“Sir, I’ve got to give this some thought. I mean, a lot of guys are going to wonder what I’m doing wearing stripes, sir. You know? There are hundreds of guys ahead of me in aptitude. There’ll be a lot of questions.”
“Yes … I … aahhh … see your point.” Hedges looked away. “I want to make myself clear, Mr. Slaight. Your conversation with Major Consor. A very, very sensitive matter. More sensitive than you know. More than I am at liberty to tell you. Understand? I think it’s best that you consider you and Consor never talked.”
“You mean that day after the area, sir?”
“Exactly.”
“It’s Top Secret, or something, sir?”
“You could give it that classification. Yes.”
“Does Major Consor know this, sir?”
“You let me handle Consor!” An ever-so-slight flare of temper. “His situation is none of your business, young man. And the less you know, the better off you’ll find yourself. Believe me.”
“Yessir.”
Hedges stood, and Slaight rose with him. Again Slaight found Hedges’ eyes and locked them for an instant. Hedges rummaged in his papers. Slaight couldn’t be sure … maybe he caught the barest glimmer of uneasiness in the general’s eyes. A flicker. It made sense. It wasn’t … right, somehow, that a general was sitting around his office making deals with a cadet who under normal circumstances would never, ever, come personally to the attention of the commandant of cadets. Slaight got the same feeling Consor had. Something was going on, something big, and they did not know what it was.
Then he knew. He just fuckin’ knew. He’d made it. He’d avoided the trap. He hadn’t said yes, and he hadn’t said no. It was a subtle point, but one to which all cadets were attuned. He hadn’t let Hedges catch him in that Honor Code trap of … committing yourself. What you did was, you wove and you dodged and you played coy and you did not commit. It was called using your honor against you. If you let an officer commit you one way or the other, then he could hold you there with the Honor Code. It was part of the game, the eternal game. Sure, you lived by the code, but you learned to use it, too….
“It was good to see you, Mr. Sam,” said Hedges, offering his hand, smiling again. Slaight shook hands.
“I think we understand each other. National security, Mr. Slaight. Remember that.” Hedges smiled. An insider smile.
“Yessir.”
“Good afternoon, mister.”
Slaight stepped back to the spot four feet from the desk and saluted.
“Good afternoon, sir.” He about-faced and walked from the room.
17
Slaight found Irit in Grant Hall sitting under General George C. Marshall, one of the two nongrads whose portraits hung in that august chamber. Grant Hall was many years ago the cadet mess hall. Now it was comfortably arranged with leather sofas and armchairs and reading lamps, the way an Ivy League club reading room must look, Slaight imagined. It was used as the public area in the barracks where cadets met their dates.
“That lawyer you wanted to talk to, Ry? Captain Bassett? His secretary said he went on leave last week. He won’t be back for a month. She said you can talk to him when you return for academics in the fall.”
“Shit,” Slaight muttered under his breath. Irit stood up, gathering sketches and note pads, stuffing them into a large canvas bag she often carried.
“Let’s get out of this place,” said Slaight.
“Wait a minute. I just remembered something,” said Slaight. “Sit down for a minute, will you? I want to call someone.”
The sergeant major.
Why hadn’t he thought of him before? Slaight leafed through the phone book. There it was. Sergeant Major Atkins Eldridge. Slaight jotted down his home number, hoping Eldridge hadn’t cleared post after retiring, hoping the army had given an old sergeant a few weeks’ grace period to make his final move. He dialed the number. A woman’s voice answered.
“Sergeant Major Eldridge’s quarters. This is Mrs. Eldridge.”
“Ma’am, this is Mr. Slaight. I was in the sergeant major’s regiment. Is he there? Can I speak to him?”
“Certainly. We’ve got the packers today, and the movers are coming tomorrow … he’s a little busy, but he’s here.” Slaight waited. Then the voice, authoritative, muscular:
“Sergeant Major Eldridge, sir.”
“Sergeant Major, it’s Mr. Slaight. I’m over at Grant Hall. I’d like to come by and see you. I’ve got to talk with you. It’ll only take a minute.”
