A Matter of Honor

Chapter Seven

First sergeant Karl Malleck was thirty-seven years old, a “lifer” in Army slang, almost eighteen years in the service, five with line companies in Vietnam, the last three with his current unit, working out of the old Prairie Avenue armory. In three years and six months Malleck would be eligible for retirement with full sergeant’s benefits.

His tailored Eisenhower jacket displayed a combat infantryman’s badge, two rows of campaign ribbons and six overseas hash marks. A braided gold fourragère was looped under the epaulet of his right shoulder. His hair, thick, black and cut short, grew in a ruler-straight line across a low, rounded forehead. The first sergeant’s complexion was dark and ruddy in all seasons, his skin tough as cured leather, with high, knobby cheekbones glinting like copper discs under deeply socketed eyes.

During the week Malleck lived in special quarters in the barracks, and usually woke, dry-eyed and unable to sleep, at about four o’clock in the morning. That gave him three hours for his spit and polish grooming and a couple of warming shots of whiskey before going on duty.

From his desk on the first floor of the armory on Chicago’s west side, the first sergeant faced narrow, barred windows streaming with sleeted rain. Through the panes he watched the morning storm, gray skies and gusting winds that sent spits of rain across the bricked courtyard.

Malleck had been alone in the office when the Tribune reporter called him, and his eyes went sharp with suspicion at the sound of her voice. He had seen Bonnie Caidin twice, once at the opening of the Veterans’ Assistance Center, when he had mingled with the sparse crowd, wearing civilian clothes and speaking to no one, and again on a TV talk show when she explained the purpose of the center.

Malleck had disliked Caidin on sight. There was a quality about her he found unsettling, particularly in younger women, a quality of self-containment or arrogance, or a combination of both. He had watched her in the Veterans’ office with the bright lights, taking notes while the black broad, Kastner, was making her spiel. In the reporter’s delicately arched upper lip, the sergeant had sensed condescension, and in her cool, alert eyes, a flash of threatening humor. Malleck disliked humor, especially in women. In both sexes it was the start of most insubordination, not discrimination, privilege, sadistic cruelty or even despair. Laughter, that’s where it all started, with a joke, ridicule, derision, disrespect. Once someone could smile at something, whatever it was, the next step was to stop being afraid of it. Bonnie Caidin was a smiler, Malleck thought, a cocky cunt who needed watching.

She told him she was calling about a private soldier, Randolph Lewis. The first sergeant had kept his tone mild, his answers responsive and courteous, but his caution stirred as he listened to her questions.

“Our religious editor got a call,” she had said, “from a citizen who wouldn’t leave his name. Claimed he’d seen a Hare Krishna handled roughly by soldiers with MP brassards. Do you know anything about that?”

“No, ma’am. No such report here.”

“I was told to check into this,” Bonnie Caidin said. “You understand, I’m sure, sergeant. We have brass on the city desk, too.”

“I’m doing what I can to help, ma’am.”

“Then you have no report at all, sergeant, on a Private Lewis or a disturbance involving the military at O’Hare last night?”

“No, ma’am. Nothing. And the personnel in my outfit are pretty strict about their duty reports.”

“The soldier’s aunt said she’d made an inquiry of one of your men at the Greyhound bus depot earlier in the evening — a Sergeant Roberts, or close to that.”

“What was the complete name of that soldier again?” With his thick, muscled knee Sergeant Malleck pressed a buzzer on the side of his desk. “I’m just writing out my own report here.”

“Private Randolph Peyton Lewis,” Caidin had said.

Malleck’s orderly, a tall, bony black with touches of premature white in his short hair, came in and set up a steaming canteen cup of coffee on the sergeant’s desk. Private Andrew Scales snapped to attention, his thin hands trembling as he pressed his thumbs tight to the seams of his khaki trousers.

“Excuse me a moment, Miss Caidin.” Malleck cupped his hand over the phone. “Nobody asked for coffee, Scales,” he said, his voice cold and measured. “You get your ass over to the barracks and tell Robbins I want him. On the double, snap shit!”

“Homer’s sleeping, Top. I just—”

Without changing his tone, Malleck said, “That’s gonna cost you your weekend, fuck-up. Move! Get him.”

Scales left the office at a shuffling run, rehearsing under his breath. “It’s tear-ass time, Robbins. Force Ten tear-ass. On the double! Sergeant wants to see you...”

Malleck sipped coffee from the canteen cup, watched the second hand on his watch for a full minute and then said into the phone. “My apologies, ma’am, but I’m with you now. And you said this Lewis was expected in from Germany?”

“Yes, sergeant, on MATS Flight 94.”

“That hearsay incident with a civilian Hare Krishna at O’Hare you mentioned — my men wouldn’t be involved in that kind of thing. They are on special duty. Unless the local law enforcement officers needed manpower in a riot, undue criminal activity or a like emergency of any kind, they wouldn’t be involved with civilians...

