Official Privilege

by P. T. Deutermann

  He’s pretty smooth and convincing when he wants to be.”

  “That’s probably what she thought at one time,” Mal achi observed. “Just before her Skivvies came off.”

  “Please. The girl’s dead, for God’s sake. Anyway, I actually think he talked the young man down. He said he would use all the resources at his command to confirm that it had been an accident.”

  “What’d the kid say to that?”

  “He said that he’d give us—that’s a good sign, by the way: He was depersonalizing it at the end—he’d give us a week. I had the impression that as my principal talked to him, the kid was beginning to realize whom he’d been talking to in a loud and disrespectful voice, and it was beginning to scare him a little. He’s only a lieutenant junior grade.”

  “Okay.” Malachi nodded. “I have no further information on what the Traffic Bureau is doing, if anything.

  My guess is they’re going to stick with the old ‘do the right thing’ dodge. They’ll issue a public statement: Whoever ran the girl down, turn yourself in and we’ll discuss degrees of accident. If we gotta come find you, it becomes something ugly.”

  The captain was shaking his head in exasperation.

  “That doesn’t do us any good. I’m going to have to think of something else.”

  “Can this kid find out what was really going on?”

  “My principal says that he and Miss. Hardin were extremely discreet. But as an active-duty officer, the lieutenant can, of course, get into the Pentagon building and into the CHINFO offices. But unless she had some close friends there in her own office whom he can get to, and they’re people she confided in, and if they’re willing to talk to him—a lot of ifs and ands. What I really wish is that the son of a bitch would just disappear, go back to Philadelphia or wherever he came from, and butt the hell out of something that doesn’t really concern him.”

  Malachi nodded and smiled. “I guess I can relate to that,” he said, looking at his watch. He would definitely have to go see Angelo up in Philly.

  angelo fiori had gotten really fat. He was moon faced, triple-chinned, and his suit made him look like a shiny dark blue sausage. Malachi remembered that when he had first met Angelo in Saigon, he was already tending to fat, beginning to pop out of his wrinkled sergeant’s uniform and always mopping perspiration in the punishing tropical heat. But now he was a miniature Pillsbury Doughboy. Malachi tried not to stare as they slid into a booth at Fiori’s in South Philly, He felt the table move in his direction as Angelo squeezed in, puffing with the effort.

  Malachi had a headache after the flight up from Washington, and perhaps from the night before.

  “So, Angelo, you ever hear from any of the boys?” Malachi asked, adjusting his dialect so as not to sound so much like Washington. He wondered if they had Harper hundred here. Probably not; probably all they had was god damned wine.

  Angelo was scratching the back of his neck. “Nah.

  One of my cousins, Salvatore, he’s up in the Apple, but the rest of the guys, most of ‘em are all retired, down south somewheres. How about you?”

  “I see some guys from time to time in D.C. Gal lagher, Monroney, Jackson—you remember, Jackson, that big guy, sergeant first class at the truck depot, heisted all those deuce and a halfs, then lost all the keys?”

  “Who could forget. I thought goddamn Monroney was gonna kill him.”

  Malachi laughed. “He would have, too, ‘cept Jackson got caught in a curfew violation and was in the stockade out there at Tan Son Nhut when Monroney came looking.”

  Angelo was toying with the bread sticks. “We did all right, those days.

  I gotta tell ya, these days it’s tougher, lots tougher.”

  “The feds getting organized?”

  “Yeah, that, and these fuckin’ kids nowadays; they got no sense of organization, you know? It’s all gangs this and gangs that, the blacks going’ totally crazy with all this disrespect warfare shit. You can’t make no fuckin’ sense outta territories or nothin’. It’s a pisser.

  You wanna order? I’m starvin’.”

