Casualties of War: The Advocate Trilgy

by Bill Mesce

  They were slowing to pass through a bottleneck caused by the blockading of a side street. Royal Army Bedford trucks were clustered by the blockade, and Home Guardsmen were directing traffic. As they passed, Harry saw the posted sign: UXB. Past the Guardsmen, the uniform facades of row houses had been violently disrupted.

  “What’s UXB?” Kneece asked.

  “Unexploded bomb.”

  Among the strewn bricks spilling into the street sat a cushioned rocking chair, surprisingly intact. Royal Engineers gathered round a crater punched into the cobbled street. “Looks like there’s a team in there trying to dig it out.”

  “Really?” Kneece craned his head this way and that. “They’re working on a live bomb right now?”

  “Must’ve been a stray It doesn’t look like anything else around here was hit.” Harry turned to the driver. “Was there a raid last night?”

  “Couple of nights ago,” the driver replied. “But you never know when they’re from; they’re still digging up duds from the Blitz. They’ll be digging bombs outta this place for a hunnerd years.”

  They crossed Oxford Street. “There we are,” Harry told Kneece. “Right up ahead.”

  The captain leaned forward to look out the windscreen. “It sure doesn’t look like much.”

  It was hard to disagree. Until one went round Rosewood Court’s front gate, one was treated to featureless walls, penurious windows, blank-faced doors set deep in the stone. These uninviting entrances were reserved for servants, deliverymen, and other common laborers, not residents. The architectural premise at work behind this in-turned enclave was that the only fitting association for the families of position who inhabited the Court were other Court residents. To that end, the stately granite facades and balustraded verandas of the town houses and pieds-a-terre faced each other across a cobbled square. The yard itself was invested with rose-dressed trellises and a two-tiered fountain of expectorating nymphs. Each veranda was dressed with garlands of ivy and colorful flowers set in boxes and standing urns. The interiors of the various residences, Harry knew, were appointed with equal grace: oak staircases, mahogany wainscoting, parquet floors, and doors veneered with the rosewood that had lent the Court its name.

  Since the coming of the Americans in early 1942, the Rosewoodarians had retreated to country estates scrupulously out of German bomber range. The rose trellises and fountain had been removed and the yard turned into a car park. The flower boxes and urns collected stubs of Lucky Strike and Camel cigarettes. By the gate, obscuring the brass plate that announced ROSEWOOD COURT, now stood a large olive drab sign with white lettering reading:

  UNITED STATES ARMY GENERAL HEADQUARTERS ADMINISTRATION ANNEX (AIR CORPS INCLUSIVE)

  LONDON

  Still, as the staff car turned the last comer and drew up to the gates, the Court retained enough of its Victoria Regina majesty to squelch Woody Kneece’s initial disappointment. He smiled up at the gargoyled cornices. “Oh, my…”

  Two white-helmeted Military Policemen stood sentinel. While one studied their identification, the other swung open the gates. Kneece peered upward at the ormolu lions sitting atop the gateposts. “Oh, my my…”

  The driver held the door for them as they climbed out. As he began to unload their bags, Kneece pivoted, soaking in all of Rosewood Court. “You used to live here? Not exactly the Fort Dix barracks, Major!”

  “Lived and worked,” Harry said. “My office used to be over there.” He pointed to one of the town houses now marked with another olive-drab-and-white sign reading JUDGE ADVOCATE GENERAL — BUILDING B. He pointed to the top floor of another building, a narrow one tucked in the comer. “Those were my quarters.”

  “Real plush, sir. You must’ve hated to leave.”

  “You would think,” Harry said noncommittally.

  Harry signaled to the driver not to disappear with their bags just yet. He began rooting through his gear until he found his officer’s peaked cap.

  “What’re you doing?” Kneece asked.

  “I want to check in with the JAG chief.” Harry frowned. At some point in their travels, the crown of his cap had been crushed. No amount of poking and prodding at the interior was able to resuscitate it.