“Slaight! Damn! How’d you know I was still around?”
“I didn’t. I just … I just called, that all.”
“Well, come on by, mister. Plenty of time. Plenty. That’s one thing I got enough of, nowadays. Time. So come by. You know where my place is, don’t you?”
“Sure, Sergeant Major. See you in a few minutes.”
Slaight grabbed Irit, explaining on the way out the door they had to see this guy before leaving West Point. He told her briefly who Eldridge was, saying he’d tell her everything later, the meeting with Hedges, all of it.
They drove along Thayer Road, turning off for Washington Gate. Down at the end of a long drive lined with the houses of colonels and lieutenant colonels, old brick army quarters built in the 1930s, were several wood-frame, clapboard structures, no less sturdy, no less elegant than the brick homes. The sergeant majors lived there. Slaight pulled up in front of the second house to find old Eldridge standing at the curb, waiting for them.
“Well, well, well. So this is the famous Irit Dov,” said the sergeant major, opening the door of the 190-SL on her side. “This is indeed a pleasure, Miss Dov. I’ve heard so much about you … from Mr. Slaight, of course.” Irit smiled. She knew. Slaight and the sergeant major shook hands. He escorted them to a small brick terrace next to the house. There were folding lawn chairs, and Mrs. Eldridge had prepared a large pitcher of iced tea.
“Hey, Sergeant Major. You think I could get a beer? Irit?” Slaight turned to her, opening an imaginary can in the air. She shook her head no. Mrs. Eldridge poured iced tea.
“Sure. I’ll get you one,” said the sergeant major. “Could use one myself, I’ll tell you.” He walked inside, and Slaight followed. In the kitchen, the two cracked beers and took long drafts.
“Jesus,” said Slaight. “Man, I needed that.”
“What’s on your mind, Ry?” It was the first time the sergeant major had ever called him by his given name, and it reminded Slaight the old soldier was retired now. Gone from the army. Slaight grabbed him by the arm as the sergeant major started back outside.
“I’d like to stay in here for a minute, Sergeant Major,” said Slaight.
“Sure.”
“I’m gonna ask you something, Sergeant Major, and I know it’s putting you up against the wall, so if you don’t want to answer, I’ll sure understand.”
“Yes. Go ahead.” A look of concern crossed the old man’s lined face. You could almost see the three wars in his face. It was tired … not physically tired … just tired. And sad. A man can only see so much, and then …
“Sergeant Major, I want to know what you’ve heard about that plebe they found up in Popolopen, David Hand. Before you answer, I should tell you I’ve just been to see the com. I’m on leave right now, and they called me up here today, special. There’s something big going on, and I want to know what it is. I figured you might have some idea.”
The sergeant major studied the face of the young man in his kitchen. Here was young Ry Slaight. He was fond of the kid. Fond of him … like a son. Slaight had gotten all worked up over that business with those guys they called the “Magnificent Seven,” because he thought they’d been screwed. They had. The sergeant major had to explain to Slaight there were just some things in life you couldn’t do anything about. Then had come the news about his own son, and Slaight was up in Building 720 the day he heard, and he told Slaight about it, told him the whole story for some reason. He guessed he just had to explain it to himsel
f all over again, that there were some things in life you just couldn’t affect. Slaight listened, nodded, but he knew Slaight didn’t believe it for a goddamn minute. Didn’t believe that business about some things in life … Slaight didn’t believe it because he, the sergeant major, didn’t believe it, either. It was just something you said to younger men, hotheads, young fireballs with a burr up their asses. You said it to cool them off, but you didn’t believe it any more than they did. He looked at Slaight’s face, red and sweating and young and hot and handsome like a colt … he looked at the kid and he knew he’d have to tell him.
“Yeah. I know about this Hand thing. Big goings-on. Big. Started the day they found him. Kept up all through June Week. Still going the day I retired … lemme see … two weeks ago, now. They got you up here, huh?”
