Dog Tags

by David Rosenfelt

  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.”

  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.”

  “Maybe I’ll put it on Edna’s list of things to do.”

  “What have you got on my list?” he asks.

  “Are you knowledgeable about investments, commodities, rich people’s stuff like that?”

  He shrugs. “I’ve got an MBA, for what little that’s worth.”

  “You’ve got an MBA and a law degree?” Hike is a constant surprise to me. “From where?”

  “Harvard and Yale,” he says. “I’m a walking rivalry. So what have you got for me?”

  “I want you to find out everything you can about the hedge fund C and F Investments.”

  “Because of the two guys that got killed? I thought you went over there and talked to the top guy.”

  “I did.” I point to the books. “But I just read in one of those books that Alex Bryant, the younger and lower-ranked of the two victims, was married for a year when he died.”

  “So?”

  “So Jonathan Chaplin, his boss, told me he didn’t think Bryant was married.”

  “At the risk of repeating myself… so? Maybe he didn’t even know the guy. That’s a big company; they’ve got offices all over the country.”

  “He said he’s racked with guilt because Bryant took his place on the trip, and that he went to his funeral. I would have to assume his widow would have been hard not to notice there.”

  “Maybe he just signed his name at the funeral and left. Or maybe he met the wife and forgot. Or maybe he’s been nailing the wife for two years and doesn’t want anyone to know,” Hike says.

  “Or maybe he’s lying because he doesn’t want me to talk to Bryant’s wife.”

  “Either way, it’s got nothing to do with our case,” he says.

  “Or maybe it does.”

  I put in a phone call to Colonel Franklin Prentice, Kevin’s brother-in-law, who has been very helpful to us on a couple of previous cases. He used to be stationed in South Carolina, but I saw him briefly at the wedding, and I think he said he was transferred to Washington, DC.

  I have no idea how to reach him, so I call the Pentagon’s main number. “I’m trying to reach Colonel Franklin Prentice,” I say.

  “Do you mean General Prentice?”

  “That’ll work.”

  Within a couple of minutes he gets on the line, which is a surprise to me. I didn’t realize generals were so easy to reach. I identify myself, and he assures me he remembers me quite well.

  “You’re the partner of my crazy brother-in-law,” he says.

  “Not anymore,” I say. “He’s off saving the world. Have you talked to him?”

  “Last week. I heard some kind of jungle music in the background, so I asked him about it. He said that was actual jungle.”

  Prentice seems inclined to chat, and we do so for about ten minutes. If there are any longer minutes in the world than “chat minutes,” I don’t know what they are, and these ten seem to take about six months. The pauses are so pregnant they feel like they originated in a fertility clinic.

  I hate chatting, and it’s particularly hard to avoid when you’re the “chattee,” needing help from the “chatter.” I’m usually good at cutting it off, and I keep throwing in a “Well, I don’t want to keep you…” and a “So listen, the reason I’m calling…,” but I guess generals are used to making chat-ending decisions.

  He seems to have nothing but time. Aren’t there any wars he should be trying to win? Finally I manage to steer the conversation to why I am calling, and I tell him about Billy’s case.

  “I’m very familiar with the incident,” he says. “Have you seen the inspector general’s report?”

  “Yes… fascinating reading.”

  He laughs. “Covered the army’s ass pretty well, huh?”

  “I need to know what was known but not written down, off the record if need be.”

  �
��Hmmm,” he says. “That’s a tough one.”

  “What if I talked to Erskine’s boss?” I ask, looking through the report for the name as I talk. I find it. “Colonel William Mickelson.”

  “That I can do,” he says.

  “Where is he stationed?”

  “Right down the hall from me. Call him tomorrow.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “Will do.”

  “You know, I’d never say this to Kevin, but I think what he and Kelly are doing is pretty amazing.”

  “So do I,” I say. “Maybe we should tell him.”

  He pauses for a moment, probably considering it. “No, I don’t think so. He might keep doing it.”

  “We don’t want to encourage that.”

