William McGivern - A Matter of Honor

Salmi read it back “74B6D9?”

“Correcto, compadre. You’ll tell Sergeant Malleck where you got it?”

The phone clicked in Argella’s ear. He gave the hook a final shake, checked the coin chute automatically and returned to the counter. He told Millie the coffee was cold and that he’d meant he wanted the doughnuts with the coconut sprinkles.

Argella lit a cigarette and looked with sensuous contentment at the curve of the waitress’ hips as she reached to get the doughnuts from a shelf over the coffee urn.

Central Police Headquarters, the official nexus for crime analysis and all phases of major criminal investigation in the city, is located on Chicago’s south side on State Street between Eleventh Street and Roosevelt Road. A thirteen-story building with a glimpse of Lake Michigan from its upper floors, Central Headquarters stands on the east parallel to State Street in a borderline area between the Loop’s business districts to the north and deteriorating sections spreading south and west, into neighborhoods dominated by ethnic groups, black, Asian, and Hispanic, migrant southern rural whites, and by the city’s highest crime and poverty statistics.

In his office at headquarters, Homicide Detective Lieutenant Mark Weir considered the information he had received earlier by phone from Bonnie Caidin.

On a notepad he had written the name Private Randolph Peyton Lewis, underscoring it with three heavy pencil strokes. He had added the notations: Age 22, black, enroute to O’Hare on MATS Flight 94, departure point Frankfurt. Reported missing by aunt, Mrs. Amanda Lewis, 4800 South Halstead Street.

Sergeant DuBois Gordon, who reported to the lieutenant, was already on his way to talk to Mrs. Lewis, and the lieutenant himself had made a number of calls to contacts around the city.

Weir was in his mid-thirties, tall and rangy, with a wide, square face and sandy hair. He stood now and stared out at the lake which sparkled dully in the early dawn. At this distance, the water looked heavy and lifeless. Weir sipped coffee from a wilted carton and looked uncertainly at his phone, reluctant to pick it up and call his father at his farm outside Springfield. He justified his procrastination by running once again over what information he’d collected so far on Private Lewis.

MATS Flight 94 had arrived on schedule at O’Hare International, carrying two hundred military personnel from various cities in Germany. According to the roster and what they knew at present. Private Lewis had been aboard. He was logged in at Health and Immigration and then cleared routinely through Customs.

Yet, according to skycaps, cab starters, bus-line clerks, rental car agencies and even private limo chauffeurs, there was no evidence that Private Lewis had left O’Hare International after he had deplaned from MATS 94 — at least he hadn’t left on a conventional carrier, and it wasn’t likely he’d tried to hitchhike into town, not with bad weather and his military gear.

Lieutenant Weir jingled the change in his pocket, then spread it on his desk. Four quarters, three pennies and a nickel, and a metal ring with his apartment and car keys. He studied the coins a moment and returned them to his jacket. He would have preferred to make this call privately from a pay booth in the lobby.

Weir lifted his desk phone and told the switchboard operator he wanted to place a call to Springfield, Illinois. Finishing the last of the coffee, he dropped the carton into a wastebasket and, without being aware of it, stood straight and squared his shoulders to prepare himself for the sound of his father’s voice.

To his relief it was Grimes who answered. John Grimes, his father’s former corporal, who had followed General Weir through a dozen posts, two major wars and, ultimately, into shared retirement on a farm in downstate Illinois.

“Mark, this is a helluva surprise, a damned treat,” Grimes said, his voice hearty. “It’s fine to hear from you. You okay, son?”

“Things are about as usual,” the lieutenant said. “How about yourself?”

“I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I’m stiff and lazy some of these cold mornings.” Corporal Grimes laughed. “But you know your father. We don’t exactly stand reveille, but there’s work to be done on this place. What can I do for you, Mark?”

“I know you weren’t expecting this call, John, but I’d like to talk to the general.”

“I’ll try to corral him for you, Mark,” Grimes said, the tone of his voice unchanged. “Give me a moment, will you? Either he’s working the dogs or he’s in the barn with the tenant farmer.”

As he waited, the lieutenant unlocked a desk drawer and took out a file which contained the names and addresses (conditional in one instance) and various biographical information relating to three United States Army soldiers who had been found dead on the streets of Chicago in the last six months; three black men, all privates with borderline service records, infractions ranging from drunkenness to insubordination. All three had been in their early twenties, and all had been knifed or shot in slum neighborhoods, with high traces of narcotics and alcohol in their bloodstreams. Privates Cullen, Baggot and Jones.

The three homicides were carried in the various police districts in which they’d occurred as open, unsolved crimes. As yet the killings had not been grouped under a single case number or tentatively identified as the work of a single person or persons.

Lieutenant Weir was first alerted to the possibility of a relationship between the slayings from Bonnie Caidin. She had called from her newspaper office with certain questions when the second victim, Will Baggot, was found in an alley behind a bar near Garfield and South Washington. Army privates, both recently back from Germany... And she’d called Lieutenant Weir again when a third military victim, Private Titus Jones, was discovered in a trash-littered lot near Washington Park.

Corporal Grimes’ voice sounded in his ear, “Mark, you there?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Your father’s just left for Springfield with the farmer. He don’t like the load of feed they delivered last week. You know how the general always was. Troops and livestock get fed before the officers.”

“It’s a little early for feed marts. He’s there but he won’t talk to me, is that it, Grimes?”

“Don’t take that tone, Mark. You think he’s stiff-necked, but he was pretty damned hurt, you know. You can’t rightly expect him not to be.”

The lieutenant felt some of the old angers and frustrations pulling at him. “Grimes, I need to talk to my father. It’s not personal.”

“Give him a little time, son.” Grimes’ tone became conspiratorial. “I’m roasting a pheasant tonight, the general’s shot a freezer full. After dinner I’ll mix him a little malt whiskey and ask him to get in touch with you. I’ll make it a direct order if I have to. Hell, it’s all gone on too long. Where’ll you be tonight, say around eight-thirty?”

“Grimes, I need to talk to my father now. I told you this isn’t personal. I’m a cop, and I need a professional evaluation from him.”

“I said he went to town, lieutenant,” Grimes said flatly.

“All right, Grimes, but do this much,” Mark Weir said. “Take down three names, three soldiers who shipped out of Germany within the last six months. Ask my father if he’ll run a check on them with his contacts in G-2. See if there’s any relationship between them and the fact that they were all murdered in my city after they returned from service abroad.”

“These soldiers are dead you say? All three of them?”

“That’s right. So far they’re being treated as separate, unsolved homicides. I’ve kept the lid on with the Army because there’s nothing obvious or logically military to move on. These soldiers were on leave, off duty, drugged and drunk and in bad neighborhoods. But they were soldiers, and they did serve abroad. If the general is willing to cooperate, I’d like him to make those inquiries as discreetly as possible.”