shrugged. “So? Like he said, the air force brings back its own. Nothing new or wrong in that.” He kept his inevitable reflections to himself.

“This wasn’t an ordinary crash,” Jo said. “I just got off the phone with a friend in D.C. This wasn’t an ordinary crew on board this flight, either.”

“What do you mean?”

“The copilot’s name was Aloysius March.”

Liam and Wy exchanged glances. “That name supposed to mean something to us?”

“Aloysius March was Walter March’s father.”

“And Walter March is…?”

Jo huffed out an impatient sigh. “How the hell am I supposed to make a living if my own friends won’t read my own paper?” Snit over, she smiled, and it was a low-down, mean, dirty, nasty little snake of a smile. “Gen. Walter March is the nominee for chief of staff for the U.S. Air Force.”

They absorbed that in startled silence. “So Dad’s going after his boss’s dad’s body,” Liam said. “Sucking up to then th degree, one more step up on the career ladder, but so what?”

“He’s using air force funds to do it.”

“I’m shocked-shocked-to hear of misappropriation of funds going on in the U.S. armed forces,” Liam said, very dry.

Wy agreed. “I don’t see the big scandal here. Like he said, he’s going after three of their own. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, frankly. I think it’s kind of, I don’t know, right. We’re still looking for the bodies of American servicemen in Vietnam. We should be. How is this any different, other than being a different war?”

Jo added half-and-half to her coffee. “I don’t think recovering the bodies of the honored dead is what this is about, Wy.”

“Why not? Why does it have to be any more complicated than that? Honest to God, Jo, you see more conspiracies than John Birch.”

“Maybe you’re right, Wy, maybe I’ve been in the newspaper game too long, I can’t see the simple truth when it’s staring me in the face. But I don’t think so. Not this time, anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Because I asked my friend to pull the service records of the three crew members.”

“And?”

“And he couldn’t. They’re listed as classified.”

Moses’ side of the bed was empty when Bill woke up. She found him down at the bar when she got there, back in the office growling at the computer. “If this keeps up, I’m going to hire you to keep the books,” she told him.

“I’d rather spend the rest of my life listening to Puff Daddy,” he said. “Look at this.”

She came around the desk to look over his shoulder. “Oh, man. Are you back at that?”

“I think it’s important.”

“Think, or is something telling you so?”

He leaned back. “I’m telling you, babe, there’s nothing going on here except my nose is itching.”

“I can fix that,” she said.

He dodged her hand. “Where’s the coin?”

“I gave it to Liam.”

“Damn it. I’d like to get another look at it.”

It was an hour before opening and she had time to humor him. “Tell me why you think it’s important.”

He decided to give her a little history. “The U.S. didn’t even make twenty-dollar gold pieces until the California gold rush. Until then, 1849, the U.S. minted only one-dollar, two-fifty, five-dollar and ten-dollar gold coins.”

“Two-fifty?”

“Yeah, I know. But we used to have a two-dollar bill, don’t forget. The early nineteen hundreds, man, they were making some cool-looking money. The buffalo nickel, the Mercury dime, you know the guy with wings, and the dime was still silver back then. The quarter with Lady Liberty on it.” He pulled a handful of change from his pocket and slammed it down on the desk in disgust. “Look at this crap. That could be Albert Lincoln who owns the Ford dealership, and Greg Washington who plays forward for the New York Knicks, and I can’t even tell who the guy on the dime is. Plus, ain’t none of them made of enough of any precious metal to actually be worth what the face value on the coin is. Always assuming you can read it without a microscope.”

Moses was very indignant. Bill concealed her amusement. “But our coin was minted in 1921, didn’t we figure? That’s not even a hundred years old.”

“Well, I haven’t quite figured out how valuable it is,” he admitted. “There a lot of stuff I don’t understand, like grading and luster and I don’t know what else.” He thought for a moment, and added, “I got tangled up on an auction site and accidentally bid five hundred dollars for one, though.”

“You did what!”

He looked a little sheepish. “It’s okay; somebody outbid me. It went for five forty-nine.”

She whistled, and he nodded. “So I been thinking, Bill.”

She matched his tone. “What you been thinking, Moses?”

“I been thinking there might have been more of those coins on that plane.”

She sobered. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Me, either,” he said grimly. “Imagine the treasure hunt a rumor like that would start.”