  “ANDY WANTS TO TALK TO YOU,” LAURIE SAYS. She says this at the end of a forty-five-minute conversation with Cindy Spodek, the result of my asking her to make the call. During all of this time she has ignored the fact that I was pacing and looking at my watch as a way of letting her know I was impatient to get on the phone.

  After a pause, Laurie says, “He said to tell you that he just wants to chat with a dear old friend, but between you and me there’s a one hundred percent chance that he’s lying.”

  After another pause, Laurie turns to me and says, “Cindy said to tell her dear old friend to kiss her dear old ass.”

  I walk over and take the phone from Laurie. “Cindy, how are you?”

  “Do you realize the only time you ever talk to me is when you want something?” she asks.

  Cindy is an FBI agent, working out of the Boston office. We’ve crossed paths on a couple of cases over the years, and in the process she, Laurie, and I have become good friends. She has also become a person I frequently call for information. “Do you have any idea how unfair that is? Or how much it hurts?”

  “What do you want, Andy?”

  “I didn’t want anything, but now that you’ve unfairly attacked me like this, I feel a need to lash back at you.”

  “By asking me for information.”

  “Exactly. There was an explosion in Iraq last year in which eighteen people, including the Iraqi oil minister and two American businessmen, were killed.”

  “Iraq?” she asks. “Now you’re becoming an international pain in the ass?”

  “I’m a citizen of the world. I just read the Defense Department’s investigative report on the incident, which takes almost seven thousand pages to say nothing.”

  “So?”

  “So I’m assuming there’s an FBI report on it as well. It’s standard operating procedure for the bureau to be called in when American citizens are murdered, no matter where it happens. I want to know what it says.”

  “You think I’m going to turn over an FBI report to you?” she asks. “You’ve got balls the size of ocean liners.”

  “And you’re a delicate flower. Come on, Cindy, I can get it anyway by petitioning the court, but it will take too long. And I’m fine if you read it and give me the highlights.”

  “That’s big of you,” she says.

  “And that’s a transparent attempt to get back on my good side. Which may or may not work, depending on what you come up with.”

  “Good-bye, Andy.”

  “Good-bye, dear old friend.”

  I hang up, and Laurie says, “You really do take unfair advantage of her friendship, you know.”

  I nod. “True, but she gets something out of it as well. She gets to insult me.”

  She smiles. “You almost ready for bed?”

  “Is that a serious question?” Nothing could be happening in my life that could make me say no to Laurie when she asks that question. The Super Bowl could be about to start, or I could be standing to give my closing argument to the jury… I’d still say yes and start to take my clothes off.

  “Let’s go upstairs.”

  We start heading up the steps, followed by Tara and Milo. “I obviously grow more irresistible by the day.”

  “I must have a thing for older men,” she says. “The older you get, the sexier I find you.”

  “Makes me glad I’m not Benjamin Button,” I say, and then stop halfway up the stairs. “Wait a minute.”

  “What is it?”

  “I just realized that it’s been a couple of hours since I heard the sound of chewing. Where’s Marcus?”

  “He’s not here,” she says. “I gave him an assignment.”

  “I thought we agreed he would guard the house while Milo is here?”

  “I know, but he’s an investigator, Andy, and we need him doing that. I can guard the house; I was a cop, remember?”

  I’m not thrilled with this. “But what if you’re otherwise engaged, like you’re going to be in about five minutes?”

  “I can multitask, remember?”

  I could continue to argue about this, pressing my point that we are better off with Marcus guarding the house. Or I can shut my mouth and get into bed with Laurie.

  End of conversation.

  I’VE NEVER MET HER, OR SEEN HER PICTURE, BUT I RECOGNIZE KATHY BRYANT IMMEDIATELY. Her twenty-seven-year-old face is grief-stricken. Not the kind that you feel in the first hours and days and weeks after hearing terrible news, but rather the kind etched by months of unrelenting pain. She has learned to publicly keep her emotions under control, but the effort of it must wear on her, and make it more difficult to summon the energy to suppress hellish private moments.

