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by Lucian K. Truscott


  “You were not exactly David Hand’s catalogue cadet, Slaight. In other words, he was telling his guidance counselor he wasn’t getting what he’d ordered through the mails. ‘Oldest story in the book,’ she said. Feisty old babe.”

  “Then it looks like we’ve got our man,” said Slaight, his voice having lost its edge of excitement. There was something of a letdown when you sensed that things were coming to an end.

  “Not so fast, young buck. This still leaves us the other three cadets in New Orleans at the same time. Now I’ll admit. According to your interview with the Boy in Blue, the chances are strong, very strong that he’s our man. If you can get a positive physical identification from a photograph, I’d say we’re coming close to a case. Opportunity … motive …”

  “What about the cow epaulet?”

  “Throwing the dogs off the scent. He probably thought there’d be a real investigation. What better way to draw attention from himself than to point all signs at your class, the year the murderer graduated and left West Point for good. Classic ploy. I could cite criminal cases … let me see …”

  “Come on, Clifford, enough with the cases. Try them out on your cow students this year. Right now, I’m interested in this case, the David Hand case, and how we can nail this SOB. I’ve got to go see Hedges tomorrow at five-thirty again. No telling what’s going to happen, his honor charges failing and all. I need total legal advice. What strategy do you suggest for Halloween, lawyer Bassett? Trick or treat?”

  They laughed. Bassett called his secretary for coffee.

  “Two things,” said Bassett, puffing up a storm. He always puffed away and said two things or three things when he was getting ready to unload what he called his “heavy artillery.”

  “One: I have been told not to give legal advice to you, Rysam Parker Slaight III, from this day forth.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “The colonel called me in this morning—the department head, the tenured professor of law—and he told me not to counsel you any more. He said if you needed legal counsel, you’d be assigned counsel. I explained to him that I was the counsel of your choice, and that army regulations stipulate a soldier is entitled to counsel of choice unless the military situation dictates that provision of such counsel is impossible or impractical. Or too expensive. I’ve got plenty of time on my hands, and most of these claims from all the summer moves have been filed and are now out of my hands, believe it or not.” Slaight looked at Bassett’s cluttered office. It was hard to believe.

  “My teaching duties take up minimal time. I have only one or two other cadet clients. I gave the colonel every reason in the book I should remain your lawyer. Finally, he told me to do as I was told and to get out. Before leaving, I asked him if he was giving me a direct verbal order to that effect. His words were—I have them copied down here somewhere—here: ‘Bassett, if you counsel that little prick Slaight on this Hand business again, I’ll personally see you get twelve months in Vietnam to contemplate your actions.’ That was precisely what I had waited for. I hurriedly copied down the colonel’s words, in his presence, dated the sheet of paper and signed it, ran out to his secretary and had her notarize the signature, time and date. Then I walked back into his office with my copy of his threat in hand, and I told the colonel if he even picked up the phone to get me on orders for Vietnam, I’d have a federal district court restraining order on his desk before he could get the JAG branch in the Pentagon to call back. That pissed him off, but he didn’t say anything more about counseling you, so I am operating on the assumption that our lawyer-client relationship is intact.”

  “Jesus. They’re really uncorking on you, too, huh?”

  “Indeed. But in so doing, they tipped their hand. I made no secret of the fact I am in possession of this telex. They’re willing to threaten me with Vietnam to back me off. I have a theory, Slaight. You know me well enough to know how I deplore theories and speculation. Well, this one is just too obvious to pass up. I think they know who killed David Hand. I think they know we’re close to identifying the killer. They’re willing to try almost anything to stop us. This would explain the threat of Vietnam duty by the colonel, the surveillance of your girl friend, the illegal search of your files, the phony honor charges, and of course, the Aptitude Board. Army officers are like surgeons, Slaight. They like to cut. They like it. When they see something wrong, their first instinct is, cut it off. Worry about the rest of the body later. There has been enough cutting in this David Hand case that I’ve begun to fathom its style. I believe the style is that of William Beatty, my favorite character in our amateur soap opera. We know this much: He was, shall we say, friendly with David Hand. According to what the sergeant major told you, he was up to his neck in Pentagon machinations behind the David Hand case. And Beatty fits this in another, more interesting way.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He is a colleague of Colonel Addison Thompson,” said Bassett gravely. He stared at notes he had scribbled on a sheet of paper in front of him, like he wished an answer would leap from the page and squirt him in the eye. The name of the head of West Point’s Department of Social Sciences was never taken lightly. Now it was being linked, through Beatty, to David Hand.