  “Let me see that,” Kneece said, and without waiting for Harry to offer it, reached inside the crown and deftly removed the buckled wire grommet. “If you don’t mind my saying so, sir, before you go nose-to-nosing with senior brass, you could use — as the rank and file like to say — a shit, shower, and shave.”

  “It’ll be OK. The Chief and I are pals.”

  “Here you go.” Without the grommet, Harry’s cap had the soft, crushed look of a flying veteran’s cap, like Doheeny’s; what combat airmen referred to as a “fifty-mission hat.” “You look like a regular Doolittle now. I believe the word is ‘jaunty.’ And jaunty as you may look, sir, I’d still think at least about a shave if I were you.”

  “I am thinking about it,” Harry said, parking the cap on his head and heading across the yard for the town house billed as JUDGE ADVOCATE GENERAL — BUILDING A.

  Harry could hear Kneece calling to him, in his best impression of a Warner Brothers cartoon character: “You’ll be sorrrrreeeeee!”

  *

  The corporal sitting at the reception desk in the entry hall was clear-skinned, well-groomed, his uniform pressed, his shoes spit-shined. “Su-sir?” It was less a query than an apprehensive puzzlement from the corporal as to why this hairy, smelly thing — of intimidating bulk in its crumpled coveralls and leather flight jacket — stood over his desk.

  “Is Colonel Ryan in?”

  “The colonel? Oh, yessir, the colonel —”

  “Tell him Major Voss would like to see him.”

  “I’m afraid the colonel’s busy —”

  “Tell him Major Voss would like to see him now.”

  The corporal licked his lips nervously, tom between offending his commanding officer and provoking the savage looming over him.

  “Now, Corporal.”

  The corporal gratefully left his desk, retreating to a set of sliding oak doors leading off the main corridor of the house. He stuck his head between the doors, Harry heard some murmuring, then the corporal beckoned him to come along, standing well clear as Harry passed by and sliding the doors shut behind him.

  It was a spacious, high-ceilinged room, originally a parlor of some sort, Harry guessed. The current occupant had kept the room much as the previous tenants had left it, with Persian carpets, overstuffed lion’s-paw furniture, globe lamps, crystal chandelier, and other such effulgent displays. Joe Ryan, as anyone acquainted with him knew, was always one to treat himself indulgently. Ryan, sans jacket and shoes, was standing on an ottoman, wobbling on the needleworked fabric, while a white-haired gentleman in a vested suit, his mouth bristling with pins, prowled round him making marks on his Army trousers with a tailor’s chalk.

  “Harry-boy!” Ryan flashed his movie-star smile at Harry’s appearance. “Harry-boy, you look like the Wild Man of Borneo! Did you walk all the way from the States?”

  “Can’t walk. All that water.”

  “Make yourself comfortable,” Ryan said, his smile taking on a doubtful twitch. “You just get in?”

  “Just.”

  “You look beat.”

  “It’s been a long couple of days.” Harry let his eyes wander round the appurtenances. “Looks like you found a pretty nice home in the Army.”

  “If they put this place in the recruiting movies the draft boards’d have to beat kids off with a stick. Ouch! Mr. Cockburn, you caught me with that last pin.”

  “Sorry, sir,” the white-haired gentleman mumbled.

  “Didn’t your office used to be…” Harry nodded in the direction of a smaller building across the Court.

  “A lot of these poor bastards had to go with Eisenhower when he moved his headquarters to Algiers, the ones I’ve figured were ‘essential’ to combat operations.”

  “How lucky for you to be nonessential.”


  “We needed the room anyway,” Ryan replied cheerfully. “The more GI’s they pack into England, the more GI mischief we have to deal with. I’ve had to add two lawyers to my staff since you left, and I have a request in for a third.”

  “Bully.”

  They were the same age, though one wouldn’t know to look at them. Ryan was — and always had been, all the way back to their school-chum days — trim and athletic-looking, with square-jawed good looks and an outgoing charm. But Harry noticed subtle differences from the Ryan he’d left in London four months before. Ryan’s middle was thicker, the sharp line of his jaw softer. Despite his beaming smile, his green eyes had lost their playful sparkle. The flesh round them was puffy and shadowed.

