Casualties of War: The Advocate Trilgy

by Bill Mesce

  “A lot of the people in the neighborhood have boys in the service. What makes it doubly rough for them is most of these people come from the part of Italy where Salerno is. Every time she sees a Western Union scooter on the street she’s scared to death it’s either news about one of her sons, or word from the Red Cross that something happened to a relative on the other side.”

  Kneece looked at the closed door where Regina Sisto had been standing. “That’s rough,” the captain said. Harry could see from the look on his face that the captain was discovering the war was possibly a tad more complicated than it looked in the newsreels. “She seems like a nice lady.”

  “They’re all nice ladies. Now, Captain, you said this didn’t have anything to do with JAG business, so what is it I can do for you?”

  Kneece seemed relieved to be off the subject of Mrs. Sisto. “Your wife does make good coffee. Hits the spot. A mite nippy out there.” As he spoke, he reached inside his jacket pocket and drew out a small, well-creased notebook. He set it open on the table and thumbed through pages crammed with scribbling. He settled on a page bookmarked by a small photograph, the kind Harry instantly recognized as an ID photo from a serviceman’s personnel file. Kneece slid the photo out of the notebook and set it down in front of Harry

  “Oh, Christ. Armando Grassi. What’s he done now?”

  “What makes you think Lootenant Grassi is in any kind of trouble?” Kneece asked.

  “I don’t think a guy from the Criminal Investigation Corps’s office in Washington hunts me down all the way up in New Jersey to tell me Armando Grassi’s been named Man of the Year.”

  “The lootenant worked for you when you were at the London JAG, didn’t he?”

  “Colonel Ryan — he was the London JAG CO — he had the office Table of Organization set up like a law firm. The senior officers —”

  “Like you.”

  “— like me, they were the primary trial attorneys. The juniors —”

  “Like Grassi.’’

  “— right, mostly served as a pool of support staff. The seniors could draw on them as needed.”

  “Kinda rotated around to all the seniors.”

  Harry nodded.

  “And Grassi rotated around to you a coupla times.”

  “Well, you tried to avoid drawing Armando, but yeah, he was on my team a few times.”

  “Rubbed you the wrong way, sir?”

  “Let’s just say Armando Grassi wasn’t a team player.”

  “Grassi was working for you on your last case. Him and a —” Kneece consulted his scribbles. “Captain —”

  “Ricks, Peter Ricks.” Harry’s gaze dropped to his coffee.

  “That was your last London case, wasn’t it, sir?”

  “Not really a case,” Harry answered quietly. “Just an investigation.”

  Kneece flipped to another page in his notebook. “Yessir, I see that. No charges. Mind if I ask why that was? Insufficient grounds? Or —”

  “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss that case, Captain. You know JAG investigations are privileged. More coffee?” Harry’s cup was only down a few sips, but he turned to the stove, his back to the captain. “You can cable Colonel Ryan if you’d like. If he approves release of the information, fine. But I’m not —”

  “At liberty, sir, yup, I understand how that is. I already cabled Colonel Ryan. Like you say: What happened in London’s all privileged. When you were saying before about Lootenant Grassi not being a team player, I know you’re not too comfortable talking about this…” Kneece craned sideways to peer at Harry around a pair of drying pillowcases.

  Harry smiled at Kneece.

  Kneece flushed.

  At home on a Saturday morning, his ears filled with squabbling kids, Harry’s legal acuity had not been what it should. But it was coming to him now. The CIC man’s presence in his kitchen signified trouble, and Armando Grassi had always been a magnet for trouble.

  Harry realized he was being gently, obliquely, but definitely grilled. He’d conducted enough similar interrogatories to know the drill: Keep it civil, keep it roundabout, give no clue as to the true purpose. This keeps the subject from raising his defenses. He’d caught Kneece at the game, and Kneece knew he’d been caught.

  Harry returned to his chair. “OK, Captain, what exactly do you need to know?”

  “You had some problems with Lootenant Grassi?”

  Harry chuckled. “Everybody had problems with Lieutenant Grassi. Everybody has a talent, Captain. Some people play the violin, some people dance. Armando’s talent was irritating the hell out of people.”

