A Matter of Honor

Chapter Twelve

The phone rang while she was showering. Bonnie Caidin reached for a towel and hurried to the bedside phone. It was Larry Malloy on the city desk.

“Did I miss something?” she asked, her mind checking over the last story she’d covered that day, a three-car accident near the airport. A private bus carrying an English rock group on its way to a gig at Rosemont-Horizon had been rear-ended by a tailgating limo rented by some groupies. Minor facial cuts for the lead singer, four girls taken to Passavant Hospital with minor injuries...

“No, no, Bonnie, you got it although I still think maybe we fell for a publicity setup on that one,” Malloy said. “What I’m calling about is that someone wants to get in touch with you. A man called here, asked for your phone number and they switched him to me. I told him that as policy we didn’t give out staff numbers. I asked him for his number so you could call back if you want to.”

“Let me get a pencil, Larry.”

“Don’t bother,” Malloy said. “He wouldn’t leave it. Said to tell you that it was George from last night.” Malloy paused. “I didn’t know how important that might be to you, Bonnie.”

“Not as exciting as you think, old dear,” Caidin said. “George is one of the people I talked to at the Vets’ Bureau last evening, that’s all. He came in for advice. How do I get in touch with him?”

“You don’t,” Malloy said. “He’s going to call me again in five minutes. If it’s okay, I’ll give him your number.”

“He gave you no idea where he was calling from, or why?”

“No. I asked but he insisted he had to talk to you directly. If he does call again, what do I tell him?”

Bonnie was thoughtful for a moment, then glanced at her bedside clock. She hadn’t had dinner yet but that could wait. “I know you’re going to give me a lecture, Larry, but when George Jackson calls back, give him this number.”

“Bonnie, a reporter’s home phone number should be as sacred as the Ark. Do you want all the kooks in the world to know where to reach you?”

“This guy is no kook, Larry. I told him I’d help him. Give him the number, will you?”

Bonnie Caidin replaced the phone and put on a blue cashmere robe. She towelled her wet hair and twisted the damp ends together with a rubber band, then took a pencil and notepad from the night table drawer and sat on the edge of the bed to wait. When the phone rang, she let it ring three times before picking it up.

His voice was as she’d remembered it, deep and touched with a southern twang, but strained now, almost a controlled whisper. “Miss Caidin? Remember the fellow who came in to talk to you last night about Luis Carlos? A little after midnight or so...?”

“Yes, yes,” she said sharply. “Of course I remember you. George Jackson, right? Is something the matter?”

“Why do you ask that? Do you think something’s the matter?”

Bonnie felt a stir of irritation, then apprehension. “Listen, I don’t think anything’s particularly the matter except that you called my office and refused to give a number and now you’re calling me at home and playing guessing games on my time. That’s all that’s wrong. This is your call. If you’ve got something to say, George, I wish you’d say it.”

The phone was silent for so long that Caidin thought perhaps the man had hung up. She said firmly, “You must tell me why you made this call...”

“I made this call to ask you a question, lady, and it’s this. Last night, for the first time, I pay a visit to your office and tell you a few things in confidence about an Army deserter, a buddy of mine, right?”

“That’s right,” Caidin said.

“That’s last night. Then today — out of nowhere — I get a strong impression I’m being followed, first at work, then at a tavern I hang out at. And I know for sure that two men who claim they’re Army MPs came by where I live and interviewed the landlady. All this happened since I talked to you. Somebody’s looking for me and they know where to look. So my question is, Miss Caidin, who is looking for me and did you set me up?”

Bonnie Caidin drew in her breath, suddenly aware of the chill, empty silence of the apartment. She tucked her bare feet under her and pulled the coverlet from the bed up around her thin shoulders.

“I would never do that, George,” she said. “I told you last night our records were confidential, that you could trust me. Whatever you think is happening to you has nothing to do with the Veterans’ Bureau, believe me. I never asked for your address, where you worked or any identification. It was entirely up to you to get in touch with us again, you know that.”

“Then those Army MPs — how did they know where I lived?”

“I don’t know. I have no idea...”

“Well, I do, Miss Caidin, and I’ve been thinking about it.”

