A Matter of Honor

Chapter Five

A black sedan traveling north on Michigan Boulevard made a sharp U-turn, sending up spurts of grimy water, then braked to a stop in front of the Blackstone Building. Lieutenant Weir got into the front passenger seat.

The sergeant at the wheel turned north on Dearborn and drove past the Dirksen Courthouse and then past the Picasso masterpiece, a flaring sculpture of curved iron arches and a facelike flange that reflected in a soft glow from the glass windows of the buildings around it.

“It’s all strange to my daddy,” Sergeant Gordon said, nodding at the giant artwork as the car angled past Civic Center Plaza. “He says it’s the spittin’ image of Picasso’s mother-in-law.”

Gordon was a plump man of about forty with fine, smooth skin, light brown, and the habit of laughing softly in varying pitches to emphasize what he was saying. His eyes were cool and watchful, but bright with a sense of amusement. Only the patchy gray of his sideburns, like clumps of steel wool, gave away his age.

“And my daddy hates all those fucking glass buildings in the Loop. He liked it when everything was brick or brownstone and the streetcar tracks went down the middle of the street,” DuBois Gordon continued with a burst of laughter. “It’s always the Outer Drive to him, none of that Lake Shore Drive shit. Marina Towers, Daley Center, he won’t have ’em. Thinks we went wrong when we took the Pullman sleepers off between here and St. Louis. My daddy still likes to tell kinfolk that Chicago is Indian talk for wild onion...” He glanced at the lieutenant.

“Okay, boss, so we’re working,” he said. “I didn’t get much from Mrs. Lewis. Nothing solid. She didn’t know her nephew well. Before the Army, she told me, he was always in some sort of trouble, but he never hurt anybody, had a good heart. She never had kids of her own.”

At the lieutenant’s instructions, Gordon drove across the river and continued north toward Bonnie Caidin’s apartment building.

“Here’s what I got hold of so far,” Weir told the sergeant. “It’s just a lot of hearsay, none of the usual sources saw anything, but a clerk at the Traveler’s Aid booth said a Hare Krishna disciple had stopped by to get some ointment for a split lip. The Krishna said he tried to intervene when a pair of military police were manhandling a soldier in an O’Hare parking lot. He said the MPs told him the man was drunk, and they were taking him in for his own good. They tossed the soldier and his gear into a closed jeep and took off.”

“Did you check with the military?”

“I got the airport to do that, without using my name. They say the regular army MPs reported no trouble at the airport, but the other MPs, the new special cadre that works out of the west armory, they could have been responsible for the action. They’re a fairly new and experimental unit, operating only in urban areas. They’ve been given liaison responsibility between men in uniform and ordinary citizens. If needed, they’ve got the right to act in civilian areas, like the airport. That cadre reports directly to a First Sergeant Karl Malleck, and that’s a call I’m trying to make up my mind about.”

“You saying that Lewis could be sleeping off a drunk in an Army brig right now?”

“Let’s say I hope he is,” the lieutenant said.

Sergeant Gordon pulled up and stopped in a parking place beyond the canopied entrance to Bonnie Caidin’s building.

“How long do we sit on it, lieutenant? Three soldiers murdered, one missing and suspicious... are you and me just keeping score?”

“The stats aren’t out of line.” The lieutenant looked at his watch; he still had a few minutes. “I’ve checked, Doobie. New York, Cleveland, Denver, San Diego — three unsolved dead males over a six-month period doesn’t make a blip on the homicide curve.”

“Dead soldier boys?”

“Not far from the national average either. Servicemen are usually young, have money to spend, like to drink, try drugs and raise hell, and they look for hookers in dangerous neighborhoods.”

“Mostly black soldier boys? All with fucked up service records, alcohol on duty, insubordination, shit like that?”

“What good is guessing? We can’t make a case on what we’ve got, period. It’s only a series of coincidences at this stage.”

“And we can’t lean on Malleck?”