“It’s already started.” She told him about the Gray gang. He swore. She looked at the monitor screen. “It’s too bad Lydia isn’t still alive.”

“Why?”

“She knew about coins.”

Moses stared at her.

“It’s true. She had a collection of old American coins, old quarters and nickels and dimes and pennies, just pocket change really, that she’d been saving up since she was a kid. She subscribed to a magazine,Quarters R Us or something like that. I used to see it lying around the house when we were at her place for book club.” She brightened. “In fact, I’d forgotten all about it, but I think she had some other, more valuable coins, too. Yeah, I remember she pulled out an album one time, it was really cool, had all these little pockets inside it for each individual coin.” She smiled. “She was annoyed with me, because I was more interested in the album construction than I was in the coins.” Her smile faded. “You know, now that I think of it, she might have…” Her voice trailed away.

Moses’ face had gone very hard. “Might have what?”

“It’s silly, it couldn’t possibly…” She met his eyes. “I’ve got to be wrong about this, Moses.”

He was inexorable. “Wrong about what?”

“Now that I think back, she might have had one of those coins in that album. Just like the one that was in the hand.”

Wy had a pickup in Ekwok she couldn’t get out of, so Jo accompanied Liam to the post. They arrived at the same time as Diana, who looked as drug-out as Liam felt. He brought her up-to-date. She listened, nodding, and when he finished said, “Makes sense to me. I just rousted Brewster Gibbons out of bed and hauled his butt down to the bank. Karen bought her town house for cash.”

“How much?”

“A hundred and twenty thousand.”

“Jesus. What’d she do, write a check?”

“She did, and this is the interesting part. She didn’t have much left over.”

“Her bank balance looks pretty good.”

“Yeah, but that’s the least amount it’s ever been. Gibbons says she’s been steadily depleting her trust fund.”

“What else?”

“While I was at it, I checked on Lydia’s finances. Her house is paid off, too, although that’s not quite so surprising. I checked on the other kids. All of them have very healthy cash balances, and none of them have any outstanding debts, at least not with Brewster’s bank. Jerry’s balance is just as healthy, it’s just that every check has to be cosigned by his mother.”

Liam frowned at the figures she’d scribbled. “Healthy. I’d call that filthy rich, myself.” He picked up the phone and dialed a number in Anchorage.

It rang five times before Jim picked it up. “Yeah.”

“Jim, it’s Liam.”

“Like I didn’t know.” There was a protesting female murmur in the background. “Sorry, honey. I’ll take this in the other room; I have a feeling I’m going to have to get on the computer.”

“Thanks, Jim.”

“Fuck you, Campbell. What do you want?”

“I need everything you can dig up on the Tompkins family in Newenham.” He gave Jim the names. “I’m particularly interested in their financial affairs. If they owe any money, if there is any money coming in. Like that.”

“Gee,” Jim said without enthusiasm. “Is that all?”

“And I need it in thirty minutes.” Liam hung up on the resulting explosion and looked at Diana. “Go down to the school. See if they’ve still got records for who was enrolled in high school in 1941. Make it for four years either way. Since the students are in their seventies, there probably won’t be any surviving teachers, but ask anyway.”

“Gone.” She went.

Liam looked at Jo. “I meant to ask you. Where’s Gary?”

She smiled. “I sent him home first thing this morning.”

He leaned back and gave her a long, considering look, which she met with equanimity. “Did you, now.”

“I did. That was a mean, rotten thing to do to you, Liam, and I’m sorry.”

He cocked his head. “Once more, with feeling.”

She laughed. “Look, Wy’s the best friend I ever had. For a few months, she was even my sister-in-law. Friends watch out for their own.”

He couldn’t resist. “Like the air force.”

“Even better than. The thing is, I got this idea you might be bad for her. You were, the first time around.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“No?”

“No. For Wy, the first time around I was a fucking disaster.”

“Thank you for not making me say that,” she said primly, and grinned.

“So I’m not a disaster this time?”

She met his eyes head-on. “No. Understand me, Liam, I can get along with the devil himself, if the devil is dating my best friend. Nothing gets in the way of the friendship, not for me. Loyalty is what I do best.”

“It’s my favorite thing about you.”

She looked surprised, and suspicious, and maybe even a little flattered. “Wy’s family. Wy loves you. That makes you family, too.”