  “How’d he do that?”

  Harry shrugged. Though no fan of Grassi, it was hard to reverse decades of living by the rule: If you have nothing nice to say about someone…

  “Maybe I can help you out here,” Kneece said. “See if any of this sounds right. You tell Grassi to go easy on something, he goes hard. You tell him to keep his trap shut, he opens it. You tell him there’s something where his nose doesn’t belong, he pokes it in.”

  “You’ve been asking around.”

  “I get the feeling this guy was as popular as a dog full of fleas.”

  “I wish I’d said that. That’s Grassi!”

  “He musta really rubbed you wrong on that last case.” “What makes you say that?”

  Kneece leafed to another page of his notebook. “Well, sir, see, there’s this medical record of you with a — Well, I can’t read all these fancy Latin names for the bones, but you’d call it a busted hand. And that same day, there’s this record for Lootenant Grassi and he’s got this busted jaw So, what I’m figuring, and you please tell me if I’m off base here…” He looked up at Harry, eyebrows raised in a question, as he laid his fist alongside his own jaw. “How’s the hand, sir?”

  Harry self-consciously flexed his right fist. “A little stiff, still.”

  “Bet the weather bothers it.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Thought it might. Got an uncle, busted his hand in a fight in some honky-tonk years ago when he was a kid. Still gets an ache. Acts up on you, try some warm towels and a little shot of brandy. I don’t know that the brandy does anything, but you just don’t care as much.”

  “Is that what this is about? Is Grassi pressing charges —”

  “Oh, no, no, sir, sorry if you got that idea, no, sir! Factually, his jaw, it’s down here as him slipping in the shower. That was just me doing a little figuring about you two. See, sir, what I’m trying to do is figure out who the loo-tenant’s enemies were.”

  “You’d do better to ask if he had any friends,” Harry told him. “You won’t have to take as many notes. Damned near everybody in the London JAG had a beef with Grassi.”

  “When was the last time you heard from the lootenant?”

  “I haven’t heard from him at all. Not since I left London.”

  “Not a word, sir?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Maybe hear about him? Maybe this Peter Ricks fella dropped you a line —”

  “I haven’t been in touch with anybody from London since I left.”

  Kneece considered this a moment. “Know where Grassi’s been all this time?”

  “I presume he’s still in England.”

  Kneece flipped to another page and shook his head. “Godthåb.” He pronounced it slowly.

  “Where the hell’s that?”

  “Greenland. So I figure somebody ’sides you in London musta been irritated as hell with Lootenant Grassi. They shipped him out as soon as he could travel. Still had his jaw wired up when they stuck him on the plane. Maybe that same person — or persons — was irritated as hell with you, too, Major, you don’t mind my saying, sir.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Well, I can’t get into that case file, that last business you were on in London, but I was told it was closed on twenty-third August. But your transfer orders were cut the morning of the twenty-second, and by that night you were on an OB
ship home. Now, factually, that’s not a lot to go on, but if I was guessing I’d say you got bumped off that case and somebody else closed it.”

  “That’s a hell of a guess.”

  “I hope that’s a compliment, sir.”

  “Like I said: I can’t discuss —”

  “I know, sir, sorry to keep poking at it. I’m just, um…” Kneece shook his head, baffled.

  “You were asking about Armando’s enemies.”

  “Yessir.”

  “That usually means…”

  Kneece showed himself master of what American gamblers call a “poker face.” He returned Harry’s gaze, his face a model of whatever-could-you-mean innocence.

  Harry looked down at the photo of Armando Grassi where it lay by his elbow. He pushed the photo back toward Kneece. “What happened to him?”

  “Armando Grassi’s dead.”

  “Yes.” Harry took a breath. “I need to ask you a favor.” Kneece nodded.

  “I’m sure my Jerry would like to hear every grisly detail.”

  “You’d like to take this outside, sir?”

  Harry nodded. As Kneece drew on his overcoat, Harry pulled his on over his robe, topped their cups off with hot coffee, then led the captain out. In the hallway, he could already hear a clatter down in the stairwell, the coal scuttle clunking along the marble-treaded stairs, and Jerry and Ricky going back and forth:

  “You’re supposed to help me with this!”

