A Matter of Honor

Chapter Four

Central Police Headquarters, the official nexus for crime analysis and all phases of major criminal investigation in the city, is located on Chicago’s south side on State Street between Eleventh Street and Roosevelt Road. A thirteen-story building with a glimpse of Lake Michigan from its upper floors, Central Headquarters stands on the east parallel to State Street in a borderline area between the Loop’s business districts to the north and deteriorating sections spreading south and west, into neighborhoods dominated by ethnic groups, black, Asian, and Hispanic, migrant southern rural whites, and by the city’s highest crime and poverty statistics.

In his office at headquarters, Homicide Detective Lieutenant Mark Weir considered the information he had received earlier by phone from Bonnie Caidin.

On a notepad he had written the name Private Randolph Peyton Lewis, underscoring it with three heavy pencil strokes. He had added the notations: Age 22, black, enroute to O’Hare on MATS Flight 94, departure point Frankfurt. Reported missing by aunt, Mrs. Amanda Lewis, 4800 South Halstead Street.

Sergeant DuBois Gordon, who reported to the lieutenant, was already on his way to talk to Mrs. Lewis, and the lieutenant himself had made a number of calls to contacts around the city.

Weir was in his mid-thirties, tall and rangy, with a wide, square face and sandy hair. He stood now and stared out at the lake which sparkled dully in the early dawn. At this distance, the water looked heavy and lifeless. Weir sipped coffee from a wilted carton and looked uncertainly at his phone, reluctant to pick it up and call his father at his farm outside Springfield. He justified his procrastination by running once again over what information he’d collected so far on Private Lewis.

MATS Flight 94 had arrived on schedule at O’Hare International, carrying two hundred military personnel from various cities in Germany. According to the roster and what they knew at present. Private Lewis had been aboard. He was logged in at Health and Immigration and then cleared routinely through Customs.

Yet, according to skycaps, cab starters, bus-line clerks, rental car agencies and even private limo chauffeurs, there was no evidence that Private Lewis had left O’Hare International after he had deplaned from MATS 94 — at least he hadn’t left on a conventional carrier, and it wasn’t likely he’d tried to hitchhike into town, not with bad weather and his military gear.

Lieutenant Weir jingled the change in his pocket, then spread it on his desk. Four quarters, three pennies and a nickel, and a metal ring with his apartment and car keys. He studied the coins a moment and returned them to his jacket. He would have preferred to make this call privately from a pay booth in the lobby.

Weir lifted his desk phone and told the switchboard operator he wanted to place a call to Springfield, Illinois. Finishing the last of the coffee, he dropped the carton into a wastebasket and, without being aware of it, stood straight and squared his shoulders to prepare himself for the sound of his father’s voice.

To his relief it was Grimes who answered. John Grimes, his father’s former corporal, who had followed General Weir through a dozen posts, two major wars and, ultimately, into shared retirement on a farm in downstate Illinois.

“Mark, this is a helluva surprise, a damned treat,” Grimes said, his voice hearty. “It’s fine to hear from you. You okay, son?”

“Things are about as usual,” the lieutenant said. “How about yourself?”

“I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I’m stiff and lazy some of these cold mornings.” Corporal Grimes laughed. “But you know your father. We don’t exactly stand reveille, but there’s work to be done on this place. What can I do for you, Mark?”

“I know you weren’t expecting this call, John, but I’d like to talk to the general.”

“I’ll try to corral him for you, Mark,” Grimes said, the tone of his voice unchanged. “Give me a moment, will you? Either he’s working the dogs or he’s in the barn with the tenant farmer.”

As he waited, the lieutenant unlocked a desk drawer and took out a file which contained the names and addresses (conditional in one instance) and various biographical information relating to three United States Army soldiers who had been found dead on the streets of Chicago in the last six months; three black men, all privates with borderline service records, infractions ranging from drunkenness to insubordination. All three had been in their early twenties, and all had been knifed or shot in slum neighborhoods, with high traces of narcotics and alcohol in their bloodstreams. Privates Cullen, Baggot and Jones.

