We Were Beautiful Once (4 page)

Mitch burrowed through the short stacks of government released files, phone books and maps while Kathy pored over Art Girardin's notes made during his needle-in-the-haystack searching at the Archives.  Meanwhile, Nick interviewed the POWs from Camp 13 his team had found.  The men who had been in Camp 13 all related the same inhumane conditions—bone-piercing cold or brain-searing heat, coupled with starvation and sicknesses without medical assistance—but only vague memories, if any, of a guy named Girardin, or was it Jardin? Or Giardino?  

Nick looked at his watch, it was after 9 p.m. on Wednesday.  He dropped the phone back into its cradle, pushed back his yellow pad, loosened his tie, and growled in frustration, “Who is left, Mitch?”

Stretching his long skinny legs and cracking his knuckles, Mitch responded, “Well, I've got Simmons, Forte, and Ciuci left, who were in Girardin's company, November '50, but not at Camp 13.  But no discharge papers, so nobody's located yet.  And, some Montoya guy who
was
at Camp 13, where his DD 214 discharge form lists New Mexico as his home address—thirty years ago.”  Nick lifted an eyebrow.  

“Leave him. Who else you got?”

“A Sonny Reiner.”

Kathy, who had been listening to the rundown while rifling through a tall stack of reports interjected, “That's a no-go. He's dead.”

Nick and Mitch looked at each other in disbelief.

“Do you do this in your spare time?” teased Mitch.

Ignoring the jibe, Kathy continued, “Art Girardin and I tracked him down to a small town north of Osage, Washington and talked to him for about 10 minutes.  Guy claimed he didn't know Roger, but we told him in '53 he'd told the interrogators at Panmunjom he did, and that he knew him from Camp 13.  Then, he said he wanted to think about talking any further.  When Art called back later two weeks later, the guy's wife said he'd drowned.  Art freaked.  Said this was like when he'd found the guy in California, and the next thing he heard, the guy was dead.”

“Nobody mentioned this to me,” said Nick, mildly irritated.

“Didn't think it was that important,” Kathy brushed it off.

“We can try Jaeger again,” suggested Mitch.

Nick was annoyed and pensive at the same time.  “Where's Jaeger out of again?” Nick asked.

“Pennsy.”

“Man, doesn't anybody live close by?  We're not even on a shoestring here, more like a piece of thread, and that deadline for naming trial witnesses is fast approaching,” Nick complained while picking up the phone and handing it to Kathy.  “Get him on the line.”

Kathy called the number listed in the file.  “Message says the phone's disconnected.”

“Call information, see if he's relocated or something,” Nick said, wondering if taking the case was such a good idea.  “Mitch, it's after 9 here, so it's still early  in Washington State.  See if you can get Mrs. Reiner on the wire...  put her on speaker.”

Ten minutes later Nick was expressing his condolences to the widow Reiner and delicately segueing into her husband's military service.  She knew little, because the man never spoke about the war to his wife.  As to his recent death, she was still mourning, one month to the day he'd washed up on the shore of Lake Wanapipiti.  

She said, “Retired after 25 years as investigator with the state welfare office.  Only 56, good health, went out hundreds of times...  to fish, wouldn't even tell me, but I'd guess where he was, good swimmer.  Clear day, too.”

“Did they do an autopsy?”

“Coroner did.  But even after the investigation, police couldn't figure it out.  Drowned, a big gash on his head...  said he must of hit the edge of the boat, fell over.  Didn't make sense to me.  What do I know?  He's dead.”

“Do you have children, Mrs. Reiner?”

“Nope, had no kids.  We didn't have a lot of friends, either...  living way out here by the lake all these years.  I tried calling a couple of men that came by just a few days before he passed, but didn't even have their names.  Friends from the Army, Sonny said.  He'd left a number on a pad in the kitchen.  I tried it, thinking it might be someone who should know he died.”

“Were they friends from the Army?”

“Think so, but I didn't have their names. Maybe Sonny told me, but I didn't remember with all that went on.  A woman answered, said something like ‘Army defense.'  I had no idea what to ask.  I hung up.”

“You didn't meet these gentlemen, then?”

