“About being a good soldier? Who knows? If he’d thrown away his rifle and refused to fight, a lot of Americans would have thought that was just fine. But he didn’t do that, he stood his ground, and I’ve seen the scars on his legs to prove it. He’s not lying about that.”
“I’m trying to get at the heart of the matter. Why do you think Carlos deserted when he did?”
Duro Lasari shrugged, his eyes became still in his dark, narrow face. He looked at her with defiant appraisal. “Maybe I walked into the wrong office, lady. ‘... we will be here to listen, understand, and resolve never to interrogate or interpret.’ Isn’t that what you wrote in the newspaper article on this place?”
“Yes, I did,” Bonnie Caidin said. She tapped the tip of her pencil against her teeth. “You understand, I mean your friend understands, that when he turns himself into the Army... if that’s what he decides to do... what happens next is out of our hands. This office can advise him, make an appointment with the right person at the right time. But by deserting Carlos broke his contract with the Army, and the Army still owns him. That doesn’t leave him much to bargain with.”
“He knows that,” Lasari said. “This guy’s at a point of no return. He can’t go forward till he goes backward. Maybe it’s the symbiotic relationship between the outlaw and the system. He’d like to serve out his time and be the best goddamn soldier ever, just as long as there’s hope he can walk out at the end of his tour with a clean discharge. He’ll pay whatever it takes to get that.”
The clerk, Argella, walked over to Caidin’s desk, buttoning a leather jacket over his blue sweater. “Excuse me, Bonnie,” he said. “I’m taking a snack break.” He looked at Lasari, his soft brown eyes friendly. “Maybe I could feed a dime into the parking meter for this gentleman here.”
Lasari explained he was parked in a free zone in the next block. “Thanks anyway, amigo.”
“Por nada, compadre.”
As Argella left, a cold wind from the open door surged around their ankles and fluttered papers on desk tops.
“I’m going to check out every Army regulation on desertion and/or reenlistment, of course,” Bonnie Caidin said. “But the best advice I have right now is that Luis Carlos come here in person and let us prepare a complete file on his service record and personal background. Will he do that?”
“I can’t guarantee anything, but I’ll ask him.”
“One thing that will be of prime importance in this case is intent. If Carlos turns himself into the military authorities voluntarily, that could be the best thing going for him. But if someone else turns him in, such as an informer, or if he’s picked up by Military Police, well, I wouldn’t count on the Army believing his good intentions.
“The Army doesn’t want ‘bad apples’ — that’s their phrase, not mine, and they’re not in the rehabilitation business. If Carlos is heavily in debt, has bad gambling habits, if you’re wrong about his drug use, or if he’s got deep legal problems, like serious arrears in wife or child support, I think you know what to advise him to do.”
“Stay away from the Army.”
“I can’t say that on my own authority, George. We just want your friend to know what he’s up against. And we’ll do everything we can to help him, that’s a promise.”
Lasari stood and zipped his windbreaker. “I’ll tell him. I appreciate you giving me this much time, ma’am.”
It was strange, he thought, he was almost sorry it was over. He had felt good here, the warm, bright office, the fragrant coffee, this thin, pale woman so willing to listen.
She picked up a raincoat with a wool lining from the back of her chair. A round plastic PRESS disc hung by a thong from a buttonhole. “I need a breath of fresh air,” she said. “I’ll type up our notes before I check out.”
The rain had stopped but the wind was high and they stood close, lifting their voices above the chill gusts. “I was a senior in high school when it was winding down,” she said, “not quite eighteen. I marched and demonstrated and carried placards. I sent letters to the editors, and I wrote things for the campus newspaper. I hated that war and didn’t believe any American soldier should be in it. What does your friend Carlos think about people like that?”
“They don’t bother him.”
“You said he was angry.”
“There are a lot of things to be angry about.” He stared down the street. “ ‘Civilians get the kind of Army and the kind of wars they deserve.’ I read that somewhere, and I’m still trying to figure it out. If it means what I think it means, I was in ’Nam for all the wrong reasons. That can make a guy angry.”
“You waited three nights before you came in,” she said. “What made you decide?”
He looked at her in surprise, then at the shadowed doorway across the street. “You saw me over there?”
“I’m a reporter. I’m supposed to notice things. What made up your mind?”
“Nothing you’d understand probably. It was those damned baseball caps.”
“You don’t like baseball?”
“I love it, Miss Caidin. It’s just another game I’m not very good at.”
As the low roar of Lasari’s GTO trembled through the silence, Rick Argella stepped from the darkness of an alley. The glow from the rear lights clearly revealed the license plate. When the car pulled away from the curb, Argella crossed the street to the all-night luncheonette.
The waitress smiled and brought him his usual order, a glass of milk and two sugar doughnuts. “Some fancy car, Millie,” he said, nodding in the direction of the fading reverberations. “Them power cars are collectors’ items now.”
“My brother had one,” she said. “The fellow who owns it was in here and I was telling him about it. Nice Italian type guy.”
Argella licked the sugar from his fingers and went into the men’s room at the rear of the restaurant. He slid the door bolt into its hasp, put some coins into the wall phone, dialed the detective division of a south-side precinct and asked to be connected with extension 400.
When Detective Frank Salmi picked up the phone, Argella spoke without identifying himself.
“I’ve got one for you, Frank. A ’Nam vet came in tonight, went AWOL a few years back and he’s nervous. Good record, he says, no habit, no drug busts but talks like he knows the scene. Says he wants to clear his record, re-up if necessary, that shit. Alley smart, if you ask me, a tough fucker. I saw him fight.”
“Got a name?”
“He calls himself ‘George,’ made out that he was asking information for a friend. That Tribune chica talked to him. He opened up to her some, but he was careful. No way I could move in or push it.”
“A deserter with a good record? A spade?”
“No, he’s pure honky, man. Maybe Italian.”
“What the fuck good is it without a name?”
“I got a plate number.”
“But is it his car?”
“Claro. I checked that twice. He told me where he was parked and he talked to a waitress.”
Argella gave Detective Salmi Lasari’s license number in spaced intervals. “Seven — four — bravo — six — dancer — nine.”
Salmi read it back “74B6D9?”
“Correcto, compadre. You’ll tell Sergeant Malleck where you got it?”
The phone clicked in Argella’s ear. He gave the hook a final shake, checked the coin chute automatically and returned to the counter. He told Millie the coffee was cold and that he’d meant he wanted the doughnuts with the coconut sprinkles.