  Malachi nodded and Angelo signaled the maitre d’, who came trotting over, a waiter in tow. Stuffing a bread stick in his mouth, Angelo asked Malachi what he wanted to eat. Malachi told him to order for both of them, it being his joint. Angelo rattled away in Italian to the maitre d’ and the waiter, who listened without writing anything down. The maitre d’ nodded, left, then returned with an opened bottle of Chianti and a bottle of cold mineral water before disappearing again. The restaurant was crowded, but their booth gave them quite a bit of privacy, which Malachi took to be a sign of Angelo’s importance. In Saigon, Angelo had been considered long on cunning, if a bit short on brains.

  One night, Angelo had been caught up in a bar fight in which a Vietnamese woman had been knifed with what looked very much like an Army knife. Malachi had taken the incident call, then had managed to drop another knife at the scene, thereby clouding the evidence.

  Monroney had then paid off some white mice, the national police, and the issue had gone away, leaving Angelo firmly in Malachi’s debt.

  With the waiter gone, Angelo signaled with his eyebrows that he was ready to listen. Malachi lowered his voice.

  “So,” he said, “there’s this guy, a Navy guy, over in the shipyard. I need him to get some religion. He’s been messing around with a client of mine down in D. C., and I need him to get the message that it’s time to butt out, get his nose out of other people’s business.”

  “So what kinda guy is this? You said a Navy guy?”

  “An officer—a black officer, a lieutenant junior grade. See, something happened down in D. C., and this lieutenant, he’s making noises like my client had something to do with it. Which he didn’t, okay? But this kid doesn’t listen to reason. Believe me, we’ve talked to him. But all he comes back with are threats. So I was wondering if you had some guys down in that shipyard could maybe go see him, scare the living shit out of him, make him be quiet.”

  Angelo finished up the bread sticks without replying and poured himself some wine. He tipped the bottle in Malachi’s direction, but Malachi shook his head. He hated wine. Angelo tried some wine, put the glass down, and wiped his mouth with his napkin.

  “Yeah, we got some people who can do that. We in a hurry, or what?”

  “Yeah, a little bit of a hurry. This guy’s talking about going to the press, the little shit. So, this week, if it could be managed.”

  Angelo nodded solemnly. “In the shipyard, you say— this a yardbird?”

  Malachi sighed mentally. Angelo wasn’t paying very good attention. “No.

  A Navy guy. An officer—a young black lieutenant junior grade. He’s assigned to a ship over there, the USS Luce. He’s the assistant supply officer or something like that.”

  Angelo looked around the room casually and then nodded slowly. “Yeah, I think that can be managed.

  What’s this all about, or do I wanna know?”

  “I’m just taking care of a problem for a client. This client is an important guy down in D. C., and this guy, this lieutenant, is putting some heat on the client. Over the guy’s love life, if you can believe it.”

  “So what’s the message, exactly?”

  “Keep your nose out of your sister’s affairs; who she’s been seeing is none of your business, and when you start talking about going to the papers, you might be shortening your life expectancy. Something like that.”

  Malachi declined to tell Angelo that the sister in question had just had her own life expectancy shortened.

  Angelo nodded again, drinking some more wine.

  “And that’s what you do nowadays, you take care a shit like this for—whaddaya call ‘em, clients? After all that money we made over there in the Nam?”

  “Yeah. It’s not the money—like you said, we made plenty, and I’ve still hung on to most of it. But yeah, ll that’s what I do down there. I kind of like D. C., you know? It’s sleazy, but they’re sleaze with
class most of the time. What I really like is when these picture-perfect Washington weenies, these great men with their thousand-dollar suits and their executive assistants and all that high-and-mighty shit, get their asses in a crack and then have to come to guys like me to unscrew it.

  And the money’s pretty good besides. Anyway, this little deal—the client himself doesn’t exactly know how his problem is going to be taken care of. And his people don’t know about it, either.”

  “So, this ain’t a contract deal—this is on your nickel?”

  “Right. See, this lieutenant can maybe put me in the shit, too, he tries hard enough to do my client. That’s why I’m up here, on my own, so to speak. This boy desperately needs to see the light.”