“No. It would be out of line for Homicide to inquire about a soldier who isn’t even officially classified as missing. If Malleck is involved, or his special cadre are in on it, it would only tip them off that we’re on to a developing pattern.”

Sergeant Gordon smiled without humor, the early morning light shining on his high, flat cheekbones. “You’re gonna ask Miss Bonnie to check out the Malleck angle, is that right?”

“She can do it legitimately, as part of a feature,” the lieutenant said. “Bonnie met this soldier’s aunt last night in a perfectly routine fashion. A follow-up inquiry to Malleck’s people isn’t out of line.”

“But she’ll have to tell him the police heard about a drunk soldier being hauled from the airport by MPs, right?”

“She can say her city editor picked up the tip in a massage parlor or bar, or whatever. ‘Your boys happen to pick up a soldier named Randolph Lewis, sergeant?’ That’s all she has to ask, for Christ’s sake.”

“Well, then why the hell you so edgy about it?”

“What’s been going on here has been going on for too long, that’s why.”

Gordon chuckled but there was a bitterness to his laugh. “Us black folks, we never did like the military helping out the police, not since Civil War days, boss.”

“Look,” Lieutenant Weir said. “I know you’ve got a masters in Public Administration, I know you’re taking courses toward your doctorate. You’re going to wind up a big shot in City Hall with more degrees than a thermometer, but I also know that when you go darky on me, you’re holding back or are damned worried about something...”

Sergeant Gordon shrugged. “Tell Bonnie to watch herself, boss. A detective named Salmi, Frank Salmi, is pretty close to Malleck. I’ve known Salmi since the Academy. He works out of Southside but he’s just been assigned to Central two days a week. I saw his name on roster. If Malleck’s anything like Salmi, then he’s tough as whale shit. Clean that up and tell Bonnie I said so.”

In a leather booth near the back of the coffee shop Bonnie Caidin sat alone, sipping black coffee and leafing through an early edition of the Tribune.

Mark Weir slid into the padded seat opposite her and signaled the waitress. “I’ll have coffee, toast, scrambled eggs — and, miss, ask the chef not to put any of that sliced fruit stuff on my plate. I don’t like things that run into my eggs.”

Bonnie folded the newspaper and put it on the seat beside her. She lifted her red hair off her shoulders with a quick, absent gesture. Cones of light from the overhead lamps shadowed her eyes and made half-circles of blue above her cheekbones.

“You look a little tired,” the lieutenant said.

“It’s just because it’s winter. I should get myself a sunlamp. How about you, Mark? No orange juice? You need that Vitamin C.”

“I take tablets when I think of it,” he said. “I’m off the orange juice because I don’t have a decent refrigerator in my apartment at the moment.” He sat up straight as the waitress put a paper napkin and silverware in front of him. “If you’re so worried about my vitamins, you could have married me,” he said. “How many damned years did I wait around hoping you’d change your mind?”

“Oh, Mark. Vitamins have nothing to do with it. I was seventeen years old when we met. I wasn’t ready for marriage then any more than I am now. And if it makes you feel any better — well, I loved you enough to think you could stand being hurt a little.”

“Thanks,” he said dryly. “I’m glad you don’t look back on me as a one-night stand.”

“I was counting,” she said. “We made love every chance we got for more than two years, two years and four months exactly. Not counting that lovely, strange weekend in Fond du Lac last spring.”

The waitress set the coffee and toast to one side and put the plate of scrambled eggs in front of the lieutenant. “I told him about the fruit,” she said, “but I hope you don’t mind that he put some parsley on. He used to chef down at Boca Raton.”

“It’s all right,” the lieutenant said. “Tell him one of Chicago’s finest says okay.” He took a sip of the steaming coffee.

Bonnie Caidin reached over and put her hand on his. “I don’t like it when you go sad. Believe me, Mark, you were the best thing that ever happened to me. I really loved you, and that’s not easy to say. We were the right people at the wrong time. But I never regretted it.”

“I wish I could say the same.” Lieutenant Weir pulled his hand away gently. “Just touching you brings it all back, Bonnie.”