“My own theory, ma’am. Couldn’t this Private Lewis be off having a little fun on his own, maybe found a friend and decided to shack up for a while?”

“Not likely, since he wrote to ask his aunt to meet him,” Bonnie Caidin said.

Private First Class Homer Robbins hurried into the office and stood uneasily in front of Malleck’s desk. His blond hair was tousled, his soft, ruddy face creased and flushed with sleep. With a quick, furtive gesture, he zippered his uniform pants and then tucked his OD shirt under his belt as Malleck stared at him coldly.

“I came on the double, sarge,” Robbins said, “like Scales said you wanted.”

“Excuse me once again, Miss. I may have something for you.” Malleck covered the phone with his big hand. “Tell me, you lard-assed idiot,” he said to Robbins, “why didn’t you report to me that a black lady was looking for a soldier at the bus station?”

“I didn’t think it was...”

“You’re not paid to think, asshole. If you were, you’d be paid a lot less. Listen good... that lady you talked to wasn’t worried, you got that? Just wasn’t sure of when the soldier boy was coming in, got that? A case of Aunt Jemima in the big city, maybe a little coon senility, is that clear?”

“Right, sarge.”

Malleck took his hand from the phone. “Miss Caidin, I’ve located the soldier who talked to the Lewis boy’s aunt. He’s in my office now.” He stared at Private Robbins.

“Now, Homer—” Malleck raised his voice. “The lady who approached you was looking for her nephew, is that it? This black lady?”

“Yes, sarge, ’cause she didn’t know when he was expected exactly, wasn’t worried or anything, just sort of confused. She said he thought he might be on a bus and had I seen him, that’s all she told me.”

“She check with anyone else at the station?” Malleck nodded affirmatively, indicating the response he wanted.

“Sure, she talked to the guy selling tickets. Then she sort of apologized and left.” Robbins smiled at the phone in Malleck’s hand. “She was a nice lady, sarge, real pleasant — not liquored up, I don’t think, but more shy like.”

“Miss Caidin, my Private Robbins tells me—”

“Thanks, I heard him, sergeant. And thank you for your time.”

“Anything comes up, you want me to give you a ring?”

“I’d appreciate that. Here’s my extension...”

Malleck wrote down the numbers and replaced the phone. He stood then, spinning his chair with the suddenness of the motion, and walked around his desk, not taking his eyes off Robbins.

Private Scales came to the open door and said, “Sarge, Detective Salmi’s here. Want him to come in?”

“Ask him to wait.”

“Got it, Top.”

Sergeant Malleck was not tall, but he was wide and thick in the upper body, layered with slablike muscle that smoothly filled out his carefully tailored jacket. His waist was narrow and hard, and he moved with economy and precision on powerful, slightly bowed legs. He liked to keep at his fighting weight and strength. He worked out at an Army gym four days a week and kept a pair of heavy, spring-bound hand grippers on the night table beside his bed.

The sergeant had been light-heavy weight champion of his division fifteen years ago at Fort Benning, losing the Army finals to a tall, black counterpuncher who fought professionally before he was drafted. The spade had taken him, Malleck conceded as he lay awake on sleepless mornings. The other man, shining and greased with sweat, had kept a left in his face for ten rounds and beat him with a sneaky hard right to the gut, knocking his breath away, but Malleck would have killed him in a bar or an alley.

“For your sake, Robbins,” he said, “I hope to Christ you don’t think this is funny. Is that some kind of shit-eating grin on your face?”

“No, sarge. I was asleep, I was just wetting my lips.”

“Good, because you’ll be pissing in your pants if I catch you laughing. I didn’t put you out on the street in uniform to act like some Welcome Wagon. Next time leave a written report. Anything out of the ordinary — and you know what I mean — put it on my desk before you hit the sack. Now tell me everything that colored woman asked you, every word and syllable.”

When Robbins completed his verbal report, he said, “Can I say something, sarge?”

Malleck nodded and sipped the cooling coffee. “Make it fast, Homer.”

“I’m sorry I screwed up on this. I’ll watch it.” Robbins moistened his lips. Malleck studied him and saw something come into his eyes he hadn’t noticed before, a dull shine of cunning or greed.

“Thing is,” Robbins went on, “I may not be the brightest guy in the world, but I know how to take orders, my daddy taught me that, and I’m better at receiving than I am at sending. What I’m saying is, I don’t talk out of school, I can keep my mouth shut. And if there’s anything special you need done, sergeant, well, I want to make good with you here...”

“You’re not too bad at sending,” Malleck said, “but I am one of the brightest guys in the world, in this part of Chicago anyway, and I don’t need you kicking your humble shit at me.” Malleck paused, then went back to the big leather chair behind his desk. “We’ll see. That’s all I’m gonna tell you, kiddo.”

