Blunt Darts

FOURTEENTH

– ¦ I stopped at the apartment to shower. While I was drying off I found the telephone number of one of the two contacts I planned to speak to that afternoon. Dave Waters and I had been first lieutenants together in Saigon in 1968. He absorbed a lot of indirect abuse during his first week until the day that a good ol' boy told him to shag his black ass after some coffee. About ten minutes later Dave began absorbing a lot of direct respect. The good ol' boy told the doctors he'd been hit by a Renault.

The last number I had for Dave was with the Denver P.D. I tried it.

"Lieutenant Waters' line," answered the voice.

"May I speak to him, please? Tell him it's Lieutenant John Cuddy."

"Hold on, sir." A pause.

"Waters here."

"Still a lieutenant, I see."

"Christ, I was afraid it was you," his voice becoming jocular. "You still padding insurance claims?"

"No, but that's a long story. I'm on my own now, and I need some information about a war hero in 'Nam."

"I didn't know anybody recognized heroes anymore."

"This was in your sector, your second tour, April of sixty-nine. A captain named Telford Kinnington led a charge from a protected position against some VC attackers. Remember it?"

A sigh at the other end. "Jesus, I'll never forget it. When I read the initial field report, I was scared stiff that old Telford was one of my persuasion. So I checked the reports and his file myself. He wasn't, but a lot of the cooks and drivers he got the asses shot off were."

"What happened?"

"Kinnington was a wild man. He'd been back in Hawaii a couple of times for battle fatigue. Only he'd never been in battle. He was in intelligence and had spent a tour in Saigon as a lieutenant. Wasn't promoted because, though his two-oh-one file didn't say so, he was damned near a psycho. Even so, he was from some big-time family up by you, so the pressure was put on to promote him. They did, and somehow he wrangled a staff position in a base camp."

"A staff position?"

"Yeah. Some sort of special-liaison crap. One day, while the infantry troops were out on a search and destroy, a 'copter spotted a concentration of VC approaching the camp. The gunships were a little too far away, so the base commander put his only remaining line troops at the points where Charlie was most likely to hit. He put Kinnington with the bakers and candlestick makers at the best natural-barrier side of the camp with sort of ambiguous orders to fend off the attack. It was the ambiguity that saved Telford's memory if not his ass, because when the VC hit the camp at the expected place, Kinnington jumps up and leads his 'company' on a charge at Charlie's flank. Just then the gunships arrive and maul the VC and Kinnington's commandos. The son of a bitch got thirty-some killed and wounded, mostly by 'copter fire."

"How the fuck did he get a medal then?"

A derisive chuckle at the other end. "How the fuck do you think, John? The family's friends applied pressure. The ambiguity was emphasized and the 'copter killing was excused, and old Telford got himself commended."

"Dave, I appreciate your time. You coming back this way in the near future?"

Another chuckle but different this time. "Thanks anyway, but if my kids are gonna ride buses, I'd sooner they be in Denver than Boston."

"I wish I could disagree with you. See you, Dave."

"'Bye, John."

I hesitated to call Val, because I wanted to catch my other contact before his cocktail hour, which probably began when most people were finishing lunch. But during the drive back to Boston, I had thought of more than my bully-whipping on the beach.

"Hullo," she answered huskily.

"Val, it's John."

"Oh, um…"

"Val, please don't hang up."

Quietly she said, "I won't," and sniffled. I was fairly certain she hadn't developed a cold in the last two hours.

We simultaneously said, "I'm sorry," and laughed. I stopped sooner than she did. "Oh,. Iohn," she said finally, "I'm so sorry I acted that way at the beach. It's just that violence, in any form… well, it makes me feel sick, and…"

"It's all right. After I thought about it, I agreed with you. It's just the way I am. Let's forget it. Okay?"

A final sniffle at the other end of the line. "Okay," she said.

"Va1, I've been thinking. Stephen doesn't seem to have confided anything to his family. Was there anybody in his class he was friendly with?"

She paused before answering. "Gee, John, that's a tough one. Like I told you at L'Espalier, he really is different from other kids his age. I never noticed that he palled around with any of the other boys."

"How about the girls?"

Valerie chuckled. "I'm not sure he was feeling the urge yet, although after what Miss Pitts said… Hey, wait a minute. There was one girl in the class who kind of, well, looked him over, if you know what I mean."

Boy, did I. "What's her name?"

"Kim Sturdevant. I'm not sure, but I think I remember seeing them eating lunch together when I was on cafeteria duty."

"Can you fix it for me to talk with her?"

"I don't know," she replied. "I've met her mother at parent-teacher conferences. Kind of mousy but okay. Her father I haven't met, but I have the impression he runs kind of a tight ship."

"Maybe if you called the mother and sweet-talked her…"

"I'm not so sure my sweet-talking is very effective anymore."

I let Val's oblique comment pass and pressed about Kim. "Val, I don't see any other way for us to get inside Stephen's thoughts."

"Well," sighing, "I'll give it a try. Call me-no, I'll call you to let you know how I made out."

"Right. 'Bye and thanks."

"Why not show your thanks?"

"How?" I said before thinking.

"Dinner!" she whooped. "But at my place, since you treated at L'Espalier and since the picnic was, well…"

I thought about Val, and then I thought about Beth. "I don't think I can make it."

"Oh, the men of your generation are so backward about accepting dates. I'm having supper with a friend from college in Boston tomorrow night anyway. How about Saturday?"

"Val, I don't know how the case will be-"

"Like I said about the picnic, you still have to eat. See you here at seven. I'll even provide the wine."

"Val-"

Click.

That was twice.

"I'm tired, John. Dog-tired, damned-tired, down-and-out tired."

