The Staked Goat - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremiah Healy

  FIFTEEN

  -•-

  IN THE MOVIES ON TV, YOU ALWAYS SEE THE HERO leap up after a brawl and be unmarked and unrestricted the next time he appears. In real life, it doesn't work that way. Where I grew up in Southie, a lot of the kids went into amateur and then club boxing. Not as many as in the white sections of Dorchester, or almost-all-black Roxbury, but a lot. I remember the kid who lived next door. He was only eighteen years old, but after a particularly tough three-rounder, he would walk, sit, eat, and talk funny for three or four days. You take it easy, use ice, and chew carefully. You rarely call Gidget to go surfing. I had put ice on my cheek and thigh when I got in the night before. When I woke up, though, my right rib cage hurt like hell. I couldn't remember getting hit there, but I showed a fist-sized bruise to match the two on my left thigh. My back ached just enough to tell me there was substantial, but not serious, damage. I did not try to touch my toes. I moved slowly to the bathroom. No blood in the urine. I turned to the sink. My right cheek, reversed as my left in the mirror, was dull red and purple, not the brighter, almost glossy red and purple you get when you don't ice it. My chin was scraped and scabby like that of a nine-year-old who had fallen while running during recess. I realized that the ribs must have been the first hit, the one that put me down, because I had only a little swelling on the left side of my head from the bounce off the sidewalk. I thought about the cabbie's remark on knives, and I suddenly had to use the toilet again. I took a long, hot bath and shaved very delicately. I ordered breakfast via room service, no orange juice. The bellboy bringing in the tray did not indicate by word or look that he thought I had been hit by a car. I tipped him a princely sum.

  I chewed breakfast on the left side of my mouth and reached for the telephone. ·

  Amazingly, I got J .T. right after Ms. Lost-In-Space. "Colonel Kivens speaking, sir."

  "Sir?" I said. "How often do people above colonel call you?""

  "Who is this, please?"

  "Christ, J .T ., you sound a lot more—" I stopped. Cold. Al and I had had such a similar conversation when he called me.

  "Who is this?" said J .T., a bit more aggressively.

  "J.T., it's John Cuddy. I'm sorry to-"

  "John, how are you? Wait a minute, where are you?"

  “I'm here. In D.C., I mean. I just came in from Pittsburgh. J .T., Al—"

  "I know," he said quietly. "There was a blurb about it in the Post. I'm really sorry."

  "Yeah," I said. "Listen, I need some information. I need to know some things about what Al was doing in Vietnam. I'm convinced he wasn't killed by any—"

  "Listen," he said knowingly. "Everybody goes there. If I were you though, the one thing I wouldn't miss is the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. I think it's the best."

  “If I meet you there, can we talk in the clear?"

  "That's right," he said cheerfully.

  "Twelve noon today?"

  "That's fine. Be sure to see the Spirit of St. Louis. Enjoy your stay now."

  "I'll be the one with the red carnation."

  He gave a forced chuckle and rang off.

  Terrific. Either J.T. was worried about somebody overhearing what I would say to him about Al or what he would say to me about Al. Or what he would say to anyone about anything. Just terrific.

  I hung up and called the Suffolk County DA's office. I asked for Nancy Meagher. A secretary came on and said Nancy was out for the morning. I told her to tell Nancy that Mr. Cuddy had called and would call back later. She thanked me and hung up. I propped up some pillows and lay back on them. I thought about calling my "friend" at the insurance company who was supposed to get a guard to watch over Jesse and Emily. My ribs hurt every time I inhaled and only a little less as I exhaled. I thought about calling the D'Amicos and complimenting them on the depth of their son's loyalty to his brother. I noticed that my thigh didn't ache when I was lying down. Instead of those calls, or calling Martha and commiserating, or Carol and misleading, or Straun and cursing, I put on the pay-TV channel and watched Clint Eastwood do to about a hundred guys in sequence what I should have done to my three the night before.

  * **

  The taxi left me about two hundred feet from the steps of the building. My thigh spasmed every time my left leg hit the ground, but I knew the more I walked on it, the sooner it would loosen up. My back and rib cage would ache for a few days.