  “There’s cigarettes on my desk, Harry. Help yourself.” Ryan’s “desk” was a large, cherry-stained dining table set before the brick-faced fireplace and its low, warming blaze. Harry found a brass cigarette box and a cup of tapers among the papers littering the desk. He tamped a cigarette on the tabletop, lit one of the tapers from the fire and took a long draught, then slouched in the deep-cushioned chair behind the desk.

  The elderly man with the tailor’s chalk was busying himself with Ryan’s inseam. “You dress to the left as I recall, sir?”

  “That’s a kick, isn’t it, Harry? They even ask you which leg you run your hose down. But they ask so nicely. To the left, Mr. Cockburn. Make a big allowance! What about this waist, Mr. Cockburn? It feels kind of snug.”

  “Yes, sir, I was of the same mind. But that was the measurement of your last pair.”

  “Jesus, am I going to have to diet now?”

  “I can adjust them, sir.”

  “The point is, Mr. Cockburn, that I don’t want you to have to adjust them. I shouldn’t be having a belly!”

  “Live like a lord, look like a lord, sir.”

  “That’s very poetic, Mr. Cockburn, very Shakespearean.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “What do you think, Harry? You think I’m getting a little round in the middle?”

  “Everybody says fat people are jolly. Look at me. See how jolly I am?”

  For the first time, Joe Ryan did look at Harry, shrewdly measuring the man slouched in his chair. His smile faded. “Are we done, Mr. Cockburn?” Ryan raised his arms so that Mr. Cockburn could unbuckle his trousers and remove them.

  Cockburn folded up the trousers, along with the other pair and two jackets lying across a settee. “I’ll see to that waist situation,” he told Ryan, and with a nod of farewell to both of them, backed out the sliding doors and closed them behind him.

  “Hungry, Harry? I think there’s something left there. Or I can have something sent up.”

  On a tea cart’s tray sat a plate with a sandwich with less than half gone. Whatever was putting the softness to Ryan’s physique wasn’t food. There was also a silver coffeepot and an unused porcelain cup. “This is fine. You don’t look all that surprised to see me.”

  “I knew you were coming.” Ryan grunted as he bent over to pull on his trousers and shoes. “Listen to me. I sound like an old man.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Colonel McCutcheon across the yard — he’s the CID commander. He got the word you were coming in with some CID investigator named Kneece who’s investigating this business about Armando Grassi. McCutcheon remembered you used to be on my staff —”

  “And passed you the word.”

  “We’re all friends here, Harry. Colleagues.”

  “Teammates.”

  “Yes.”

  “All for one, et cetera.”

  “Yup.” Ryan came round the desk for a cigarette of his own. Harry moved away, sitting on the most distant end of the settee. Ryan smiled sadly at the maneuver. “How’s Cynthia?”

  “Fine.”

  “The kids?”

  “Fine. Cynthia says hello. Philip Mayer —”

  “The guy with the store?”

  “He says hi, too.”

  “How’s the neighborhood?”

  “The same. But different.”

  Ryan sighed and lowered himself into his chair. “You’re still angry about —”

  “I wouldn’t bring that up.”

  Ryan nodded at the warning. “What the hell are you doing here, Harry? How did this CIC joker rope you into this expedition?”

  “He asked.”

  “That’s all?”

  “You’ve been away from the neighborhood a long time. Maybe you forgot. Back there, when somebody asked you for help, you helped. Kneece asked for help. I’m a helpful guy.”

  “You’re a regular Boy Scout, Harry. What’re you doing here?”

  “I told you. I want to find out who murdered Armando Grassi and why.”

  “That’s why Kneece is here. Why are you here?”

  “Kneece thought I might be good to have on hand because I knew Grassi.”

  “You worked with him a couple of times. You hated him each time.”

  “I explained that to Kneece. He thought because I’d been stationed here —”

  “And because of all the loads of mutual affection and respect between you and the brass here in London —”

  “— that I’d have some connections.”

