Recurrence

by Dave Norem

  “You will have to accept that you may never get full personal satisfaction. No one person can totally control anything in the Army, not even the Inspector General. If you’re still not satisfied after my efforts, I’ll help you get an appointment with him.”

  John agreed and got his PFC stripe in less than two weeks. He was surprised to receive a pay voucher with it for the time that the promotion was overdue. He knew also that there was a stigma attached to him that might diminish after he got his next assignment, but it would still take years to disappear completely if he stayed in the Army. Nevertheless, he made it a point to intercept Captain Nagaya and thank him personally before moving on.

  He had been expecting orders that would send him to Vietnam. Instead, even though he had just over a year of active duty left, his orders were for Nurnberg, Germany. He had fallen through a crack in the system.

  The enemies he’d made had friends though. They were well ahead of him when he reached Germany. His pay records had disappeared beforehand, and he had no choice but to accept a fixed partial-pay every month. He also had to solicit transportation to the nearby town of Fuerth to get it. This continued for the duration, and he never did receive all of his pay.

  He also knew that qualifying as expert at this assignment might help in dispelling the troublemaker image he’d acquired. He decided that, rather than submit completely, he would test the waters by qualifying as sharpshooter with both rifle and pistol.

  While his platoon leader and the company staff appeared satisfied but not elated, no issue was made of his scores. He believed that at least a few of them knew he was capable of consistent expert ratings. He maintained the sharpshooter ratings, and identical scores, for the duration of his tour.

  Other things dogged his first few months in Germany too. An operations sergeant named Stimes persistently laid blame on him for things he hadn’t done. Stimes once openly accused him of vandalism in front of a group of lower-ranking officers and several NCOs. The ploy was to get him to assault the NCO, but John ate the words and didn’t take the bait.

  Whenever there was an unattended inspection, or when they were gone on maneuvers, some of his gear would wind up missing or damaged. As a result, his first sergeant reprimanded him and denied him privileges. Worse, the perpetrators labeled him as a Fuck-up. The attempts to get him in trouble were so blatant that the junior officers and some of the technical NCOs began to take his side. They interceded against the harassment until it almost stopped.

  John endured and tracked the equipment manipulations to an alcoholic supply sergeant named Emery. Others helped by supplying him with information, and he found out that Emery, who had a wife in the states, kept a woman in an apartment in the city. He also had a racket going with two lower ranking NCOs tied to a black-market ring.

  They were pilfering from the barracks of units that were on temporary duty, or on maneuvers, or from select targets like himself. They also falsified documents of goods received and sold clothing, tools, vehicle parts, and gear. A German merchant in concert with them moved it to others on the black market.

  A warrant officer who didn’t like Emery or Stimes helped John to meet and establish a relationship with Emery’s woman, Monika. Monika was only two years older than John’s nineteen. Before long, he was sleeping with her two or three nights a week and using Emery’s personal stash of food and beer in the paid-for apartment.

  While there, he found documents that were proof of the black-market tie in. Try as he might though, he could never establish a connection to the operations sergeant or back to either Fields or his previous platoon leader.

  John had stayed in contact with Lewis, who had rotated to a signal depot in Illesheim. Lewis had been an accountant for several small businesses, and he agreed to help John sort out the documents. They devised a scheme that exposed Emery and his two cohorts. It also left a window of financial opportunity for John and Lewis: at minimal risk but on a smaller scale.

  Neither of them was foolish enough to confide in the woman or others in their own companies. Monika really didn’t care what happened to Emery, as long as someone else paid the rent. She knew that before long John would be gone too, and then she would have to find another benefactor. She acknowledged the life she lived.

  Emery had disappeared from the company. Official word was of a hardship transfer due to his wife’s ill health. Rumors were of a demotion and an undesirable discharge, restricting his pension. John and Lewis toasted his downfall.

  Within a month of Emery’s departure, Stimes, the operations sergeant, rotated out too. John was still unable to determine the connection or even find out where the man went. He was still stuck with the partial pay and a delay in his next promotion, but the harassment and shit-detail assignments ended completely.

  The private endeavor he’d gained with Lewis grew slightly when they deciphered more of the documents, some of them written in French. This led to another German merchant and a small operation skimming merchandise from the main area PX, which was otherwise inaccessible to their lower ranks.

  With the help of some more friends, they were able to fill the void left by some of the premature transfers. Coupled with the quartermaster merchandise scheme, this supplemented their incomes nicely. John maintained his relationship with Martin Levine too and began using him as a stateside banker, the first of many to come.

  Both he and Lewis were smart enough to know it was too risky to spend the extra money while they were still in Germany or to try to maintain control over the operation once they rotated back to the states. To pass on or sell the operation would be nearly as risky. Others would take over through attrition once they stepped aside.

  Some had already tried to muscle away part of their business but didn’t really know whom they were dealing with. John and his cohorts hadn’t ignored security and had recruited willing military enforcers to maintain status quo.

  Frank Cramer was working with Army personnel records when John met him. He was a heist man with his own network, but he became one of John’s enforcers on an independent basis. He was also an accountant by trade and was successful at manipulating money, no matter whose it was.

