A Matter of Honor

Chapter Eight

Sergeant Malleck believed he understood everything there was to know about Frank Salmi except the detective’s compulsion to talk about his family, even though Malleck had never met any of them and never meant to, but never even shared a beer or pizza with the detective, let alone gone to his home in Pine Lawn or whatever suburban barrio he lived in.

Salmi had five children and a Puerto Rican wife. She wasn’t Cuban or Mexican — he’d made a point of informing Malleck about that at their first meeting — although the sergeant didn’t see what difference it made; Cuba, Panama, Chihuahua, El Salvador, they were all the same, fine places if you wanted stomach cramps, get your hub caps stolen or shack up with ten-year-olds. But those family photographs were always in the wallet, right next to the payoff monies, Malleck was sure of that. Salmi had pulled out a snapshot once and Malleck had been forced to look at it briefly before telling the man to put the goddamn thing away. It was a picture of five little Salmis, three of them with bows in their hair, standing in a row against a house with a couple of bushes and cracks in the stucco. Malleck’s sense of privacy had been as violated as if the detective had asked him to bind up an open sore or tend to some other personal and revealing piece of carelessness or rotten luck. Since then Malleck had made it policy to keep Detective Salmi at arm’s length, on edge, subservient, and just a little bit hungry. Paydays were variable, Malleck saw to that, and he liked to wait till Salmi asked for it.

A small man with neat, dark features and liquid eyes, Salmi’s thinning hair was wet with rain and he looked hot and uncomfortable in a double knit suit and damp overcoat. In the warm office, the coat — a thick, green tweed — smelled strongly of cigars and cleaning fluid. Malleck did not ask him to take it off.

“Okay, Salmi,” he said. “You asked to see me.”

Detective Salmi put a piece of paper on the sergeant’s desk. “My nephew, Rick Argella, gave me this plate number. I checked the motor bureau in Springfield on it. His name is Durham Francis Lasari and the address is Calumet City. I called a contact in Calumet City. Lasari lives in a rooming house, works in a big diesel station there. I got both addresses.”

“On the pumps? Just labor, a pair of hands?”

“No, he’s some kind of mechanic specialist, transmission, brakes, ignition, the works. He owns a car he did himself, a souped-up GTO. That’s what he’s driving.”

Salmi had telephoned earlier with a preliminary briefing on Durham, aka Duro Lasari, a ’Nam veteran, a long-time deserter, a loser unable to make it in either world, a flake who suddenly got religion and wanted clean paper from the Army he’d walked out on. Malleck already had a stomachful of contempt for this shifty ginny bastard, this Duro Lasari.

“This character,” he said to Salmi, “he talked to the Trib reporter last night, didn’t he?”

“That’s right. Gave her some shit about his friend Carlos going AWOL, called himself by the name of George Jackson. Rick heard all of it.”

Frowning, Malleck reached for Salmi’s canteen cup, poured half the steaming coffee into his own, then added another touch of Bushmill’s.

Malleck drank steadily during the day, usually small amounts at roughly forty-five minute intervals. He never got drunk, never lost his awareness of what was going on around him. His reflexes were not dulled by whiskey, he felt, but sharpened to keen readiness. There was little in the way of work or pleasure, Malleck told himself, that he couldn’t handle with more stamina and efficiency than men half his age. His insomnia, the trauma of broken slumber... well, the sergeant liked to think he slept alert, near the surface of consciousness, and when he woke early, irritable or touched by depression, sometimes with his concentration splintered, a shot of Bushmill’s was usually all he needed.

But Bonnie Caidin’s call had been the wrong way to start this day. Her questions had sent up faint alarm signals, then a roil of anger. He hadn’t planned to send Scales out spying on the female tech corporals but the sudden thought that they might be using their billets for sex had angered and distracted him. They all wanted something, not a bitch in the world you could trust.

Over the years Malleck had honed and savored his attitudes toward women. He had no interest in courting them, gaining their confidences, taking them to dinner and the track, keeping their names and specialties in a bachelor’s little black book. The fact was that he didn’t like close friendships, couldn’t stand to share his living quarters with a female. He already owned one luxury seaside condo in Miami but he wanted to purchase a second unit. He could consider a contractual deal with a woman, a car, an allowance, everything on paper so he could break it off when he wanted to without fear of a shrewd lawyer clipping him on a palimony rap. But his bathroom was a personal and important place to Malleck. It would repel him to find a woman’s soiled clothes mixed up with his in the laundry hamper, or cosmetics and makeup cluttering up his own neat collection of toilet articles.

Malleck liked a girl who went to bed with him on his terms, eager to please, afraid of failing. In Miami, when he was leading the life he’d earned, that’s the way it would be; sex when he wanted it and the kind he wanted, and then the girl back in her own place, everything bought and paid for.