  “As you probably know, Colonel Thompson is about the closest thing we’ve got around here to an honest-to-God academician. He has his master’s, his Ph.D., and honorary degrees from Lord only knows how many distinguished colleges and universities, including most of the Ivy League. He is the man credited with having ‘liberalized’ education at West Point, pushing for more elective subjects, more concentration in specific areas, if not actual majors, and less of the broadbrush-stroke approach West Point has pursued for so long. For many people in this country, Colonel Thompson is the modern Military Academy. He helped establish the Air Force Academy. He spends fully a third of his year down in the Pentagon, consulting on matters relating to national security. He is the army’s professor emeritus to the rest of the world, and the rest of the world loves him.”

  “So?”

  “So that’s just the surface of Colonel Thompson. What is less known publicly, but appreciated privately in government and big business, is the rest of his career. During World War II, he was a key aide to General George C. Marshall, the Army Chief of Staff. There are those military historians—and they are not few in number—who credit Thompson with authorship of the ‘Marshall Plan,’ the economic blueprint for European recovery from the war. It is known, in certain circles, that Colonel Thompson was one of the authors of the National Security Act of 1947, the law passed by the Congress establishing the CIA. Thompson has served as an adviser to every director of Central Intelligence since Dulles. He is tight with such public and not-so-public power brokers as the Editorial Board of the Times, major bankers and brokers on Wall Street, and most of the Council on Foreign Relations. The truly astounding thing about a man like Thompson is that he is able to continue his influence … no. Let me correct that. He is able to make his influence grow despite any political ties to either party, Democrat or Republican. He is recognized by both sides as a patriot, a statesman, a scholar, and a gentleman. That he is also an army officer has hardly mattered. But by far the most frightening of the five hats he wears—if we can call them that—is the hat patriot. There is nothing more pernicious than a patriot without identifiable politics. One has only to recall Hitler of the 1930s to reacquaint oneself with that lesson of history.”

  “Jesus. So you’re saying Colonel Thompson is a lot more than the head of the Social Science Department.”

  “Yes. And a lot less. According to certain friends of mine at Harvard with an interest in international relations, Thompson’s politics haven’t changed much since the days of Joe McCarthy. His image as the Great White Liberal of the Service Academies is a wonder of modern public relations. It’s easy to be a liberal, Ry, when your liberalism is contained neatly within this tight, beautiful ghetto called West Point. Outside the academy, I am told, our Colonel Thomp
son is something less than liberal in his views of domestic and international affairs.”

  “The war?”

  “He has been known to advocate the bomb-them-back-to-the-stone-age approach to war in Southeast Asia.”

  “So William Beatty is a colleague of Colonel Thompson’s, huh?”

  “Well, both a colleague and a protégé. You see, it was Thompson who put him where he is in the Pentagon, so he owes his career to the man. But Beatty’s job is now of such a nature that they operate in the same circles, see the same people, attend the same parties, socialize with the same defense industrialists and bankers and Wall Streeters, so in a sense they have become colleagues. But everyone knows where they stand with Colonel Thompson. He probably has more debts outstanding in Washington, D.C., than the President himself, because he’s simply been at it longer than the President. He has there at the beginning of everything. Everyone owes him something. I know William Beatty does.” Bassett relit his pipe.

  “So. I think Beatty is some kind of key to this thing, and I think the key leads directly through Thompson, but for the life of me, I cannot figure out how. Much of this material on Thompson is so old, it either doesn’t hold water any more, or all the water has evaporated. So there are one hell of a lot of dry wells surrounding the man. But for every dry well, let me assure you, he has sunk ten new ones, and they produce.”