  He was five foot nine inches tall, and wiry, but his appearance was deceiving. His shirts hung loosely on him from his broad shoulders, making him appear skinny to the untrained eye. He had thick, wavy honey-blond hair and laughing light-brown eyes. At his weight of one hundred and sixty pounds, he was actually solid muscle. His biceps and forearms were like rocks when he clenched his big knuckled fists; the hardest John had ever felt.

  His disarming grin had fooled far too many women and lulled too many men into relaxing their guard. Frank Cramer liked to fight, and his size belied his strength and ability. He fooled those who knew him by occupation even more. He craved the excitement of carrying out one of his own planned robberies or a raid on a competitor. Some knew of him as Creamer-Cramer, from his smooth-as-cream way of talking and the successes of his criminal enterprises. They usually went off without a hitch.

  When John first met him though, it was because of one that hadn’t. Cramer was involved in fixing military transfers and promotions. You could buy the transfer and, for more money, when you reached your new location, you were at a higher rank. He also loaned GIs money on a monthly basis at high interest rates. John had seen him around the base and occasionally in the bars and had heard of the transfer scheme.

  While out carousing one night, John left an off-post rock-and-roll bar by the back door and found Cramer in the alley confronted by two men. From what he heard, John concluded that they were unhappy about the amount of interest both had paid Cramer over a several-months period. They’d joined forces in an attempt to gain restitution. Only then did John realize what was going on.

  Cramer had already exchanged blows with the men and was putting up a good fight, but he was still up against two larger men. A middleweight up against two heavyweights
flashed through John’s mind. He had never seen either of the men before, and he was close behind one of them before any of them noticed him. The man, a solid-looking redhead, was quite a bit heavier and slightly taller than John. He was advancing on Cramer with a broken bottle while his friend was trying to circle behind him while wiping an already bloodied face.

  John added his five-foot-ten, one-hundred-and-seventy pounds to the mix and hit the redhead in the back of the neck as hard as he could with his right fist. The man dropped like a rock, face down. His buddy, who was about Cramer’s height but stocky, ran from the alley.

  With blood from his nose plastered all over one side of his face, Cramer looked warily across the fallen antagonist. “Well what?” he asked, unsure of John’s intentions.

  John grinned and blew on his knuckles. “Two against one, that’s not fun. Besides, I’ve seen you around some but not them. Anyway, a middleweight and a light-heavyweight just took out two heavyweights.”

  Cramer dropped his hands to his sides. “Well hell, let’s go somewhere else so I can get cleaned up. I’m buying the rest of the night. What the hell did you hit him with?”

  “Just my fist,” John laughed.

  As he said this, the bottle wielder was struggling to regain his feet. Without speaking, Cramer kicked him in the ribs hard enough to roll him over. John heard a loud pop with the kick as the man grunted loudly and then moaned. He guessed that at least two of the man’s ribs were broken. Cramer was wearing civilian clothes over his spit-shined combat boots.

  Cramer searched through the man’s pockets and felt inside his belt and around the waistline of his pants. He removed a wallet, glanced inside, and fanned through the money.

  “Shit, only thirty-two dollars.”

  He handed John sixteen dollars of it.

  John liked Cramer’s style. He was from the Midwest too and they became friends, staying in contact over the years on both personal and business levels. They both remained independent but occasionally one or the other would call about some type of opportunity, either available or needed. All of them that John became involved in with him were successful.

  After their return to Stateside, Cramer never stayed long in one place and never revealed his local base of operation or his sources of information. John always reached him by calling a Cleveland, Ohio, answering service and leaving the name John Jones: with a number for a return call.

  CHAPTER 9

  John completed his tour in Germany without further incident and received his discharge in Fort Hamilton, New York. It led to two extra days of wrangling over his missing pay records. Faced with the potential of endless days of garbage details and policing cigarette butts from the grounds during the review, he accepted less than what he was due. He had to sign off before they would give him his DD-214 Form and released him.

  He took a military bus to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in the center of Manhattan, stashed his duffle bag in a locker and set out to explore the city, not sure of where he would put down roots.

  He had been corresponding only sporadically with both Mrs. Farmer and his grandfather Tilman, who had recovered from his injuries and the pneumonia. John hadn’t heard from him in several months, and he couldn’t remember which of them had written last.

  Three months before his separation, he had received a brief note from one of Mrs. Farmer’s daughters. Mrs. Farmer had passed away and the daughter wanted to know where to send his personal possessions before they sold the house and divided the property. She had left everything to her daughters, but there wasn’t much to share. He had responded, sending his condolences, and asked her to send his things to his grandfather’s address in Suffolk, Virginia.

  He walked the sidewalks, both uptown and downtown, and explored Times Square and the subway system again. The subway system now seemed tremendous in scope compared to the Strassenbahn, or streetcar system, in Nurnberg. He liked what he saw of New York well enough to stay for a few days and rented a room at the Murray Hill Hotel, not far from the Empire State Building.

