The Staked Goat - Jeremiah Healy (19 page)

"Last night I had a little brush with
Washington's version of the Welcome Wagon."

J .T. smiled. "Drunk?"

I smiled back. "Me, not them. " My cheek
hurt a lot when I smiled.

"So, how can I help you?"

"The way A1 was done, I'm convinced it had to be
somebody from Vietnam, somebody he was going to blackmail or
something. I think he—"

"John, that was, what, over thirteen years ago,
anyway? Why would A1 wait so long . . ."

I shook my head again as we walked in the shadow of
an incongruously small but nevertheless lifesized DC—3. "I
think it was something that just happened or just suggested itself to
him when he hit Boston. He was in desperate financial shape, about to
lose his job and probably his house, and I think it was somebody out
of the past. I can't believe that he ran into anybody like that in
the steel industry selling widgets, and anyway, I've talked to
everybody, wife, friends, business associates, not a whiff until he
got to Boston."

"So you figure that something or someone he saw
or knew in Saigon touches him off thirteen years later to blackmail
somebody who kills him?"

I clicked my tongue off the roof of my mouth. "I
agree that when you put it that way, it sounds crazy. But I don't
have any other place to start."

"Place to start?"

"Yeah, why I called you. I want to go back into
all the records that someone must have at the Pentagon somewhere, the
records of all of Al's time there. Maybe I can make the same
connection Al did."

J.T. frowned. "A lot of that stuff gets asked
for by writers, researchers, and so forth to make us look worse than
they already did back then. We've kept a lot of it away from them,
even with the Freedom of Information Act, on the grounds that the
records are still part of an ongoing investigation. If I let you, an
outsider, a civilian, see them, and the researchers found out, they'd
scream bloody murder and it'd be my career."

I regarded J.T. very carefully. "Are there still
ongoing investigations, J .T.?"

He opened his eyes a little too widely and quickly,
then grinned. "John, it was all over, basically, ten years ago.
Most of the statutes of limitations have run out by now."

"Are there still open investigations?"

"Oh, John," said J .T., doing a half turn
to his right. "You know the army, there are always
investigations of some kind going on."

"J.T., look. Al and you and I were friends. We
looked out for each other, saved each other's butts a couple of
times. Somebody killed Al, horribly, after torturing him, like the
Vietnamese. You're nobody's fucking fool and not, even after all this
time and a pension so close you can smell it, such a stiff that it
doesn't get to you. Somebody killed our friend. Somebody has to pay
for that."

J .T. looked grave and sounded stem. "I'll look,
John. This isn't Saigon, and it isn't wartime. You can't get away
with things here, and neither can the guy who killed Al, whoever he
was. He'll be discovered eventually and—"

"Bullshit," I said, a little too loudly,
causing an elderly couple in front of us to jump. I lowered my voice.
"The police in Boston have chalked this up as a category crime,
and the guy who did it was neat and careful enough so you can't even
blame them. I want at those records. If I find something, I'll check
it before I bring in the cops. But that's all. If this guy could take
Al, he can take me, and I'm only looking to even up the ledger. No
blood feud, just let justice take its course."

J.T. didn't believe me, but he said, "I'll have
to think it over. I'll be back in my office by thirteen hundred."
He pulled out a card with his name and a different direct dial number
on it. "Call me around thirteen-fifteen."

He turned and drifted off toward the door, stopping
to read a plaque. I sought out a uniformed employee and was directed
to the nearest spot for lunch. Soft ice cream and milk.

I called J.T. at 1:10. He answered.

"J.T., it's John."

"It's set. Be here by fourteen hundred hours.
Use your name, my name, and the following three-digit number. The
security guard at the first public barrier you come to will call for
an escort who'll bring you in."

"Thanks, J .T."

"See you at fourteen hundred."

I hung up and looked again at my watch. Time for a
couple of quick drinks but I decided against it. I was about to do
something that two drinks, two dozen drinks, wouldn't ease for me.
Something I never thought I'd do. Ever.

