Lee stepped out of the car, stretching. Just like someone who’d been napping for a while, not someone in predator mode.
Now only a couple of paces away, Eric McAuley—Webb still thought of him as Jesse Lockewood—barely glanced at Lee.
McAuley had taken good care of himself over the decades. His hair was silvered at the edges, and his jaw was square and the skin tight. He was tanned, and his khaki pants and light green golf shirt made him look like he golfed.
He could be a successful businessman or maybe someone who ran a restaurant in the French Quarter. Or he could just as easily be a popular university professor teaching English literature based on a hard-earned PhD.
Thanks to information from his cousin Adam’s geek friend, Webb knew, of course, that Eric McAuley actually did teach at the University of New Orleans and that the online staff photo showed an icon of Shakespeare instead of McAuley himself.
Lee made no threatening moves as McAuley neared the old Taurus. Lee simply remained leaning against the door and said two words. “Jesse Lockewood.”
McAuley didn’t flinch. Didn’t break his stride. Didn’t even look at Lee.
“Bad acting,” Lee said to McAuley’s back. “Anyone else would have looked over, wondering why I got their name wrong. You want a quiet talk with me and my friend over coffee and beignets? Or you want to leave behind this nice life as Eric McAuley and start running again as Jesse Lockewood?”
McAuley kept walking.
Webb stepped out of the car too.
“You’re closing in on sixty,” Lee said, raising his voice slightly because of the distance McAuley kept adding. “Think it’s going to be easy to rebuild?”
McAuley stopped, as if considering Lee’s words, then turned. “I’m putting my groceries inside. I’ll be back. That okay with you?”
“Okay with us,” Lee said. “I’m not here to force you to do anything. No weapons, no threats. Just want to talk, and then my friend and I will be out of your life. What you’ll get out of it is knowing how we found you, and the steps you can take to make sure that Vietnam doesn’t catch up to you again.”
The answer must have satisfied McAuley, because after he opened the door and stepped inside his apartment, he was back out in less than two minutes.
“Let’s walk,” he said. Nothing about his body language suggested he was afraid. “Nice café around the corner. I don’t want my wife involved.”
He glanced at Webb, who could see McAuley’s eyes taking in the long hair.
“I know, I know,” Webb said. “Hippie. That’s the first thing you Vietnam vets think.”
“No,” McAuley said. “Your face. Something familiar about it. It’ll come to me.” McAuley turned to Lee. “Beignets? You’ve been to New Orleans before.”
Lee grinned. “Love those things. Great on your lips. Stay on your hips.”
All three remained silent the remainder of the short walk around the corner. A waiter greeted McAuley by name and showed them to a sunny spot on the patio. McAuley ordered beignets and coffee for all of them. It was very civilized, considering that someone had burned down Lee’s house because of the man across from them.
“I’m Lee Knox,” Lee said. “Former second lieutenant. Thirty-eighth Infantry.”
“The Cyclones,” McAuley said. “Amazing how that stuff never leaves your brain, remembering names for divisions.”
McAuley gave Webb another questioning glance.
“Jim Webb,” Webb said.
McAuley studied them some more. “I’ve always had an escape plan. Reason I didn’t run when you called out my name was because of sheer curiosity. Not only about how you found me, but this whole odd-couple thing between the two of you. That curiosity is only growing. One of you talks like a Minnesotan. The other like the south.”
“Black and white,” Webb said. “Something Lee keeps pointing out.”
“Webb’s Canada,” Lee said. “I’m Tennessee. And he’s the one who started it. A friend of a friend kind of thing. Webb had questions about two names and one photo. Jesse Lockewood and Benjamin Moody.”
McAuley looked at Webb. “That’s where I’ve seen you before. Sean Alexander. Same features.”
Sean Alexander. Hearing the name from someone else was like a zap of electricity to Webb.
“My grandfather,” Webb said.
“I hope he died a horrible death,” McAuley said. His face tightened. “And please, do take offense. I thought this was going to be a friendly chat, and I hoped we could work things out, but after what that man did to me, I’d gladly dump your body in a swamp.”
Their waiter brought the beignets and coffee in a pot on a tray and set it down.
McAuley’s expression stayed tight, as if he was clenching his jaw. He ignored the beignets and didn’t move his gaze away from Webb.
“Wow, these are great,” Lee said, his mouth full. “Deep fried and sugared. We can order some to go, right?”
Webb’s gut was churning. He kept hearing McAuley’s words about Webb’s grandfather. After what that man did to me…
“Hey, Lockewood,” Lee said to McAuley when neither Webb nor McAuley broke off the stare-down. “Ease off. Webb’s not responsible for his grandfather’s actions.”
McAuley turned a slow gaze toward Lee. Then he gave a puzzled frown as Lee pulled out his wallet and put a hundred-dollar bill on the table, right beside the coffee pot.
“Here’s what I have—straight-up odds—that says you’re wrong about the kid’s grandfather,” Lee said. “Someone else did you wrong, and that’s why I’m here. For payback against the same person. Want to take the bet?”
McAuley relaxed, but only slightly. “What do you know?”
“The kid’s grandfather has passed on,” Lee said. “Yet someone burned my house down a few days ago. I like the odds that a dead man wasn’t the one to either burn down my house or send someone to do it. So whatever happened, you should assume someone else was responsible and is trying to bury the past. Webb and I think of him as the Bogeyman, and we’re trying to find him for some payback.”
Lee said to Webb, “You’ve never been to New Orleans before, right? Try a beignet. Don’t let Lockewood spoil your appetite with an unfounded accusation. There’s still a lot of digging to do before we find out what really happened, and in America we’re supposed to believe in the innocent-until-proven-guilty thing.”
Webb took Lee’s advice and set his iPhone on top of the hundred-dollar bill. He grabbed a beignet and took a bite. It tasted better than he expected.
“Someone wanted your military ID cards destroyed,” Lee said to McAuley. “That’s why they torched my house. It worked.” He pointed at the iPhone on the bill. “Except the kid here was smart enough to take photos of the cards. Want to see them?”
“No,” McAuley said. “I know what they look like. Last man who had them was this kid’s grandfather. Sean Alexander. I traded them to him so that my wife and I could escape Saigon. We didn’t get too far.”
McAuley’s face twisted slightly with bitterness. “We didn’t get too far with Sean Alexander’s help anyway. We had to get here on our own. And apparently, as your presence indicates, that still wasn’t far enough.”
“Sounds like quite a story,” Lee said. “How about you make another trade? Your story for Webb’s story and my story about how we found you. When we’re finished, maybe you’ll owe the kid an apology.”
“Fair enough,” McAuley said. “In a small town in the southern part of Vietnam, I saw someone counting diamonds in a tent. That’s where it began.”