A Matter of Honor

Chapter Forty

Three days later, after a four o’clock appointment, Laura Devers drove Bonnie Caidin home from the doctor’s office.

“It’s too early to tell really,” Caidin said as they left downtown Springfield, “but the doctor agrees I’m probably pregnant. At first I told myself I’d been knocked off my menstrual schedule by that godawful beating, but, no, there are other signs. My breasts have been sensitive, and I felt ghastly three mornings in a row. I thought that might have been worrying about Duro and the general.” She sat huddled in a tweed coat, a yellow scarf at her throat, and her face was pale and still. The older woman reached over and patted her knee.

“The doctor doesn’t do abortions, he made that clear,” Bonnie Caidin said. “He told me that under some circumstances he and a consulting physician might come to an administrative decision to prevent the birth. He acted as if, he just assumed, Laura, that I wanted to get rid of it.”

“He’d never seen you before,” Laura Devers said. “He must have wondered why you didn’t go to your own doctor.”

“I didn’t want to wait,” Caidin said. “I felt I wanted to know before I saw Duro again.”

“Did you tell him you had a doctor’s appointment?”

Caidin shook her head. “No, I haven’t even talked to him. I asked Sergeant Gordon to tell him to do whatever he had to do, square himself away with the Army and the police before he got in touch with me. But I did hear his voice. I listened in when he was calling from Frankfurt.” She laughed softly. “He didn’t ask for me. I’m not even sure he plans to call...”

“Would you like to have the baby?”

“I don’t know,” Bonnie Caidin said. “I’m not sure I want to love anything for a while. Right now I can’t be sure what’s truth and what’s fantasy. Sometimes I think I just imagined the past... my brothers, Mark and even Duro.”

It was dusk and lights from the Weir farmhouse laid flat squares of yellow on the gravel driveway when they reached the front door. Laura declined the invitation to come in for a drink.

“To tell you the truth, Bonnie, I want to go home and write a letter to Scotty. I feel better about him when I stay in touch.”

“But you told me you called the hospital twice.”

“Three times, actually, but I just get to talk to the floor orderly. He tells me Scotty’s doing just fine, seeing no one except his doctors. You’d think at my age I could make up my mind,” she said, “but I’ve been arguing with myself whether or not I should fly over to Frankfurt. Or at least fly over to bring him home when he’s fit.”

“Why don’t you? I think he’d love that.”

“And then again he might not,” Laura said. “We’re old, old friends, and good friends, and I know how I feel about him, but he’s stubborn, you know. I wouldn’t want to rile him. I’ve got a hunch Scotty Weir’d rather find his own way home.”

“There’s a number for you to call in Chicago, Miss Bonnie. It’s Sergeant Gordon. He tried to reach you three times. Can I bring you a pot of tea? You haven’t eaten a bite today.”

“Tea would be just fine,” she said. “Tea with lots of sugar and dry toast.”

Grimes hesitated and the skin above his collar flushed red as he spoke. “You’ll forgive me, Miss Bonnie, but is it Mark’s boy you’re carrying?”

“No, Grimes,” she said, “it isn’t. That just wasn’t meant to be, Mark and I.”

“The general would’ve been pleased,” the man said. “We’d have made a fine pair of grandfathers, don’t you think? Jesus, we’d have carried on...”

Bonnie Caidin sat at the general’s desk and picked up the phone pad with Grimes’ writing on it.

Gordon answered at once in a voice so booming, so vibrant that she said, “Doobie, what is it? Have you been drinking?”

“Drinking, hell, Bonnie. I’m just on one big success high. When you get to the bottom of a case as deep and rotten as this one, it’s like sniffing pure oxygen. Get your pencil ready, lady.”

“Doobie,” she said, “I’m off duty. I haven’t even called the office since Grimes drove me down here.”

“Don’t give me that, Bonnie. You’re too pro to turn down a byline on something like this. The whole city is upside down, I’ve had a hard time protecting it for you, but remember, Mark said this would be your story.”

“All right,” Caidin said. “I’ve got a pencil and paper here. Shoot, Doobie.”

“There’s been a lot of coverage, but what I’m giving you is the nuts and bolts, the inside stuff on how we put the case together, the information the other papers don’t have yet. And a lot of credit goes to your boy friend.”

“Don’t call him that, please,” she said and scrawled “Durham Lasari” across the top of the page. “Start with the Chicago end.”

“Okay. We’d been working round the clock, we didn’t know exactly what we were looking for, but we were looking. There were shadows, we were getting an outline. It was part coincidence, part self-indictment, but last Friday we finally threw a net over Detective Frank Salmi, one of the city’s own finest, the bastard, and he broke down and gave us some very pertinent details.”

