A Matter of Honor

Chapter Twenty-eight

Sergeant DuBois Gordon paid for his purchases at the newsstand in the lobby. He put candy bars in a jacket pocket and stood peeling the cellophane from a pack of menthol cigarettes, aware of a prickling sensation at the nape of his neck. The first floor of Chicago Police Headquarters seemed to him hyperactive this morning, almost hostile. Gordon felt that he was being watched.

The building had been remodeled some years ago. The lobby floor was now an open space, almost a half block in length, with white marble paneling, terrazzo floors and windows that let in a maximum of daylight.

Gordon stood with his back to a wall and let his eyes travel over the shifting crowd. He saw a couple of plainclothes officers he knew, a reporter from City Press waiting at the elevators, the usual flow of office workers, lawyers, bondsmen and citizens going about their business.

Gordon had felt more comfortable in this building in the old days. As a rookie cop he was excited by the shabby atmosphere of the neighborhood, a tangle of railroad tracks just across State Street and rows of honky-tonk movies, church missions, burlesque houses and pawnshops in the surrounding blocks. That had felt like the real city to him. The railroad yards had long since been replaced by the angular modern architecture of the Dearborn Park condominium development. Between that project and the rows of blue and white police cars lined up at headquarters, the traffic on State Street moved through the area at a horn-honking pace. The neighborhood had become prosperous and middle class.

To Gordon’s sharp eye, nothing inside the lobby or outside in the streets seemed out of the ordinary. Then he realized what was tugging at his attention.

Among the glassed-in cases of police citations and memorabilia on the south wall, an addition had been made. Gordon walked to the section marked by a lettered plaque in gold: IN SUPREME SACRIFICE.

To this display, row on row of photographs of Chicago police officers who had lost their lives in the line of duty over the last decades, the Honors Committee, sometime in the last few hours, had added the picture of Lieutenant Mark Weir. The eight-by-ten glossy photo appeared to have been placed in the gallery in haste. All other officers’ pictures were in muted color, set off by distinctive, matching frames. Mark’s unframed photograph, in full uniform, was in black and white, pinned on a background of dark velvet, his numbered brass badge imposed beneath.

Gordon looked at the familiar face with a new sense of rage and disbelief. In time Mark Weir’s likeness might blend and fade into the ranks of honored dead, the sergeant knew, but this morning the glossy photo, the velvet background and the smudge of fingerprints on the glass paneling were as conspicuous as damp soil on a new grave.

Gordon walked to the bank of elevators, picked a crowded car, then pushed the button for the twelfth floor. He kept his eyes on the blinking floor lights above the door, unwilling to make eye contact with anyone else in the car. His frustration, his anger, were so corrosive he did not want to share those emotions with any man.

“Goddamn it, Mark,” he thought bitterly, “one thing I am not going to do, and that is I am not going to mention this to your old man when he calls. You got my word on that, friend, and on everything else that counts. The honored dead is bullshit. The only way to honor a fellow officer is to get the bastards who did it...”

Lieutenant Weir’s office on the twelfth floor was now the unofficial command post for the investigation into his death. The desk had been cleared of all Weir’s reports and personal papers. They were in a special corner file. Plants from the window sill, his favorite coffee pot, and an oil portrait of a racehorse he’d once owned part of had been removed and sent to his apartment. The desk top was aligned now with a dozen wire file baskets stacked with bound account books. A tape recorder and amplifier had been arranged on a nearby table.

Sergeant Gordon sat at the desk and broke a large Hershey bar into four pieces. The first two pieces would be breakfast, the second two lunch. Mrs. Lewis had offered him coffee and a sweet roll but the overheated atmosphere of her apartment had made him feel confined and thirsty, not hungry. He had asked for a glass of water.

Lieutenant Weir’s corner office was one of two on the twelfth floor with a view of Lake Michigan. The water was choppy today and from this distance Gordon could not tell if he was looking at whitecaps or the breakup of ice.

Life was moving too rapidly and in all the wrong directions, the sergeant thought. He would have more of it. He had been up, at work, for hours, but already the clock had ticked past noon and was edging toward tomorrow. Mark Weir had been dead only days, yet every sunset that passed without an answer to his killing seemed a new affront to the victim himself. Before long, the days would lengthen and it would be spring...

Doobie Gordon’s father liked to fish Lake Michigan in the spring, casting for steelheads and lake trout off the stone breakers that bulwarked the shore. Mark Weir had laughed and said he couldn’t believe it when Gordon first told him about the big fish still in the lake, and the very next day the man standing next to Mr. Gordon had caught a twenty-five pound Chinook salmon.

Gordon felt an almost uncontrollable sadness and popped chocolate into his mouth, hoping the sweetness would send a rush of energy through his body.

