A Matter of Honor

Chapter Two

The Greyhound bus station near Van Buren and Randolph streets on the north side of the Loop was cold and windy and smelled of worn luggage and discarded cigarettes. An old man in overalls was mopping the terrazzo floor, a bucket of hot water steaming in the chill air.

Only one ticket window was open and the clerk was reading the sports page of the Tribune. A pair of Military Police, big young men with white helmets and shining leather hip holsters, stood beside the glass doors leading to the ramps for loading and departing buses. All the parking bays were empty. The last buses from O’Hare and Midway had come in more than an hour ago, quickly emptying civilians and soldiers with duffel bags before pulling away to the garage behind the terminal. Most of the exhaust fumes had blown away by now, and the air around the loading ramps was brisk and cold with the wind off the lake.

Mrs. Amanda Lewis sat alone on a wooden bench and wondered what she should do next. Randy hadn’t been on the bus from O’Hare, as he’d written he would, and now there wouldn’t be another bus until seven the next morning. All the way from Germany, she thought, and here she’d missed him right in Chicago. Her skin was the color of milk chocolate and so smooth that even her ready, quick smile hardly creased it. She looked respectable, even old-fashioned, in a neat brown coat and a hat with a brown feather that lay on her cheek against her graying hair. But her eyes reflected her worry, her uneasy concern. Amanda Lewis had not made a trip to downtown Chicago for years and found it challenging and foreign terrain. She’d made a note of the date on her kitchen grocery pad the day Randy’s letter came, but now she wasn’t sure if it was A.M. or P.M., when his flight was due in from Frankfurt. And somehow, she’d lost or mislaid the letter.

Amanda Lewis, who was Randy’s aunt and only living kin since her sister had gone, had arrived at the bus station before nine that morning and stayed all day and into the evening to watch the buses coming in from the airports.

His mother had been dead only a month, sick from alcohol and buried in their hometown of Barlow Bend. Randy wrote he wanted to see his aunt in Chicago before he went on home to that empty house in Alabama, and Amanda planned to cheer him up, to show him a real welcome home. She’d borrowed fifty dollars from the credit union so they could go somewhere nice for dinner and maybe hear country music.

Randy was kind of wild, never having a father to raise him and Missy Jane always blaming herself and the bottle weakness. But maybe he’d be all right. His letter had been serious. He wanted to see Aunt Mandy, he wanted to talk to her, he said. He was planning to make something of himself when he got out of the Army. And he was bringing presents, or maybe he’d mail them, German stuff he’d picked up. He hadn’t asked for any favors, didn’t go to the Red Cross or anything, but a sergeant had heard about his mother’s death and arranged for him to leave for the States early, even fixed the stopover in Chicago.

“There are some fine people in the world,” he’d written, “people who don’t mind helping us get ahead if we cooperate.”

If you could use such a word about Randolph Lewis, then he had matured, she thought. The big crazy kid, with all his Southern boy tricks and meanness, had sounded grown up for once in his life.

The MPs, the military police, they’d been real nice. One of them was named Homer Robbins, she saw that on his nameplate. He’d told her the best thing to do was to find that letter, come back tomorrow. Maybe she had the wrong date, Robbins said, or maybe her nephew missed his flight and was a day late.

The old man mopping the floor said she could call Missing Persons, but they’d probably tell her to wait a week or so. Then the clerk at the ticket window suggested a soldiers’ place he’d read about, over near Diversey about twenty blocks from here, open twenty-four hours a day. They answered questions for servicemen and their kin and didn’t ask too many of their own, that’s how the man put it. They could make a few phone calls, advise her. Mrs. Lewis knew she’d rest better if she could tell someone about her nephew, so she took down the address, stepped carefully around the wide, wet swaths of suds on the floor and went outside.

A few lights shone from nearby bars and from a small, four-story hotel, but all the brighter lights seemed on the far horizon, the big hospital and the rows of tall apartment buildings along the lake shore. Nobody is on the streets this time of night but fools like me, Amanda Lewis thought as she got into her car, locked the doors quickly and started the motor, letting her breath out as the motor caught.

A sound like a faint human scream or a cat in heat came from a building down the block, an unlit warehouse with corrugated metal doors and windows. Mrs. Lewis’s heart beat erratically as she pulled away from the bus station and out into the dark street.

Turning north on Dearborn, she began to count off the blocks to Diversey Avenue and arrange her thoughts. “Private Randolph Peyton Lewis, twenty-two next New Year’s Day, enlisted out of Montgomery, Alabama, just finished up a one-year tour of duty in Germany”... that’s about all she could tell the soldier people.