The three homicides were carried in the various police districts in which they’d occurred as open, unsolved crimes. As yet the killings had not been grouped under a single case number or tentatively identified as the work of a single person or persons.

Lieutenant Weir was first alerted to the possibility of a relationship between the slayings from Bonnie Caidin. She had called from her newspaper office with certain questions when the second victim, Will Baggot, was found in an alley behind a bar near Garfield and South Washington. Army privates, both recently back from Germany... And she’d called Lieutenant Weir again when a third military victim, Private Titus Jones, was discovered in a trash-littered lot near Washington Park.

Corporal Grimes’ voice sounded in his ear, “Mark, you there?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Your father’s just left for Springfield with the farmer. He don’t like the load of feed they delivered last week. You know how the general always was. Troops and livestock get fed before the officers.”

“It’s a little early for feed marts. He’s there but he won’t talk to me, is that it, Grimes?”

“Don’t take that tone, Mark. You think he’s stiff-necked, but he was pretty damned hurt, you know. You can’t rightly expect him not to be.”

The lieutenant felt some of the old angers and frustrations pulling at him. “Grimes, I need to talk to my father. It’s not personal.”

“Give him a little time, son.” Grimes’ tone became conspiratorial. “I’m roasting a pheasant tonight, the general’s shot a freezer full. After dinner I’ll mix him a little malt whiskey and ask him to get in touch with you. I’ll make it a direct order if I have to. Hell, it’s all gone on too long. Where’ll you be tonight, say around eight-thirty?”

“Grimes, I need to talk to my father now. I told you this isn’t personal. I’m a cop, and I need a professional evaluation from him.”

“I said he went to town, lieutenant,” Grimes said flatly.

“All right, Grimes, but do this much,” Mark Weir said. “Take down three names, three soldiers who shipped out of Germany within the last six months. Ask my father if he’ll run a check on them with his contacts in G-2. See if there’s any relationship between them and the fact that they were all murdered in my city after they returned from service abroad.”

“These soldiers are dead you say? All three of them?”

“That’s right. So far they’re being treated as separate, unsolved homicides. I’ve kept the lid on with the Army because there’s nothing obvious or logically military to move on. These soldiers were on leave, off duty, drugged and drunk and in bad neighborhoods. But they were soldiers, and they did serve abroad. If the general is willing to cooperate, I’d like him to make those inquiries as discreetly as possible.”

“You know Scotty,” Grimes said dryly. “Take your chances on how discreet he’ll be.”

Lieutenant Weir gave Grimes the names of the three murder victims and their Army identification numbers. And one last name to check on, a missing person called Private Randolph Peyton Lewis. Then, unable to help himself, Weir added, “If the old man doesn’t want to get involved, if he doesn’t want to talk to me or help me, you can tell him for me where he can stuff those four silver stars of his.”

“You’re out of line, Mark,” the man said. “I’ll skip that part of your message.”

Mark knew Grimes well; the corporal had almost raised him, but Grimes had never understood the issues between Mark and his father, the gulf that separated them like a lethal moat. It wasn’t only a matter of bands at dockside for returning GIs or patriotic bunting on main streets across the country. Most of the differences between himself and his father were generation problems, philosophy gaps, definitions of “a just war” and “other wars” and the inability to talk sanely and quietly about any of it. And there was something else, too, something wounding and estranging that had come between them after his mother died.

The lieutenant looked at his watch. He was waiting for Sergeant Gordon’s call and only half listening to Grimes now. “... he’s not made of granite himself, Mark, never mind the public image. He can be hurt, too, you know.”

It was true, of course, the lieutenant thought, watching the surface of the gray lake begin to glitter. A fog had come in and the sun broke through in dappled patterns. A light glowed on the base of the phone.