The sergeant had spent most of the morning with Amanda Lewis in her south side apartment, a third-story walkup in a building so covered with pink and green graffiti, it looked almost tropical. Mrs. Lewis had called the sergeant at the number he had given her. The ring of the phone woke him at home a little before seven.

It was the last letter from Randolph Lewis that had got her thinking. With the funeral of her nephew and the lieutenant’s murder, well, she hadn’t been concentrating right and that bothered her. She got the letter out and read it over and over again. The reason she had called the sergeant was one sentence she couldn’t make sense of. “... I’ll maybe be sending you gifts, Auntie. I’ll know when I see you.”

Randy had never sent gifts before, she told Gordon, and, in fact, no gifts had arrived. She hadn’t thought too much about it till whoever that was who had called Lieutenant Weir and used her name. She’d felt so badly about that, she’d tried to remember and think of everything. That’s when the question of the gifts began to worry her. She’d asked the mailman and he said he’d delivered everything that had her name on it, which was nothing much at all, since that last letter from Germany. She’d bused herself down to the main post office and talked to a lost and found clerk. He’d explained to her that they couldn’t put a tracer on a package until they knew a package had actually been mailed. Chicago’s was the busiest postal center in the world, he’d told her. It was the mail order center of the United States and more than ninety percent of everything ordered through catalogues went through Chicago. With all those packages coming and going, and the fact that her nephew’s letter was so vague... well, there was nothing to go on.

The sergeant thanked Mrs. Lewis and told her she was right to contact him and to call again about anything, anything that might occur to her.

Now, back in the office, Gordon picked up where he had left off late last evening, and spent the next few hours going over tenant rental records dating back five years for buildings in Cabrini Green, the building in which Mark was murdered and the four others closest to it. He worked deliberately, using a red plastic ruler to slide down under the column entries, studying names, sizes of families, lengths of stay, moving patterns and payment records. Whoever had shot Mark was familiar with the buildings, the apartment layouts, the elevators, the stairs...

At a quarter to three Gordon put aside the Cabrini Green files and shut the office door. He told the switchboard operator to hold all his calls except one he was expecting from Tarbert Weir. Then he switched on the tape from Mark’s police car, the tape with the anonymous voice asking for a rendezvous at Cabrini Green. The amplifier swelled the words and threw the voice into every corner of the office.

Sergeant Gordon laced his fingers together over his vest, shut his eyes and tilted back the office chair, almost in an attitude of repose. He let the tape play over and over again, allowing every word, inflection and tone quality stamp its impression into the auditory-response neurons of his brain. He began to wonder briefly if the man’s voice seemed familiar because he did know it, or only because he had heard it so often that it was becoming routine. No matter, he thought, listening to the repeated tones as intimate as if he held a seashell to his ear, no matter, I will know it if I hear this man again.

DuBois Gordon sat upright in the office chair, frowning with concentration at the paper in front of him. The general’s voice and questions were efficient and articulate but cold, almost as if they were total strangers. Person to person, with body language and eye contact, Tarbert Weir had projected as more human, less formidable. Now the conversation seemed one-sided, almost authoritarian, with impatient waits for information, long questioning pauses on the general’s end of the line.

It was because he had so little concrete to report, the sergeant realized; the few roads of inquiry the police department had been able to follow had turned into detours or dead ends.

A department message form had been on the desk when Sergeant Gordon checked in. “Tarbert Weir called. Will call again at four o’clock sharp.”

When the phone rang Gordon had looked at his wristwatch. It read four minutes to four. Dammit, he thought irritably as he picked up the phone, the blasted thing is running slow on me, I’ll have to get my watch fixed...

He had made a checklist of points he wanted to discuss with the general and he looked at the paper as he spoke. “The guns, general,” he said into the phone, “both Ballistics and Stolen Property have been working on that. Lugers are hard to trace, about the worst. They could have come into the States from Europe or down from Canada any time in the last five years or earlier. Lab’s got the report on the bullets. They’ve got clear calibration marks and could match bullet to gun. We have men checking every pawnshop, gunsmith, collector and hot shop in Chicago and through the state. So far, nothing.”

“I see,” the general said.

“The murder site itself, that’s still being checked inch by inch. Fingerprints number into the hundreds for the six apartments on that floor and we’re running a check on all of them. Superintendent McDade ordered units to work Cabrini round the clock for any fact, rumor or hearsay that might bear on Mark’s case. We are getting maximum cooperation, we think, but so far only dead-end leads.

“Every officer in town is working on his private stoolies to come up with something. McDade talked to the press, he talked to the individual districts. We’ve got the word out on the street that the police department will do a lot of favors, a lot of forgiving to anyone who gives us information on Mark’s murder.”