“Yes?” she said.

“That Spanish-looking clerk at your place last night, Rick something...”

“Rick Argella. What about him?”

“When I was talking to you, he asked me a very stupid question, or maybe a very smart one. He was going out for a snack break, and he asked if he could put a coin in the parking meter for me.”

“Why is that stupid? Or smart for that matter?”

“I told him no thanks, I was down the street in a no-meter zone.”

Bonnie massaged her cold feet with her fingertips, then put one foot under the bed to feel around for her slippers. “I don’t see—”

“It was after midnight, remember?”

“All right, all right, I get it. It’s not necessary to feed dimes into the parking meters after 8 P.M., is that it? And you think Rick Argella had to know that? Aren’t you being a little paranoid, Mr. Jackson?”

“With just one question, Rick Argella, your office compadre, found out that I’d come to the Bureau not on foot, not by taxi or the El, but by car and he got a good idea of where I was parked. And when I got into my car after leaving your office, somebody stepped out of the restaurant across the street. It was raining and I can’t swear it, but it could have been Argella and he could have taken down my plate number. You still think I’m paranoid?”

“I’m listening, George,” Bonnie Caidin said, picking up the pencil.

“Either you’re in on this or you’re not, Miss Caidin. But I believe somebody checked out my license number with Motors Registration and found out who I am and where I live...”

“Let me tell you two things, George,” Bonnie Caidin said, interrupting. “First, I’m not ‘in on this,’ as you suggest, not in any way at all. And second, Rick Argella is no more than a filing clerk at our office, a clerk, plain and simple, not even a volunteer. He gets paid by the hour. He would have no authority whatsoever to ask for plate information from Motors in Springfield. That Bureau wouldn’t even give me that information if I called, which I didn’t. That takes an official request...”

“I don’t want to argue with you, Miss Caidin, but suddenly I’m a hot property. People are looking for me and they know where to look. That’s as plain as I can make it.”

“Look, George,” she said. “I’m still not convinced that anyone is following you or looking for you, not really, I’m not. I think it could just be a normal — yes, a normal paranoid reaction to what’s been worrying you, to what you started to tell me about last night. And I’m not convinced that Rick Argella is anything but a nice young guy who wanted to do a veteran a favor. But I want to prove that to you.

“I’ve got a friend,” she said, “a dear, old and trusted friend. I’ll ask him to call Motors for me — he’s official — and inquire if anyone put in a request for information on your license plate. Is that okay? Give me till nine and I’ll get back to you on this. Where can I reach you?”

“Nine o’clock and then I’ll call you,” Lasari said.

While she was talking, Caidin had scrawled some words on the notepad: “Mark Weir... Mark Weir” and “MP’s...” and then a pair of telephone numbers. After that, as she listened and almost without realizing it, she had made a series of question marks in heavy strokes, underlining them three times. And then the word “Springfield.”

She knew she had to locate and talk to Weir now, not from a special reporter’s instinct, but from a gut apprehension, a conviction that, as George Jackson had said and whether she had meant to be or not, she might — in fact — be a “part of this.”

Bonnie Caidin laid the palm of her hand flat against her robe, between her small, firm breasts, and pressed hard against the breastbone, trying to make contact with what she thought of as the inner core of herself, determined to force the sudden trembling to leave her body and willing her voice to stay firm.

“Is that a promise, George? You will call back? Last night, when we were talking — didn’t you trust me last night?”

As she waited, Bonnie Caidin flipped to a fresh sheet of paper on the notepad. Finally Lasari said, “Yes. Last night I did trust you and I’ll call you back at nine. And my license plate number, it’s 74B6D9.”

His voice was normal now, low but clear, without the cautious, muting whisper. “One more thing, Miss Caidin, because I am trusting you, the car is registered in my real name, Durham Francis Lasari.”

“D-u-r-h-a-m. I’m writing that out.”

“Right,” he said. “It’s spelled just like the place in North Carolina. And the last name — that’s Lasari with one ‘s’ and one ‘r,’ okay?”