“All right,” she said quietly. “Shall we talk about what we came to talk about? Do you have anything on Private Randolph Lewis?”

The lieutenant told her what he’d told Sergeant Gordon and when he finished she said, “I’ll call Sergeant Malleck, but I don’t understand why you or Doobie don’t do it.”

“It might rustle the bushes, Bonnie. I don’t want to make cop noises till I know what we’re up against.”

“All right,” she said, “I’ll handle it as a routine check, like I’m doing some kind of feature. I’ll tell Malleck some do-gooder called the city desk about the Hare Krishna, sort of a citizen’s complaint, religious freedom in our streets, something like that.” She leaned back in the booth, the lights deepening the blue shadows under her eyes. “Whatever we find out about young Lewis, I can’t hold back my story on those GI murders much longer, Mark. You’ve got to realize that.”

He shrugged and stirred his coffee. “What story? We’ve got three isolated murders over a six-month period, no relationships, no motives, no connection except uniforms. The Tribune ran a page-three paragraph on every one of them, and that was the extent of their interest. So far it’s random violence, typical of any big city in the country.”

“They all saw service in Europe, Mark.”

“Damn it, Bonnie, on any given day the United States has more than three hundred thousand men in uniform in Germany alone and they’ve had men there by the thousands for nearly forty years.”

She said with finality, “If Private Lewis doesn’t turn up safe and sound within the next twenty-four hours, I’ll have to turn over my notes. My editors have got to be told. I can’t decide on my own whether or not to sit on this information.”

“Doobie Gordon told me about the man who saved Mrs. Lewis last night. Does he fit into the story?”

“I don’t think he does. He was across the street three nights running, trying to work up courage to come in. Those Latino turkeys who tried to zap Mrs. Lewis gave him an excuse.”

“It wasn’t an act? He wasn’t tailing Mrs. Lewis?”

“No. I’d been aware of him for three nights.”

“What was he so shy about?”

“I’m as bad at cocktail psychiatry as most amateurs,” Bonnie Caidin said, “but here’s my thumbnail analysis. George Jackson, which probably isn’t his name, is carrying a double guilt load, first because he was in the Army and secondly because he ran away from it. He doesn’t quite see himself in either role.

“He’s about thirty or thirty-two, blue collar, high-school education and then something extra. Did time in Vietnam, wounded twice. A private sort of person but street smart, a little touch of the old South in his voice. He’s good-looking in a macho way, maybe Italian, and he’s ballsy, we know that from how he fought for Mrs. Lewis.” She finished her coffee and put the cup down with a decisive click. “He let a little something slip. He talked about ‘the symbiotic relationship between the outlaw and the system.’ So he’s not your ordinary deserter. He’s been reading Genet, Fanon, Marcuso, something besides the thrillers and sports magazines you get in a PX or GI hospital. He’s been thinking.”

“And he came to the Vets’ to clear up his bad paper?”

“In a way. He said he came in to get that information for a friend, who wants to get squared away with the system. I felt sorry for this George.”

“Bleeding heart sorry or person-to-person sorry?”

“Person-to-person sorry, and rather admiring. He’s in a kind of agony with his anarchy, whatever you want to call it. He hasn’t made your kind of adjustment, Mark. He didn’t put down one gun because it was wrong and then pick up another gun because it was right. He just walked away. And he doesn’t seem to have a father to play off his emotions on.”

Bonnie put the folded newspaper under her arm and pushed her coffee check toward the lieutenant. “Thanks for breakfast, Mark. I’ll give you a ring when I talk to Malleck. And I think we can just forget about my ‘George Jackson.’ He’s got nothing to do with Private Lewis, I’m sure of that, and I’ve got a hunch he’s not going to turn up at the Vets’ again. It’s probably the end of it.”

“Can’t you call him?”

She laughed. “It’s against the Vets’ Assistance policy to interfere or pursue in any way. Besides, do you know how many Jacksons there are in the Chicago phone book?”

“You’ve already checked?”

“Yes. Five full pages, and thirty-eight of them are named George.”