“Grimes, do your best,” Weir said. “Tell my father those dead men on my turf mean as much to me as the casualties at Bastogne or Pork Chop Hill or anywhere else on his terrain. I need him to locate the enemy...”

The lieutenant broke the connection, pushed a button and Sergeant Gordon came on the line. He was calling from Mrs. Lewis’s apartment.

“We found the letter and Mrs. Lewis was right about dates and times. Nothing much else in it except stuff about presents and wanting to make the big time in life. Nice, kind of hopeful, but nothing for us to go on. Mrs. Lewis almost got mugged tonight near the Vets’ Aid on Diversey, by the way. Some stud with balls saved her ass. She’s making us tea right now, and I’m going to look through a stack of letters from Randolph’s mother, see if they give us something. Anything at your end, lieutenant?”

“I’m trying a new approach,” he said. “Suppose you pick me up at Congress and Michigan in about an hour, okay?”

“Will do, lieutenant.”

Mark Weir lived on the near north side in a block of renovated three-story brownstones. His was the basement apartment, running the length of the house, four rooms and as bath, with barred windows, front and back, opening on shallow courtyards. In summer there were potted geraniums on the front sills, and he resolved that if he ever got a cat, he’d keep a catnip tray growing in the kitchen bay.

At home he changed into track clothes, left his apartment and jogged east to Michigan Avenue. He continued over the bridge that arched the river, past the Tribune Tower to the stretch of shops and the apartment buildings and hotels that faced Lake Michigan.

The lieutenant alternated his route every other day. He ran in Lincoln Park often, and sometimes took Delaware or Oak to the Outer Drive and along the lake to Navy Pier. From there, if he had time, he usually jogged back toward the El, the elevated transportation route that circled the town’s original business district. He liked the narrow streets in that area, slatted and shadowed from overhead by the structure of train tracks, the satisfying Chicago sound of old El cars rumbling and screeching above him.

This early frosty morning the lieutenant wore a gray wool cardigan over his jogging suit. Beneath the sweater a .32 caliber revolver in a spring clip was looped to his belt, and under the leather were secured his ID and gold badge. A wristwatch with a small receiver gave him contact with Homicide Central.

Traffic on Michigan Avenue was still light, only a few cruising cabs, morning-shift doormen walking to clubs and hotels and old women from downtown cleaning crews moving wearily toward bus stops and El stations.

From here the lake stretched away from the city like a flat silver platter, the thin sun spreading through the mists. A wind scattered dirt and damp papers in the gutter and ice in the hollows of the sidewalks glittered like bits of broken glass. Street lights were still on, he noticed, their glows paling in the rising daylight. Weir paced himself to the echo of his footsteps and checked his watch as he passed the Art Institute with long, rhythmic strides.

For the last ten years there had never been a cease-fire between himself and the old man, no area of accommodation, not even a no-man’s land where they might have met under a flag of truce to reestablish lines of communication. Yet even for a long time before that something had been missing between them, or maybe missing in himself, he often thought. He remembered his feelings as a kind of emotional overkill, a demand for more love than seemed to be in supply. As a young boy he sometimes felt lonesome for his father, even when they were together on the same Army post, in the same house, sometimes even in the same room. It was an ache he felt acutely but never understood.

General Weir was stationed mostly in Europe and Washington during his son’s teens and university years. Mark had managed a student draft deferment until graduation, then volunteered for service for two years. He went into the Army a private and came out a private. He applied for and received specialized training in communications. He spent a year and a half on various Stateside assignments and the last six months in a suburb of Saigon. Except for basic training, Mark Weir never handled or fired a weapon.

Mustered out of the Army at twenty-three, he transferred his Army savings to a Chicago bank, moved into a small efficiency apartment near the Loop and joined a Veterans Against Vietnam group to publicly protest U.S. military involvement in the war.