Grimes came in and set a tray of tea things on the desk. Bonnie Caidin blew him a kiss and said into the phone, “How’d you do it?”

“The damndest thing, Bonnie. We had that voice tape and the man’s voice we couldn’t identify on it, right? Well, by chance I was on the elevators in the police building, on my way up to the office, sharing the ride with some civilian cats, and on the third floor Salmi gets on. Remember, Bonnie, how in those elevators, right over the regular floor number, there’s a little brass plaque with the numbers in braille? It’s the same in all the county buildings.”

“I remember,” she said.

“Well, Salmi sees me, nods hello and then he goes apeshit, puts on some kind of clown act, feeling those braille number plates, making cracks about Lady Justice being blind. He got a couple of laughs from the civilians and then he turned to me and said, ‘I’d like to ask you for lunch today, Sergeant, but my wife sewed razor blades in my pockets. She don’t want me bribing no cops.’ Another big laugh, he’s a real elevator comedian, his nerves just cracked on him.

“Salmi’s a short guy, you know, balding, tan complexion, and I saw that he was sweating like a greaseball. All of a sudden I knew why. That was his voice on the tapes and the fucker was so nervous being in the same car with me that he couldn’t keep still, he had to expose himself.

“So at the next floor I asked all the civilians to step out. Frank and I took a ride up a couple more floors and I pressed the emergency button to stop the cab between floors. I pulled the door open just a little to show him we were all alone between four brick walls. We had our chat. I never laid a hand on him, Bonnie, but in five minutes he was blubbering to get up to Commissioner McDade’s office and give his story to a steno.”

“Okay, Doobie,” she said, “you talk fast but I’ve got that.”

“Salmi told us what we’d suspected all along but could never prove. It was a heroin scam on both sides of the Atlantic, using military couriers, a growing business. They were expecting their fifth delivery.”

“Just a minute,” she said, and then asked a few questions to clarify details on the earlier deliveries. “All right, I’m clear so far. Where was Sergeant Malleck during all this?”

“Right where he should be, running his operation from the armory. We decided our best strategy was to simulate business as usual. Let Lasari try to get through to the armory with the payload and catch Malleck with the goods in his hands.”

“And Detective Salmi?”

“We kept him on ice, so to speak. Once he started talking he didn’t want to stop. He knew he was an accessory to Murder One for setting up Mark with that phone call, though he’s pleading against collusion. He insists he didn’t know an execution was planned.

“It was two of Malleck’s men, Eddie Neal and Joe Castana, who pulled the trigger. We got them both right at the airport, along with that amateur gunsel Mr. M. sent over to pick up the shit for himself.”

“Mr. M.? I thought he was straight syndicate.”

“I guess he wanted something on the side. According to Salmi, Mr. M. bankrolled the operation for Malleck from the beginning. It was going to be comparatively small stuff, but profitable enough for both sides. But Malleck got greedy and careless.

“The first couriers brought in duffels with only three to four pounds of white in the lining. Malleck figured out a new angle for a profit to split between himself and a Sergeant Strasser in Germany. Before leaving Germany, each courier would mail home one or more regulation GI packages, little things, a teddy bear, a fancy pillow, a music box — each with its cache of heroin inside. There’s no limit as to how many packages a GI can send as long as they’re no heavier than seventy pounds maximum and are marked gift with a declared value under fifty dollars. He can take his choice, the German post office or APO, which is a little cheaper. Malleck wasn’t worried about costs, and he was bypassing Mr. M. completely on this extra loot.”

“How did you get onto the mail angle?”

“Lasari corroborated the information, but it came from Frank Salmi first. Finding Salmi was like getting a direct hit at the piñata with a baseball bat. Goodies spilled out all over the place. And, of course, Uncle Andy wanted a chance to cleanse his soul.”

“Uncle Andy?”

“Private Andrew Scales, a soldier and a junkie, the man who shot Malleck. He was billeted at the armory but he hung around Cabrini Green. I’d been checking through Cabrini books and found that Scales had rented four different apartments in different buildings over a five-month period. Each time he got a new mailbox and a new key. He knew I was onto him, but I let him dangle. After the shooting he told us Malleck had alerted him to watch out for four presents from Germany for Uncle Andy this time.”

“Packages they forced Lasari to send?”

“Yes, but the packages never left Germany, Bonnie. Lasari had the right information tucked in his memory bank. He’d memorized the file numbers of the four mail receipts he’d signed and the German officials caught the stuff right at the Frankfurt post office.”

