Guilt

Brown looked like he wouldn't turn food down – he weighed about a hundred fifty pounds. He was nearly six feet tall.

Thieu also thought he'd get franker answers if he was away from his counsellor.

So now they were sitting at a table outside under the green and white umbrellas, sharing a large pizza, of which Thieu wouldn't be able to eat more than one enormous piece. Fully loaded with pepperoni, sausage, olives, mushrooms, peppers, double cheese and anchovies, one slice weighed in at nearly a pound.

Judging from how he started it, Thieu guessed Chas would finish the entire large pitcher of Budweiser he'd ordered. He was already on his third glass. Thieu was having iced tea.

The two men weren't yet friends, but the beer wasn't exactly making Chas taciturn. The pocket tape recorder was rolling and they'd already covered Thieu's background, verifying that he was too young to have fought in Vietnam. His father hadn't been in uniform, either, though he'd been anti-Communist all the way. A capitalist in the silk trade in Saigon, the elder Mr Thieu had to leave when the city was abandoned by the U.S. So Thieu and Chas were on the same side.

'That's when my name changed.' Brown had a lot of nervous energy. Tics and scratches, eyes moving all the time. But he was talking clearly, if a little rushed. Maybe the beer would eventually mellow him out. 'Before I got in country I was Charles, Charlie Brown. When I was a kid, I would have done anything not to be named Charlie Brown, so of course it stuck like glue. Then I get to Nam and Dooher says there's no Charlie in his platoon, I'm Chas. So I'm Chas. I thought it was a good omen at the time. I thought Dooher was a good guy. Shows you what I knew.'

Thieu didn't want to stop him, and remained silent as Brown downed another deep slug of beer, the eyes going blank a moment. Another drink, more emptiness. Blink, the lights went back on, led to the abrupt segue. 'Tried to be my friend, y'know, after.'

'After what?'

The eyes came back, then darted away. 'You know.'

'I don't know.'

'About the dope, all that. I thought that was what you came down here for.'

In fact, Thieu's main avenue of inquiry was going to be about the ease of smuggling bayonets and rifles out of the country when your hitch was up. Instead, a bonus, Chas Brown was heading in a different direction.

'What dope?' Suddenly, Brown's expression closed up. Was Thieu trying to sandbag him in some way? The open camaraderie – the ruse of drinking together, having lunch – faded. The change in Brown was palpable. Suddenly Thieu was the heat and that wouldn't help his investigation, so he moved into damage control mode. 'I'm not interested in dope, Chas. I'm interested in a murder.'

'Well, yeah.' Meaningless, unforthcoming.

Thieu pressed it. 'Look, Chas, it's none of my business what drugs you're taking, or took. I want you to understand that. Here,' he pointed at the tape recorder on the table between them, 'I'm saying it on this tape. It's on the record. This has nothing to do with you except insofar as you know something about Mark Dooher. Did he take drugs, was that it?'

Brown moved out of the blazing sun, into the shadow of the table's umbrella. He wiped his high forehead and took a long pull of beer. 'Everybody took drugs,' he said. 'Everybody.' He scratched at his neck.

'Dooher bought our drugs. He was the connection.'

'Mark Dooher was selling marijuana?'

Brown laughed. 'Marijuana? Look at me, you think I'm strung out on marijuana? You think thirty years down the line, my brain's fried on some doob?' He shook his head, amazed at Thieu's world view. 'We're talking shit here, china white, skag.' Thieu digested this. 'Horse, man. Heroin.'

'You're saying Mark Dooher sold you heroin?'

A continual nod. 'That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Not just me. The whole platoon. Got his own stash free and sold to his guys. Did us a favor, lowest price in Nam.'

Thieu sat back, rocked by this information.

But Brown was going on unbidden. 'And you know, if you look at it the way it really was, Dooher's the one who let it all happen. It was his job to keep us straight. Instead, he kept us wired.'

Thieu leaned forward. 'Let what happen?'

Brown wasn't good with direct questions. They seemed to spook him. He leaned back, found himself out of the umbrella's shadow, his face in the sun, and that moved him forward again. 'You don't know about this, why did you want to see me?'

'I wanted to see if the guys in your platoon – Dooher specifically -smuggled out their weapons. If you knew if Dooher had.'

'Why?'

Though it had nothing to do with Sheila Dooher, which was his case, Thieu ran with what he had. 'We think Dooher used a bayonet to kill somebody, that's why.'

Brown's face cracked – a broken smile. Thieu had just verified something for him. 'Yeah,' he said.

'Yeah what?'

'That's how he did Nguyen, too.'

Thieu was learning about the art of interrogation with this man. Don't ask directly. Just keep him talking. 'Nguyen?'

'His source – Andre Nguyen. Had a little shop just outside Saigon, pretended to sell groceries.' Thieu must have looked confused. Brown put his beer mug down, brought his face in close, eye to eye. 'Come on, man! The guy he killed.'

The story came out. There had been no ambush with a platoon of stoned soldiers. Nguyen had sold Dooher a load of bad heroin, or maybe it was extra-good heroin. In any event, Dooher sold it to his troops and it overdosed all but two of them.

'And this never got reported?'

Again, an expression that told Thieu that his world and Brown's operated on different planes. 'Dooher covered it. He wasn't part of it. We – me and Lindley – we weren't part of it. We all alibied each other. We were out on patrol, the guys left back at camp had this bad load of shit, and it killed them.'

'And the authorities believed you?'

Brown nodded. 'Enough, but that wasn't really the end of it.' A slug of beer. 'Problem is, Dooher knows it's his fault. And we know it's his fault. So now he like wants to be friends, afterwards. Make sure Lindley and me, we got no hard feelings.'

'How'd he try to be your friend?'

'You know, pulled us – me and Lindley – some cherry R and R in Hawaii. He had a knack of getting what he wanted. He thought he'd show us a good time, make up for the other, some bullshit like that. Lindley wouldn't do it.'

'Why not?' It was a direct question and Brown hesitated again, but Thieu couldn't stop himself. 'Chas, why didn't Lindley want to go out with Dooher?'

'He thought he was going to kill us.'

'Why?'

'Why? 'Cause we knew he'd fucked up, that's why. We could ruin him if we told. We were the only witnesses left and we were pretty bitter.'

'At Dooher?'

Brown shrugged. 'At the whole thing, man. You get tight over there with your guys. You're like twenty years old and then, wham, they're all dead but you. It makes you bitter.'

Thieu believed it. 'But you went out with Dooher? In Hawaii?'

Chas nodded. 'I just didn't see it. He wasn't going to kill nobody. Lindley was just paranoid. I thought.'

'Now you don't think he was?'

'Well, he didn't try to kill me. There's the proof of that.'

The eyes seemed to go empty again, but Thieu saw something in them that Chas Brown was trying to keep hidden. Chas grabbed for the crutch of his beer glass, but Thieu surprised himself, reaching out, grabbing his wrist, stopping him.

'What?' he asked.

'I always thought, later, that if Lindley had come along, he might have. Killed us both, I mean. When I showed up at his hotel alone, it was like he freaked out, goes all quiet on me, like, "What the fuck? I ask my guys out for a good time, on me, and they stand me up. What kind of bullshit is that?'"

'So what did happen? That night?'

'Nothing. We got drunk. Well, tell the truth, first time in my life, somebody got drunker than me. I was, I guess, still a little scared what he might do.' Brown's ravaged face creased into a little-boy smile. 'I poured out a lot of good rum that night. Still breaks my heart to think about it.'