  I had called Kathy to discuss her husband’s death in Iraq, and at first she tried to deflect me by giving me the name of her own lawyer. He is representing her in dealing with Alex’s estate, and in settlement negotiations with the US government regarding a possible negligence lawsuit she might file.

  I finally persuaded her that I was more interested in the cause of the explosion than in the financial entanglements that have followed it, and she agreed to meet with me. Her chosen location was here, at the food court of the Garden State Plaza Mall in Paramus, a large area of fast-food restaurants that collectively contain more cholesterol than your average third-world country.

  I’m a few minutes late, since I don’t know where in the mall the food court is, and I wind up parking as far away as is possible. Then I have to decipher the mall directory, which helpfully tells me with an arrow where I am, which would be good news if where I am is where we are meeting. It’s not, and by the time I figure out where I’m going, and then trek over there, I’m late.

  She’s sitting at a table when I arrive, and after we say our hellos, I get us a couple of coffees from the Coffee Bean. “Thanks for seeing me,” I say when finally settled in.

  “I’m not sure what it is you want.”

  I smile my charming Carpenter smile, a guaranteed funk remover if ever one was invented. “I’m not, either,” I say. “I’m just asking questions until someone gives me an answer that I can use.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll be asking you about the circumstances surrounding your husband’s death. I hope that’s okay.”

  “When you think about something twenty-four seven, talking about it doesn’t really make it any worse.”

  I nod my understanding, even though it’s hard for me to relate to what she has been through. When I was twenty-seven, pretty much the most tragic event in my life was when the Giants lost a play-off game.

  “Has anyone in the government given you an explanation for how it happened?”

  She nods. “Yes, someone from the State Department called the first week, and then again after the investigation was completed.”

  “What did they say?”

  “That this teenager blew herself up trying to kill the oil minister, and that Alex and Mr. Freeman were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that while every effort was made to prevent it, it’s a dangerous country, and not every lunatic can be stopped.”

  “So they didn’t admit negligence?”

  “No. My lawyer said they wouldn’t, and they didn’t. They didn’t say much more than I could read
in the paper.” She pauses, then, “Not that I read the papers.”

  “Why did Alex go on that trip?”

  “Because Mr. Freeman asked him to; Alex worshipped Mr. Freeman,” she says.

  “Do you know why Mr. Freeman asked him? There were other people in the company higher than Alex.”

  She shrugs. “I don’t really know, other than it was a late decision. For some reason the spot opened up. And since Alex’s job included dealing with the oil markets, I guess he was a logical choice. Mr. Freeman seemed to think of him as a protégé. Alex was on the fast track.”

  She says this with a hint of scorn, so I ask her about it. “You didn’t approve of Alex’s job?”

  “I guess I had mixed feelings about it. It was incredibly stressful, and I could see the effect it had on him. He had trouble sleeping… stomach problems… especially in the last couple of months. It’s tough when his health and the quality of our lives seemed to depend on the price of things like oil or gold.”

  “Your feelings don’t sound particularly mixed,” I point out.

  “Now they’re not; losing the person you loved more than anything in the world at twenty-seven has a way of clearing things up. But back then, Alex was making a lot of money, and we had this vision of him retiring early, so I bought into it. Mr. Freeman wasn’t even fifty, and Alex said he was going to quit soon and sail around the world. That sounded so appealing…”

  “What about Jonathan Chaplin?”

  “I don’t really know him. I met him a couple of times at a company Christmas party, and then again at the funeral. He was really very nice… said all the right things.”

  “Have you had contact with the company since then?”

  “Oh, yes. The HR person called me a number of times, to see if I needed anything, or if there was anything they could do for me. And they needed Alex’s papers dealing with work, so they could transfer it on to someone else.”

  “You gave them everything?” I ask.

  “Whatever I had. He took some things with him on the trip, so I don’t know where they are, and I didn’t give them his personal papers, of course. That’s something I need to go through when I’m ready.”