“Yes, Sergeant Major” When you addressed a sergeant major, you said, Yes, sergeant major to him the way you said Yessir to an officer. It was the way.
“Cut that crap. You can call me old Moonface, for all I care. Did you know that’s what they used to call me? Old Moonface? It was because I was a platoon sergeant when I was eighteen, so goddamn young I was moonfaced, I guess. You can call me Ed. That’s my nickname.”
“Sure,” Slaight was nervous. You always felt that way when someone older—someone above you—told you to be informal.
“So what’d they call you up here for?”
“I found out about the autopsy on the kid. By accident. Soon as they found out I knew, they called.”
“Figures.” The sergeant major took a long pull on his beer. He looked out the window. Irit and Mrs. Eldridge were going over some of her sketches. Mrs. Eldridge looked interested … she laughed. Irit … fit.
“Lemme tell you something, Ry. I wouldn’t have told you this a couple of weeks ago. But you know—got the packers today, movers coming tomorrow. It’s the last time, I guess. We’re going to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Picked it right off the map. Never been there in my life. We’re just going. Feels kind of funny though … it’s the first time I picked the spot on the map.” Sergeant Major Eldridge took another swig, finished the beer, opened the fridge for another.
“In the army, you’ve got your shitstorms and you’ve got your shitstorms. Happens all the time. Goddamn command maintenance inspections, stand-downs, division exercises over in Germany … and the goddamn war. Now there’s one of your all-time shitstorms. That one.” The sergeant major opened his beer and stared out the window again.
“Yeah,” said Slaight, acting like he knew what old Eldridge was talking about. He didn’t.
“As I was saying. You’ve got your shirtstorms. This one’s so big, you can’t even see it. This dead plebe thing. Lemme tell you, Ry, those last couple of weeks up there in 720, it was like being in the eye of a hurricane. Know what that’s like? Quiet as hell. Not a whisper of wind. But around you, you know all hell is breaking loose. That’s the way it was with the dead plebe. Quiet. Too fucking quiet. It was another one of those situations where not one piece of paperwork got generated. Not a fucking one. Now in the army, anytime the poop-sheets stop flowing, you better sit up and take a look around, son, ‘cause something’s wrong. Like in Nam. You don’t hear nothing, you don’t see nothing, you start looking up, up in the trees for snipers. Look up, not down. Same thing with the plebe. I did some asking around.” The sergeant major paused and studied Slaight’s face. It was a ritual he’d been through a thousand, maybe a million times before. You paused, and you waited for the young trooper to come on.
“I understand,” said Slaight, prodding.
“No, you don’t,” said the sergeant major with finality. “Not this time. Slaight, the lid’s down so tight, it took me a week to get a hold of anything. Even then, it was diddlyshit, rumors and such. Another week, just before they retired me"—he sipped his beer—"just before they retired me, this clerk over in Headquarters comes by and we talk. He was scared. Said a friend of his down at Post HQ told him three MPs got shipped to Korea the week before … just like that. Gone in one day. They’d been up at Buckner, working on that dead cadet thing, he said. Then they were gone. He did some sniffing around. Colonel King arranged it … the MPs’ transfer, I mean. I knew King was up to some shit, because I was watching him come in and out of the office … in and out and in and out…. That last week, I had lots of free time, and I just wandered around. He was going to see Hedges about twice a day. I figured that’s what he was doing, reporting to Hedges, but I didn’t know for sure till I seen him.” Sergeant Major Eldridge finished his beer.
“Want another?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“Well. I knew the lid was on, but goddamn. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen that kind of stuff—used to call it ‘midnight levitation,’ when they’d take a guy and ship him out overnight, just raise him up and he’d be gone, like magic. So one day the colonel … I mean Colonel King … he’s going over to play tennis right around lunchtime, and he drops off this big pouch on the chair next to my desk on his way out, and he says to me, he says, ‘Take care of this for me while I’m gone, will you, Eldridge?’ So I figure to myself, okay, I’ll take care of it. I went in his office and closed the door and went through the whole pouch … anything disappeared, I wanted to know about it, right?” Eldridge grinned widely and swiggered his beer.
