Night vision

CHAPTER 16

The Prosecutors. Earnest young men and women clip-clopping along the corridors of the Justice Building, barging from courtroom to courtroom, slinging a cargo of files. Always hustling. Always grim. An atmosphere of perpetual motion, of jobs undone, of calendars clogged. Nolle prosequi, refile, plead 'em out, nolo contendere. Bring in new batch. Waive the jury, face the judge, try 'em, minimum mandatory. Carrying concealed firearm, probation violation, back again sucker, revoke probation, bus 'em to Raiford. Jury trial, six honest baffled souls, reasonable doubt, let 'em go, catch you later. Stack 'em up and move 'em through.

The Accused. In the corridors, accompanied by uniformed county-jail guards, filing in from the holding cells. The funnel of law enforcement pours out its refuse here. Some bewildered first-timers, shackled at the feet, shuffling into court, eyes darting toward the gallery for a friendly face. Then the hard guys, still swaggering despite the chains, putting on that street-wise cool as a shell against the world.

The Civil Servants. Drab halls jammed with the faceless players in the game of crime and punishment. An army of workers from a dozen state agencies scooting through the building, feeding the monster. Social workers, probation officers, drug counselors, victim advocates, all committed to the impossible task of imposing order on the bedlam of the American city. In cramped offices overhead, an invisible legion of administrators, secretaries, and file clerks push the paper, stuff the files, and record every twist and turn of the swirling universe called the criminal justice system. Your Tax Dollars at Work.

I squished along the corridor, my wet high-tops leaving a perfect trail of tread on tile. Nick Fox's receptionist gave me a look reserved for unshaven men in soggy clothes who interrupt the boss's breakfast before the nine a.m. staff meeting. I didn't wait for an invitation to join the great man in his inner office.

He had company.

"You know Commissioner Caycedo's new Lincoln?" Fox asked. He sat at his desk, a linen napkin jammed into his already tight collar, protecting his white-on-white shirt and burgundy power tie. In front of him was a serving tray with a plate of eggs Benedict, a glass of orange juice, and a pitcher of steaming coffee.

Alex Rodriguez sprawled in an upholstered client's chair, reading the sports section of the Journal. "Yeah. That blue-black number about a block long with tinted windows like he's el presi-dente. "

Fox poured coffee for himself and did his best to ignore me. He was good at it. "See, he's got the car, maybe two weeks, doesn't even have pecker tracks on the velour. Every antitheft device known to Detroit, the kill switch, the remote alarm, the fuel-line switch, the cane hook, the portable motion sensor, the telephone-activated alarm, the window beeper."

"I think I see this coming," Rodriguez said, still reading the box scores.

Fox sliced into a poached egg and a dollop of yolk squirted out.

"But all that electronic shit doesn't do any good if you just double-park in front of Manny Diaz's restaurant-"

"El Pollo Loco."

"— and leave the car running, door open."

"Uh-oh. I picture it now," Rodriguez said, cracking a grin.

"So the commissioner waddles into the kitchen to collect the week's bolita receipts. He still would have been okay, but then he stops for a media noche on the way out with a side of frijoles negros and a little flan for dessert."

"Bad for his heart, if he had any."

"So he's wiping the grease off his chin just in time to see some jackrabbit hop into the Lincoln and tear down Calle Ocho." Fox paused, sipped the coffee, and continued, "Now the fat fuck's busting my chops."

Rodriguez nodded solicitously. "What's he expect you to do, call out the National Guard?"

"A major crusade against grand theft auto. It'll be his theme for the next election. He's got the figures. Thirty-six thousand stolen cars a year in Dade alone, a hundred a day. In the course of a year, one out of every fifty cars in the county is snatched. He figures every voter either is a victim or knows someone who is."

Rodriguez smiled with appreciation. "Caycedo might be fat, ugly, and crooked, pero el no es estupido."

"Plus he wants his car back."

"Lots of luck." Rodriguez laughed. "It's probably on a boat to the Dominican Republic."