A student group at New Trier High School had asked him to speak, and it was there he first met Bonnie Caidin. He allowed her to tape one of his speeches, and some months later agreed to have it printed as a pamphlet for the antiwar student group to stuff in Evanston mailboxes, pass out on downtown street corners and send to the opinion page of the Chicago newspapers and the New York Times.

Mark Weir was never sure exactly what had triggered his final anger or flawed his judgment, or why he wanted to hurt his father so directly, but he had instructed Bonnie Caidin to identify him in the introduction to that pamphlet as the only son of Lieutenant-General Tarbert Weir, United States Army.

Even now, at thirty-four, Weir felt an almost crippling chill as he remembered his father’s rage and scorn. The Pentagon had sent one of the pamphlets to the general in Paris. He had initialed it and sent it back to his son with the scrawled comment: “High-class rhetoric. I’d say, persuasive to cowardly hearts and immature minds but damned close to treason in my judgment. Have I raised a turncoat as my son?”

Mark had written a heated reply: “If civilian criticism of government policy is treason, how would you describe the government’s current lies to its citizens? What would you call our faked casualty reports, unreported bombing raids on a neutral country, deliberate underevaluation of enemy strength to keep this war alive? Is that legitimate representation, or none of the country’s damned business? I kept my mouth shut while I was in uniform, but I will no longer do that. By your own choice, you have been in uniform most of your adult life, and you don’t speak out. By staying in uniform, accepting its power and privileges, your silence abets the lies of the Vietnam conflict. You are committing the ultimate treason. You are not true to yourself.”

Coincidence or not, Mark never knew, but less than two years after that letter General Tarbert Weir resigned from the United States Army and moved permanently to Springfield.

Running smoothly now on the hard pavement, Mark Weir crossed the east-west streets named for Presidents Adams, Jackson, and Van Buren, his thoughts as insistent and rhythmic as his stride.

In the post-’Nam years, some of young Weir’s angers were eroded by civilian life and simple reasoning. His father had not made policy, had not been a commander in Vietnam or had any part of it. When he applied for Police Academy and was accepted, he wanted his father to be proud of him. He had written him the news to the farm but that letter was never answered.

It was not the accusation of personal treason that had hurt his father so deeply, Mark Weir knew that. Angry words can be forgiven and forgotten. It was the mutilated picture he had enclosed with that final letter. He had literally tom his father out of his life.

It was a snapshot taken the last time they had been photographed together as a family, one mild winter day in Wiesbaden, right after Colonel Weir had come back from two weeks of maneuvers on the border between Czechoslovakia and West Germany. Grimes had snapped the picture of the trio, their eyes squinting against the winter sun, arms around each other. At the last moment his father had taken off his Army cap and put it on his son’s head. The cap slid over the boy’s fine, sandy hair, and all three of them had laughed into the camera.

His mother had died a month later of lobar pneumonia, complicated by an atypical lung collapse. They had gone for a long weekend together in the Bavarian Alps, but Grimes had shown up unexpectedly to take Mark back to the base on Sunday night. His father said he did not want Mark to miss school, so the boy had not been with his mother when she died.

After crossing Harrison, the lieutenant slowed to a walk and stopped in front of the Blackstone Hotel. In spite of the cold, he was sweating, his hair dark and damp at the temples.

He had torn that picture in two, so that his mother and the boy in the officer’s cap were on one side and Colonel Scotty Weir was separated from them completely. But there was still the outline of his father’s hand as it rested on young Mark’s shoulder.

Mark Weir had carefully picked at the shiny surface, lifting off the flakes of photograph that recorded that hand, and dropping them into the envelope.

Symbolically, and then in fact, he had tom his father out of his life. John Grimes sent an occasional brief note and always a handwritten message at Christmas, but Mark Weir had known for some time that his father did not know how to forgive him, and he had never quite forgiven himself.

But he hoped the general would at least care about the three dead soldiers.