Richard Greener: The Lacey confession

Walter spent more than seven years in Vietnam. He lived. When the war was over, he returned to America. But the war never ended. It stayed in his dreams long after the women faded away. Na Trang, Laos, the Mekong River delta. He never lost it, not all of it. It didn’t haunt him as it did others, but every time he thought it was gone, all gone-it wasn’t. There were still nights when he would awaken with the smell of Saigon, the stench of blood and napalm, burning huts and burning bodies-so close. Back in the United States, as seamlessly as could be expected, Walter resumed life as a regular soldier. However, there was no one left to find.

He left the Army at twenty-five and spent two uneventful years struggling to make a living back home in upstate New York. Then a distraught Colonel from Ft. Benning, Georgia, called, and Walter Sherman found his way in life. The Colonel, who had heard of Walter through another officer from Saigon, paid Walter a thousand dollars to find his sixteen-year-old, runaway daughter. The Colonel was the first of many. Although new clients had a hard time finding him, those who succeeded were not disappointed. The market sought him out. Rich, powerful and famous people needed someone they could count on to find their runaway children, drunken wives, or husbands off on a bender. Or it could have been someone else close to them, a brother or sister, mother or father, holed up a thousand miles from home with somebody they picked up in a bar. Embarrassment and scandal were to be avoided at any cost and Walter was seen as the answer to the most terrible question a public person of means could ask- Oh God, is there anyone who can help me?

Years later, in rare moments of nostalgia, he sometimes wished he’d saved at least a dollar of that first thousand bucks so he could frame it as many retailers frame the first dollar they make at their new store. Instead, he had no memorabilia. In fact, he had nothing but the money to indicate he’d ever done anything, worked for anyone, found anybody. Walter never took notes, kept no records, had no files. For the first few years he continued to live at home with his mother and didn’t even have a phone of his own. He was a model of discretion and confidentiality. He maintained total privacy and offered the same to every client. In addition to his uncanny success, it was this quality of total privacy above all others that justified his high fee. He was an honest priest and forceful sheriff, both at the same time. For someone to retain his services, they had to know someone who knew someone-just to find him. He worked only by referral, only for cash, paid in advance and totally without supervision.

All that was behind him now. “I don’t work anymore,” he told Conchita Crystal. As Ike said, Walter was retired. Ike never knew exactly what Walter did. Neither did Billy. But Walter’s friends had a pretty good idea it often involved some real danger and, perhaps-just perhaps-questionable legality. They saw the strangers who, from time to time, came into Billy’s Bar looking for him. They knew something was up when he left the island without notice and returned just as unexpectedly after a few days, a week, sometimes longer. Walter rarely said where he’d been. He never said why. Ike and Billy were sure Walter was mixed up in some very strange goings on. “Some serious shit,” said Billy once, to which Ike had vigorously nodded agreement.

Walter was in his early thirties when he and his wife, Gloria, bought the house on St. John. In those days, Ike too basked in his prime, no more than fifty, looking and acting half his age. The two men had been close friends for almost thirty years. When Billy Smith showed up-as William Mantkowski at first-in the spring of 1992, the trio was quickly established. Ike and Walter were already fixtures at a bar called Frogman’s. Billy Smith, the name William Mantkowski chose after a month on St. John, bought Frogman’s and as an extra bonus, he got his two best friends in the deal.

Ike now served as overseer, the wise elder, CEO emeritus of a family conglomerate of small enterprises. Together with his sons and their sons, he founded and guided everything from taxis to rental cars, charter boats to gourmet catering, specialty construction and a little politics mixed in. A widower for twenty years since his wife Sissy died, he was fiercely devoted to his family. One of Ike’s sons was a senator in the Virgin Island’s government. Over the years, the family businesses, which supported a large extended clan, enjoyed a warm and beneficial relationship with both local and federal government agencies. With the help of his sons and now his grandsons, Ike held court at the same table in Billy’s even longer than Walter occupied the last two barstools near the kitchen.

Billy Smith had arrived on St. John unheralded and alone. It was obvious he was eager to stay that way. Finally, a few years ago Billy met someone, a bushwhacker about his age, not a bad looking woman either. She had something going for her-spunk, spirit, a take-charge attitude mixed with a straightforward friendly nature and a strong appetite for sex. Whatever it was, Helen Mavidies captivated Billy. She was just a middle-aged schoolmarm from New Bedford, Massachusetts, on a Caribbean holiday by herself, but she was certainly a woman. One day she came into Billy’s for lunch and, like Ike and Walter before her, stayed. At first she was just there, Billy’s sort of girlfriend. Then she began to help Billy behind the bar and in the kitchen. It wasn’t long before she was pretty much running the place. Helen had moved into a small rental house, a cheap one as far from the water as a person could get on St. John. She didn’t live there long. One morning Walter arrived for breakfast and there she was. Billy and Helen were an item. She moved in with him and they seemed quite happy with that arrangement. Ike told Walter he thought it was a very good thing Billy was getting some on a regular basis. “Man needs that kind of thing, you know,” he said. Walter wholeheartedly agreed, thinking, “Here’s the two of us who haven’t got laid in so long we can’t remember, talking about how ‘good’ it is Billy’s getting some.”

Billy was at least ten years younger than Walter and just a kid compared to Ike. Despite the age difference, the three men became attached to each other, tied together with a twine destined to form an unbreakable bond. Everyone knew what Ike did. His life on St. John was an open book. Everyone knew what Billy did-not necessarily what he had done or where he had come from-but they knew what he did now. And everyone had his or her own theory about Walter. Over the course of his years on the island, there had been hints, the occasional glimmer of light thrown upon his activities, enough so that Ike and Billy could worry about him and take pleasure and comfort every time he returned from wherever he went, doing whatever it was he did. They remembered Isobel Gitlin and her famous connection to the notorious Leonard Martin. All things considered, Walter’s friends were very happy to see him retire.

Now, Conchita Crystal, of all people, had waltzed right into the picture, upsetting everything.

November 22, 1963

The Czech-the one who had made himself known in America as Stephen Hecht-was a tall, thin man with a sallow complexion that because of his high cheek bones made him look rather sickly. On top of that, he rarely smiled. He brought the rifle with him. He carried it in a small bag, in pieces. He was recommended not only for his expertise, but also for his attention to detail. It was a certainty that many times he had put the weapon together in just a few seconds, each piece clicking neatly and swiftly into place. With only minutes remaining before the motorcade would enter the street below, he sent his new friend away. He said, “I know you are hungry. Go down and get something to eat. It’s okay, I’ll stay here.”