When Robbins left, Malleck swiveled the chair around to look at the series of narrow channels of water visible from his side windows. Mason’s and Jay’s canals they were called, fingerlings of sluggish green wash from the big sanitary canal which flowed westward through the city to join a branch of the Chicago River. No sound or moisture came through the windows of his office but the gray spread of rain was like a curtain of gloom shadowing the room.

Malleck took a bottle of Bushmill’s Irish whiskey from his bottom desk drawer and poured two ounces into his canteen cup. Then he picked up the Chicago phone book, with a picture of the old stone Water Tower on the cover. Malleck liked to know where people lived and he also wondered if there was a Mr. Caidin.

He found only one Caidin listed in the directory, a B. Caidin on Lake Shore Drive. A surge of anger swept through him, causing a deep flush on the backs of his hands. Jesus, he thought bitterly, the Tribune must pay her plenty to rate an apartment at that address.

Detective Frank Salmi could wait. Malleck needed a little time to think about Bonnie Caidin. The first sergeant knew her story about some religious do-gooder calling the paper was bullshit. She’d known about Robbins and Mrs. Lewis. Why was she interested in some two-bit black soldier? And why was the smooth bitch sending up a smokescreen? Figure he’d be too stupid to see through it? Think again, little girl, Malleck thought. He had a clearer view of things than she could possibly know; this was his operation, his controlled arena.

It was a military axiom that sergeants ran the Army but Malleck knew the only time this was true was in special circumstances, wartime pressures, isolated posts, even superior officers who were flakes or drunks or long-termers sweating out retirement. A first or master sergeant needed to find an irregularity in the chain of command that he could exploit to create his own empire — a company or battery or special unit which by some fluke slipped through the cracks of standing operating procedures, and was lost for a time to the normal scrutiny imposed by the table of organization.

It had been Malleck’s dream to find such an outfit and now he had it, the X-14th Company of Special MPs, and it belonged to him, body and soul, with his own selected cadre. He could never have done it without them, wouldn’t have tried, in fact. He needed them as much as he needed the overseas contacts, the security on both ends of the arch.

Joe Castana and Eddie Neal had served with him in ’Nam and shared his conviction that they had the right to set up their own welcome home party back in the States. Malleck rapped the top of his wooden desk with his knuckles. So far they had done just fine.

The sergeant pushed the desk buzzer twice and Frank Salmi pushed through the door, followed by Scales, carefully balancing a cup of hot coffee for the detective. Malleck asked Salmi if he’d like a touch of whiskey.

“No, I’m running late,” Salmi said. “A kid has to go to the dentist and my wife’s working. Lucky I’m off.”

“Very lucky,” the sergeant said, and added a dash more Bushmill’s to his cup. Scales asked if he might have a private word with him and Malleck shrugged indifferently, then joined the man in the CO’s cubicle outside his office.

“Top, you was funnin’ about me losing a weekend.” Scales grinned nervously. “It was a joke, right, Mr. Malleck?”

“I usually make jokes like that?”

“No, Top, you sure don’t. But I promised to meet a man who’s got something for me.”

Malleck studied him impassively, watching the tiny blisters of sweat starting on the man’s forehead. “Okay,” he said at last. “We’ll make an exception this time, Scales. Take your time off, but I want you home till noontime Saturday. It could be mail call.”

“Yes, sir, Sergeant Malleck. They know me at the Green. The mail come, nobody touch my stuff.”

Sergeant Malleck put out his hand to open the office door, then paused. “I got an extra job I’d like you to do today, Scales. You know where those two bird noncoms live?”

Scales nodded quickly. “North side, Top, building on Clark near Fullerton. I know the place.”

Jane Avers and Coralee Sio were the “bird non-coms,” the tech corporals assigned to Malleck’s unit as company clerks to make up rosters, payroll sheets, medical reports, and other official reports. They’d been assigned to the armory just three months earlier.

“Take this afternoon off, go clean their apartment from top to bottom,” Malleck said. “Tell ’em it’s a birthday present from the boss. Shine their shoes, straighten the closets and clean out the drawers. Scrub the bathroom, get a look in the medicine cabinet. Know what I mean?”

“I think I do, Top.”

“Don’t give me that think shit, soldier. You better know what I mean. Find out if they’ve got guys staying there overnight. Use your nose if you have to. If those little ladies are misbehaving, Sergeant Malleck wants names and phone numbers.”

“I’ll find out, Top. Don’t worry none.”

“I never worry, Scales, because I’m not paid to. I’m paid to make you worry. Now tell Castana and Neal I want to see them in my office right after this fucking cop leaves. And don’t forget what I told you about Saturday. I wouldn’t want the mailman to mess up on your birthday presents. I figure some stuff is about due.”