In a recent article for the Tribune on the opening of the new Veterans’ Assistance Service, Bonnie Caidin had written:

Bonnie Caidin’s article featured statistics on the number of Illinois veterans who had served in Vietnam, references to various existing state and federal services and budgets, and ended with a statement from the mayor commending the Veterans’ Assistance Service on its aims and stating that if the service were ever short of help, the mayor’s staff could arrange to put in a few hours per month as volunteers.

The article, with the Caidin byline, ran for two editions in the Sunday Tribune, just below the fold, and was then lifted to make space for the story on a shocking and unprecedented act of vandalism, the graffiti spray painting of the giant Picasso sculpture in Civic Center Plaza.

Dr. Kastner had called the newspaper in person to thank Miss Caidin for her fine reporting, and Caidin decided to offer her services as a volunteer on the night staff.

After leaving the luncheonette, Lasari circled back to the corner opposite the storefront office. Almost compulsively he found himself mulling over familiar excuses. He had to work tomorrow, another day or so wouldn’t matter, he should think his whole story through again. He had just about talked himself into giving up for the night and driving back to Calumet City when an old blue car turned into Diversey and slowed down on the opposite side of the street. Almost simultaneously, a new sound echoed from down the block, a staccato of hard-heeled boots. The three Latinos in baseball caps came trotting along the sidewalk out of the shadows, arms linked, laughing and talking to one another in high, excited voices.

A plump, black woman climbed from the car, closed and locked the driver’s side and started to run with heavy steps toward the lighted office.

The three Latinos broke ranks then and rushed the woman like predators, coming at her from the front and from two sides, pushing her screaming and stumbling backward against the brick building. The woman screamed again and hugged her handbag tightly against her brown coat.

Without articulating his thoughts, Duro Lasari knew the lady was his excuse to let loose the rage that fed his indecision, a reason to get to the other side of the street, and finally step into that lighted office.

He left the curb and dashed across the slippery pavement in a half crouch, stopped a moment behind the car, breathing slowly and deeply, flexing his chilled fingers in the pockets of his coat. Then he stepped out in front of the three Latinos, his hands loose at his sides.

“Come on, guys,” he said quietly, “back in the woodwork. Let the lady alone.”

The three boys were rolling Amanda Lewis’s stout body from side to side against the rough brick, pounding on her shoulders and tearing at her crossed arms, thrusting like pack dogs for a grip on the leather strap of the shoulder bag. Her first screams had turned into a moaning prayer. “Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me. I can’t give you nothing...”

The door of the Veterans’ office swung open and the male clerks stood framed in the light, not speaking, not moving, staring out at the struggling woman, then at Lasari. At a desk inside the red-haired girl dialed rapidly.

It was the insolence, the unearned honor of those baseball caps that first stung Duro Lasari, and then the animal challenge of the three sullen faces turned toward him.

“Fuck off,” one of the boys said. “Fuck off, prick, before you get yourself cut.”

They were young, twelve or thirteen years old, but slim and wiry and deadly, Lasari judged, with pack strength and pack guts. They had been stalking for prey and they’d found it. The terrified woman’s purse belonged to them because they could take it from her; as simple as that.

One of the trio swung around suddenly and faced Lasari with an open switchblade. He walked toward him in a crouch, holding out the thin, razor-sharp blade before him, carving out his territory with wide swings of his arm. “You asked for it,” he said softly. “I’m comin’ into your space.”

The shining blade, swinging back and forth, cocked the final trigger of rage in Lasari’s head and his speed caught the youth off guard. He feinted left, then right, spun around suddenly on the balls of his feet and swung his right leg in a powerful arc, grunting when the top of his work boot struck the young man’s wrist and sent the knife into the gutter, and the challenger sprawling backward against the hood of the car.

A police squad car turned into the block, siren wailing and lights flashing. The three boys sprinted off toward the intersection, one bent almost double to ease the pain in his broken wrist.

Duro Lasari told the battered woman that everything was all right, and when she shivered and stood motionless he moved toward her and put an arm around her shoulders. With eyes shut tight, she was still praying in ragged gasps.

Amanda Lewis could not stop moaning and stammering until a police officer and the woman in the plaid suit took her inside the office, where she sank into a chair, eyes bright with fear, arms still locked about her shoulder bag that held her car keys, wallet and the five ten-dollar bills she had borrowed to entertain Private Randolph Lewis.