“A cop and a reporter,” he said. “It’ll never last.”

She laughed again. “That’s what they said about Chuck and Di.”

The phone rang. “Okay, you prick,” Jim said, “get a pencil.” He dictated rapidly, without checking to see if Liam was keeping up. “That do you?”

“That does me just fine.”

“Dunaway there?”

Liam was surprised. “How did you know?”

“I know everything. Put her on.”

Liam handed Jo the phone. “Somebody wants to talk to you.”

She took it. “Dunaway.” She listened for a moment. Liam watched as her face flushed a deep, dark red. “None of your goddamn business,” she said, and slammed the phone down. Liam got his fingers out of the way just in time.

“What was all that about?”

“None of your goddamn business either,” she snarled. “Just so you know, Campbell, that family business doesn’t extend to your friends.”

“Okay,” he said, and refrained from any comments about younger men because it seemed safer. He made a mental note to call Jim back at his earliest opportunity.

“What do we do now?” she said, seeming to master her rage.

“I don’t know aboutwe, ” he said. “I’m going out to the base.”

“Can I come?”

“No.”

The base officer quarters was of a piece with the rest of Chinook Air Force Base, freshly painted and tidy, the sidewalks neatly shoveled and the storm windows fastened down. He found Charles in the same room he had stayed in that summer. The colonel was surprised to see him and, Liam thought, somewhat wary. “Come on in,” he said.

Liam closed the door behind him. “What’s with the crash site, Dad? What do you expect to find?”

“I expect to find the bodies of three men who died serving their country in time of war,” Charles said.

“One of whom fathered the man currently nominated for the air force spot on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

Charles looked startled and then rallied. “Who he happens to be related to doesn’t lessen his sacrifice.”

“No,” Liam admitted. “But there’s something else.” He was suddenly sick of the dance they always did. “Ah, hell, Dad. Wild Bill Hickok died in 1876.”

Charles was taken aback. “I- What?”

“The coin we found with the arm was minted in 1921.”

“Oh,” Charles said blankly. A sudden and unexpected grin spread across his face. “I never was a very good liar.”

Liam sat down without invitation in the room’s only chair. “Unless you’re doing something illegal by recovering that plane and the bodies of the crew, and I can’t see how you are, I don’t care why. I just don’t like being bullshitted. I can keep my mouth shut.” After last summer, Charles had to know that was the absolute truth. “Tell me enough so that I’ll want to and I’ll go away. Or I’ll buy you a beer, or take you caribou hunting, or whatever you want.”

They stared at each other in silence. It was hard to tell which of them had been more surprised by Liam’s words.

Finally Charles said, “You’d really take me caribou hunting?”

“Sure.” Liam shrugged. “I’ve never been, but there’s a hell of a herd northwest of here, the Mulchatna herd. Hundreds of thousands of them, the Fish and Game’s practically begging people to go shoot some so they won’t eat themselves out of house and home and wind up starving to death.”

The years of armed truce weren’t easy to shake. “I don’t know, Liam, you might shoot me and bury the body, once you got me out there.”

Liam got to his feet, disgusted.

Charles rose, too. “Don’t go, Liam. It was a joke. A bad joke, I admit, but it was a joke. Sit down.” He hesitated. “Please.”

Liam couldn’t remember his father ever having used that word with him before. He sat down again, partly because he wasn’t sure his legs would carry him to the door.

Charles reached for a plain buff file markedRestricted Access in big red letters and held it up. “The official investigation into the crash.”

“What happened?”

“It was too clear.”

“What?”

Charles smiled. “I know, doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it? But it was. Unlimited ceiling, fifty-mile visibility. It was too damn clear, and too cold, and the aurora was out in full force, hanging right down to the ground, if you can believe the eyewitnesses. All the colors they come in and all over the sky. There was no distress call from the crew, no indication that anything was wrong.”

“What were they doing so low? And weren’t they a little off course?”

Charles’ laugh was short and unamused. “A little. Their flight plan was for Krasnoyarsk. Instead, they were on a heading for Dutch Harbor. Either their instrumentation was off or they were, or they were just blinded by the lights. A couple on the ground saw the fireball when they impacted, and then a plume high up on the mountain. They called a pilot who was living in Newenham at the time, some Scots name…” He thumbed through the file.

