William McGivern - A Matter of Honor

His son would have little interest in the footlocker’s contents, General Weir was sure of that, but if there were grandchildren they might like to look at it some day, not as mementos of blood and glory, but as part of an historical record. General Weir himself was still acutely aware of every decision, every conviction, every ultimate action behind that collection of honors, but more and more, since the break with Mark, he had begun to feel detached and inoperative, a military statistic, an outdated cipher.

One special medal was not in the clutter of the toy box, the one with scattered stars on a blue field, the head of Lady Liberty and the single word: Valor. General Weir kept that hidden in a zippered compartment of his wallet, along with a medallion picture of Maggie and the two initial beads, an M and a W, from the identity bracelet snapped on Mark Weir’s wrist in the Paris hospital only moments after his birth.

Tarbert Weir stood and almost reflexively touched the hip pocket of his corduroys to feel the familiar outline of the wallet. Then he walked to the windows, looking out at the darkness through the fire-flecked panes. His hands were clasped behind his back and he was frowning. Although he was standing perfectly still, there was a restless tension about him.

He heard Grimes’ footsteps and said, without turning, “Just put the drink on the desk, Grimes. I want you to listen to the phone tape. You’ll remember the lady, I told you about her.”

He’d help his boy, General Weir was thinking. Mark had called him, he had even told his lady friend he might drive down. He had thought of his father, sought him out and that was the important thing. They were both men now.

The general waited as Grimes switched on the phone tape and listened to Bonnie Caidin’s message, once, then a second and a third time.

He had a past, too, Weir thought almost defiantly. Since seventeen, he had lived and learned and believed in the lessons taught by the Army — loyalty, love of country, dedication to other men in uniform, a demanding dictum. Was that code of behavior always wrong?

Weir picked up the glass from the desk and drank it back almost to the ice cubes. Was there anything, he thought, new or revealing about war or life that Napoleon could tell a West Point cadet today? If Hannibal were alive, would he be a man of vision and courage or would he be working in an elephant act at Ringling’s?

The general asked telephone information in Chicago for his son’s home phone number. When he dialed it he let the phone ring six times before hanging up. Then he called the number Bonnie Caidin had left on his phone tape. That line was busy.

“Grimes,” he said. “I want to talk to Mark again. I’d like to find out if he trusts me. I can’t really help him unless he does.”

“I think you can depend on him,” Grimes said obliquely. “You’re more alike than you know, sir. A homicide detective in one of the toughest combat zones in the country, that’s the duty Mark’s pulling, general.”

Weir shrugged. “I was never the father that boy wanted to believe in. I was a human being, full of flaws. That’s always fatal for true believers. The Army taught me a man has to turn his back on troops to lead them. Mark never understood that, and now I wonder if we couldn’t have walked side by side at least part of the way.” He glanced at a wall clock. “Call Mrs. Devers and tell her I can’t make dinner tonight.”

“She’ll want details, sir.”

“Goddammit, Grimes, you know how an officer puts up a tent, he asks a sergeant. Well, I’m asking a corporal. You tell Laura anything, tell her I’ll talk with her tomorrow. I want the lines clear when I try to locate Buck Stigmuller.”

Grimes said, “After Mrs. Devers, you want me to bring down the correspondence with Marta Tranchet? You still keep it in the map-case?”

The General looked at the stocky corporal with frank admiration and said, “Dammit, Grimes, you should be in plans and strategy in the Pentagon. You’re right. If General Stigmuller can’t help us, then the problem could be in Europe. Young Tranchet-LeRoi got promoted, he’s with NATO in Kassell. Marta told me the last time she wrote.”

Scotty Weir reached for the phone and said, “First, let me dial that Caidin lady one more time.”

Both men waited until a busy signal sounded on the line. The general broke the connection and held up his glass. “Call Mrs. Devers on the kitchen phone, will you, so I don’t have to hear your lies. And fill this up, if you please, Grimes. I didn’t even taste the last one.”

“You shouldn’t buy this junk food,” Duro Lasari said, looking at the tepid lasagna on his plate.

“I usually eat out or have a sandwich at my desk before I come home,” she said. She was smoking a thin brown cigarette and sipping red wine. “I’m not into eating, really.”

“This wine is different,” Lasari said, turning the glass to catch the candle’s reflection. “Bardolino is made mostly from Corvina and Molinara grapes, the north of Italy. I know a little something about wine, my father drank enough of it. But I know everything about pasta. You shouldn’t encourage them by buying this stuff.”

He poured wine into both glasses. “Cheers,” he said, “and thanks again for the roof over my head. It was raining like hell in Calumet City.”

“You’re sure no one followed you here? Lieutenant Weir was adamant about that.”

Lasari shrugged. “I drove in on the expressway, changed lanes a few times and did the last five miles on surface streets. My car is parked four blocks from here. I walked over, ducked in the alley behind the basement garage — there should be a lock on that door, by the way — rode up on the service elevator.” Lasari took a sip of wine. “I hope I have my priorities right. Maybe I should be worrying more about your boy friend than some bullshit tail. Technically I’m a felon, he’s a cop. Maybe I’m the hot hunch he’s working on for tonight.”

“Mark Weir is a friend, not a boy friend, not for years. And he’s a very straight guy.”

“If he came out of ’Nam with an honorable discharge, and if his old man’s top Army brass, why would he want to do anything for me?”

“He must trust you by intuition,” Bonnie Caidin said. “He was convinced the Vietnam war was a terminal mistake and had the guts to say so. Maybe he thinks you protested in a different way.”

“Okay, so I buy your lieutenant, a cop with compassion, but what about his father? To any bullshit Army brass, a deserter is about as welcome as dung on the flag.”

“General Weir has nothing to do with you or me, or any of this. I just mentioned his name because he might return my call tonight, and I plan to answer that phone. Under the circumstances, I don’t want to alarm you by talking to bullshit Army brass, as you call it.”

“I never even got within saluting distance of a general,” Lasari said. “I was in the arena of noncoms and slopes. But I’ve heard about Weir, or read about him.”

Caidin nodded. “Tarbert Weir always got himself talked about one way or another. He was a kind of folk hero in the sixties for the way he handled an Army division when half the South was practically under martial law. He called in all the northern protesters, the clergy, and the red-necked sheriffs, and the black activists and federal marshals, and gave them a speech that’s kind of a classic. Weir said the laws of the land applied to everybody, and if a priest or a nun physically or verbally assaulted marshals or cops who were doing a job, they’d end up reading their missals and saying their rosaries in the stockade. And vice versa. He made himself understood.”

“I heard more about his bucking General Westmoreland’s strategy, protests against phony body counts, that sort of cover up crap in ’Nam,” Lasari said. “Those riots and marches down South, I was just a kid back then.”