“No, was out shopping, and when I drove up the driveway, they were driving out.  Sonny said they were buddies from the Army.”

“Do you have the number you called?”

“Oh, I don't know.  I can look, but I threw out a lot of scraps Sonny kept.”

“And that was all? No further contact?”

“No, put it outta my mind, 'til now.”

“Do you remember the car they were driving?”

“Not really.  Sonny only said they'd be back.”

“If you run across the number will you call us back?”

After Nick hung up, he turned to Mitch and Kathy.  “So, what's odd about that conversation?”

Mitch chimed in, “I would think the wife would have gotten more from Sonny or remembered who those guys where.  It's not like he had a lotta friends.”

Nick turned to Kathy, who was standing by the large window overlooking West Street. “Kath?”

Without turning in Nick's direction, she said, “Friends, Army buddies, or buddies from the Army, which was it?  I think that ‘Army defense' is the key... suggests, ‘buddies from the Army.'”

“Witnesses can't be found, some dying off. Trial's a few months down the line.  Folks, something's gotta break our way or we are in deep...  ”

Kathy interrupted Nick.  “Hey guys, across the street, that dark office right across from us.  I thought I saw someone looking in our direction.  Whose space is that?”

“That's an empty office. Hasn't been used in a year.”

Nick walked over to the window.  “Was that a flashlight that swept across? Mitch close the lights.”

The three stood back and looked across the street for about 10 minutes, saw nothing, and decided to call it quits for the day.

1981

 

 

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF TOWN, HARRIS and his staff had begun their investigation by interviewing the Army Board for the Correction of Military Records chairman, when Art Girardin's petition had been denied.  Having access to all the records without court orders, Harris's team was far ahead of Nick.  One Congressional from the mid-50s listed over 400 names, but rather than locating and interviewing each of those men they focused on a file, which had not been turned over to Nick on the opinion of the security counsel, that the report be withheld on grounds of national security.  The file known as the Broadbent report listed as the names David Bradshaw, Harry Sheer, Kenny Preston, Juan Montoya and Sonny Reiner.  Kenny Preston could not be located by Harris's Justice Department investigators, but the others were and were eventually contacted.  Except for Reiner, whom a senior official in the Department of the Army decided should be interviewed by a little-known investigative unit referred to simply as DA, under the umbrella of the larger Defense Intelligence Agency.

A search of FBI records turned up Juan Montoya, aka John Montoya, as an inmate in the New Mexico State Penitentiary serving a twenty-five-year-to-life sentence for a bank robbery in 1959.  In a phone discussion with Montoya, they had learned that he had been in the 32nd Army Special Forces assigned to working behind enemy lines. After being captured, he had been put into Camp 13.  When the name Girardin was mentioned, it rang a bell.  He had claimed that the last time he remembered seeing him was in the late winter of either 1952 or 1953.

Montoya had been moved from Camp 13 in June 1953 the following year.  But he recalled an American officer who spoke Chinese as being familiar with what went on in the camp: he thought his name was Tad or Tray or something unusual.  Harold Foster, the young JAG officer working for Harris, went in two directions: setting up an ex parte deposition, to which Castalano wasn't privy, to obtain an official statement from Montoya and locate an American POW officer that spoke Chinese.  Although there were several Chinese-American POWs in Camp 13 that spoke the language, none were officers.  However, based on a DD 214 service record of First Lieutenant Trent Hamilton, it was learned that he spoke Chinese and had been in Camp 13 during the last year of the war.  He was easy to locate; he had a secret security clearance, because his company did work for the Defense Department.  Harris's staff arranged a conference call.  The discussion did not produce anything pertinent to their investigation and they moved on.

Harris's next step was to fly to New Mexico and interview Montoya.  Foster arranged to have Montoya's statement recorded, but the government had no intention of sharing it with Nick under the “work product privilege” attorneys use to conceal things lawyers create in the course of litigation.  Phone interviews of Bradshaw and Sheer had pointed to the fact that Girardin may have been a POW.  But the interviews weren't exhaustive and Harris remained skeptical about much of what the men had to say after thirty years.  Montoya seemed to be the last in the line of those who may have had contact with Girardin.