“DeCreft?” Liam said. “Bob DeCreft?”

Charles looked up. “That’s right. How did you know?”

“One of the original Bush pilots. He’d lived here a long time. Go on.”

“DeCreft was in the air within the hour. Said in his interview that he followed a creek up so he wouldn’t get fuddled-his word-by the lights. Said he saw the impact site at the eleven-thousand-foot level, and then where the remains of the plane had fallen three thousand feet onto a glacier and into a crevasse.”

Liam was silent for a moment. “I don’t understand, Dad. Why are you so hot to pull this particular wreck out? Everything Wy said was true; it’ll be difficult and damn dangerous. Not to mention which the weather around these parts is not at its most reliable at this time of year. Your people could be getting themselves into some serious trouble.”

“I know that, Liam. I’m not doing this because I want to; I’m doing this because I’ve been ordered to.”

“Is it because the father of the guy who’s going to be your boss was one of the crew members?”

“No,” Charles said. He shook his head. “If only it were that simple.”

Trust builds trust. “Does it have something to do with the fact that the service records of the crew are classified?”

Charles regarded him with exasperation and, if Liam was not mistaken, maybe even some pride. “So you know that, do you?”

“I do.”

Charles looked at the file, and set it to one side. Elbows on his knees, he linked his hands and stared at them. “The copilot’s name was Lt. Aloysius March, and yes, he was General March’s father. But there were two other members on board that flight. One was the pilot, a Capt. Terrance Roepke. The other was a navigator, a Sgt. Obadiah Etheridge.”

“Where were they going?”

“Officially? Krasnoyarsk.”

“And unofficially?”

“Oh, they were going to Krasnoyarsk, all right. After they had refueled, they would have continued on to Attu, and made a big circle back to Anchorage by way of Dutch Harbor.”

“They were hunting.”

Charles nodded. “For the Japanese fleet. It was right after-”

“Pearl Harbor!”

“Who’s telling this story? Buckner and Eareckson and the rest of them were expecting an invasion at any moment. They wanted intelligence. This flight wasn’t the only one of its kind.”

“What makes this one special?”

Charles was silent for a long moment. Liam kept quiet, thinking that if he did so he might actually hear the truth.

“There was reason to believe,” Charles said, very carefully, “that there was a spy on board.”

“What kind of a spy? A Japanese spy?”

“A German.”

This was starting to sound like the script for a movie. “I still don’t get this mad rush to recover the wreckage. Let it lie, Dad, and the story will die with it.”

“Orders. From General March himself.” Charles smiled thinly. “We don’t know which member of the crew was a traitor.”

Understanding came at last. “And General March is afraid it is his father.”

“Yes.”

“Which would not be good for his confirmation hearing.”

“No. And then there’s that damn gold piece.”

“Why does it bother you so much?”

“I’m worried there might be more of it,” Charles said in a level voice. “And if there was more-”

“You’re worried about what it was going to be used for,” Liam said. “Smuggling? Spying? Sabotage?”

Charles nodded. “Any or all of the above.”

“There was more gold, once,” Liam said, and had the satisfaction of seeing his father look surprised.

“How do you know?”

Liam told him, and at the end said, “May I see the file?”

Charles hesitated for only a moment before handing it over.

Only one of the names of the two people who had witnessed the crash surprised him.

December 19, 1941

We go tomorrow. Its cold as hell. Peter showed me a poem by this guy Service which is about another guy named Mcgee who climbs into the furnace of a ship to get warm. Man if there was a ship with a furnace around here Id climb into it too.

We got the briefing on the route this morning. Supposed to be CAVU all the way. The Bering Strait is frozen over so it fucking well better be clear as a bell or were not going to know which way is up. The forecast calls for clear but this weather can turn completely around in twenty minutes or less you just never know. I asked Roepke what our mission was and he put his hands over his ears and looked under his bed. I don’t think Hitler gives a shit where were going. But the emperor of Japan might so maybe hes right. They told us to pack enough for a week so I reckon we won’t be gone long.

No letter from Helen. No letter from Mom. I dont know whats going on but its a real war now and I cant think about that. There might be something I can do though. Ive got to try anyway.

Peter gave me a present of a brown leather valise. Its old but nice and it looks smaller than it is. Ill have to recalculate the fuel load.