I was going back to Vietnam. My escort was a young
MP, slim, female, and black. She had smiled when her counterpart at
the barrier had checked my ID and confirmed me to her. She introduced
herself as PFC Waller, and off we went.

She threaded us through seemingly endless hallways,
small pockets of humanity appearing in various civilian and military
uniforms. We took half-left turns at indistinguishable corridors and
subcorridors. In less than three minutes, I was hopelessly lost.

"Should I be dropping a trail of pebbles?"
I said, then dodged a navy officer whose head was buried in a file he
was carrying, choirboy style.

Waller laughed graciously. "You get used to it
after a while, sir."

"How long have you been in?"

"A little over a year now."

"Planning on making it a career?" _

She gave me a cautious sidelong glance to be sure I
was serious. "Probably not, sir. I'm more interested in data
processing."

"I see." Whenever someone brings up
computers, I tend to acknowledge the topic and then cease all
conversation. My reticence was covered by her abrupt stop at a door
bearing only a room number. She knobbed it open.

We entered a small suite of offices. A woman,
probably my telephone partner, barely glanced at us as we walked past
her toward a desk occupied by a youngish, male staff sergeant who
looked tall sitting down. He had reddish brown hair, close-cropped.
As we approached, he rose. And rose.

I seemed to recall a six-foot-six maximum height,
with a waiver for up to two additional inches. I guessed he needed
the waiver. His name tag said "Casey." "The Colonel
will see you, Mr. Cuddy." He winked at Waller. "Thank you,
Waller."

Waller nodded, said "Sir" to me as a
good-bye, and left us.

Casey knocked on an office door to his left. He
waited for an affirmation from inside before he opened it. "Sir,
Mr. Cuddy."

"John! Good to see you!" I entered the
room. J.T. sprang up and came forward as though we were brothers
reunited after twenty years of separation.

"Thank you, Sergeant," said J.T.

"Yessir." Casey backed out and closed the
door as J.T. pumped my hand a few times for effect and then motioned
to one of several steel, green-cushioned government office chairs in
front of his desk. We sat.

"Well," he said. "This hasn't been
easy."

"Especially on such short notice."

"Right. I had to pull strings and call in
favors." J.T. looked a bit distracted, checked a desk calendar.
"I have a meeting at fifteen hundred across the District, so
I've got to rush. I have all the files from a month before A1 and I
got to Saigon to a month after he left. That's roughly September '67
to December '68. The files are chronological?

"I remember."

J.T. frowned and sank a little lower.

"I suppose you wondered how come I didn't make
the funeral."

I shook my head. "Actually, no, not until you
told me you'd read about it. I just assumed it wouldn't be enough
publicized for you to be aware of it."

"We've been busy, John. Pressure-cooker busy
down here. I just didn't have time to come, or even return your
calls."

I held up my hand. "You don't owe me any
explanations. Or apologies."

"But I owe . . . owed Al. Like you said.
Everybody did. He was a great guy."

"Yeah, he was."

There was an awkward silence as J.T. stared past me.

"Your meeting?" I said.

"Huh?"

"Your crosstown meeting. At three o'clock?"

"Oh, damn! Yes, thanks." He tapped a buzzer
on his phone, and Casey's head was in the partially opened door
before the buzzer sound had died away.

"Sir?”

"I'll get Mr. Cuddy set up next door. You get
the car and pull 'round to Bravo Seven. I'll see you there in five
minutes."

"Yessir."

"And Case?"

"Yessir?"

"Get Ricker to relieve you on the desk."

"Yessir." Casey's head was gone.

J.T. got up and moved toward the door. I did
likewise.

J .T. said, "Everything's in the next room, kind
of a conference room. You can take notes, but no photocopying,
understood?"

"Understood. "

We walked out his door and into the next room.

"I'll be gone the rest of the day with Casey
and," he dropped his voice, "the receptionist is an
airhead. But if you have any questions, Sergeant Ricker can field
them. Be sure Ricker leads you out when you're finished."