  He hoped to catch up with Ross McGough and Vince Lewis, who were due to rotate home. McGough lived in New York and Lewis would be passing through on his way to Philadelphia.

  A variety of hustlers solicited him. He learned some new angles and amused himself by figuring out ways to turn the tables on them when he wished too. He was already a much more accomplished criminal than many of them. He let a few of them pull him into darkened entryways, where he left them unconscious, minus their stash. Once, three of them trapped him. He broke bones with a spring-baton that he’d bought from one of them the night before. He laughed at the irony of it when they ran off howling. He recalled his time in Germany.

  While in Nurnberg, he had been an occasional observer of scams and street crimes out of curiosity and speculation. Sex offers of all persuasions were bartered openly. Stolen jewelry, knives, tear-gas guns, and weapons such as brass knuckles, proliferated. He had seen civilians rob drunken GIs and GIs perform strong-arm robberies on civilians. At festivals, he saw even more of that in addition to burglaries of automobiles and thefts from vendor stashes.

  There were constant fights to keep the police busy, and more than once, he saw clandestine stabbings. Not long before rotating back to the states, he watched two drunken GIs break the windows out of several cars in a Volksfest parking lot and take money from purses. He followed them discretely, listening to their chatter, and heard enough to tell that they were on leave from Hamburg. When they stopped at the most remote area of the parking lot to count and divide their loot, he stepped from between parked cars and accosted them.

  “Hand it over fellas!” he commanded.

  They were both big men and several years older than John’s twenty. The nearest man stepped toward him without bothering to raise his hands. John smacked him on the side of the jaw with a set of brass knuckles he’d bought with a similar situation in mind.

  The man’s jaw popped, and he went down as if he’d been pole-axed. The second man dropped the money and yanked a knife from his waistband. He pushed a button on the hilt and the blade telescoped straight out from the handle with a solid clack of the latch.

  John feinted with a left jab and then followed with a right cross. The knuckle-duster captured the man’s attention. He swayed indecisively, dodging between the feints, but did not lunge. John kicked him hard in the crotch. As the soldier doubled over, he grabbed his wrist with both hands and twisted it up, over, and past his shoulder, forcing the knife free and into his own hand. The man fell to his knees with the other hand palm down on the ground. John stomped down on it, breaking bones. He fleetingly remembered doing the same thing to Harold Hamm.

  He leaned over, scooped up the wad of money, and growled at the man. “Fucking amateur punk, you make crime look bad. Find someone to think for you.”

  He walked away stuffing the money into his pocket, the blood pounding in his veins from the rush of it. He knew that what he’d done was stupid and not really worth the risk. He resolved to stay in control of himself in the future and to find better ways of obtaining money.

  He hung around New York for several days, riding the subways to each of the boroughs, the Staten Island Ferry, and the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. He was disgusted at the amount of trash and the multitude of condoms floating in the bay. He turned down questionable offers of sex, including group sex, from both men and women, and knocked one man flat in a men’s room when the man squeezed his butt. The man had only sixty-two dollars in his wallet.

  With no word from Lewis and unable to find McGough, he relinquished his expired Indiana driver’s license in exchange for a New York driver’s license, using a street address he’d noticed in Queens.

  After deciding to move on and visit his grandfather Tilman in Virginia, he rode a Greyhound bus to Richmond. There he used a pay phone in the bus station and called William Decker in South Carolina with a request. Withi
n hours, he had a contact in Richmond who could supply him with an excellent fake Virginia driver’s license in a couple of days. He had turned twenty-one not long before and considered this a new beginning.

  He rode city buses to where the used-car dealers were. Using the personal information that would be on the fake driver’s license, he purchased a 1964 Chevrolet Chevelle, Custom Deluxe, with cash. The car was an inconspicuous tan-colored, two-door sedan, with a six-cylinder engine and an automatic transmission. He soon found it to be solid and reliable with excellent gas mileage.

  He spent his first night of waiting in a second-floor room of a cheap hotel with communal bathrooms. There were also prostitutes in residence. He saw them in the dimly lit lounge and threadbare lobby and passing with coy looks in the halls. He ignored them all.

  He stayed for a second night and, on a return trip from the lobby for a coke, he caught up with a woman in the hall who was several years older than him and not unattractive. She did not make eye contact and stopped at the door before his without glancing his way or speaking. As he passed her, he quickly decided that she was not a prostitute. He slowed just enough to see that she did not knock and that she had to open the door with a key.

  While hesitating, he recalled an instance several months back when he’d taken a Saturday afternoon nap and had the recurring nightmare. Rising from the cot when it woke him, he stumbled to his wall locker and yanked the door open to stare at his face in the mirror. His own face appeared, not the face of the man in the nightmare. It was still his own but no longer the face of a boy. The face of a man stared back at him: a man of average height, with dark brown hair and blue eyes. It was a revelation.

  “Excuse me,” John said softly.

  She straightened and looked his way cautiously while continuing to turn the key. He waited to see if she would rush into the room. When she didn’t, he continued without advancing toward her.