  “So how does David Hand fit in with William Beatty, and how do they fit in with Colonel Addison Thompson?”

  “If I could answer that question, Slaight, we could fold up shop.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So when you go in to see Hedges, if you get a chance—the barest opening—probe him about Beatty a little. See what kind of reaction you get. I’ve done some asking around. It seems our friend Hedges, as a cadet, was one of Colonel Thompson’s first ‘boys,’ after he left Washington and took his permanent professorship here at the academy. Their relationship doubtlessly continued while Hedges was liaison in the Secretary of Defense’s office between the DIA and the CIA. Thompson has cronies up to here"—Bassett slapped the bottom of his chin with the back of his hand—"in both intelligence agencies. I think it’s safe to say Hedges and Thompson are not strangers to one another.”

  “Christ. This thing just gets deeper and deeper, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, Ry, it does. If you’d applied yourself while studying law under me, you would have noticed the same thing about the law. It just gets deeper and deeper. You follow the cases further and further back, looking and looking for that one decision that gives you an ‘in,’ some little kernel of information or legal interpretation which you can cull out and apply to the present and attempt to affect the outcome of things as they stand today. But you were … ah … one of my sterling 2.3 students, right, Slaight? Just high enough for long weekends, not high enough to show you were really trying.”

  “Yeah. Nothing personal, but law wasn’t exactly my favorite subject.”

  “What was your favorite, Ry? I’d really like to know.”

  “Mechanics, believe it or not. I carried about a 2.8 in both solids and fluids.”

  “Mechanics?” Bassett removed his pipe and exhaled incredulously.

  “Yeah. There was something so … neat about mechanics. It all added up. They called it ‘resolution of forces.’ I always liked that phrase.”

  “I do see what you mean,” said Bassett, leaning back, propping unshined shoes on his paper-strewn desk.

  “Captain? Thanks for standing up for me with the professor of law like you did. With my 2.3 average under you, I know I don’t deserve it.” They laughed.

  “Forget it, Slaight. If they ever do send me to Vietnam, I’ll end up in some air-conditioned trailer in a base camp, processing claims just like I’m doing here. Boring myself to death. At least here at the academy, things are happening. Listen. I want to see you tomorrow after your confab with Hedges.”

  “Here? In your office?”

  Bassett puffed on his pipe for a moment, his eyes glistening.

  “No,” he said. “Come over to the Officers’ Club and meet me in the bar. Tomorrow night is ‘Happy Hour.’ There are always lots of Tactical Department types present for duty at Happy Hour. Let’s rub it in their noses a little. Give them something to gossip about.” Bassett chuckled at the plan, his round face beaming, eyes darting around, looking over the top of his glasses.

  “Happy Hour. Jesus.”

  “Yes, Mr. Slaight. Happy Hour.”

  “See you then.” Slaight was gone, on the run. He had work to do. Calls to make. His meeting with Hedges was twenty-four hours away.

  34

  Friday, November 1, 1968, 1730 hours.

  “Sir, Mr. Slaight reports to the commandant as ordered.”

  “Have a seat, mister.”

  Slaight sat down. Things seemed different … almost casual. The commandant was seated behind his desk with his uniform jacket open, his short collar unbuttoned, his tie askew. He busied himself finishing some paperwork. Slaight waited.

  “I’ve called you in today, Mr. Slaight, to let you know that this business with the plebe, David Hand, has been resolved. You’ve got nothing to worry about now. You can go back down to the barracks and enjoy your first-class year. How should I put this? You have … ah … pointed out certain matters, and they have been resolved. Any questions?” Hedges stared intently at Slaight’s face.

  “Resolved, sir? How do you mean, resolved?”

  “The situation is over, Slaight. Finished. You are to stop your meddling, get down to the barracks, and start acting like a cadet again, instead of a cheap private eye.”

  “I still don’t understand, sir. Hand was murdered. I want to know who killed him and what’s being done about it.”

  “You are right, Slaight,” said Hedges, chewing his words like tough steak. “The little fag was killed. And the man who killed him … he took the only honorable way out. He volunteered for Vietnam. He’s over there right now, a platoon leader in the Big Red One. A combat leader.”