  “You tell him how off-base he was on that, too?”

  “I did. Kneece never said it up front, but I think the real reason he wanted me along was that he had this idea that Grassi’s murder had something to do with what happened here back in August.”

  Ryan’s eyes narrowed. “I have to wonder what put that idea in his head.”

  “So do I. It wasn’t me.”

  “How much does he know about August?”

  “Now?”

  “You told him.”

  “Just a little. To persuade him that he was wasting his time; that whatever happened to Grassi had nothing to do with August.”

  Ryan smiled coldly. “This wouldn’t be one of those reverse-psychology routines where you say, ‘It doesn’t,’ to get him to say, ‘It does’?”

  “I’m not that clever, Joe. You know that. You were always telling me how smart I wasn’t.”

  Ryan stood, turned his back to Harry; and tossed his cigarette into the fire. There was a pair of brandy snifters and a nearly empty carafe on the liquor stand near the fire. Ryan lifted the carafe in offering. “How’s your stomach these days?”

  Harry held up his coffee cup. “I’m fine.”

  Ryan poured a small splash into one of the snifters and returned to his seat. He took a small sip. “The headquarters move to Algiers gave us a lot of new office space, but we’re still tight on bunk room. The only space they could find you and your traveling buddy is down in the junior officers’ quarters. Sorry.”

  “We’ll be fine.”

  “What do you think?” Ryan asked. “About Grassi?”

  “I don’t think it had anything to do with August.”

  “You told Kneece that? Does he believe it?”

  “I think so.”

  “If I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t’ve told him that. I would’ve said this smells to high heaven of a connection to August.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “No. But I would’ve said that just to get him to dig around, pick at everybody’s sore spots. That’s what I would’ve done. But then, I’m not you. Sweet, pure Sir Harold the True.” Harry crossed the carpet to set his empty cup down on Ryan’s desk. “You don’t have to believe this, but I want to put that business behind me as much as you do.”

  “Look at that!” Ryan mocked. “We still agree on something!” He took another sip from his glass. “What’re you doing here, Harry? I don’t mean in England. You’re not here in any official capacity; you’re just part of Kneece’s luggage, so you didn’t have to check in with me.”

  “I just wanted to say hello to an old friend.”

  Ryan’s eyes went cold. He set his glass down on the table so hard, Harry feared the frail crystal would shatter. “You c
ame in here wanting to make some kind of impression. OK, I’m impressed. You’re not the old Harry. You’re a tough guy now. Man of the world. You’re a shark. You’re a barracuda. Is that what you want to hear?”

  Only at that moment did it occur to Harry that he didn’t know what he wanted from Ryan. “Cynthia and Philip Mayer wanted me to give you their regards. Consider their regards given.” He reached for the handles of the sliding doors.

  “Harry! Harry wait!” Ryan was standing, imploring. “We should talk.”

  Harry slid open the doors.

  “Harry! How about dinner tonight? I’ve got things to do this afternoon, otherwise we could go right now, but tonight —”

  “Colonel Ryan, what in the hell could you possibly have to say that I could possibly want to hear?” And he left.

  RE YOUR INQUIRY G-l RECORDS ALL CONCERNED UNAVAILABLE STOP

  “That was waiting for me at Colonel McCutcheon’s office,” Kneece said when Harry looked up from the message in his hands. “You know him? McCutcheon? London CID boss?”

  Harry shook his head. “He must’ve transferred in after I left.”

  “You should’ve seen this guy’s office, Major! Are they all like that? You know — like…” Kneece sought the word.

  “Like something out of Little Lord Fauntleroy.”

  Kneece pointed at the message. “Don’t ask me what ‘unavailable’ means. There’s not too many reasons personnel records wouldn’t be available to a CIC investigator. Factually, I can’t think of one, leastways a good one.”

  At that moment, Harry and Kneece were working their way through lunches of tuna sandwiches and coffee in the Rosewood Court canteen. It had been nearly a week since Harry had seen the young captain clean-shaven and in his Class A’s. Kneece now seemed almost unfamiliar.