“How did they try to do it this time?”

“Same M.O., Bonnie. Separate packages, all to be mailed on different dates, all addressed to Andrew Scales. This stuff could have fooled anyone — four big expensive cuckoo clocks, painted in Alpine colors, crazy little birds inside, but each pair of swinging weights — they look like pine cones, the Germans told us — each cone is hollowed out and filled with about a pound and a half of heroin.

“The military in Frankfurt put the cuffs on Strasser, Malleck’s opposite number, the German border police picked up the ringleader, Pytor Veyetch, as he tried to cross the Czech border near Cheb.

“Andrew Scales... that poor junkie brother’s got more than heroin possession and Malleck’s murder to worry about. It was Scales who gave Malleck the layout of the Cabrini apartment, the place they got Mark...”

Gordon sighed and some of the animation went out of his voice. “Well, Bonnie, it’s an ongoing investigation, of course, but I think that covers the Chicago end up to date.”

“And Lasari,” she said, keeping her tone impersonal. “Has he been with you all this time?”

“Not exactly. We talked to him on tape the better part of a day, he’s got a mind like a computer for details, you know. Then at Senator Copeland’s suggestion, he and Superintendent McDade flew into Washington. They’ve been holding meetings with General Buck Stigmuller and a Colonel Benton of Intelligence, along with the senator. I’m strictly Chicago law-and-order and not privy to those meetings, but McDade says they’re haggling over the best public relations approach for this matter, whether or not a full disclosure in this country and abroad is the best approach. Intelligence seems to favor a limited exposure, almost a coverup, but Copeland and Stigmuller like the bad apple theory and a major announcement that they’ve cleaned out the whole damned barrel.

“General Stigmuller has his special point of view on a lot of things,” the sergeant said. “He contends he was working closely with Tarbert Weir and that Durham Lasari was in their plans from the beginning. Lasari’s been cooperating in every way, he’s holding back nothing. I thought you’d want to know, Bonnie.”

“I’ll explain what you just told me to the desk,” she said, “and see how they want to handle it. Maybe they’ll want to put someone from the Washington bureau on that angle, direct quotes from the three big names.”

“Okay, Ace. I’ll be in the office for a half hour or so, and you’ve got my home number if there’s anything you need to recheck,” Gordon said. “McDade and Lasari flew into Chicago about an hour ago. We’ll want him up here for more questioning and as a witness at the trials, of course, but McDade gave him a couple of days off. Lasari said to tell you he’s driving down there tonight.”

Bonnie paused, took a sip of tea to compose herself, then said, “One more important thing, Doobie. General Weir — are you going to send him a report on all this?”

“I already talked to him, Bonnie.”

“You talked to him?”

“Well, it was rather a one-sided conversation but a nurse held a phone over the bed and I gave him an official report. I knew there were two things he was adamant about. He wanted those GI killings stopped and he wanted to find out who’d murdered his son. I said, ‘Mission accomplished, sir’ and that was that.”

“You’re sure he heard you?”

“The nurse said he made one hand into a fist, held it up like a victory sign. He can talk, she said, but he’s still got those damned tubes in his throat.”

“Just one last thing, Doobie. I’m not sure I have these numbers right. You said the first four couriers brought in three to four pounds of white, then Malleck got greedy. That means that Lasari’s duffel had more?”

“Yes, they stuffed in seven pounds this time, all balanced out so the weight was even.”

“And the cuckoo clocks with a pound and a half in each of two pendulums, that’s another twelve pounds?”

“Right.”

“So all together on this loop Malleck was trying to bring in nineteen pounds of heroin. In street money, when they’re dealing, how much would all that be worth, Doobie?”

“Drug Enforcement figures quantity in kilos, and there’s two point two pounds to a kilo so, in this case, we’re talking about eight and a half kilos, a little more.”

“And?”

“At retail level, with the stuff cut for street sale, this high-grade stuff sells, all told, for about two million dollars a kilo.”

“I don’t have a calculator, Doobie. What did you come up with?”

“We’ll have accurate figures when the German agents send us exact weights and measures,” Doobie said, “but this haul would have been worth from sixteen to eighteen million dollars, and if the market is dry, even a little more.”

“And this was the fifth try,” Bonnie said. “I’m speechless, Doobie. Thanks, and whether or not I get a bonus on this. I’m going to call you and take you out to lunch.”

She hung up and dialed Larry Malloy on the city desk at the Tribune and talked with him for an hour.

Bonnie folded the notes and put them in a sweater pocket, straightened the top of the desk, switched the lamp to low. When she’d lit the logs and tinder in the fireplace, she decided to ask Grimes to chill some red wine from the cellar.