  “Honorable? Honorable?” Slaight’s voice raised in involuntary octave. “General Hedges, are you kidding me? You mean you know who killed Hand, and you’re saying Vietnam is his honorable way out?”

  “That’s right, son. The man’s in Nam right now. This minute. Combat. Volunteered for Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols, the Lurps. Honorable duty. Necessary. Same thing.”

  Slaight sat there in Hedges’ office so stunned he couldn’t speak. Finally the words came. He would call Hedges “General” from now on, a subtle gesture, but one to which a man like Hedges would be attuned. It meant he’d never again hear the word “Sir” from Slaight’s lips.

  “General, can I ask the man’s name, the man who killed Hand?”

  Hedges stopped his poop-sheet shuffling and looked at Slaight.

  “You already know, don’t you, mister?”

  “Yes, General, I do.”

  “Julian VanRiper, ‘68. Damn fine man when he was here. Doing a fine job with the Big Red One Lurps, I’m told.”

  VanRiper. He’d been C.O. of Beast and then Fourth Regimental commander, a straight-laced SOB with a reputation for writing up his own classmates, an almost unheard-of practice in the co-operate-and-graduate atmosphere of the academy in the 1960s. No wonder he and Hand had a thing going! Neither one of them gave one half a shit about anyone but himself. Theirs must have been a shared, insular paranoia. In the end, what they had mistaken for emotion had consumed one of them. Hand. At least the West Point co-operate-and-graduate philosophy had that much figured out. To do otherwise was to cannibalize your fellows, living off their energy, their blood, their lust for The Life. At West Point, you either joined-up or you died. Slaight wondered if the same thing held true for other bureaucracies, other colleges, big civilian multinational corporations. He wondered if the cannibalism represented by the homosexual murder of David Hand was endemic to the military, to West Point. He’d been at it for six months, and he still didn’t know what
in hell was going on. He was beginning to conclude he’d never understand it when Hedges interrupted.

  “There’s no use in your going any further with this thing, Slaight. As I said, everything has been taken care of. There will be no charges preferred against VanRiper. You may as well forget the provost marshal, Slaight. You have no evidence. Only conjecture, son. And your kind of conjecture won’t stand up in a court-martial. All it will do is get you deeper in trouble. If you know what’s good for you, mister, you’ll forget you ever heard of David Hand. You’ll forget the whole thing.”

  “If I knew what’s good for me, General, I’d never be in here with you in the first place.”

  “That’s correct, mister. You wouldn’t.”

  “So I guess I don’t know what’s good for me, General.”

  “No, Slaight, you don’t. And that’s been your whole problem, right from the start. You’d better start learning the rules around here, mister, and you’d better start playing by those rules. Or you’re out. You hear me?”

  “General, I already know the rules. West Point’s rules. The army’s rules. Your rules. All the rules. I guess I just haven’t been playing the game by those rules, General. Any of them.”

  “Mister, you think you know the way the game is played around here. I am here to tell you that you do not. Am I understood?”

  “Yes, General.”

  “Now. Let’s come to an agreement here. Are you going to start playing by the rules, Slaight?”

  “General, if you mean by that, am I going to keep my mouth shut about the David Hand case, the answer is no, General. No.”

  Hedges’ face turned burgundy red, and his head seemed to sink into the lapels of his uniform jacket. A transformation began to take place. Slowly, his gaze never leaving the cadet sitting in front of him, Hedges buttoned his ribbon-bedecked uniform jacket. He buttoned his shirt collar and straightened his tie. Over and over again, he ran his left hand along the bottom of his jacket, ensuring the left flap covered the right. Standing up, he jerked his arms, exposing his cuffs. An informal, friendly figure when Slaight first walked into his office, Hedges was now standing erect, the very essence of military bearing. He walked around the edge of his desk and stood a few feet away, rocking slowly back and forth, heel-to-toe, heel-to-toe. His tongue ran from one cheek to the other across his teeth. Slaight could see it. Hedges was thinking. He was rehearsing his lines.

 

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