  Angelo, having finished off the bread sticks, was looking around the table to see what else could be eaten. He poured some more wine. “Yeah,”

  he said over his glass. “I got it. I think we can work something out.

  We’ve definitely got some guys in the yard down there. We run some, you know, low-level shit down there, materials mostly, and of course we got the big unions, the metal benders, guys like that, and the scrap haulers. The unions keep some animals around to keep everything peaceful.” He smiled for a moment at the image of peace on the labor front. “Some a those guys in Washington, they’re pieces a work, am I right? I see those guys on the TV, those shiny shits, two-hundred dollar hairdos, smooth as a baby’s ass, and then you hear all this shit, congressmen humping the page boys in the bathrooms, that big chairman of some shit or other—guy’s taking cash for stamps, for Chrissakes, fucking stamps! These are the guys pass the laws, tell us regular assholes how we’re gonna live?”

  “You don’t know the half of it.” Malachi snorted.

  “That’s just the shit that comes out in the papers. Guys like me, we shovel a lot more than that down the sewer.”

  “Yeah, I can believe it. Look, there’s something you gotta know here.

  These things, these deals where we send somebody around to talk to a guy, they can sometimes get outta hand, you know what I’m sayin’? Like, if it’s a guy in the business, he’ll know when to take good advice. We may still break his leg, but he knows as soon as he sees the guys what it’s all about, what can happen, and what everybody expects. But a civilian … well, shit, you don’t never know what a civilian’s gonna do, right? So I gotta be up front with you. Sometimes what starts out as a little talk can turn into a big deal, the guy don’t act right, okay? I gotta tell you that.”

  “I understand,” Malachi said. “Believe me, I know how that shit can go down.”

  “Okay, because I gotta tell you, up front like, so’s we don’t have no surprises. You know, the kinds’a guys do this shit, we’re not talkin’ math majors here, okay?”

  “I understand,” Malachi repeated. “And I guess if something was to happen, then what I gotta have is that the problem, if there is a problem, and I’m not saying there should be a problem, okay, but if there is a problem, the problem’s gotta totally goddamn disappear.”

  Angelo stared at him like a lizard for about ten seconds.

  Malachi wondered for a moment if they were talking past each other.

  “Look,” he explained. “I really don’t want the guy whacked; this isn’t like business between two families, where I need to reinforce some rules or anything. I just want him so scared that he stops even thinking about talking to anyone about what happened down in D. C., that’s all. What I think you’re talking about is a contingency, covering the bases, like, and I agree. But all I’m saying is that, if there’s a real problem, I can’t have a goddamn stiff popping up in the Delaware.”

  “Contingency,”

  Angelo said blankly.

  “Yeah. I mean, this is just good planning. But mostly I want him crapping a quart of loose prunes anytime the thought even occurs to him to go running his mouth. That’s what I really need. Look, I brought some money—ten thousand.”

  “This is your money,” Angelo said again, his little eyes unblinking.

  “Yeah. And I know what you’re going to say—that you’ll do it as a favor, memory of old times and Saigon and everything. But I want you to take it; that way, you can lay some cash out, make things go smooth, especially since it’s real short notice. It’s the least I can do, okay?”

  Angelo looked around the crowded dining room and then back at Malachi as he tried unsuccessfully to erase the glint of greed in his eyes. “Well, you’re right,” he said. “I would do it as a favor. We go back, you and me.

  You ran some slick shit in your day, and without your cover, our little thing there in Saigon wouldn’ta been so good. And I still owe you big time for that time in Cholon.”

  “Forget about it. We scratched each other’s backs pretty good over there. I don’t remember any debts.

  This is a favor, but the money … well, that’s just a little grease, make things go smoother, you know?”

  “Yeah, well, you know how to act. You always did.”

  Malachi handed over the envelope, keeping his hands below the level of the table. “Saigon was such a sweet deal,” he said. “Here. Take the money. I appreciate the hell out of it, and you never know, some guy might get a little sideways, want a bunch of money just to do his job.