Bonnie Caidin checked the clock and noted the hands were at 8:10. That gave her almost one hour. She dialed the first of the two phone numbers she’d scrawled on the front of the notepad, then waited while the phone rang six times in Mark Weir’s apartment.

She hung up and opened the Chicago Yellow Pages directory, running her fingers down the “Clubs” category till she came to the Illinois Athletic Club on South Michigan Avenue, almost opposite the gray arches of the Art Institute. When a male voice answered, Caidin identified herself and explained she was trying to locate Lieutenant Mark Weir and could he be paged in the bar and the dining room?

Within minutes the voice came back on the line to say that Mr. Weir did not answer the page.

“Just a moment, please, let me think,” Bonnie said. “Maybe he decided to work out before dinner. Can you try him in the gym or the handball courts? It’s very important that I find him.”

The bedside clock ticked away a full five minutes before the voice said, “I’m sorry to keep you, Miss Caidin, but I took the liberty of checking with the doorman and both the bartenders and the maitre d’ and none of them has seen the lieutenant tonight. He didn’t answer our page in the gymnasium. Charley in the locker room says Mr. Weir hasn’t been in for ten days or so...”

“Thank you,” she said, “but if he should happen to stop in, can you ask him to call me at home? He has the number.”

She hung up and circled the second number on the pad, detective headquarters. She hesitated, and then on impulse ran her pencil in a square block around the question marks and the word “Springfield,” and asked information for General Tarbert Weir’s home phone number.

When she dialed the number, she heard four rings, then a taped announcement in a deep, masculine voice, curt and brief, asking that the caller leave a message, with date and time of day, and Tarbert Weir would return the call when possible.

Stifling a sigh of disappointment, Bonnie Caidin left General Weir her message. After that she dialed detective headquarters on State Street.

“I know Lieutenant Weir isn’t working tonight,” she told the switchboard operator, “but could you ring his office anyway? I can’t get him at his club or at home or anywhere else.”

“As a matter of fact,” the operator said, “the lieutenant was in until about twenty minutes ago. I put through a call he was waiting for and right after that, he checked out.”

“Is Sergeant Gordon in the building?”

“No, ma’am, he went off duty at six o’clock.”

“Look, I realize this is irregular, but could you try to rouse the lieutenant on his police signal for me? If he’s in the squad or tuned in on his two-way, maybe we can reach him. It’s urgent.”

“May I ask who’s calling, madam, and the nature of your business with the lieutenant?”

“Well, it’s rather personal. Just tell him his first wife needs to talk to him.”

Lieutenant Weir was alone in the squad car, driving along the lake front near the city limits when the dashboard phone rang. On the tape deck Willie Nelson was singing loudly about “the good times.” Weir turned down the volume and picked up the receiver.

“Weir,” he said.

“I know you’re off duty, lieutenant,” the headquarters operator told him, “but the lady insists it’s urgent. Says to tell you, it’s your first wife calling...”

Mark Weir felt a slight quickening of his heartbeat. “Thanks, operator, put her through,” he said. Willie Nelson’s voice, now in muted miniature, was singing something about “Sunday mornin’ comin’ down...” The inside of the blue and white car with its worn leather seats, the rain-misted windows and the glowing signals on the dashboard seemed suddenly to be the whole world to Mark Weir, enclosed, personal, valuable.

He heard a faint click in the receiver and before she could speak, he said, “Mark here. I’m listening to you, Bonnie.”

“Oh, Mark,” she said, her voice small and hurried. “There is something I need to talk to you about. Did you speak with your father this morning?”

“Yes. We spoke, but he said he wouldn’t raise a finger to help me. That was the essence of it anyway.”

“Then that isn’t it. I’m trying to consider everything,” Bonnie said. “I know I need your help, Mark. Could you give me a ring from a public phone? This may have something to do with that call I made for you this morning...”

Weir checked the street signs at the intersection, then looked at his watch. “Listen, baby,” he said, “I’m just cruising around waiting for an important call to come in on this line, something about a case I’m working on. I should hear in about twenty minutes, then I can head for your place. I’d be there about eight forty-five, ten to nine at the latest. Can it wait that long?”