  It was a clear, bright day, somewhere in the high 40s, which was good, since the seams under both arms on my topcoat were split and hence being repaired back at the hotel or some subcontractor thereof. I had junked my pants, so I was wearing the funeral suit. Gingerly, I climbed the stairs.

  I walked into the crowded lobby. Somehow I'm reluctant to use "museum" to describe a place that has things in it that I remember as current events. The huge Apollo space capsule exhibit was off to the right. A number of airships, from World War I bi-planes to post-Korea jet fighters, were hanging from the ceiling, fifty or sixty feet above my head and suspended in eternal flight. I spotted J.T., in uniform but strolling unmilitarily around the base of the Apollo exhibit while the turistas streamed along a walkway over his head to see into the spacecraft. I edged over to and under Lindbergh's plane, staring up at it like a little kid in church. Lindbergh was well before my time, and I didn't mind thinking of his plane being in a museum.

  "A brave man," said a familiar voice from behind me.

  "Who gave a lot to his country," I replied.

  J.T. stepped even with me.

  "Sorry about the telephone."

  "I assumed you had your reasons."

  He was frowning. "I did. And do. How is Al's family taking it?"

  "Wife's O.K., son is too young. Everybody else is dead."

  I must have sounded pretty despondent, because J.T. didn't reply right away.

  "What is it you need?"

  "A1 was killed by somebody who knew what he was doing."

  "The paper, uh, implied that—"

  "Yeah, I know. But his room at the hotel in Boston was tossed professionally, after he was taken and maybe even before he was killed. Also, Al called me to set up dinner after some meeting he was going to have. He'd have had no reason to go looking—"

  "Hey, John. Take it easy. I wasn't implying anything. I just meant the paper—"

  "Yeah," I said, shaking my head. "I know, I know. Let's walk a little."

  "I noticed your limp. And your face isn't exactly yearbook material."

  "Last night I had a little brush with Washington's version of the Welcome Wagon."

  J .T. smiled. "Drunk?"

  I smiled back. "Me, not them. " My cheek hurt a lot when I smiled.

  "So, how can I help you?"

  "The way A1 was done, I'm convinced it had to be somebody from Vietnam, somebody he was going to blackmail or something. I think he—"

  "John, that was, what, over thirteen years ago, anyway? Why would A1 wait so long . . ."

  I shook my head again as we walked in the shadow of an incongruously small but nevertheless lifesized DC—3. "I think it was something that just happened or just suggested itself to him when he hit Boston. He was in desperate financial shape, about to lose his job and probably his house, and I think it was somebody out of the past. I can't believe that he ran into anybody like that in the steel industry selling widgets, and anyway, I've talked to everybody, wife, friends, business associates, not a whiff until he got to Boston."

  "So you figure that something or someone he saw or knew in Saigon touches him off thirteen years later to blackmail somebody who kills him?"

  I clicked my tongue off the roof of my mouth. "I agree that when you put it that way, it sounds crazy. But I don't have any other place to start."

  "Place to start?"

  "Yeah, why I called you. I want to go back into all the records that someone must have at the Pentagon somewhere, the records of all of Al's time there. Maybe I can make the same connection Al did."

  J.T. frowned. "A lot of that stuff gets asked
for by writers, researchers, and so forth to make us look worse than they already did back then. We've kept a lot of it away from them, even with the Freedom of Information Act, on the grounds that the records are still part of an ongoing investigation. If I let you, an outsider, a civilian, see them, and the researchers found out, they'd scream bloody murder and it'd be my career."

  I regarded J.T. very carefully. "Are there still ongoing investigations, J .T.?"

  He opened his eyes a little too widely and quickly, then grinned. "John, it was all over, basically, ten years ago. Most of the statutes of limitations have run out by now."

  "Are there still open investigations?"

  "Oh, John," said J .T., doing a half turn to his right. "You know the army, there are always investigations of some kind going on."

  "J.T., look. Al and you and I were friends. We looked out for each other, saved each other's butts a couple of times. Somebody killed Al, horribly, after torturing him, like the Vietnamese. You're nobody's fucking fool and not, even after all this time and a pension so close you can smell it, such a stiff that it doesn't get to you. Somebody killed our friend. Somebody has to pay for that."

