David Rosenfelt - Dog Tags

Willie went down there at six PM, a time when he figured a lot of people would be out and about. He parked in front of a diner and started walking. To everybody he saw he said the same thing: “Hey, my name is Willie Miller, and I’m looking for Joseph Russo. You know him?”

Every single person said they did not know Russo, so Willie smiled and said, “If you meet him, please tell him I’ll be at the diner, waiting to talk to him.” Most people in Willie’s situation would have been nervous, but Willie had been born with a defective anxiety gene.

After half an hour of spreading the word, Willie went back to the diner, ordered a burger and french fries, and waited.

He didn’t have to wait very long. Two men, one large and the other larger, came in and the diner immediately felt crowded. They walked over to Willie’s table, and the smaller of the two said, “Let’s go.”

Willie stuffed the last few french fries into his mouth and followed them. They walked down the street, and the smaller man dropped behind Willie, so that Willie was in the middle. Willie noticed kids in the street and on the porches staring at them, and he waved as if he were in a parade.

The unlikely threesome went three blocks, ending at a house that looked no more expensive or impressive than any of the others. The larger man went up the steps and opened the door without knocking, then signaled for Willie and the other man to follow.

Willie heard the sound of a television, which seemed to come from upstairs. He was led into a den, where Joseph Russo was shooting pool with another man. Willie was struck by how much weight Russo had gained since getting off prison food. Back then he was maybe 160 pounds, which looked appropriate for his five-foot-ten frame. Looking at him now, Willie figured him for more than two hundred.

Russo looked up, saw Willie, and broke into a broad grin. “My man,” he said, then put down the cue stick and walked over, wrapping Willie in a bear hug. “How ya doin’?”

“Still cool,” said Willie. “Stayin’ cool.”

Willie suddenly realized that they were alone; his two escorts and the other pool player had seemed to vanish in thin air. He wanted to get to the reason he was there right away, but Russo wanted to drink beer and reminisce about the old days, as if they had been fraternity brothers for four years rather than casually acquainted inmates for three months.

Russo only briefly referred to the attack that day in the prison yard, but did mention that the three men regretted what they did “until the day they died,” which was only two months later.

“So,” Russo finally said, “what can I do for you?”

“I killed a guy last week,” Willie said, but Russo showed no reaction at all. “His name was Ray Childress.”

“That was you?” Russo asked, and then laughed. “Childress was messing with you? I always knew he was an asshole. Man, I’ve been telling my people for years about how you could handle yourself.”

Willie was pleased that Russo knew Childress. “He held a gun on my wife and tried to steal my dog.”

“Your dog?”

“Yeah. I need to know why he did that, and who sent him, so I can make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“You think I know?” Russo asked.

Willie shrugged. “I figured you could find out. Especially if Petrone is involved.”

Russo reacted quickly to the mention of his boss. “This had nothing to do with Mr. Petrone,” he said, then softened and laughed. “He don’t even like dogs.”

Russo stood up, hand extended to shake, a signal that the meeting was over. “Let me see what I can find out, okay? I’ll call you.”

“Thanks, man.” He handed Russo a business card, which he’d had made when he and Andy started the Tara Foundation.

Russo looked at it. “Dog rescue? What the hell is it with this dog stuff? You and that lawyer friend of yours.”

The reference to Andy was a sign that Russo had checked Willie out, which surprised him. “You should get one,” Willie said. “A dog will never bullshit you.”

Russo smiled. “Nobody bullshits me.”

CHAPTER 41

THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT MUST PAY ITS INVESTIGATORS BY THE PAGE. Hike and I are going over their report on the “incident” in Iraq, which took five months to prepare and an entire forestful of paper to print. It arrived from the office of the court clerk in eight boxes, each filled with documents.

I randomly choose four boxes and Hike takes the other four, and as we go through it we occasionally stop to discuss what we’re reading. The writers of the report were clearly operating under a mandate to conclude nothing, and then use as many words as possible to support that conclusion.

“Shit. Crap. Garbage,” says Hike as he closes his last book. There’s a lot of Winston Churchill in Hike, and this particular pronouncement has to rank up there with the “Blood, sweat and tears” speech. “How do they get away with this stuff?” he asks.

I’ve been waiting for Hike to finish, mainly because by the time I got to my third book I switched to reading-every-fourth-paragraph mode. I don’t think I missed much.

“I take it you didn’t find anything that would be helpful?” I ask.

“Only if we want to put the jury to sleep.”

The problem for us is that the investigators clearly had as a goal the management of political fallout from the incident. To that end, they predetermined that personnel were lax in their implementation of procedures, without criticizing the procedures themselves.

More significantly, the investigators, or at least the authors of the report, never considered intent as a possibility. That is to say that they never looked at whether or not the people in charge of security, or those implementing it, wanted the explosion to happen. And when you’re not at least open to something, it makes it a lot harder to find it.

Pretty much everybody in the Middle East was interviewed for the report, in an obvious effort to be able to claim that no stone was left unturned in pursuit of the truth. It’s not a total loss for us, in that at least we get the names of everybody involved, especially the soldiers assigned to security.

There were seventy-one assigned that day, including Billy. One was killed, and fourteen others besides Billy were injured. While no specific blame has been laid, five soldiers were reprimanded and discharged from the army. Their names are Donovan Chambers, Jason Greer, Tyler Lawson, Jeremy Iverson, and Raymond Santiago.

Erskine was not specifically implicated in the fiasco, but the report refers to a general weakness in the command structure. The report does not speak to his military fate, but we know that he was at least viewed less favorably afterward, and he seems to have chosen resignation. It was a relatively graceful exit, only to end somewhat less gracefully on the street in front of a bar.

“If I ever commit a felony,” Hike says, “I want these guys investigating the case.”

“They found exactly what they wanted to find… nothing.”

“Leaves us in a pretty big hole.”

I nod. “Although we do have the names of the five soldiers who were discharged. We can find them and talk to them; at least it’ll give us something to do.”

“How are you going to find them?”

“I’ll give it to Laurie, and she’ll probably put Sam Willis on the case. Ten minutes at his computer and he’ll be able to tell us where these guys are, what they had for breakfast, who they’ve called in the past three months, and who they’re sleeping with.”

“Is all that legal?” he asks.

“It wasn’t last time I checked, but I haven’t checked in a while.”

He nods. “Makes sense. Checking stuff like that can be a hassle.”