  “Nunh-unh. Daddy said for you to do it!”

  “You’re a stupid jerk!”

  “Nunh-unh. You’re a stupid jerk!”

  “You!”

  “You!”

  Harry escorted Kneece out onto the porch overlooking the concrete-topped yard, and to the seats by the windows of his flat.

  “Hey, Roosk!”

  “Hey, Fredo!” Harry called back with a wave to the boy in the yard. He was a little older than Jerry, and playfully jostling for possession of a soccer ball with a man in an odd khaki fatigue uniform. Both were olive-skinned, dark-eyed, and dark-haired. The man looked up at Harry and waved.

  “Signor Roosk, buongiorno!”

  Little Fredo seized advantage of the man’s momentary distraction to scoop the ball away with his foot. But the man swiftly reached out, grabbed Fredo by the waist of his trousers and lifted his feet clear of the ground. “You think I no see, huh?” The man looked back up to Harry. “Hey, Signor Roosk, you think this fish too small, huh? Maybe I throw him back, huh?”

  “Maybe, Cosimo.”

  Cosimo laughed, Fredo laughed, Harry laughed. Cosimo set the boy down on the ground so the dueling over the soccer ball could continue.

  Harry took one of the chairs. There were dustbins filled with food tins and bundles of tied newspapers nearby, saved for the salvage drives. Harry pulled a few of the newspaper bundles closer to use as a table and set his coffee cup down.

  “These things don’t do much for keeping you warm,” Kneece said as he pulled on his garrison cap. He jammed his hands far down in his coat pockets, but it didn’t stop his shivering.

  “You should drink your coffee before it gets cold.”

  “I suppose you being from around here, you’re inured to arctic temperatures. Before I got stationed in Washington, I’d never been any further north than Chapel Hill. Autumn came around, the trees started turning, and I got thinking, ‘Well, you know, this is mighty nice. We really been missing something down home.’ The air gets a little bite in it and that’s all right. I’m thinking it’s actually” — a grand delivery, complete with rolled r’s — “rrrather brrrracing!” Kneece pulled up his coat collar and shivered again. “Well, then it started getting cold.”

  “You should come back around in February if you want to feel something really bracing.”

  “No, thanks.” He looked away, the smile quickly fading.

  “Something on your mind, Captain?”

  “I was out of line before, making a remark about where you live, and about your neighbors and the like, and then to do it right in a fella’s own home. I don’t want you thinking my people didn’t raise me better. I apologize for any insult to your home or your neighbors.”

  “It’s already forgotten, Captain. I presume Armando Grassi didn’t fall in the bathroom this time, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

  “Not unless you know some accidental way for somebody to put a bullet through the back of his own head.”

  It was Harry’s turn to feel a chill. “When did this happen?”

  “About a week ago.”

  “You’ve been on this all that time?”

  Kneece frowned down at the man in the khaki fatigues playing with little Fredo. “What uniform is that?” he asked. “Italian Army.”

  Kneece looked to Harry, eyebrows raised.

  Harry smiled. “There’s a holding center for Italian POWs down at Dix. Cosimo was taken in North Africa. He’s a cousin to one of the families here in the building. If you’re a relative, they’ll let you take him home for the day.”

  “That’s awfully free-thinking of them.”

  “He’s no security risk. I don’t think any of the POWis are. If Cosimo is any sign, they’re a lot happier here than over there right now.” Harry squinted up into the azure sky. It was going to be a brilliant December day. “Am I a suspect?”

  “Sir?”

  “Grassi’s murder.”

  “What makes you think that, sir?”

  “You were asking about enemies, when was the last time I heard from him, and so forth.”

  “Major, sorry if that was the idea you got. Factually, unless you found yourself a way to get out to the Orkney Islands and back without anybody noticing you being gone for a coupla days, I’d say you’re in the clear.”

  “The Orkneys. Where’s that?”

  “Remember Scapa Flow?”

  Harry shrugged.