  J .T. looked grave and sounded stem. "I'll look, John. This isn't Saigon, and it isn't wartime. You can't get away with things here, and neither can the guy who killed Al, whoever he was. He'll be discovered eventually and—"

  "Bullshit," I said, a little too loudly, causing an elderly couple in front of us to jump. I lowered my voice. "The police in Boston have chalked this up as a category crime, and the guy who did it was neat and careful enough so you can't even blame them. I want at those records. If I find something, I'll check it before I bring in the cops. But that's all. If this guy could take Al, he can take me, and I'm only looking to even up the ledger. No blood feud, just let justice take its course."

  J.T. didn't believe me, but he said, "I'll have to think it over. I'll be back in my office by thirteen hundred." He pulled out a card with his name and a different direct dial number on it. "Call me around thirteen-fifteen."

  He turned and drifted off toward the door, stopping to read a plaque. I sought out a uniformed employee and was directed to the nearest spot for lunch. Soft ice cream and milk.

  I called J.T. at 1:10. He answered.

  "J.T., it's John."

  "It's set. Be here by fourteen hundred hours. Use your name, my name, and the following three-digit number. The security guard at the first public barrier you come to will call for an escort who'll bring you in."

  "Thanks, J .T."

  "See you at fourteen hundred."

  I hung up and looked again at my watch. Time for a couple of quick drinks but I decided against it. I was about to do something that two drinks, two dozen drinks, wouldn't ease for me. Something I never thought I'd do. Ever.

  I was going back to Vietnam. My escort was a young MP, slim, female, and black. She had smiled when her counterpart at the barrier had checked my ID and confirmed me to her. She introduced herself as PFC Waller, and off we went.

  She threaded us through seemingly endless hallways, small pockets of humanity appearing in various civilian and military uniforms. We took half-left turns at indistinguishable corridors and subcorridors. In less than three minutes, I was hopelessly lost.

  "Should I be dropping a trail of pebbles?" I said, then dodged a navy officer whose head was buried in a file he was carrying, choirboy style.

  Waller laughed graciously. "You get used to it after a while, sir."

  "How long have you been in?"

  "A little over a year now."

  "Planning on making it a career?" _

  She gave me a cautious sidelong glance to be sure I was serious. "Probably not, sir. I'm more interested in data processing."

  "I see." Whenever someone brings up computers, I tend to acknowledge the topic and then cease all conversation. My reticence was covered by her abrupt stop at a door bearing only a room number. She knobbed it open.

  We entered a small suite of offices. A woman, probably my telephone partner, barely glanced at us as we walked past her toward a desk occupied by a youngish, male staff sergeant who looked tall sitting down. He had reddish brown hair, close-cropped. As we approached, he rose. And rose.

  I seemed to recall a six-foot-six maximum height, with a waiver for up to two additional inches. I guessed he needed the waiver. His name tag said "Casey." "The Colonel will see you, Mr. Cuddy." He winked at Waller. "Thank you, Waller."

  Waller nodded, said "Sir" to me as a good-bye, and left us.

  Casey knocked on an office door to his left. He waited for an affirmation from inside before he opened it. "Sir, Mr. Cuddy."

  "John! Good to see you!" I entered the room. J.T. sprang up and came forward as though we were brothers reunited after twenty years of separation.

  "Thank you, Sergeant," said J.T.

  "Yessir." Casey backed out and closed the door as J.T. pumped my hand a few times for effect and then motioned to one of several steel, green-cushioned government office chairs in front of his desk. We sat.

  "Well," he said. "This hasn't been easy."

  "Especially on such short notice."

  "Right. I had to pull strings and call in favors." J.T. looked a bit distracted, checked a desk calendar. "I have a meeting at fifteen hundred across the District, so I've got to rush. I have all the files from a month before A1 and I got to Saigon to a month after he left. That's roughly September '67 to December '68. The files are chronological?

  "I remember."

  J.T. frowned and sank a little lower.

  "I suppose you wondered how come I didn't make the funeral."

  I shook my head. "Actually, no, not until you told me you'd read about it. I just assumed it wouldn't be enough publicized for you to be aware of it."

