“Captain, I’m not at liberty to give that information.” His peevishness sounded tempered by the awareness that I outranked him.
“All right, Sergeant Johnson,” I said, “let’s start over, shall we? Who is the man in question?”
“Sergeant Lopez, sir.”
I was somewhat relieved when I heard Lopez’s name. He was an exemplary soldier and one of the hardest workers in the unit.
“And?” I asked.
“And, sir?”
“C’mon, Sergeant, tell me what this interview is all about?”
“Sir, with all due respect, I can’t divulge any information in regards to an ongoing case. You as a captain should know that.”
The word captain had a little snide lilt to it. This guy is an asshole, I thought. And Lopez was a good man, I knew that, and one of my soldiers, so I wasn’t going to give up so easily.
“Well, Sergeant,” I said, a little malice in my voice now, “tell you what. If you can’t tell me what all this is about, well, then I’m afraid I’ll just have to inform the chain of command before I send him to you.”
“Sir, that really won’t be necessary. I—”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” I cut in. “You’ll hear from me by late this afternoon.” And I hung up the phone, cutting off the defensive response about military justice and the law.
I sat for a moment at my desk and took a deep breath. I dreaded the phone calls I now had to make. First, I called Colonel Fazio, my battalion commander at headquarters, and that call went over like a sack of bricks. The second call was to my company first sergeant to get him to tell Lopez to report to my office. I figured maybe Lopez would know what this was about. Then I made a few more calls to higher command at HQ , and everyone agreed that we would cooperate and not interfere. We’d find out sooner or later what they were up to. Just as I hung up the phone, there was knock at my door. It was Lopez.
Lopez was about twenty-seven, with thinning blond hair, a clipped mustache, and a solid build. He was one of the last soldiers in the unit I would’ve expected to get into trouble. I liked him a lot. He worked hard, did his job well, often went beyond the call of duty, and obeyed the rule of my command to the letter.
“Good morning, sir, you wanted to see me?”
“Yes, come on in and close the door.” I smiled at him as he walked in, raised up slightly, closed the door behind him, and stood at parade rest. I shook my head.
“No, Sergeant Lopez, no need for that, sit on the couch.”
He walked to the couch. I noticed nothing that would indicate he knew why he’d been called into my office, which only confirmed my suspicion that something else was going on. There was no point wasting any more time.
“All right, Sergeant, let me get right to the point. CID called earlier, and they want me to take you to their command post for an interview ASAP.”
Lopez’s face turned pale, which concerned me. He was normally an easygoing, cheerful guy—straightforward, I’d always thought, forthright. If he knew what it was they had on him, he’d tell me. That’s what I thought, at least. Now it appeared he knew what was going on and was terrified. And apparently he didn’t plan on letting me in on it, which was totally out of character for him.
“So is there something you want to tell me, Sergeant?”
“Sir, I haven’t done anything wrong . . . that I know of.” His voice quivered just slightly, and I suddenly began feeling a little sorry for the guy, though I had no idea why.
“That you know of?” My tone was impatient and annoyed, though I was truly baffled now. “Listen to me, Sergeant. I am going to find out eventually what it is they’re looking for. So whether it’s you or them, I’m going to get to the bottom of it. At this point I might be the only person who can still help you. But the only way I can do that is if you tell me what’s going on. These guys don’t play games, Lopez.”
He studied me for a moment, carefully, as if he were searching for something, and I thought he was about to open up when suddenly he simply dropped his head into his hands and said nothing.
“Okay, Sergeant. I hope for your sake it’s all a mistake. I gave you an opportunity to confide in me and you passed on that chance. Fine. You will report to CID tomorrow at thirteen thirty hours. Have a good day.”
He saluted me and walked out, turning his head as he passed through the door and looking back at me with a strange sad look on his face.
Lopez bore heavily on my mind all the next day. That look on his face as he walked out of my office haunted me. It had felt like a wordless accusation. I decided to become proactive in the investigation. He was a good man, after all, and he’d worked hard for me under my command, earning, at the very least, I thought, the benefit of my doubt. So I went to CID.
I had never been in the CID building. It was quite an impressive place. As I entered the sleek, modern lobby, I was reminded of one of the obscene truths of military life—that the farther away from the front lines you get, the more luxurious things become. There were fancy glass partitions and doors and high-tech security cameras all over the place. If it hadn’t been for the twelve-foot holding cell, the place could’ve been mistaken for any big-city office. I was relieved to see that they weren’t holding Sergeant Lopez in the cell. It was empty, shining in the soft glare of the indirect lighting.
I slid my ID card into the lock. I was sure that the card had been scanned and that my every move was now being digitally captured by one or all of the cameras. The door clicked open, and I was greeted silently by an attractive woman about my age, a civilian, I was convinced, judging from the expensive clothes she wore. She led me down a pristine white corridor to a sparsely appointed waiting room. A TV attached to the wall in the upper-right-hand corner of the room was tuned into CNN and muted. As I sat down and looked up at the set, I noticed yet another camera situated above the TV, aimed directly at me. A red light at the base of the camera glowed brightly.