The sergeant paused for a response, but there was none. In the silence he felt he could hear the general’s breathing over the miles of telephone wires that swayed and hummed through four states down to White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.

“Are you with me, general?” he said.

“I’m listening,” Weir said.

“All right then. I had backup personnel to check me out,” Gordon said, “but I personally went through every scrap of paper in Mark’s wallet and on his person. I went through his desk, his files, every report he’d made out in the last year. I came across nothing irregular, nothing that needed any extra explanation.

“And his apartment, general. There’s not a drawer, a bookcase, an address book we haven’t turned inside out, examined and analyzed. We found nothing there that helped our case.” Again there was silence.

“I put some of the more personal things aside, sir, things you might want to go through later. As an officer, Mark was the model of efficiency, but he was kind of a packrat about his private life. He hoarded kid snapshots, old plane tickets, every letter you wrote when he was in school in the States...”

“Later, Gordon,” the general said abruptly. “That doesn’t seem relevant now. What else do you want to tell me?”

“A message from the superintendent. Clarence McDade wants to assure you that he is personally in charge of this investigation, that he gets a twice-daily report on all progress.”

“Progress?” Weir asked, a touch of irony shading his tone.

“The progress of elimination, if nothing else, elimination of probabilities, narrowing the field of suspects is necessary to any investigation,” Gordon said. “Take recent releases or paroles, for example. McDade was emphatic; he wanted those records examined for anyone who might have a blood vengeance or even a death feud against Lieutenant Weir, anyone he’d put in the pen who got out recently. Once again, nothing. Mark was a hard officer, but impersonal in his work, even criminals respected that. Besides, he was a little young to have stockpiled enemies.”

“We’ve got to assume he had at least one,” the general said coldly.

Gordon examined the checklist on his desk pad, then made a tick after Mrs. Lewis’ name and briefed the general quickly on the woman and her observation about gifts from her nephew, and her concern that no gifts had arrived.

“It’s only a hunch on my part,” Gordon went on, “but I’m working on the theory that our best clues will come from time and place. Cabrini Green, the place. We’re interviewing, we’re talking, we’re knocking on doors. And we’re examining leases and rental records for a name, a combination of names, a coincidence, maybe, anything that will tell us why Cabrini Green.”

“But it’s still a question. You still don’t know why,” Weir said flatly.

“Not yet, sir, not yet.”

“In short, sergeant,” Tarbert Weir said, “with all the best intentions in this investigation, the police are just about where they were an hour or so after my son was shot.”

“The kind of progress we’re making is hard to measure, sir, but we’re not standing still. Take Mark’s phone tape, the one with that last rendezvous call on it. We put linguistic experts on it at once, specifically an authority who specializes in acoustic phonetics. I don’t feel free to give you the details, general, but we have a pretty good profile of what kind of person that caller is — sex, age, education, nationality, background. And about time, we also know that person was not out duck hunting, he was not farming in Kansas, he was not playing pinochle in Toledo. Five hours before Lieutenant Weir was killed, that man was in a phone booth, maybe in a private home, somewhere in the state of Illinois, probably in the city of Chicago, talking to your son. We know that for sure.”

He paused. “I’ve spent hours listening to that tape and I’m adding my personal feelings to what the experts are telling us. I’m convinced that voice speaking is not the voice of a total stranger. It’s not necessarily someone I know, but someone I ought to know...”

“I appreciate everything you people are trying to do, sergeant,” General Weir said. The finality in his voice told Gordon this conversation was nearing its end. “And I thank you for it.”

“If there’s a breakthrough, where can I reach you?”

“John Grimes at my home phone number. You can trust him with anything, Gordon.”

The sergeant was reluctant to hang up the phone; he knew there was still something important and unspoken between them.

“General, Mark felt he was up against a stone wall in those murders we were working on, that’s why he turned to you when he did. Mark sensed he was out of his depth... hell, we both did. Chicago’s our beat and yet we couldn’t get a handle on what was happening. We had the effect here in Chicago, but the cause, that’s what we couldn’t get near. Mark had the impression that the cause might be outside our jurisdiction...”

“Sergeant Gordon,” the general said, “I’ve been making some inquiries of my own, as you may have inferred. But to use your own phrase, I don’t feel free to give you the details. Just let me assure you I understand what you’re saying, that I am aware the trouble could be coming from somewhere else. That was one of the last things my son said to me.”

It was nearly midnight when Tarbert Weir let himself out the rear door and set off at a slow walk along the pathway behind the cottages on South Carolina Row. Here and there lights from windows touched the path and lit portions of the groomed, fragrant shrubbery, tipped with new buds. Above the night breezes, there was a faint murmur of voices, the drone of late movies on TV and an occasional clink of glasses.