  "We've been busy, John. Pressure-cooker busy down here. I just didn't have time to come, or even return your calls."

  I held up my hand. "You don't owe me any explanations. Or apologies."

  "But I owe . . . owed Al. Like you said. Everybody did. He was a great guy."

  "Yeah, he was."

  There was an awkward silence as J.T. stared past me.

  "Your meeting?" I said.

  "Huh?"

  "Your crosstown meeting. At three o'clock?"

  "Oh, damn! Yes, thanks." He tapped a buzzer on his phone, and Casey's head was in the partially opened door before the buzzer sound had died away.

  "Sir?”

  "I'll get Mr. Cuddy set up next door. You get the car and pull 'round to Bravo Seven. I'll see you there in five minutes."

  "Yessir."

  "And Case?"

  "Yessir?"

  "Get Ricker to relieve you on the desk."

  "Yessir." Casey's head was gone.

  J.T. got up and moved toward the door. I did likewise.

  J .T. said, "Everything's in the next room, kind of a conference room. You can take notes, but no photocopying, understood?"

  "Understood. "

  We walked out his door and into the next room.

  "I'll be gone the rest of the day with Casey and," he dropped his voice, "the receptionist is an airhead. But if you have any questions, Sergeant Ricker can field them. Be sure Ricker leads you out when you're finished."

  "How late can I stay?"

  "Eighteen hundred. I'm sorry, but no later."

  "I appreciate it, J.T."

  "Yeah." He gave me a quick smile and handshake; "Just keep the door closed, O.K.?"

  "O.K. I'll call you tomorrow."

  "Right." He sighed and swung his head around the room. "I hope it's here," he said and left.

  I closed the door behind him. I tugged off my suit jacket, undid my collar button, and pulled down my tie.

  The room measured about ten by fifteen. There was a slate-green rectangular table with a half dozen pencils, two pads, and some ice water and paper cups. There were five chairs. The space for a sixth chair was occupied by an olive-drab file cabinet with five drawers. It would
contain fifteen months of operational paperwork for our MP unit in Saigon. Somewhere in there was Al's killer. Maybe.

  I rolled up my sleeves and yanked open the top drawer. The files were packed in tightly. I levered ten out and sat down with them. I poured and drank one cup of ice water. Then I opened the first file and stepped back fourteen years and as many thousand miles.

  SIXTEEN

  -•-

  AT FIRST IT WAS ALMOST AS IF I WERN'T READING THE reports but translating them from army jargon and abbreviations to real English. I went slowly through the first files, refreshing myself with designations and geography. Then, like the return of a foreign language, it came back to me in the clear, my brain automatically decoding the cryptic report texts. I riflled through the simpler, ordinary stuff of traffic accidents, drug overdoses, fights, and petty thefts that happened just before Al got to Saigon. I lingered over two reports.

  In the first, a quartermaster staff sergeant named Kevearson was killed shooting it out with MPs raiding a heroin refinery. He turned out to be the entrepreneur. The MP in charge was a Captain David L. Bonner. I remembered Al mentioning him once. I wrote down Kevearson, Ronald B., then Bonner's name.

  In the second report, an MP sergeant named DeLong had siphoned seized heroin from an evidence locker, replacing it with flour. Al later testified at the court-martial, but I couldn't recall why. DeLong, Alvin B.

  I reached the point chronologically when Al and J.T. had hit Saigon. There were dozens of major crimes in the files for the eight weeks before I arrived. Several had A1's name on them.

  One was the shooting of a pace trooper named Brewer by a bar girl. He apparently wanted things a bit kinkier than she tolerated. The report suggested he had lived. Brewer, Delvin J. I remembered his name for some reason, so I wrote it down.

  J .T. and Al both covered a second lieutenant in the infantry who went AWOL. Brought him in from the boonies, living with a Vietnamese woman outside a formerly French plantation. How the hell he had avoided being killed by Charlie in the three nights out there was beyond me. There was a photo in the file of the lieutenant. He looked miserable. Court martialed, imprisoned back in the States. Named Ralser, Lionel P. Write it down. A guy who would risk living in the bush was capable of anything.