  “Remember when that U-boat torpedoed the Royal Oak back in ’39? The war’s not two weeks old, this kraut sub sneaks into the anchorage for the Royal Navy’s home fleet at Scapa Flow and nails this big British bucket? Well, that’s in the Orkneys. Just north of Scotland.”

  “I didn’t know we had people stationed there.”

  “We don’t.”

  “Then what was Grassi —”

  Kneece’s face took on an aye-there’s-the-rub expression. “Oh,” said Harry.

  “Yup,” Kneece said. “Oh.”

  As Harry mulled over this new wrinkle, a thought came to him. “We could’ve done all this on the phone.”

  “The way it looks, I’m gonna have to go on up to Greenland, see what I can find out around Grassi’s stomping grounds. Then I’m gonna have to go on to the Orkneys, see what I can sniff out there. Depending on what I find… Well, I’ve got authorization to go further.”

  “I hope they’re paying you by the mile, Captain.”

  Kneece’s eyes followed the Italian POW and young boy kicking the soccer ball in the yard below. “I went to college in North Carolina. That’s where Chapel Hill is. Like I said, except for that, I’d never been out of South Carolina ’til I got posted to D.C. Never been in a plane. Before D.C., never been in a building higher than five stories. I guess that all sounds funny to you.”

  “I’m ready for the punch line, Captain.”

  Kneece turned to Harry. “I’d like you to come with me, sir.” Harry could only imagine the reaction on his face because the next thing Kneece said was, “No, I’m not joking, Major. It’s already cleared. I’ve got the authority from Washington and permission from your CO at Dix, but it’s up to you.”

  “Why the hell would you want me —”

  “Because I may have this hotshot CIC identification card, but I’m just a country cop. Damn, Major, you’re the second-highest-ranking person I’ve ever dealt with on this job, and I already put my foot in it with you. If I wind up poking around London HQ… Major, you know the ropes. You know who’s who over there, how to deal with the big brass. You know all the ri
ght things to say, and what not to say, and to who and —”

  “Hold on a second, Captain. Believe me, you’re overestimating my —”

  “OK, then, it’s this simple.” Kneece sounded urgent, desperate. “You’ve been there. I haven’t. You knew Grassi. I didn’t. I need your help.”

  Harry shook his head. The request was comical and pathetic at the same time. “Somebody must’ve put you up to this.”

  “No, sir, nobody.”

  “Did somebody ‘suggest’ me? Make a ‘recommendation’?”

  “This is my case, Major. I’m looking at what I know about this thing so far, and of the names that pop up, you look like the best bet to help me here.”

  “Captain, you’re a conscientious SOB, I’ll give you that.” Harry sighed. “Well, as you say, I’ve been there. You haven’t. So if you really want the benefit of my experience… I’ve been across the North Atlantic during winter once, Captain, and that’s not an experience I want to repeat. I spent the whole trip being sick as a dog and sweating out the wolf-packs. When I shipped home in August, I just missed the U-boats being sent back out by a few weeks. My oldest boy thinks I missed having a hell of a story to tell, but I’ll tell you just what I told him: I like being a bore.”

  “No convoy. Monday morning I pick up an ATC flight out of Newark ferrying cargo to Greenland and then on to Reykjavik. From there, I’ve got authorization to commandeer that transport as far as London.”

  “Somebody’s putting an awful lot of muscle behind you, Captain.”

  Kneece nodded and Harry was intrigued: Kneece was as suspicious of that muscle as Harry. “My people are saying, ‘Go get ’em,’ so I’m going. I don’t know anything for sure past that because nobody’s saying anything past that. But if I was to guess, I’d figure our people are in a sweat because they can’t figure out how some JAG looey who’s supposed to be pulling his time in Greenland winds up shot dead a thousand miles away. That’s a security hole you could drive a Sherman tank through. And the Brits are all het up ’cause that dead looey turns up on the front lawn of one of their biggest Navy installations. They’re still looking over their shoulder from that business with the Royal Oak. I’m told both Scotland Yard and British counterintelligence are on this already. Maybe you’re right: In the end, Grassi probably just rubbed some fella the wrong way and that’s all there is to it. But brass on both sides of the water want to know before they let this thing rest. I know I’m asking a lot, Major.”