For the doctor’s visit in Springfield her choice had been brown slacks and a cashmere cardigan set, but she wanted to shower and change into a dress. What had she been wearing when she saw Lasari last, she wondered. With a start she remembered her tom and bloody clothes had been destroyed at Henrotin Hospital. She had reached the foot of the staircase when the phone rang.

“I’m sure it’s for me, Grimes,” she called out. “Malloy must have found something I skipped. And, please, can you chill a couple of reds for us? Lasari’s coming.”

She picked up the study phone and was surprised to see Grimes watching her from the doorway. After listening briefly, she held out the phone. “It’s for you. Person to person, the overseas operator.”

As a voice sounded on the overseas end of the line, Grimes squared his shoulders, standing almost at attention. “Yes, sir,” he said. “John Grimes here.”

Bonnie saw the warning flick of shock in the man’s expression, the sudden sag of his shoulders.

“Yes, I hear you, sir. I was just listening. But we’d been given to understand...” His face was ashen and she could see the shine of tears in his eyes. After some moments he said, “I see, I see. Thank you, major, and God bless you, sir. This can’t be easy for you.”

He replaced the phone and turned to Caidin. “The hospital in Frankfurt’s been trying to reach us for an hour or more, but the line was tied up.”

“I was talking to Sergeant Gordon in Chicago, and then my paper.”

“A doctor just told me, a medical major, that the general died an hour ago. Scotty Weir didn’t make it after all, Miss Caidin. Can you believe that?” Grimes watched the young woman closely, studying her eyes, her mouth, as if to find an answer somewhere in her expression. She nodded helplessly.

“He was so alive to me,” she said. “I was just using his paper and pencils. There are some playbills in the desk drawer, a deck of cards...”

Grimes seemed not to hear. “It wasn’t the gunshot wounds at all, according to the major. That skulking bastard never killed him. It was an embolism, the doctor said, a blood clot that got loose and went for the heart,”

“It’s too much for me to take in,” Bonnie said. “I know I should weep, but it’s too soon, I feel I honor him by not crying.”

There was a flash of headlights across the windows, a crunch of gravel as a car pulled into the drive and Grimes went to the front door.

Duro Lasari came into the study, a rush of cold air around him, tired, his face troubled and dark. He put his arms around Bonnie and his lean, hard body felt hot, almost fevered through his clothes.

“I heard it on the car radio. I should have stayed with him, but goddamn it, he ordered me to leave him.”

“Please, Duro. You’re hurting my shoulders. I’m still bruised there.”

He slackened his grip and said, “ ‘It’s never as bad as it looks, soldier,’ those were the last words. But he’d called out to warn me, he took that shot for me. He just didn’t give a damn.”

“You’re wrong about that,” Grimes said. “Scotty Weir knew what he was doing. He always gave a damn.”

Lasari dropped his arms to his sides and began to pace the small study. “This is the last thing I expected. I had begun to understand him. I believed I would see him again.” He paused. “Maybe it was a decision he made out there at Schwartzwald. Maybe it was a moral one, but it was an action he’d conditioned himself to take.”

“We were friends for more than thirty years,” Grimes said. “I knew the man and respected him, but I’m just a snapass corporal. I don’t know if he’s the last of his kind or the start of a new breed.”

He looked around the study, the walls of books, the empty trophy cabinets, the folders of maps and papers stacked on shelves. “It shouldn’t end like this,” he said. “It has to mean more than that. We should talk about him, remember him. Someone should put it all on paper.”

“I’ve been thinking of little else for days,” Bonnie said.

Grimes walked to the foot locker with the flag folded on top, touching it reverently, “There’s more than a man’s life in that trunk, there’s history here, his speeches, his medals, his decorations. They should be sorted out, looked at, treated with respect. I’m too hurt by all this, it’s like a terminal wound to me. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Maybe I would,” Duro Lasari said, and took a packet from his pocket and placed it on the desk, folding back the leaves of tissue paper.

Bonnie Caidin bent close, then touched the object with the tip of her finger. “That’s a Medal of Honor, isn’t it? I never saw one before.”

Lasari put his hand on her shoulder lightly, but he seemed to be addressing someone beyond the shadows of the room. “You’re right, Bonnie, a Medal of Honor. The Army gave that to General Weir years ago, when he was just a kid, a private. The reason you never saw one before, well, there are just too damned few medals around these days. That’s the way I see it.”

John Grimes nodded and Bonnie Caidin said softly, “You’re right, Duro. And that’s the way I see it... far too few.”