  This way—”

  “Yeah. You’re right about that. Some a these guys today …” Angelo rolled his piggy eyes.

  “Right,” Malachi said. “So, the mark’s name is Har din, It. (jg) Wesley Hardin, stationed on the USS Luce, which is a destroyer. I think it’s a destroyer going through overhaul. There’s a description in the envelope.”

  Angelo nodded thoughtfully, absorbing the information.

  The envelope had magically disappeared into the folds of his voluminous coat. “Hardin, yeah, okay, I got it. And he needs an attitude adjustment. Maybe get snatched, get wrapped head to toe in duct tape, maybe get folded into a dryer, down the laundromat, and go for a little spin, something like that. Give him a little Halloween, coupla six months early. I got some people who can do that. And you need it this week.”

  “If you can, yeah, this week. I’m guessing it can’t be that hard. I mean, I’ve made some checks. He’s living aboard the ship, probably has a car he parks in the yard somewhere. I’ll bet they have a parking lot for officers, something like that. He’s single, most likely goes out at night and howls at the moon like we used to do when we were that age.

  Maybe some guys could watch the parking lot at night, and—”

  Malachi noticed that Angelo’s body was jiggling like a plastic bag full of Jell-O. Angelo was laughing at him.

  “Pretty soon you gonna be telling me how to make good pasta, hey, Malachi? You want this spade to turn white for a night, he’s gonna do it, okay?”

  “Shit. Sorry, Angelo. Yeah, absolutely. He needs to forget all about what he was doing in D.C. The whole thing’s gotta disappear right out of his mind. Poof. Like the magic dragon.”

  “Yeah. Hey, you remember those goddamn DC threes—what’d they call ‘em?

  Puff, yeah, Puff, the magic dragons. Like you just said. Had those GE electric cannons, shoot a gazillion rounds out the door.

  Looked like a horse pissin’ fire down outta the sky at night, hose down a whole province at a time. Remember those guns?”

  “Hell yes. Vulcans, they called ‘em. And I remember when you guys boosted a shipment of those Vulcans down at the docks in Saigon.”

  “Yeah, and you had to come blow up the heist so’s you could cool some CID heat that was sniffin’ around the HQ.”

  “I picked on that one because you guys—I think it was even Monroney, said he couldn’t figure out what to do with the guns after you heisted them.”

  “Yeah, we knew we couldn’t go sellin’ that shit to the VC.”

  “Right. Couldn’t have the bad guys using electric twenties to zap our own guys. That wouldn’t have been right.”

  “Absolutely.”

  They looked at each
other for a second and then laughed as the waiter showed up with their food.

  Five days after Malachi got back from Philadelphia, Angelo called. It was eleven o’clock at night, and Malachi was sitting in his kitchen, abusing some Harper and watching a movie rerun. Angelo was apologetic.

  “The deal went totally wrong, Malachi. Totally. Your guy went apeshit, is what my people are telling me. Absolutely apeshit.”

  “I know what you mean,” Malachi said, remembering the knife in the apartment. “It must run in the goddamn family.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. So what happened?”

  Angelo paused. It sounded to Malachi as if Angelo was eating something.

  “Well, they snatched him up, just like you suggested.

  At night, in that officer’s parking lot there, near Dry Dock Five. Put him in a van, sat him down between a coupla guys, work for a moving company, you know?

  They call ‘em ‘piano horses’ in the business.”

  “Big guys.”

  “Yeah, really big guys. Anyways, they went some wheres and they did some shit, and they had a little talk with your guy. Went back to the shipyard, had another little talk, let him outta the van, back in the parking lot, musta been around one in the morning, real private like.

  Anyways, he wasn’t doin’ so good, is what my guys say. But he had a big mouth on him, they said; took some time to get that big mouth under control. So, anyways, he gets about fifty feet away from the van and then starts yellin’, says he knows who sent them, gonna get that motherfuckin’ somebody or other. Guys couldn’t understand what he was sayin’—you know how it is, those people get to screamin’ like that.”