Fox took a swallow of his orange juice. "Nah, we found it last night. Fished a local doper out of a canal and the divers came across the Lincoln by accident. Radio and tape player ripped off, nothing else missing, car in twelve feet of muck."

Rodriguez shook his head. "Your crack addicts got no respect for value."

Fox looked up, well fed and delighted with himself. "Yo, Jakie. You look like shit. What's that, mistletoe in your hair?"

Rodriguez put down the newspaper and laughed. "Jake's a happy camper, aincha, Jake? Been earning his merit badge from some a-hole in the woods. I'll bet Jake spent the night with him. Separate sleeping bags, I hope."

I squeaked over to the window and caught a fine view of morning rush hour above the trestles of the interstate. "Is this what you guys do all day? Wait for me to make a fool of myself?"

"Doesn't take all day," Nick Fox answered.

Rodriguez giggled. "Hey, Jake, what's the difference between a porcupine and two lawyers in a Porsche?"

I didn't say a word.

"On a porcupine the pricks are on the outside."

"Ole Jakie doesn't have a Porsche," Fox said. "Drives a rusted relic of his youth that-"

"Has six hundred miles more on the odometer today than yesterday," I said. "Alex, your pal Tom Carruthers doesn't believe in sleeping bags. Likes to sleep in trees and hump white-tailed deer."

"Told you he was a hard case," Rodriguez said.

"He's a bit off center, but I don't think he's a serial killer. The professor is a boozer with a vivid imagination, but I don't see him strangling young women, either."

Nick Fox's laugh was laced with derision. "Christ, is that how you investigate? Talk to the suspects, decide if they seem like murderers."

"Thanks for the critique, but you were supposed to stay out of the Marsha Diamond case," I said.

"And the Rosedahl case is out of your jurisdiction."

"But if they're related, we gotta work together, Nick."

Fox shook his head. "Jakie, you're jumping to conclusions. You've lost your feel for this side of the tracks, been downtown too long with the fancy divorces-"

"Hey," Rodriguez interrupted, "I was downtown getting a warrant from Judge Simons the other day-this is the truth-and I'm waiting for this divorce case to finish. The judge turns to the husband and says, 'I'm giving your wife eight hundred dollars a month in alimony.' So the guy looks up at the judge and says, 'Great, Your Honor, I'll chip in a hundred bucks myself.'"

"Shut up, Rod," Fox commanded. "Listen, Lassiter, the grand jury doesn't give a shit how you feel about these assholes. How about collecting some evidence?"

"What do you suggest, Nick, planting one of your men in the woods disguised as a tree? We don't have enough to get a search warrant or a wiretap. So far as I can tell, it's no crime to talk sexy to a willing woman. That's all we've got on Daniel Boone and the professor."

Rodriguez was fondling his. 38, lovingly loading and unloading it. "What about Harry Hardwick?" he asked.

"Aka Henry Travers. I'm going to see him tonight, after I find out if I still have a job downtown."

Fox drained his coffee cup, tore his napkin loose, and tossed it on the desk. "I don't like your approach. You oughta let Rodriguez's boys do the spadework. A couple of experienced cops to Mutt-and-Jeff these guys. If one's a loony, maybe he'll crack. Some of the nut cases love to confess. You don't believe me, hire one of those psychiatric experts to consult with. Shit, the state's got lots of money for shrink time. I can recommend someone who'll-"

"That's okay," I said. "I've got someone in mind."

I used Fox's executive bathroom to shave and wash my face. When I came out, Rodriguez was gone, headed to the firing range, and Fox was dictating the agenda for his staff meeting. I decided the hell with it, just blurt it out. "Marsha ever ask you about Vietnam?"

"What?"

"Vietnam. Your experiences. The Silver Star, all of that."

He dropped the Dictaphone and studied me. "What's that got to do…?" He stopped, not liking where he was going. "I already told you about 'Nam. That's all I'm going to-"

"But she asked, didn't she? About you and Evan Ferguson."

He turned in his chair and looked toward the plaques on the wall. But he didn't see them, his eyes blank with the thousand-yard stare of a thousand wars.

"Sure, she asked me some things."

"Why do you suppose…?"