“Right,” said Slaight. Classic sergeant logic.
“CYA. Cover Your Ass. All that good stuff. So I went through the pouch. Took me an hour. It was all the stuff on this plebe, David Hand. Some of it was pretty incredible. They had his whole record, every goddamn thing there was on the kid here at the academy, and some shit that must have come from someplace else … intelligence stuff, or something. There were ‘red flags,’ you know, those little red tabs that mean Top Secret, all over the goddamn place.” Eldridge paused again.
“So?” Slaight could barely stand the waiting.
“Well. I can’t remember everything I seen, you understand. And I believe if I was ever to be questioned about it … I’m not so sure I could even remember what that pouch looked like. I’m getting along in years, you know. And I got this shrapnel wound right here …” Eldridge pointed to a scar behind one ear, leaning toward Slaight and turning his head. “I got me this wound right here, and it’s been known to affect my … uh … memory. You understand.”
“Sure.”
“Slaight. You’re a good man. A god damn good man. I like ya. And I’m gonna tell you three things that was in that pouch. Three. You listening?”
“You bet, Sergeant Major.”
“One. The kid was a homosexual. Confirmed. All over the place. Poop-sheets and poop-sheets and poop-sheets on the kid being queer. Got that?”
“I knew that one.”
“Good. Two. There were two … that is two … copies of autopsies in that pouch. Both of ‘em typed up. Both of ‘em signed by some major over to the hospital. You wannanother beer?” Eldridge crinkled his can and opened the fridge for another.
“No, thanks. I’m driving.” They laughed.
“Okay. These two autopsies. They were different. Completely different. One of ‘em was all about the kid being a fag, semen all over the goddamn place, all that shit. Said suspected murder victim. The other one said nothing about him being a fag. Nothing about a murder. Drowning. Accidental. Water in lungs. You know. Both of ‘em signed by this major. Can’t recall his name. Now I figured that was a little strange … two autopsies, one dead plebe. And with all that other stuff in there—a lot of the red-flagged stuff—about him being a homosexual and all. I don’t know what King was doing with two autopsies. Both of them were photocopies. All I know is I seen two of them, for sure.”
“Jesus.” Slaight whistled, the way Leroy Buck whistled, between his teeth.
“Yeah. Jesus. So I read on, after coming across these two separate autopsies. And we come to number three. Three. One name keeps coming up, all through the pouch. I don’t know what the hell this name is doing in there. The name is on
the red-flagged poop-sheets. It’s on letters. It’s on some photocopies of transcriptions of phone conversations. Lemme tell you, Slaight. This name was in that pouch, one end to the other. The name is William Beatty.” The sergeant major took a pull on his beer.
“Yeah?” said Slaight, not wanting to appear anxious.
“William Beatty. Number three. Some civilian down in the Department of Defense in the Pentagon. From the looks of it, he knew the kid, David Hand. But the strange thing was … this Beatty character, his name crops up in letters from the Pentagon, letters from generals, letters to King, letters to the com, letters from one general to another inside the Pentagon, all kinds of goddamn memos, and letters from Beatty himself to all of these guys. This Beatty … he’s all over the goddamn place, digging in everybody’s shit. Looked like he pretty much inserted himself into the thing … you know … they didn’t go looking for him. He came looking for them. For King and Hedges, I mean. As for the rest of them—the Pentagon characters—I don’t know. I don’t know what this Beatty’s story is, but I can tell you one thing about him. He has got some friends. It was all Dear Billy, Dear Tommy, Dear Dave … that fucker was dearing his ass from one end of the Pentagon to the other. And first-naming it with King and Hedges, too. This guy, William Beatty, he’s into that dead plebe up to his hindquarters and then some. Deeper. If I was to base my conclusions on poop-sheets alone, I’d say this guy knows some stuff. William Beatty, Slaight. That’s all I’m gonna tell you.”
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