Weir walked swiftly but easily, swinging his arms and breathing deeply, looking like a midnight jogger in runners’ shoes and gray track suit. It wasn’t until he was out of the immediate resort grounds, passing behind the shuttered crafts workshop and the Greenbrier museum a half mile from the main buildings, that he broke into a run.

His final telephone conversation with General Stigmuller earlier that evening had been as detailed and grave as a wartime briefing. Stigmuller had said, “I can’t condone or even recommend what you’re doing, Scotty, but I understand what’s driving you and you have my word I’ll back you in every way. It’s the old survivor’s shock syndrome, the way a survivor feels after a battle. You look at the casualties and wish you could be, even try to be, part of them in some way. Am I right, Scotty?”

“That’s part of it, Buck,” the general said, “and I’m not sure yet of the other part. But I’m ready now for what you’ve got for me.”

Stigmuller responded by giving him in detail the Army records of Durham Francis Lasari. “You realize, Scotty, that it’s more than ten years since this man was Army. I can’t bring you any more up to date than this.”

“I understand,” Weir said.

“Private Jackson is a different matter,” Stigmuller went on. “We haven’t been able to locate the original enlistment records under that name, with no middle initial given, but a Private George Jackson was assigned orders out of Chicago about ten days ago and he’s been traveling.”

Stigmuller summarized the orders that had been cut and signed for Private Jackson, starting in Chicago and delivering him currently to an assignment in West Germany.

Now, as he broke into a trot, Weir ran the facts of both cases through his mind. He kept his footsteps light on the spongy sod, staying close to the trees and hedge line of the Lakeside golf course, watching for the exact stand of pines he had chosen as his landmark to make his break to the right and begin the climb up Old White Course.

Weir’s single piece of luggage was there, hidden under a patch of wineberries that edged the fairway. He and Laura Devers had played Old White late yesterday. He had picked up an electric golf cart at the clubhouse, driven round to the back door of the guest cottage. First he loaded a half case of iced beer into the cart. Then he slipped his suitcase under the beer, put two sets of clubs into the cart, and called loudly to Laura to join him.

At the ninth hole, Weir had become aware of a solitary golfer shooting behind them, approaching and playing out each hole in a methodical fashion, never too close to the twosome, but never far behind.

On the eleventh hole Weir had pulled his cart off the pathway into the rough and waited. As the lone golfer drove up in his cart, Weir recognized him as the man assigned to the cottage next to his.

“We’re holding you up, friend,” Weir called out to the golfer, a burly man with a thick neck and protuberant eyes. “Why don’t you play through?”

The man stared at Weir in obvious surprise. “No, no, you play on. I didn’t realize I was crowding you.”

Laura Devers smiled. “This is a long vacation for us and I’m afraid I’m learning the game as I go. I’ll be embarrassed if you just don’t play on through.”

The man agreed, took a couple of practice swings, then turned for a last look at Weir. He hit a long drive straight down the fairway, got into his cart and followed the ball into the distance.

At the twelfth hole Laura Devers took six putts on the green and Weir waited until the sound of the lone golfer’s cart was only a faint whine in the distance. Then he removed his luggage and concealed it in the wineberry bushes.

Now, as the ground began to rise slightly, Weir felt the slip of dew under his feet and smelled the mountain chill in the air. The weather was fair with a few scattered clouds lit by a quarter moon.

Weir had instructed Stigmuller that he wanted an unmarked charter helicopter, not an Army requisition, and Stigmuller understood. Weir then gave him time, location and approximate grid coordinates for the twelfth hole. There would be no radio communications, no ground lights. The time would be exactly 0100 hours and the only signal would be a triple Hash from a flashlight on the middle of the twelfth fairway. There would be one passenger and destination would be disclosed when he was on board.

“You don’t want to give me a flight plan, Scotty?” Stigmuller said.

“Trust me, Buck,” Weir said. “I’ll feel a lot more sure of what I’m doing when I get to where I think I ought to be.”

Now he stood in the shadows at the wood’s edge, suitcase in one hand, a powerful flashlight in the other. He felt the approach of the helicopter even before he saw it, a vibration that seemed to come from the earth and up through the soles of his shoes. Moments later he heard a high, metallic hum and saw a triangle of lights coming toward him across the sky like moving stars.

Tarbert Weir ran out into the fairway, crisscrossed the darkness with three brief flashes from his electric torch, then waited while the machine took its bearings and hovered toward the ground, flattening the moonlit grass with its rotors, and then settled like a trained bird.

Weir ran to the helicopter, slung up his luggage and climbed aboard. The flight to Dallas should take two hours, he calculated, then another flight to Mexico City. By late sunrise he would be on a commercial airline, flying east toward Germany.