That sound kosher?”
“Oh, yeah,” Danny said. “There were plenty of opportunists in-country back then. Knowing the fighting would eventually end, some balls-to-the-wall entrepreneurs went over to establish position for the postwar boom. Several ran bars and restaurants in Saigon.”
“Where was Lapasa from?” Not sure why I asked. Place of residence didn’t really matter. Guess it was my way of personalizing.
Ryan shuffled pages. Read. Shuffled a few more. Then,
Danny grinned. I resisted the impulse to roll my eyes.
“Lapasa was a home boy.” Ryan had switched back to English. “Honolulu, Hawaii.”
“Got an address?” I asked.
Ryan read out a street number on Kahala Avenue.
“Cha-ching!” I pantomimed a cash register. Or something.
Ryan looked at me.
“Kahala has some of the priciest real estate in Honolulu.”
Danny’s smile faltered, slowly faded. He looked down, then to his left, as though searching for an answer deep in his memory. Wordlessly, he jotted a note.
“Got antemorts?” I asked.
“Your bailiwick.” Ryan handed me the folder.
The men watched as I leafed through papers.
There were multiple letters from Lapasa’s mother to the army. A couple more photos. Statements from witnesses who’d seen or been with Lapasa before his disappearance. The last was dated January 2, 1968. Lapasa had rung in the New Year at Saigon’s Rex Hotel with one Joseph Prudhomme, a member of the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support Agency.
According to Prudhomme, Lapasa planned to travel to Bien Hoa and Long Binh during the month of January. I assumed that was the reason Lapasa came up in Danny’s circle search.
At the very back of the folder was a manila file. I flipped through the contents. Charts. Narrative. A small brown envelope. I peeked inside and saw the little black squares I was hoping for.
“The dentals are here, including X-rays.” I read the final page of the file. “Lapasa’s last dental appointment was on April twelfth, nineteen sixty-five.”
I backtracked. Skimmed.
“Theresa-Sophia Lapasa states in a letter dated November sixteenth, nineteen seventy-two, that medical records can be provided.” I looked up. “Why wouldn’t she just do it?”
“Makes it too real,” Danny said.
I raised questioning brows.
“It’s a form of denial. Sometimes families can’t face the possibility that their loved one really is dead.”
I read a few more of the letters Theresa-Sophia had written over the years.
“The old gal must have faced reality. In two thousand, Mrs. Lapasa expressed her willingness to provide a DNA sample.”
“Did she?”
I looked. Found no lab report. Shook my head.
We all went still, thinking the same sad thought. Had Theresa-Sophia Lapasa died never knowing what happened to her son?
Ryan spoke first.
“Lapasa wasn’t military. How could he have been on that chopper?”
“Civilians hitched rides all the time,” Danny said.
“And your CIL-1968—” Ryan circled a hand in the air.
“1968-979.”
Ryan nodded. “1968-979 was found a quarter mile from the crash site, seven months later, too decomposed for visual ID or fingerprinting, wearing a dog tag but no insignia?”
“The mortuary affairs people at Tan Son Nhut assumed the body had been looted.”
“Like 2010-37,” I said.
Danny nodded. “Apparently it was a problem in that area.”
“Why leave the dog tag?” Ryan asked. “You’d think that was a priority item for looters.”
Good question, I thought.
“Who knows?” Danny said.
“I’m confused,” Ryan said. “Spider Lowery was army. Wasn’t Tan Son Nhut an air base?”
Danny crossed his arms. “Long or short version?”