The room spooked me. Poor Lopez must be terrified, I thought. I tried not to look at the camera but found myself increasingly self-conscious about it, imagining myself centered on some screen amid a bank of black-and-white monitors, being watched by a group of strangers. Then a man of medium height with closely cropped hair entered and extended his hand to me. He wore a button-down Izod shirt and khaki pants. I felt as if I’d tumbled down the rabbit hole and found myself in some alternate army universe.
“Captain McGowan, pleasure, sir, I’m Sergeant First Class Johnson. Thank you for coming to pick up Sergeant Lopez.” Here was my officious CID sergeant in the flesh.
Of course I hadn’t come by simply to pick up Lopez. He didn’t even know I was here. But it was clear that that’s what Izod Johnson thought. It was clear he intended simply to fetch Lopez for me without any sort of explanation. It was clear he felt I had no right to one. His whole demeanor seemed condescending to me, to me personally and to my rank as well, and I almost snapped and dressed him down right there. But I held myself back, though not entirely.
“Sergeant Johnson, before you leave, I must tell you how concerned I am and have been; you know protocol does not warrant a senior officer,” I pointed to myself and smiled, “to relieve himself from post to drive an NCO back to base, needless to say, and I’m sorry for repeating myself, but I have the utmost concern for the matter at hand.”
I’d drawn up very close to the man. I wanted to make it clear to him that no matter how deep his jurisdiction ran, he wasn’t leaving the room without briefing me on the situation. He thought for a moment, then curtly nodded his head.
“Very well, Captain, have a seat.”
We sat. He folded his legs and clasped his hands on top of them.
“Sir, there has been an ongoing investigation into a prostitution ring on post.”
I let out a sigh of relief. The most he’d be looking at behind that charge would be an Article 15, a reduction in rank, perhaps, and the whole thing would stay in-house. There would be no court-martial. But Johnson wasn’
t finished.
“We have uncovered and broken up the ring, which has been doing business out of Moon Hall. The prostitutes were doing an organized business out of the bar in the lobby, sir. During the course of the investigation we discovered that the ring was not only female—” He stopped talking abruptly. It took me a moment to register what he’d just said. Finally, I said, “So, what is it that you’re saying, Sergeant, that Lopez is what—a prostitute?”
“Prostitute, sir? No sir, not exactly. We set up a sting to try to lure in some of the male prostitutes. We, in fact, accomplished our mission and arrested several soldiers. We questioned them and acquired evidence that they were involved in procuring pornography.”
The more he tried to explain it to me, the more confused I became. I forged on.
“So Lopez is a pornographer?”
“Not exactly, sir.”
I’d had all I could take. I took a deep breath and looked Johnson straight in the eye.
“Give me the charge that you intend to levy against my sergeant; that’s all I want from you, Sergeant Johnson.”
Johnson looked a little startled. He hesitated before speaking. Then, giving in, reluctantly, he said, “Sir, we questioned the subjects who were arrested, and they gave us the names of everyone who was involved. Through this process we were able to ascertain those soldiers who are known to be . . . homosexual.”
Now I thought I might explode. “What is the charge, Johnson?” I said, raising my voice, still looking directly into his eyes. “For the last time, what are you charging Lopez with?” Then, slowly, and more intensely, “What is the charge, Sergeant?”
“There is no charge as of yet. He’s part of the inquiry is all, sir, however . . . there is the homosexual issue, sir, and that is where it gets a little complicated.”
I stood up. I now had what I needed. There was no charge against my sergeant.
“We believe all of the homos should be chaptered, as I’m sure you do, sir.”
I looked away from him. This last bit seemed unnecessary, as if he’d thrown it in in order to prove that his own sexuality was beyond reproof, that he was on the winning team. Replace “homo” with “Commies,” and that sentence could have been torn straight from the pages of recent history, the 1950s, say, when unmitigated hatred of communism and Communists was seen as a badge of one’s patriotism.
Who knows what Johnson really felt? I think I might even have been able to respect him a little had I thought his antigay rhetoric was based in real conviction. But he was just spouting the party line, there was no doubt about that, and it infuriated me.
How easy it would be for him to end Lopez’s career! Hardworking, loyal, honest Sergeant Lopez—who’d probably spent his entire life thinking he had to compensate for his sexuality by overachieving, by always being the best little boy in whatever world he happened to find himself—was now going to be repaid by having his professional life destroyed by some mediocre, goose-stepping, Izod-wearing bureaucrat.
“The prostitutes and pornographers will certainly be chaptered; now we are going to need some sort of administrative help to chapter the rest of the . . . faggots, sir.”
I tried to appear indifferent and wholly detached.
“Are we done here, Sergeant? I’m very busy.”