“Yes, yes, that’s just fine,” Caidin said. “But if you’re going to be later than ten to nine, call me, will you? That’s how important I think this is.”

Mark Weir clipped the phone to the dashboard, then snapped off the tape deck. He reversed directions, and began to cruise back to the center of the city. He would have liked to attempt to reach Doobie Gordon again, but he had already tried four different bowling alleys and decided it would be better to leave this line open.

In her bedroom, Bonnie Caidin pulled on a green jumpsuit over a black jersey body stocking and twisted a green scarf around her hair. Then she slipped her feet into the fleece-lined slippers.

She plumped up cushions in the living room and squared off a pile of magazines on the coffee table. The apartment, three rooms overlooking Lake Michigan, was large and sparsely furnished, low couches, lamps of chrome and parchment, bright paintings on the walls and a scattering of sheepskin rugs. The air was chill with winds from the lake. Periodic gusts forced the cold in around the edges of the glass windows, even through the concrete and reinforced steel walls themselves.

Bonnie looked out at the stormy lake, the black horizon edging somewhere into a black sky, the lights of the city just touching the eerie white water that crested on the swells. She lit a half dozen candles on tables and bookshelves, letting the tiny bright stars of fire add a spurious warmth to the room.

In the kitchen she made fresh coffee and removed a rock-hard package of lasagna from the freezer. From a basket on the window sill she took six oranges and squeezed the juice into a tall crystal glass, placing it on the top shelf of the refrigerator.

Bonnie went into the bathroom then, polished steam off the mirrors and shower door, refolded the towels. She plumped up the pillows on her bed and straightened out the quilted coverlet, twisted and rumpled as if two people had been lying on it. How odd, she thought, after all these years she still cared desperately, perhaps childishly, what Mark Weir thought of her.

She poured herself a cup of coffee and brought it to a couch near a big window so she could look out over the lake and down at the bright, pinpoint crawl of traffic on the avenue.

She was aware she had busied herself partly to keep from worrying. Mark was late, she knew that without checking the clock, and her thoughts were touched with a wisp of anxiety. The apartment was so silent, her own breathing so light and shallow that she could hear the sound of traffic rising in a hum from the street ten stories below.

At five minutes to nine Bonnie moved to stand by the phone and picked up the receiver on the first ring. “Give me twenty minutes more, Lasari,” she said. “I contacted my friend, he said he’d help. I expect him any minute.”

“This isn’t working, Caidin,” Lasari said, “even though I’m trying to trust you. I’m a clay pigeon, hanging around this phone. Who is this dude we’re waiting for?”

Caidin hesitated, then said, “He’s an old friend, almost family. It’s Lieutenant Mark Weir of the Chicago police...”

At that moment the buzz of her doorbell cut through the conversation. “He’s here, Durham, the doorbell just rang. Stay there and give me just a little more time.”

“Twenty minutes more, lady. That’s how long I’ll stay put.”

Mark Weir’s presence seemed to fill the room with a rush of energy, of vitality. His cheeks were reddened from the night wind and his dark eyes unnaturally bright. He pulled off his raincoat and shook off the droplets with a force that guttered the candles and threw shadows on the ceiling.

“I’m sorry, Bonnie, the call I was waiting for came later than I thought it would.”

She raised her hand. “I stalled, I bought us another twenty minutes, Mark. And I took out some lasagna. Let me put it in the oven if you’ve got time.”

“Not tonight, Bonnie, but I’ll take that fresh coffee I smell.”

She hurried to the kitchen and brought a mug of coffee to Weir, who stood at the window looking out at the night. He held the mug in both hands for a moment, turning it round and round, savoring the warmth on his lingers.

“I’ve seen a nighttime view like this a thousand times and I think I’m lucky every time.” He smiled at her. “I don’t mind being a little crazy, Bonnie, but I just love this city.” His tone changed suddenly. “I’m on kind of an adrenaline high right now. I may be onto something tonight. But you wanted to talk. What do you want to tell me?”

“I’ve got to make it fast, Mark. This person who’s in trouble is waiting in Calumet City at a pay phone.”