Montoya, a small-shouldered, dark-complexioned man wore the tan shirt and pants of an inmate.  At the end of a long table, he seemed lost. Crammed in behind him sat a stenographer from the U.S. Attorney's office at Santa Fe.  Suit jackets removed, shirt sleeves rolled up, Harris sat at one side and Foster the other.  Harris, balding man standing well over six feet tall, did not have enough room to stretch his legs.  Near the door, a prison guard in short sleeves sweated profusely, water streaking down his pancake-shaped face.

After introductions, Harris asked, “Mr. Montoya, do you have anything you'd like to say before we get started?”

The man ran his fingers through his crop of dark gray hair, then smiled through large, amber-stained teeth.  “Hi Mom,” he giggled.

“Mr. Montoya, this is a serious matter,” Harris cautioned.

“Yeah, yeah, got a weed?”

“Neither of us smoke.  Anything else?”

“I wanna make sure we gotta deal.”

Foster interjected tersely, “I think we discussed that fully.”

“Yeah, but tell that man over there,” Montoya countered, his voice tense.  He nodded in Harris's direction.  “He's
el jefe,
no?”

“So there's no misunderstanding, you tell us what you think we talked about,” Foster said.

“Well, if I tell you what I know, Justice will recommend I get good time added for parole.  You talked five years.”

Foster, a man in his late twenties, lowered his voice, “I think we talked along those lines.”

Montoya flipped his head in the direction of the stenographer.  “Mr. Reporter, get all that?”

The stenographer, a slight man in his fifties with black pencil mustache banged on a few keys. “Yes.”

Harris began by having Montoya recount his training and early combat missions.  He said he was in-country almost nine months, on his way to Japan for R&R, when at the last minute he'd received orders transferring him from the 101st Calvary to the 32nd Army Special Forces.

“There came a time when you were captured by the Chinese, right?” Harris asked.

Before he answered, Montoya looked at the guard.  His eyes were closed.  Montoya's shout of “Yes!” startled the man out of a catnap.  The prisoner hee-hawed.

Without blinking, Harris followed up, “Tell us what happened.”

Montoya put his head between his hands.  “On my fifth mission behind the lines, late summer '52, ground was shit soft.  Ten of us parachuted in near the Yalu.  Raining.  Chinese spotted us.  Was surrounded.  Marched thirty miles to a camp.”

Montoya told about interrogations and attempts at indoctrination.  Harris moved to the question that brought him to the Southwest in the first place: “Did you know Roger Girardin?”

“Sounds familiar, think so,” Montoya answered coolly.

“What can you tell us about him?”

“Was in my hut.  He was there first.  I came in the middle of winter '53, so I didn't get to know him good.  I was beat up.  But, these guys all looked dead.”

“What did he look like?”

Montoya's face turned somber.  “Dead, like I said.”

“Color hair, remember?”

“Unh-uh.”  The prisoner had a vacant look.  

Foster handed Montoya a picture.  “From the file, when he was drafted.”

“Looks like a convict,”  he snickered.

“Was he talkative?”  Harris looked up.

“Can't say.”  Montoya seemed bored.

Harris clenched his fist. “Well how'd you know if he was there if you can't remember anything about him?”

“Man, I dunno.  My brain knew 'im.”  

Harris exploded.  “Goddamn it, I flew 2,000 miles to learn nothing.”  Foster avoided eye contact.  A moment passed.  Harris cooled off.

“Mr. Montoya, you told Mr. Foster that you and several hundred POWs were transferred to another camp.  Explain, please.”

Montoya looked up.  “Yeah, June '53.”

“How were you selected?”

“Hell, I don't know, orders came from the commandant.”

Harris laid his pencil down.  “Do you know who that was?”

“Yeah, Jo or Chao, something like that.”

“Did he come out and say, ‘You men are... ?'”

“No, nothin' like that.  Guy who spoke Chinese, a first louey, his mouthpiece told us.”

Harris sped up the pace, “What'd this guy, the ‘spoke Chinese guy' look like?”

“Big, big mother. Well fed,” Montoya giggled.