The sergeant felt he knew himself fairly well and was not afraid of his compulsions or ashamed of his needs. Women did not satisfy the deep core of his sexuality, but Malleck had always known the Army would be a risky place to indulge his other preferences. He’d showered often with other GIs, shared bunk dorms, roughhoused with them, but always forced himself not to pay attention to them. He never looked at the smiling youngsters who closed their eyes under the streaming jets of water and got soft erections when they soaped and massaged their slender loins.

In Miami, when he was older, the past over, the present earned and the future secured, he’d sell that extra condominium and shop around for a houseboy to take care of him. He wouldn’t mind that kind of courtship, he’d enjoy it, in fact. He’d find a young stud who was even tempered and amusing and handsome, a boy without family connections, someone he could train, maybe someone with a police record he could use as a leverage for his own protection...

“So?” Salmi said. “You listening?”

Malleck felt the heat of anger touch his cheeks. The Caidin woman had done it. Her voice, the memory of her cool bitch face had roused him sexually, had blurred his final concentration.

“Give me that again, Salmi.”

“Mr. M. says he’d like a meet this time. He’d like you to make the payoff in person, wants to see you. I don’t think you realize what a big man you’re dealing with, sergeant. Mr. M. don’t like to be a third party.”

Malleck stared at the detective for a long moment, then hit the top of the desk with the flat of his hand.

“Salmi,” he said, “we’ve got an S.O.P., a formula for what’s working, and we’re going to stick to it. Nothing else. Got that? And Mr. M.’s our bankroll, our distributor, and nothing else. We don’t need a meet and we’re not gonna go steady. He’s been paid off three times already, and he’ll get paid next week. That’s our deal, nothing’s changed.”

“I’m just passing on what Mr. M. told me,” Salmi said. “I’m taking a lot of pressure personally, Malleck.”

“That’s what you’re paid for, Frankie,” the sergeant said. “I wouldn’t have hired a detective badge if I didn’t need privilege and protection. You keep Mr. M. cooperative, and I’ll run the rest of the operation.”

“There should be some way to quit wasting those couriers each time,” Salmi said.

Malleck looked thoughtful. “Maybe you’re the only one who cares, Salmi. They get ten, twenty guys shot or knifed to death every month or so on the south side. Run more than a paragraph apiece in the newspaper on each case, they’d have no room for the Marshall Field ads. What’s one more drunk or junkie soldier dying in the gutter?”

“The city’s got some smart cops down at Homicide.”

“Your Lieutenant Weir? He’s been on those homicides since number one, Private First-Ass Sammy Cullen, right? You told me that. And Weir’s got nothing. You told me that, too. So his old man’s Army brass, a big hero. Big deal.” The sergeant was thoughtful. “They’re all heroes after they retire, sitting on their asses in some country club bar.”

Malleck looked at his watch, a gold Rolex shining on his thick wrist. It was nearly time to call Frankfurt. Strasser would be waiting at the fucking phone, a glass in one hand and some fraulein’s buns in the other, probably.

“Let me tell you something about your Mr. M., Salmi,” he said, “your ‘big man.’ We’re one of a kind, the two of us, and that’s why we get along; and why we ain’t ever going to see each other. We’re both double-crossers, we’re both out to get ours. The Army don’t know what I’m doing and you can be damned sure the Syndicate better not find out that their Mr. M’s got his own little racket on the side. They’d have his black balls, right? Just like the Army brass would grab mine. So he’s going to cooperate with me and I’m going to cooperate with him and we’re both gonna stay alive. We don’t need to meet. It’s easier to respect strangers.”

Malleck took a sip of the cold coffee, savoring the strong Bushmill’s on his tongue. “Old man Weir,” he said suddenly. “I heard of him and he’s got the medals. Maybe he earned ’em.”

Salmi stood, small against Malleck’s bulk, an unfocused worry clouding his soft eyes. “I should get that kid of mine to the dentist,” he said.

Malleck was looking at the slip of paper with a name and address in Calumet City scrawled on it. “Do what you gotta do, man,” he said absently.

“I don’t like any of this operation any more,” Detective Salmi said nervously. “It’s me who takes all the risks. Mr. M. may not know who you are, but he knows who I am.” He paused and breathed deeply. “My wife’s a Catholic. Everything’s the Church with her, being in a state of grace and ready to die. She knows I’m not ready to die, but she’s afraid I’m going to.”

“Surprise her then,” Malleck said. “Don’t. I want a couple of more big scores — nothing real greedy — and then out. Tell your Cuban lady—”

“Puerto Rican, Malleck. Adella’s Puerto Rican.”

“Okay, fine. Tell Adella to light a candle for both of us and in a few more months we’ll be home free, our tickets to heaven bought and paid for.”

“She don’t like jokes about it, sergeant. That’s another thing.”

“Then fuck her!” Malleck said. “She must like that. You got five kids, Salmi, you’re not firing blanks. So fuck her, Frankie, and tell her to stop worrying about us. Her prayers are making me nervous.”