William McGivern - A Matter of Honor

“Then those Army MPs — how did they know where I lived?”

“I don’t know. I have no idea...”

“Well, I do, Miss Caidin, and I’ve been thinking about it.”

“Yes?” she said.

“That Spanish-looking clerk at your place last night, Rick something...”

“Rick Argella. What about him?”

“When I was talking to you, he asked me a very stupid question, or maybe a very smart one. He was going out for a snack break, and he asked if he could put a coin in the parking meter for me.”

“Why is that stupid? Or smart for that matter?”

“I told him no thanks, I was down the street in a no-meter zone.”

Bonnie massaged her cold feet with her fingertips, then put one foot under the bed to feel around for her slippers. “I don’t see—”

“It was after midnight, remember?”

“All right, all right, I get it. It’s not necessary to feed dimes into the parking meters after 8 P.M., is that it? And you think Rick Argella had to know that? Aren’t you being a little paranoid, Mr. Jackson?”

“With just one question, Rick Argella, your office compadre, found out that I’d come to the Bureau not on foot, not by taxi or the El, but by car and he got a good idea of where I was parked. And when I got into my car after leaving your office, somebody stepped out of the restaurant across the street. It was raining and I can’t swear it, but it could have been Argella and he could have taken down my plate number. You still think I’m paranoid?”

“I’m listening, George,” Bonnie Caidin said, picking up the pencil.

“Either you’re in on this or you’re not, Miss Caidin. But I believe somebody checked out my license number with Motors Registration and found out who I am and where I live...”

“Let me tell you two things, George,” Bonnie Caidin said, interrupting. “First, I’m not ‘in on this,’ as you suggest, not in any way at all. And second, Rick Argella is no more than a filing clerk at our office, a clerk, plain and simple, not even a volunteer. He gets paid by the hour. He would have no authority whatsoever to ask for plate information from Motors in Springfield. That Bureau wouldn’t even give me that information if I called, which I didn’t. That takes an official request...”

“I don’t want to argue with you, Miss Caidin, but suddenly I’m a hot property. People are looking for me and they know where to look. That’s as plain as I can make it.”

“Look, George,” she said. “I’m still not convinced that anyone is following you or looking for you, not really, I’m not. I think it could just be a normal — yes, a normal paranoid reaction to what’s been worrying you, to what you started to tell me about last night. And I’m not convinced that Rick Argella is anything but a nice young guy who wanted to do a veteran a favor. But I want to prove that to you.

“I’ve got a friend,” she said, “a dear, old and trusted friend. I’ll ask him to call Motors for me — he’s official — and inquire if anyone put in a request for information on your license plate. Is that okay? Give me till nine and I’ll get back to you on this. Where can I reach you?”

“Nine o’clock and then I’ll call you,” Lasari said.

While she was talking, Caidin had scrawled some words on the notepad: “Mark Weir... Mark Weir” and “MP’s...” and then a pair of telephone numbers. After that, as she listened and almost without realizing it, she had made a series of question marks in heavy strokes, underlining them three times. And then the word “Springfield.”

She knew she had to locate and talk to Weir now, not from a special reporter’s instinct, but from a gut apprehension, a conviction that, as George Jackson had said and whether she had meant to be or not, she might — in fact — be a “part of this.”

Bonnie Caidin laid the palm of her hand flat against her robe, between her small, firm breasts, and pressed hard against the breastbone, trying to make contact with what she thought of as the inner core of herself, determined to force the sudden trembling to leave her body and willing her voice to stay firm.

“Is that a promise, George? You will call back? Last night, when we were talking — didn’t you trust me last night?”

As she waited, Bonnie Caidin flipped to a fresh sheet of paper on the notepad. Finally Lasari said, “Yes. Last night I did trust you and I’ll call you back at nine. And my license plate number, it’s 74B6D9.”

His voice was normal now, low but clear, without the cautious, muting whisper. “One more thing, Miss Caidin, because I am trusting you, the car is registered in my real name, Durham Francis Lasari.”

“D-u-r-h-a-m. I’m writing that out.”

“Right,” he said. “It’s spelled just like the place in North Carolina. And the last name — that’s Lasari with one ‘s’ and one ‘r,’ okay?”

Bonnie Caidin checked the clock and noted the hands were at 8:10. That gave her almost one hour. She dialed the first of the two phone numbers she’d scrawled on the front of the notepad, then waited while the phone rang six times in Mark Weir’s apartment.

She hung up and opened the Chicago Yellow Pages directory, running her fingers down the “Clubs” category till she came to the Illinois Athletic Club on South Michigan Avenue, almost opposite the gray arches of the Art Institute. When a male voice answered, Caidin identified herself and explained she was trying to locate Lieutenant Mark Weir and could he be paged in the bar and the dining room?

Within minutes the voice came back on the line to say that Mr. Weir did not answer the page.

“Just a moment, please, let me think,” Bonnie said. “Maybe he decided to work out before dinner. Can you try him in the gym or the handball courts? It’s very important that I find him.”

The bedside clock ticked away a full five minutes before the voice said, “I’m sorry to keep you, Miss Caidin, but I took the liberty of checking with the doorman and both the bartenders and the maitre d’ and none of them has seen the lieutenant tonight. He didn’t answer our page in the gymnasium. Charley in the locker room says Mr. Weir hasn’t been in for ten days or so...”

“Thank you,” she said, “but if he should happen to stop in, can you ask him to call me at home? He has the number.”

She hung up and circled the second number on the pad, detective headquarters. She hesitated, and then on impulse ran her pencil in a square block around the question marks and the word “Springfield,” and asked information for General Tarbert Weir’s home phone number.

When she dialed the number, she heard four rings, then a taped announcement in a deep, masculine voice, curt and brief, asking that the caller leave a message, with date and time of day, and Tarbert Weir would return the call when possible.

Stifling a sigh of disappointment, Bonnie Caidin left General Weir her message. After that she dialed detective headquarters on State Street.

“I know Lieutenant Weir isn’t working tonight,” she told the switchboard operator, “but could you ring his office anyway? I can’t get him at his club or at home or anywhere else.”

“As a matter of fact,” the operator said, “the lieutenant was in until about twenty minutes ago. I put through a call he was waiting for and right after that, he checked out.”

“Is Sergeant Gordon in the building?”

“No, ma’am, he went off duty at six o’clock.”

“Look, I realize this is irregular, but could you try to rouse the lieutenant on his police signal for me? If he’s in the squad or tuned in on his two-way, maybe we can reach him. It’s urgent.”