Mark Frost - The Second Objective

“What you got here is a massive racketeering operation,” said Grannit. “Organized crime, like we had on the Brooklyn docks.”

“You work those cases?”

“A couple.”

“How’d you break ’em?”

“Hook a small fish. Small fish gives up a bigger fish. Roll ’em over like that all the way up the line.”

“HQ needs this to go away today,” said the senior CID man.

“Then for starters,” said Grannit, “let me talk to ’em.”

Grannit strolled through the holding area in the ballroom, studying faces. He picked out six men, including Corporal Eddie Bennings. They were hustled upstairs to the fourth floor and tossed into a room. Grannit had some MPs empty out the furniture, turn off the heat, and open the windows to the balcony. He let the suspects stew for an hour in the freezing cold, with orders to keep silent. The first time the MPs outside heard one of them say a word, they marched in and took away their matches and cigarettes. Whenever one of them dozed off, the MPs kicked him awake.

Two hours later, Grannit walked into the hotel room, followed by the three biggest MPs in the unit, swinging their nightsticks. Grannit wore a brown civilian suit with no badge or insignia. He explained to the prisoners that during the next fifteen minutes they were each going to write and sign a confession detailing their involvement in the battalion’s black-market activities. He set paper and pens down in the middle of the floor and lit a cigarette. The six men looked at him and one another, but no one moved toward the pens.

Grannit finished his cigarette, walked over to the toughest-looking guy in the group, slammed his head into the wall, and went to work on his kidneys. By the time he finished, the man was urinating on himself and four of the other five suspects had pens in their hands. Each was escorted to a separate, heated room down the hall, where they were told a hot meal and a cocktail of their choice would be served as soon as they finished their confessions.

Grannit stayed in the cold room with Eddie Bennings, the one man who hadn’t picked up a pen.

“You’re not going to write a statement?”

“Fuck you,” said Bennings.

Grannit ordered the other MPs out of the room and lit another cigarette.

“I know you from someplace, Eddie?”

“Where the fuck would I know you from?”

“You ever been fingerprinted in a New York police station? Done any time? Eduardo DiBiaso, that’s the name you were born with, isn’t it?”

“Where’d you get that?”

“Right here on your paperwork, Eduardo. Why is that, you change it for the draft board to get the stink of garlic off you? Or were you dodging a warrant?”

Bennings narrowed his gaze, working hard to show how little he cared. Grannit had known this pissant had a rap sheet the moment he laid eyes on him, strictly small potatoes, a wannabe who’d clocked enough time around the mob to lose his moral compass.

“You got a wife and kids back home, Bennings?”

“I got a wife.”

“That where you’re sending the money? Home to the wife?” No response. “Which makes her an accessory after the fact. We could go after her, too. Send the NYPD to her door. What’s her taste been so far, five thousand? Ten?”

“I got nothing to say till I talk to a lawyer.”

“Lawyer? Where the fuck you think you are, Hoboken? There’s no justice system here. There’s no neighborhood capo back home taking care of the family ’cause you kept your mouth shut. Military courts don’t work that way. This ain’t some penny-ante beef, pinching rum off the back of a Seagram’s truck. These are war crimes, pal. People go to jail for life or face a firing squad. We got you on ice. You don’t play ball, you’re never gonna see your wife again.”

“Bullshit.”

“And once word gets around how you guys ripped off our troops in the field? Life in the brig is gonna be some hard fucking time.”

The first crack showed in Eddie’s practiced tough-guy facade. “What about it?”

“We know you got a relationship with the officers running this show. You brought some experience from home; they trust you ’cause you got things done. You’re a key man for them. You want to tell me anything different?”

Eddie didn’t.

“Help us put those big shots in the pokey and the system’s gonna treat you better. That’s common sense. Your boys are soldiers, not gangsters, so nobody’s coming back at you if you roll over, you might not even stand trial. A slap on the wrist, maybe. They transfer you into another unit with no jail time.”

“What, so I can get killed on the front line? Thanks but no thanks.”

“Okay, Eddie. So we’ll go with choice number three.”

Grannit stubbed out his cigarette, grabbed Eddie by the collar and wrist, and marched him through the balcony doors.

“What’s that? What the fuck you doing?”

“I turn my back for a split second, you were so despondent you threw yourself over the rail. Tragic waste of life. No death payment, no gold star in the window, no folded flag for the missus-”

“Wait a second, wait a second-”

“You don’t think I’m pissed off enough? I’d be doing a favor for everybody in your life you’re going to fuck over if you live through this-”

Eddie grabbed hold of the wrought iron balcony with both hands for dear life as Grannit muscled him to the edge.

“Okay, okay, I’ll write it, I’ll write it, I’ll cooperate-”

“You sure about that?” Grannit yanked hard on his arms.

“I’m sure, I’m sure, Jesus Christ!”

Grannit let him drop to the floor of the balcony, panting like a puppy, slick with sweat.

“Fifteen minutes,” he said, and walked out of the room.

By six o’clock that night the urge to confess had spread through the 724th like old-time religion. Whenever Earl Grannit returned to the ballroom, he found more willing volunteers to take upstairs. He’d seen this before, panic spreading through a pack of crooks on some silent animal wavelength. By mid afternoon, he no longer needed to speak to suspects personally and handed them off to teams of junior CID officers like Ole Carlson, who needed the experience. As confessions piled up on their desks, the Army Intelligence men in charge felt as if they’d witnessed Grannit turn water into wine.

The CID brass organized dinner for their investigators that night in the hotel’s private dining room. Grannit made it clear he didn’t want anybody making too big a deal, but there was no doubt about who they were celebrating. CID had cracked its biggest case of the war, and Earl Grannit made it happen.

During the main course, a radio message came into the communications center downstairs for CID’s commanding officer. Three GIs from the 394th stationed at a checkpoint outside a small village called Elsenborn fifteen miles due east had gone AWOL overnight. Local MPs were on their way to investigate, so the radio operator didn’t feel it was important enough to interrupt the dinner.

An hour later, the radio man burst into the room during coffee and dessert with a second dispatch: The missing men’s bodies had been found in the woods a mile outside of town.

The Road to the Meuse, Belgium

DECEMBER 15, 7:00 A.M.

The three other commando teams working under Erich Von Leinsdorf crossed into Belgium before midnight and passed through American lines without incident. Gerhard Bremer’s team spent the night with a family of German sympathizers in the town of St. Jacques. American deserter William Sharper’s team, posing as a forward recon unit for Fifth Army, reached their safe house in Ligneuville. Karl Schmidt’s team lost their way, fell in behind a convoy of American vehicles heading west, then peeled off after midnight and spent the remainder of the night hidden in a forest. All three teams were up and on the road, heading west, before first light.