"You know reporters. A million questions."

"But why Ferguson?"

"Prissy probably mentioned him. They always talked about me, comparing notes, I suppose. There's a picture of us-Ferguson and me-in the house. Marsha must have asked about it. What's the big deal?"

"I saw the picture."

He swiveled toward me, glaring. "You were in my house?"

"Yeah."

"What the hell for?"

"It's my job. Interview persons who might have evidence."

"You talked to Prissy?"

"Sure."

"You think I killed Marsha, you crazy bastard?"

"No. As far as I can tell, you had no motive."

He nodded. His face softened just a bit.

"Of course Priscilla might have," I added judiciously.

A fist crashed on the desk, and a file slid to the floor. "Fuck you! And the horse you rode in on! There's a couple of nuts running around out there and you think my wife killed the babe she fixed me up with."

"Just raising possibilities," I countered. "Charlie Riggs taught me the method."

"Then you're both getting senile!"

"Two women-your wife and your girlfriend-were fascinated by you," I said calmly. "And from what I know, Marsha was preoccupied with Vietnam and Lieutenant Ferguson."

"How do you know that?"

"Privileged information. Work product. Top secret and for my eyes only. But if you'd open up a little, maybe you could convince me it's a dead end."

Nick Fox was quiet a moment and then blurted it out. "He was the best friend I ever had, the finest man I ever knew. He died in my arms."

I stayed quiet. In the corridor I heard the faint sound of laughter. Nick Fox didn't hear it. He was on another continent in another time.

"It was January 1968, a month before Tet. Like I told you before, my platoon got pinned down in a village, Dak Sut. Evan called it Duck Soup. No air support, so Evan's platoon hauled ass to bail us out. Two men, Gallardi and Boyer, dogwood six, killed in the firefight. Four more dogwood eight, wounded. Evan brought his men in like the U.S. Cavalry and Charley beat it. But they grabbed our translator, a Vietnamese girl named Phuong. We licked our wounds, evacuated the dead and wounded by slick-helicopter-and took off after Chuck and the girl.

"We'd been in the field four days. The men were tired. At least three looked like they had malaria. Two others were popping some pills that had 'em wired. We're tramping through rice paddies, staying on top of the dikes, trying to keep dry and keep moving at a decent pace. Evan's platoon on one dike, ours on another about two thousand meters away, moving parallel to each other, watching the horizon. No sign of Chuck.

"Except for a couple of water buffalo, we're the only things moving. A bunch of boys from the south and Midwest, carrying M-16s, playing soldiers, feet bleeding into their boots, diarrhea staining their pants. Just sticking out against the sky."

He stopped, his face drained of color. He gave no sign of continuing.

"Sniper?" I asked.

"Creature from the Black Lagoon. Came up out of the mud alongside Evan's platoon. Covered with glop, he goes for the officer first. Suicide mission. Evan takes I don't know how many rounds. He's all chopped up. The medic's right next to him. He gets it in the throat before Evan's men get off a round. The RTO's dead, too. I slide down the dike and wade through the water. It's like slow motion. Running through the muck. I fall flat on my face a couple times. Evan's still alive, still conscious when I get there, but I knew he wouldn't make it. Half a dozen sucking chest wounds. He died in my arms."

Fox turned back to me. His look said the history lesson was over.

"Did you tell Marsha?" I asked.

"I never even told my wife, not the details. Prissy had asked me a few times, tried to convince me it would be good to talk about it. But I'm not one of those guys to go crying to the VA, sit in a circle and spill my guts to a counselor."

"No survivor guilt?"

"Fuck no! Survivor joy. I did my job and got back. Evan wasn't as lucky. It could have been me but it wasn't." He stared at the wall, his eyes unfocused. "But you're right about one thing…"

Good, that filled my quota for the month.

"Marsha kept bugging me about 'Nam. 'Talk to me,' she'd say. 'Talk so I can understand you, get close.' All that feminine bullshit."

"But you never responded."

"Negative. I told her I would talk. Tell her the whole story. But before I could, she..

"So you never mentioned Dak Sut to her?"