Weir sipped his coffee as Bonnie sketched out everything she knew of George Jackson from last evening and everything of Durham Lasari from this evening.

When she finished, Weir was thoughtful for a moment. “I can make that call to Motors for you, Bonnie,” he said, “but I feel the results will probably be negative. I think you’re dealing with a typical sad sack case. You wrote those features on delayed stress syndrome, post-’Nam shock, you’ve met enough of them at the Vets’ Bureau. Why is this Jackson-Lasari character any different? He sounds to me like a hard-nosed loner, more than a little paranoid, maybe even psychotic.”

“Don’t make me beg for this, Mark. We have too little time.”

“Hey, this guy means something to you, doesn’t he, Bonnie?”

“I’ve only seen him once,” Caidin said obliquely. “But I promised him confidentiality, I owe him something.”

“Your phone?”

“In the bedroom. His full name and license number are on the phone pad.”

“All right. I have to make a couple of local calls first,” he said. “I’m trying to track down Doobie Gordon. Then I’ll call Motors.”

He hesitated, his hand on the bedroom knob. “Forgive me, Bonnie,” he said, “but I’m going to close this door. I know we’re both on the same side, but I’m cops and you’re press. If I do reach Doobie, what I’ve got to say is police business, private. I’m onto something about these dead soldiers. It will be your story first, I promised you that, but I don’t want you obligated to Larry Malloy till we’ve done our police work, okay?”

Bonnie Caidin nodded and he closed the bedroom door behind him. She thought of turning up the kitchen radio but instead she moved closer to the windows, letting the hum of street traffic float up and mask out the drone of Mark Weir’s voice in the bedroom.

First there seemed to be two conversations, low and short, then she could make out a longer series of digits being dialed and knew he was calling Motors Registration in Springfield. There were murmurs and pauses, then a longer murmur of Weir’s voice and a pause as he listened.

When Weir emerged from the bedroom, his expression was thoughtful and withdrawn, almost as if she were not in the room. “Something wrong? You couldn’t locate Doobie?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No, I couldn’t. But that’s not what’s worrying me.” He glanced at his watch, then joined her at the window, putting both hands on her shoulders and turning her slim body to face him squarely.

“Listen, Bonnie, and listen good. I told you I was onto something. Well, Durham Lasari may be part and parcel of the whole thing. I can’t explain now, but I want to meet with him. I’ll get back here by 6 A.M. That should give me time to do what I’ve got to do.”

As Bonnie began to speak, Mark held up his hand, “You’re listening, baby, I’m talking. When Lasari calls you from Calumet, tell him to come here. Tell him not to let anyone know where he’s going and to be sure he’s not being followed. Keep him here till morning, till I get back to you. Don’t go out, don’t let anyone in.”

“What if he won’t come?”

“Convince him, Bonnie, for his own good.”

“Then someone did check him out at Motors?”

“Yes,” Lieutenant Weir said. “A detective from Headquarters checked the plate this morning, early. I know who this man is and who he pals around with. It’s part of a damned jigsaw, but it’s falling into place.”

Weir pulled on his damp raincoat. “I squeezed some fresh orange juice,” Caidin said. “Want to drink it down right now, Vitamin C and all that?”

Weir shook his head. “I’ll have it for breakfast, okay? And Bonnie, once Lasari is here, keep the door bolted from the inside, understand?”

“I understand, Mark,” she said, “but I also understand you’re holding out on me. You were on that phone to Springfield just too damned long. So who else called Motors about Lasari today?”

“I know you’re going to have to tell him about the cop to get him up here, but the next one’s strictly between you and me, Bonnie. Do I have your word on that?”

When she nodded, Weir said, “There was a second call, around 3 P.M., a confidential request from a government agency. I’m not authorized to ask who or what on that one, Bonnie.” He frowned. “I sure as hell hope I’m not making a mistake in telling this, even to you, but that call was an A-1 priority level request from Washington. Your Durham Lasari is suddenly a very important person.”

When the lieutenant left, Bonnie bolted the door and went to sit on the edge of the bed. She began to rehearse quickly what she wanted to say when the phone rang from Calumet City. She wanted to get the words right the first time.