“You’re lucky, pal,” the sergeant said. “You don’t know this town. Them scumbags are just bucking for a chance to open you up.”
The woman who led Mrs. Lewis, followed by Lasari, into the office was Dr. Irene Kastner. She introduced them to the staff and poured cups of coffee. One of the two clerks who had watched the action from the doorway put out his hand and said he was Rick Argella. Argella was slim and youthful in jeans and turtleneck and a pale blue cardigan. “I’d like to apologize for not helping you out there,” he said. “I just froze. I just don’t cotton to those friggin’ españoles.”
The red-haired girl was named Bonnie Caidin. Lasari took his mug of coffee and accepted the invitation to use the extra chair at her desk.
The office was warm, almost hypnotically bright, an insulated cocoon against the cold, dark streets, and touched with odors of chicory blend coffee and the girl’s faint perfume. She sat with him, fragile hands folded neatly on the top of the desk, as if she were resting or taking a break in the night’s work. Lasari saw the expectant look in her eyes and was aware of the silence between them. He shifted in his chair, put his coffee cup on the desk and stared down at his tight jeans and his feet in the heavy work shoes, carefully crossed at the ankles. He was surprised to see a slash of blood on the coarse welt of his right boot.
He said then, “As long as I’m here, maybe I could ask you something. It’s about some trouble a friend of mine got himself into. Carlos his name is, Luis Carlos.”
Bonnie Caidin pulled a yellow legal pad in front of her. “Carlos,” she said as she wrote. “Luis Carlos. How can we help him, George?”
“He’s a deserter,” Lasari said, “but he’d like you to know that he volunteered in the first place, miss. He was nineteen, almost, when he signed up. He was in ’Nam for more than two years, nearly to the end. He got hit twice, the first time a flesh wound in the hand that put him out for a month. Carlos doesn’t count that one, but it’s on his record.”
He forced himself to pause, to slow down the rush of his words. “The second time he got hit twice in the leg. It was bad and took a lot of surgery in Saigon to put it together. That treatment didn’t work out right, and he was in a hospital in the States, after the second operation, when he saw the end of the war on TV. You probably saw it, everybody trying to crowd onto planes and get out of Saigon in those last days.” He paused and looked at the red-haired woman, aware that she was listening carefully, writing nothing on the legal pad.
“How’s your coffee, George?”
“It’s fine, thanks, ma’am.”
“So Carlos was back in the States when the war was winding down. What then, George?”
“There was a lot of time in Fitzsimons, and things didn’t always go right,” he said. “Carlos had personal problems, a kind of overload, and he never finished out his time in the service. He just walked away from it all. That’s more than ten years ago and he never went back. So he’s a deserter, miss, plain and simple. He knows the Army kept records on him, and Carlos would like to get that straightened out.”
“We’re on a first name basis here, incidentally, George. Except for Dr. Kastner, that is. Only her husband and the mayor call her Irene. I’m Bonnie, if you like.” She sipped her coffee. “It’s obvious that you and Carlos are good friends.”
“That’s right. We’ve been close ever since he came to the Midwest. We both work in the same body shop...”
“As his friend, don’t you think you should ask Carlos to come in and talk to us in person?”
“I suggested that to him, ma’am,” Lasari said, “but he’s at the place where he doesn’t trust anybody. He doesn’t feel he owes anybody an apology. He doesn’t feel ashamed or guilty. He got hit twice and he put in all those good years. That should entitle him to something, he figures.”
Dr. Kastner and Mrs. Lewis walked over to Caidin’s desk. Dr. Kastner said, “Excuse me for breaking in, but our friend here wants to say goodbye to the young man.”
When Lasari stood, Amanda Lewis took one of his hands in both of hers and pressed it warmly. “I got to thank you, young man. I was too scared to talk when we first came in. But I’m grateful to you, I surely am.”
“Her nephew, Randolph Peyton Lewis, was supposed to leave Frankfurt early yesterday,” Dr. Kastner said to Caidin, “on a MATS flight scheduled for O’Hare about eight-thirty this morning. But she hasn’t been able to locate him yet.”
“Was it a direct flight?” Bonnie Caidin asked. “Do you have a number?”
“Yes, MATS 94, out of Frankfurt,” Dr. Kastner said. “But the MATS switchboard is closed for the night. Mrs. Lewis is going home now, so here’s her phone number and address in case we hear anything.” She put a slip of paper on Caidin’s desk. “I told her I think her nephew will probably try to get in touch with her there anyway. No need to presume he’s in any trouble.”
Mrs. Lewis nodded. “I’ll go home and wait by the phone. He’s only twenty-two, and I just pray the good Lord the boy’s all right. But I had to thank this young man here before I go anywhere.”
Caidin excused herself, picked up her coffee cup and went into a small, dimly lighted storage room behind the office. Supplies were stacked there, boxes of stationery and pamphlets and several five-gallon bottles of drinking water. A counter against one wall supported a mimeograph machine and cartons of paper and a two-burner Silex coffee maker. Bonnie Caidin filled her cup and then walked to a wall phone.
Mrs. Lewis squeezed Lasari’s hand again. “You’re one of God’s own,” she whispered as Dr. Kastner took her arm and walked her to the front door.
It hadn’t been too difficult so far, Lasari thought as he sat at the desk. The office was quiet except for the occasional sputter of the steam radiators and a rhythmic thumping from a side table where Argella and the other clerk were stapling papers.
He’d spelled it out for the lady as he’d practiced it for so long, keeping his voice easy and casual, like he was talking about someone else, keeping the personal anger where it belonged, so deep inside him that no cracks showed on the surface.
He had told the whole detailed story to Luis Carlos, of course, not once but a dozen times or more, sitting in Mrs. Swade’s rooming house, playing dominoes; Carlos, the old Filipino, watching, nodding, sipping dark rum and smoking twisted little brown cigars. It helped that Carlos had little English, didn’t understand everything Duro Lasari told him. He listened, that was the important thing, listened with his brown eyes creased against the drifting tobacco smoke, his tired, old face watchful and attentive, and he never showed any recrimination or disapproval for what Duro Lasari had done or not done, letting him decide for himself to do what he was doing now, talking to the lady, trying to find some way to clean up that bad paper with the Army.
The office walls were painted hospital green, Lasari thought, a color that smelled of institutional economy and nursing routines; and pain, the green-gray monotony of military hospitals where he had lain so long, flat on his back with his leg in traction, burdened by thoughts of where he had been and where he was going, and violent memories of Vietnam coursing through his brain again and again. Outside on Diversey Boulevard, a single car sped by, its lights flashing a brief arc of color on the rain-streaked window. Lasari wrenched his thoughts back to the present.
Bonnie Caidin was talking on the phone in the storage room, the door open. She looked comfortable with herself, he thought, sipping coffee, the phone wedged between her chin and shoulder. She wore a beige sweater, a pink shirt and a gray skirt, and she leaned back against the counter, one slim ankle swinging idly. He could hear the low, soft murmur of her voice but the words were indistinct, and there were long pauses while she listened thoughtfully to whoever was on the other end of the line.