Steve Martini - Double Tap

If this sets off galvanic responses in his skin or elevates Ruiz’s blood pressure or respiration, you wouldn’t know it by looking at him. “Oh, I have heard of Special Ops Command. Didn’t recognize the acronym.”

“They’re headquartered down in Tampa,” says Harry. “MacDill Air Force Base.”

Ruiz takes it all in but doesn’t say a thing.

“Seems there’s a lot of interesting things going on down there,” Harry remarks.

“Really?”

“According to the online site, they have an Army Ranger unit attached. Seventy-fifth Ranger Regiment?”

“Not familiar with them,” says Ruiz.

“And there’s something they call Psy Ops,” says Harry. “Psychological Operations Command. And a special-warfare school.”

Ruiz doesn’t say anything, just takes a drag on the cigarette, which is now down to a butt.

“So, have you ever been there?”

“Where?”

“MacDill Air Force Base?” says Harry.

Ruiz smiles. “I was wondering when you were going to ask. Sorry to disappoint you. The answer is no. Listen, the fact that that sidearm was issued doesn’t mean a thing. That particular weapon is probably issued in half the military ranges in the country. For training purposes.”

“So you’ve never been attached to Special Operations Command?”

“To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever even driven past MacDill Air Force Base,” says Ruiz.

For the veterans of Korea who were ahead of the psychiatric learning curve, it passed for battle fatigue. Today we have a name for the condition that afflicted my uncle. It is called post-traumatic stress disorder and it produces symptoms in varying degrees of severity. In my uncle’s case it was catatonia. His soul had been possessed by this particular demon in the winter of 1950 somewhere north of a place on the map of Korea called the Chosin Reservoir. Those who survived to tell of it have become known as the “Chosin Few.”

Through the hell that was the battle at Chosin and the retreat south to the coast, from what I came to learn later, my uncle functioned normally. He drove a truck carrying supplies and the wounded, and used a rifle and fought when he had to. His problems, the mental cloud that descended on him, came later, after he’d had time to think, a kind of delayed reaction.

For the better part of a year after returning from Korea, he seemed fine. With the war winding down, he found himself stationed at Fort Ord, assigned to drive an ambulance. With little to do but dwell on the past, the memories of faces and voices, of dead companions, he passed time waiting for his discharge. It was there, during this period of psychic decompression, that the twin demons of battle trauma-the guilt of survival and depression-began their corrosive effect. Evo began to ask troubling questions. Why was he alive when so many of his friends were dead? Like a man who escapes by a hair the carnage of a catastrophic collision and an hour later succumbs to uncontrollable tremors, my uncle fell into crying jags without any explanation. On leave at home, my grandmother would find him in the morning curled in a fetal position in the corner of his room, soaked in cold sweat and shaking. Within weeks Evo was catapulted into a psychotic pit beyond reach.

By the time they had finished with him at the VA hospital, shooting a zillion volts of electricity through his body-shock therapy, the cutting-edge treatment of the time-Evo was completely catatonic. To a wide-eyed kid of seven, my uncle Evo was a scary guy.

When he smiled, which wasn’t often, there were gaps up front where teeth were missing. On most days, uneven dark stubble, whiskers like a wire brush, covered his expressionless face.

On visits to my grandmother’s house where he lived, I would watch him sit in his chair silently, staring at nothing in particular-the wall, the television, whether it was on or not-the expression on his face an impassive mask. At times I could not help but look at him in fascination and fright until my father would gently call my name and shake his head, a message that this was not polite.

For hours Uncle Evo would sit chain-smoking in a stretched out white tank-top undershirt, burning holes in the upholstery with his cigarette while he drilled psychic holes in the wall with his eyes.

Years later I would swear that the paint, the brown nicotine-stained walls of the living room, bore scorch marks from Evo’s gaze. He could stare for hours and never blink, lost somewhere in thoughts of past horror, his own private hell. At times his senses were so dulled by the anesthesia of past mental pain that a cigarette held between his fingers would burn down until it singed the flesh between them, filling the room with an unmistakable sickening sweet odor.

On the few occasions when my uncle turned his dead eyes on me, I felt as if I would melt. Once after nearly a year sitting in his chair without uttering a word, getting up only for food or to relieve himself, he did something I will never forget. Visiting with my father, I sat silent in a corner watching the adults talk, when suddenly Evo swung around, looked at me, smiled his toothless grin, and said: “Paul. How is school?”

You could hear the clock ticking two rooms away in the silence that filled the room. All eyes were on Evo. As I picked myself up off the floor, he laughed just a little, the happier face of times gone by. Then just as suddenly the leaded curtain behind his eyes dropped once more, his unfocused gaze passing through me as if I were transparent.

To my grandmother, who spoke no English, it was a miracle on the order of the fishes and the loaves. To this day I remember it as one of the truly unnerving events of my childhood, seared into my memory as if placed there by a white-hot branding iron.

“The truth is that we would have had to let him go even if they hadn’t charged him.” Max Rufus is talking to me from behind a massive antique partners desk, quarter-sawn oak, probably two hundred years old, with brass-pull-decorated drawers and leg wells on each side. The top is covered by a blotter of inlaid burgundy leather. Atop this is an antique letter box of darker oak and an ornate gold desktop pen set complete with gold-nib pens and two square crystal ink bottles for dipping, both of them empty.

Everything about Rufus is big, from his desk, to the size of his office, to the man himself. His hair is thinning and gray, his face tanned with creases like the furrows of a field across his forehead and around the corners of his eyes. I would guess he is in his late sixties and that the tan is from sailing. There is a large photograph of a boat under full sail on the wall behind him. This is flanked by framed certificates and licenses. The photograph, obviously taken from the air-the strut of a small plane visible in one corner-is close enough to make out the gray head at the helm, behind the oversized stainless-steel mariner’s wheel in the boat’s cockpit.

This morning Rufus reclines, almost laid out, in the leather executive chair, rocking back, his hands clasped behind his head as he talks.

“I liked Ruiz. He was a likable guy. He always had a good word and a smile. He would take any assignment you gave him, and for the most part he was good at what he did. I think he’s a little wanting in judgment-well, more than a little wanting,” he says. “Having an affair with a client is about as far as you’d want to go. Except for killing her. But then, I’d like to believe that he didn’t do that. I wish him well. I do,” he says. “I hope you can get him off. God knows, this firm doesn’t need the bad publicity that surely will be showered on us if he’s convicted. That phone”-he nods toward the one on his desk, a marble and onyx French antique-“hasn’t stopped ringing with calls from the press since the day they arrested him. So you can be sure that we have an interest in the outcome of your trial.”