"How late can I stay?"

"Eighteen hundred. I'm sorry, but no later."

"I appreciate it, J.T."

"Yeah." He gave me a quick smile and
handshake; "Just keep the door closed, O.K.?"

"O.K. I'll call you tomorrow."

"Right." He sighed and swung his head
around the room. "I hope it's here," he said and left.

I closed the door behind him. I tugged off my suit
jacket, undid my collar button, and pulled down my tie.

The room measured about ten by fifteen. There was a
slate-green rectangular table with a half dozen pencils, two pads,
and some ice water and paper cups. There were five chairs. The space
for a sixth chair was occupied by an olive-drab file cabinet with
five drawers. It would contain fifteen months of operational
paperwork for our MP unit in Saigon. Somewhere in there was Al's
killer. Maybe.

I rolled up my sleeves and yanked open the top
drawer. The files were packed in tightly. I levered ten out and sat
down with them. I poured and drank one cup of ice water. Then I
opened the first file and stepped back fourteen years and as many
thousand miles.
 
 

SIXTEEN
-•-

AT FIRST IT WAS ALMOST AS IF I WERN'T READING THE
reports but translating them from army jargon and abbreviations to
real English. I went slowly through the first files, refreshing
myself with designations and geography. Then, like the return of a
foreign language, it came back to me in the clear, my brain
automatically decoding the cryptic report texts. I riflled through
the simpler, ordinary stuff of traffic accidents, drug overdoses,
fights, and petty thefts that happened just before Al got to Saigon.
I lingered over two reports.

In the first, a quartermaster staff sergeant named
Kevearson was killed shooting it out with MPs raiding a heroin
refinery. He turned out to be the entrepreneur. The MP in charge was
a Captain David L. Bonner. I remembered Al mentioning him once. I
wrote down Kevearson, Ronald B., then Bonner's name.

In the second report, an MP sergeant named DeLong had
siphoned seized heroin from an evidence locker, replacing it with
flour. Al later testified at the court-martial, but I couldn't recall
why. DeLong, Alvin B.

I reached the point chronologically when Al and J.T.
had hit Saigon. There were dozens of major crimes in the files for
the eight weeks before I arrived. Several had A1's name on them.

One was the shooting of a pace trooper named Brewer
by a bar girl. He apparently wanted things a bit kinkier than she
tolerated. The report suggested he had lived. Brewer, Delvin J. I
remembered his name for some reason, so I wrote it down.

J .T. and Al both covered a second lieutenant in the
infantry who went AWOL. Brought him in from the boonies, living with
a Vietnamese woman outside a formerly French plantation. How the hell
he had avoided being killed by Charlie in the three nights out there
was beyond me. There was a photo in the file of the lieutenant. He
looked miserable. Court martialed, imprisoned back in the States.
Named Ralser, Lionel P. Write it down. A guy who would risk living in
the bush was capable of anything.

A staf sergeant named Crowley, Matthew M., got his
head blown off by a Eurasian drug merchant named René Bouvier. There
was a photo in the file of a short, black-haired sergeant with two or
three other staff-looking noncoms around him. Everyone was smiling,
and the flip side of the photo said the short guy was Crowley. The
Eurasian was never found. Al and a technician CID named Clay Belker
investigated the killing, Belker signing on the body's fingerprints.
Belker I remembered, a gangly, surly white guy from Alabama. Al
always thought that Belker was O.K., God knows why.

I reached November 1967,
when I arrived in Saigon. The next file involved Al directly. An MP
was knifed and died when he stumbled on two GIs buying heroin from a
Vietnamese. On his way down, the MP winged one GI named Curtis D.
Chandler, who was caught six blocks away, bleeding freely. Al
interrogated Chandler, who refused to give the name of his partner. I
wrote down the full name of Chandler and the word "partner?"
There was no further mention of partner except that "further
interrogation proved unsuccessful." Involuntarily, a picture of
a different kind of interrogation came to mind and decided to stay
awhile.