I let him unwind for a couple of reasons. First, we were in his office. Second, in my opinion, Mo (for Morris) Katzen at age fifty-three is the best reporter in Boston. He is also the only reporter on the Herald American who will speak to me, and I don't know anybody on the Globe. Since there are only two major newspapers in Boston, and since I was trying to locate a reporter or ex-reporter, I needed to talk to Mo. So I let him unwind awhile.

"I'm tired of sports. I'm tired of the Red Sox breakin' our hearts. I'm tired of the Patriots not even breakin' our hearts. I'm tired of prizefights in hockey games and ballet dancing in prizefights."

"Sports can be frustrating, Mo," I said.

"Tell me about it." Mo paused to puff obscenely on a cigar that looked as fit for a human mouth as a wolf's turd. He had a dour face and so much white wavy hair that at first you thought it was a toupee. Mo was wearing his uniform: a gray suit with a too-wide tie, visible because he wasn't wearing the coat and the vest was completely unbuttoned. I once asked Mo why he wore that suit. He said it made him look like a lawyer, which made it easier for him to get past screeners of all kinds. Since in twelve years I had seen neither the vest buttoned nor the jacket, period, I had to reserve judgment.

"Tell you what else I'm sick of. Politics. We got a mayor who builds buildings instead of neighborhoods. We got a school committee run by a Federal judge and school kids who can't read and write English. And we got two fuckin' newspapers that don't do anything about it because one's a black-and-white version of Sports Illustrated and the other's a gossip rag with one foot in the fiscal grave."

"Politics stinks, Mo," I said, and then, to be sure I wasn't being deficient in my commentary, I added, "And the newspaper business isn't like it used to be."

"Tell me about it." Four more puffs. "At least," two more puffs, "at least in the old days, we covered stories. Aw, people got bought, sure, then as now, but it was more, I dunno, more understandable somehow. People were selling out so their kids could have food or operations, and the stories were good because they'd hurt you, you know. You'd write the story and proof it and say, 'You know, that gets to me, what that poor shit must have been goin' through and now what's gonna happen to him!' And you'd read it, you'd read the story in the evening edition and you'd say, 'Jesus, that coulda been me, I learned something today.' "

"I remember those stories, Mo."

"Sure you do. Everybody does." Three puffs.

"Everybody old enough anyway. Nowadays, look around, what do you see?"

I looked around. All I saw was Mo's office, which could have passed for Hitler's bunker or a hazardous waste dump.

I looked back at him without an answer. "Youth!"he boomed, coming forward in his chair. "Youth!"

"Youth is everywhere, Mo," I said, nodding my head.

"Damn right. These kids, the kids that the school committee doesn't educate, they graduate from high school anyway. Half of 'em never wrote a book report. Shit, half of those probably never read a book. They intern here-'intern,' that's the word they use nowadays for office boy, although both boys and girls can be office boys and you sure as shit better call them men and women or interns for neutral-they intern here because they saw the movie All the President's Men a couple of years ago and they wanna be 'journalists'. You hear that, 'journalists.' I haven't met one yet, not one, that's read the book All the President's Men, and only two could spell Bernstein's and Woodward's last names right the first time."

"Youth can be sloppy, Mo."

"Aw, it's not just sloppy, it's the way they've been brought up. On TV and now videogames.

Videogames, can you imagine? I got a niece, she can't speak a word of Hebrew. When I was growing up in Chelsea in the late thirties, it was maybe seventy-five percent Jewish, twenty-five percent Italian. All the Jewish kids could speak enough Italian to be polite to the old store owners and whatever, and understand the dirty jokes. The same for the Italian kids with Yiddish and Hebrew. Now, Jesus, we don't even give them names you can recognize anymore. That niece of mine is Jennifer. Jennifer, can you fucking imagine! When we grew up it was Morris, and Mario, and Patrick. Now it's fucking Jennifer, and Scott, and…"

"… and Stephen," I said.

"What?"

"And Stephen. With a 'ph' instead of a 'v.' "

"Oh, yeah and Stephen, right. Oh, I'm telling you, John, I'm tired, dog-tired, own-and-fucking-out tired."

I glanced down at my watch. Mo usually runs his course in fifteen minutes, and the repetition of his opening stanza is usually the giveaway. "Mo, I was wondering…"

"You know, that's why they got me in here."

Usually, but not always.

"They gave me my own office. Me, a reporter. No Pulitzer putzin' Prize or anything. Just me. In my day I don't think the city editor had his own office. But I got one. You know why?"

I cleared my throat. "Ah, no, Mo, I don't."

"It's because of them." He swung his hand in an all-inclusive circle. "It's because of youth. The brass is afraid I'll infect them. So they stay out there with their video terminals and I stay in here with my Remington," which he paused to slap firmly but affectionately. "I type my stories on this, then they gotta go to somebody on one of those terminals to be entered. 'Entered.' That's another one of those words like intern."

"Bad words, Mo. One and all."

"Tell me about it. I haven't had three stories in a year get printed without 'constituency' becoming 'constitutional' or 'receive' becoming 'recieve' or… oh, I dunno. I'm just so tired. So fuckin' tired."

He paused again to try to resuscitate the cigar. I leaped in.

"Mo, I was wondering if you could help me."

"Sure thing, John." Two puffs. "What's up?"

"I'm trying to locate a guy who was a reporter for a suburban paper and who now is supposed to be in Boston. His name is Thomas Doucette-"

Mo held up his hand to stop me. "He's an assistant editor at the Gay News in the South End. I forget the street."

"Thanks, Mo," I said, getting up.

"Hell, if that's all you wanted," he said between pulls, "why didn't you just say so?"