"No Dak Sut, no Duck Soup."

"Or the sniper?"

"No."

"Evan was killed after the firefight in the village, right?"

"Of course, right. I just told you-"

"Evan was still alive when you left the village."

"Jake, what's wrong with you? Of course he was still alive or he couldn't have been shot by the gook sniper on the dike."

I don't have a polygraph machine in my head, but he looked like a man telling the truth. Of course, I believed Gerald Prince and Tom Carruthers, too. Maybe Nick Fox was right about me. Maybe I'd lost that cynical edge that comes with the territory. Maybe I'd gone soft downtown advising husbands how to avoid alimony and companies how to breach contracts. Maybe billing by the hour fattened the wallet and dulled the instincts. But I could still recognize two stories that didn't match. There was Nick Fox's story and there was Marsha Diamond's printout:

1. WHO GAVE THE ORDERS TO WALK ALONG THE DIKE PRIOR TO ENTERING THE VILLAGE OF DAK SUT?

2. AFTER THE MEDIC AND RADIOMAN WERE KILLED, WHAT WAS THE STATE OF DISCIPLINE OF YOUR MEN?

3. WHEN YOUR PLATOON ENTERED THE VILLAGE OF DAK SUT ON JANUARY 8, 1968, WHAT ORDERS DID YOU GIVE?

4. WAS THERE EVIDENCE OF NVA OR VC IN THE VILLAGE?

5. WERE THE VILLAGERS ARMED, AND IF SO, DID THEY THREATEN YOUR PLATOON?

6. WERE ANY VILLAGERS WOUNDED OR KILLED BY YOUR MEN?

7. WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR TRANSLATOR?

8. THE LAST TIME YOU SAW LIEUTENANT FERGUSON ALIVE, WAS HE…

The chronology didn't match. Nothing added up. And if Fox hadn't told Marsha about the incident, how did she know enough to ask the questions?

Nick Fox picked up a file and began reading or pretending to.

"Tell me more about what happened in Dak Sut," I said.

"Look, other than formal reports to command and my personal log, I simply have never…"

His eyes glazed over, but only for a moment. Then he turned to me, the old Nick Fox, a glint of anger just beneath the surface. "I don't know what you're getting at, Lassiter, but you're barking up the wrong tree. How about interviewing Harry Hard Dick, or whatever he calls himself, and get the hell out of here."

"I intend to do just that."

"And don't let him bullshit you. Shake him up if you have to. Tell him you've got his prints at the scene-"

"That's not the way I play the game."

"The game," he said derisively. "I used to watch you play ball, Jake. And you know what I remember? One Sunday against the Cowboys, you were blitzing from the weak side. Staubach rolled your way and tripped. Just stumbled over his own feet and went down. Nobody had touched him, so it was a live ball in the days before quarterbacks wore skirts and the zebras blew the whistle every time a money player got a hangnail. He was down, ribs exposed. Fresh meat, and you had a clean shot. You could have speared him, taken him out. Worth fifteen yards, right? Even a good shoulder might have done it. But you just played tag and hopscotched over him."

"I never played to hurt anybody."

"You never played to win! " he thundered.

"I stuck my head in there like everybody else."

"Sure, you were physically tough. You threw your body around like it was somebody else's. But that's not the point. You played to have fun. I watched you. You'd help the runner up. You laughed out there, always chattering, clapping your hands like a schoolboy. You never knew it was war."

"It wasn't. It was just a game."

His laugh was scornful. "You don't fucking understand, Jake. I'm not talking about football. I'm talking about life. You coast along, just doing your job, making your little jokes. You weren't committed to winning on the field and you haven't changed. You're not serious because you don't see what's going on. Well, I've seen life up close. In the jungle, on the streets, in the eyes of the scumbags and the faces of their victims. Being a cop is war. Being a prosecutor is war. You think the assholes out there play by the rules? You think the guy who killed Marsha gives a shit what's in our fancy books? It's just like in-country. We own the day, Charley owns the night. Only it's worse now. It's pitch-black twenty-four hours a day. Damn it, Jake, you got to have night vision. You got to see in the dark."