“Yes, sir, Lopez is two doors to the right,” he said, sneering a little now, and then, as if he’d just thought of a funny joke, he added, “You can take the queer with you, or he can walk back.” Hearing this tone and seeing the flash of hatred in Johnson’s beady little eyes made me think I might have been mistaken. Perhaps it was real conviction. The way he tried to lure me in with this last remark, to collaborate in a perceived shared hatred of gay men, disgusted me. I was used to hearing this kind of talk, but I’d rarely heard it at this level, rarely heard the tone of voice Johnson had used, drenched in so much hard-boiled contempt.
He stuck out his hand to shake mine. I looked down at it but kept my own hands at my sides. After simply staring at it for a few seconds, I lifted my head up and looked Johnson in the face. The look on my face must have been scary because Johnson took a step back, as if he felt threatened. Apparently it finally occurred to him that he was in the presence of a superior officer who didn’t like him very much, so he briskly stepped back, wished me a good day, and hurried from the room.
For the most part we rode back to the base in silence, Lopez and I. When he first got in he said to me, quietly, “I know I haven’t done anything wrong, sir . . . nothing,” and I turned my head toward him briefly and nodded to let him know I believed him. Of course, it wasn’t what he’d done, it’s what he was that they were having a problem with. If that isn’t un-American, well, I don’t know what is.
I felt bad for the guy. And the fact that I couldn’t say anything about myself, the irony of that, was just incredibly depressing. Here I was, a gay man who was probably going to be asked to initiate the persecution of another gay man. Could things get any worse? How could I believe in this army? I tried to imagine what he must be going through. And the realization that it could just as easily be me, that it one day might be me, was sobering, to say the least. I feared for Sergeant Lopez and for what I might be asked to do. Was it possible to remain in the army as a gay man and still maintain one’s integrity? I was beginning to see how impossible that was. I was beginning to see just how compromised I might up end up becoming.
The very next morning there was a message for me to meet Colonel Fazio at HQ. I had my normal horrific four-mile torture session and made my way back to the comfort of my office, where I showered and changed, and when I emerged from the bathroom Colonel Fazio was sitting on the couch in my office, sipping coffee from a plastic foam cup. I was supposed to have met him at his office at nine, but my office was on his way, so he figured he’d just drop by. I smiled as he lifted up a brown paper bag with another cup of coffee in it for me.
“Thank you, sir. This is a surprise, sir. I was just on my way to see you.”
Fazio smiled. He was in amazing shape. He could outrun any twenty-year-old on the base. He was tall, about six foot two inches, with gray hair cut very short. He reminded me of the actor Sam Elliot. He was a great guy, easy to talk to, with an excellent sense of humor, and I thought of him as my mentor.
“So, Jeff, you had quite the day yesterday,” he said, blowing on his steaming coffee, then chuckling a little before taking a sip from the cup. Before I had the chance to answer he said, “Tell me, Jeff, what kind of soldier is your motor sergeant?”
“A good one, sir. He works hard. Never had a problem with him.” I waited for his response. I figured if anyone knew the right way to handle this, Colonel Fazio would.
“Really?”
I looked up from my cup and noticed that the colonel was busying himself with clipping the end of a black Maduro cigar. He then lit it and casually blew out a thick column of smoke. I wasn’t sure how to answer the question, so I said nothing.
“So how’s his section doing?”
His eyes followed a particularly graceful ring of smoke up to the ceiling, then they slowly trailed down and landed squarely on me. I smiled somewhat guardedly, and just as I was about to speak he broke in again, “So, Jeff, what’s up with this bust, anyway? What’s going on? What’d they say they’re looking for?” Like the rest of us, he didn’t like or trust any of the CID people.
“They made multiple arrests, sir. Apparently there was pornography involved.” I shrugged my shoulders.
“Seems that this mess has made its way up the chain of command to the corps commander; apparently one of these”—he considered his choice of words carefully—“little queers got an outside advocacy group involved, you know this Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell horse shit and all. There is the potential for some serious blowback behind it all.” He laughed again and winked at me, adding, “No pun intended . . . so the process has been slowed down considerably.”
“The process, sir?”
He raised his eyebrow at me, then b
lew another ring of smoke in my direction.
“The process of safeguarding the army. You don’t think we’d allow them to stay in, do you?”
“Absolutely not, sir,” I answered much too quickly. In all my life, I’d never felt more ashamed of myself than I did at that very moment.
“So tell me about his performance, Jeff.”
“He’s an excellent worker, sir, never had a problem with him, and the rest of the troops like him.”
“Late?”
“No, sir.”
“There is talk that the subjects who were outted—you know, the ones who weren’t coconspirators—are not going to get sectioned out. We’re not supposed to ask, and this guy certainly didn’t tell. Needless to say we’re going to have to . . . deal with the situation.”
Suddenly the whole thing became clear to me. The colonel expected me to develop a pattern of offenses against Sergeant Lopez, to find fault wherever I could and create a paper trail. This trumped-up paper trail, created by me, would eventually carry enough weight to bring him down. It was a crushing blow to hear this coming from the man whom I’d admired for so long and who’d come to represent for me all that I thought was good in the army.
I thought maybe I could appeal to his reason. “I don’t want to sound like I’m not a team player, sir,” I said, “but I’m just not getting it.”
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