Dress Gray

by Lucian K. Truscott

  “Thanks, mister,” said Lugar, puffing on his cigarette in the cold fall air. The man started to move away, but Lugar cut him off again.

  “Say, I wonder if you could help me …” Just then, Leroy Buck drove up, heading north on Madison, slowly, the nondescript Chevy behind him. The man in the charcoal London Fog made a move toward the Chevy. Leroy Buck stopped, threw the rental car in reverse, and made-believe he was backing into a parking slot, cutting off the Chevy. Irit’s cab was disappearing up Madison in traffic. John Lugar was pestering the man in the charcoal London Fog about the Whitney Museum. Suddenly the man waved his right arm wildly, and the nondescript Chevy pulled around Leroy Buck and raced up Madison after Irit’s cab.

  They’d done it. They’d separated the pursuers. Buck followed the nondescript Chevy, following Irit on her wild-goose chase. John Lugar thanked the man in the charcoal London Fog for the light, and walked downtown. Slaight moved to a better storefront. He watched the man in the charcoal London Fog. What would he do? Where would he go, now that he’d lost his partner in the car? Back to the drugstore? Slaight was banking … no. Slaight was banking he’d go to a place where he could establish secure communication with his partner in the Chevy. He was banking he’d go where they were holed up. The man in the charcoal London Fog headed back down Madison, crossed to the east side of the street at Eighty-third, turned left on Eighty-second, walked past the entrance to a luxury high-rise, past a couple of brownstones, and turned onto an old double-wide tenement, which had been gutted and “renovated” with tiny overpriced studio apartments, catering to the quick-turnover stewardess and secretary trade. John Lugar had moved to Irit’s apartment lobby. He watched the man enter the building. Slaight stayed out of sight on Madison.

  About 6:15 a light came on in the apartment, second from the top, left. Slaight headed for the bar on Seventy-eighth Street. When Irit walked in, he dropped a dime in the pay phone and dialed the phone in Irit’s building’s lobby. Lugar picked up.

  “I’m going to turn her loose now,” said Slaight.

  “Okay, I’ll hold the line,” said Lugar.

  Irit walked back up Madison, the four blocks to Eighty-second Street, turned into her lobby, and headed for the elevator. The nondescript Chevy turned the corner not long afterward.

  “Chevy here,” said Lugar.

  “Thought so,” said Slaight.

  “Lights out in apartment,” reported Lugar. “And now Venetian blinds are going up … face visible in apartment window, just a shadow, but it’s a guy. It’s the guy. He’s standing up, taking off the overcoat,” said Lugar with satisfaction. “Chevy parked … goddamn, I think they’ve got that space reserved, you know, with one of those little white cardboard parade permit things … man getting out of Chevy, heading for same apartment, going in. He’s there.”

  “Okay. Come on down. Leroy’s here,” said Slaight from the pay phone in the bar. Lugar took a couple of minutes to reach the bar.

  “So Irit’s tucked away for the night,” Lugar announced. “I think you better keep your fanny out of there, Slaight. They’ve got a full view of everyone going in and out of that building, and you may be the one they’re waiting for.”

  “Yeah. I know. Let’s hop in the car and get downtown, get some supper at the Puglia. Tomorrow comes the fun part. Josie in town yet?”

  “She’s down at the Van Rensselaer right now, waiting. Already got our rooms.”

  “Gentlemen, let us leave our friends to exercise their night vision, drive downtown, and get our shit together for tomorrow.” They did.

  Saturday morning, 11:30, October 26, the three cadets and the woman reporter for the Bergen Record loaded into the rental car and drove uptown. It was a simple plan, hatched by John Lugar, eagerly agreed to by his girl friend, Josie Irene Severns, who at twenty-three had cut her teeth as a newspaper reporter covering political corruption in Hudson County, New Jersey, with the exception of Mayor Daley’s Cook County, probably one of the largest political sludge-heaps in the nation. In a year fraught with the spectacle of the Democratic National Convention fracas, demonstrations and political dissidence of every conceivable sort, a story on domestic intelligence gathering seemed to Josie Irene Severns one of national importance, and one hell of a lot of fun. Like most cadet girl friends, she held little truck with the demonstrators. But again like most cadet girl friends, issues about the war raised by Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy had made their mark. The girls were none too keen on the war their boyfriends were doubtlessly going to fight.

  Leroy Buck pulled the rental car to a stop a block from Irit’s boutique. Josie hopped out and headed for the boutique, just another customer. Once inside, Irit stood behind a rack of clothes and pointed out today’s watchers. Josie checked her purse. All was ready. Irit tied a red scarf around the neck of one of her mannequins in her window—a prearranged signal. Buck, Lugar, and Slaight jumped out of the car and moved to the corner of Eighty-first and Madison. Josie walked out of the shop and directly across the street to the drugstore.

  Two men sat in a booth near the window, nursing cups of coffee, toying with stale English muffins. Josie took a counter seat near them, ordered coffee, turned her back, and pulled out John Lugar’s Nikon. Without warning, she wheeled the counter stool and snapped six photos of the men in the booth, seated about eight feet away. She placed the camera on the counter, produced a note pad and her wallet, and approached the booth. The men were stunned.

  “Gentlemen, my name is Josie Severns, and as you can see by my police department press badge, I represent the Bergen Record.” She slid into the booth next to one of the men.

  “Now. I would like to ask you a few questions about intelligence activities. We may as well start with what agency you gentleman represent. CIA? FBI? Military Intelligence? Defense Intelligence Agency?” She looked eagerly in their eyes, and she knew they were wondering what in fuck is going on?

  “Come now, gentlemen, don’t be shy. I’ve been watching you for a few days. You and your friends are getting to be regulars here. Now, let’s cut the crap and get down to basics. Who are you with, and why are you watching the woman who runs the store across the street?” Again she watched them. She knew she had them. They were making the same mistake the New Jersey pols made. They thought if they just ignored a “girl reporter” long enough, she’d go away.

  Bad mistake with Josie Irene Severns. She could wait out the stoniest Hudson County courthouse stare-down. And there she was, sitting in the booth with these two spooks, still holding her main question. On an educated guess—based upon research into the career of Brigadier General Charles Sherrill Hedges, gleaned from a bio in Assembly, the West Point alumni magazine—John Lugar figured the surveillance was the work of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The FBI had no reason to muddle in the army’s affairs. Military Intelligence agents spent most of their time running background checks on guys who were being put in for security clearances. Best of all, General Hedges had served for two years, after his first tour in Vietnam, as a liaison officer on the staff of the Secretary of Defense between the CIA and the DIA. Since he worked for the Secretary of Defense, Hedges had been the DIA’s man. He probably still had good contacts there, reasoned Lugar. Josie sprung the question, standing up, thrusting her notebook back in her purse:

  “Well, then, gentlemen, if we don’t get anywhere this way, perhaps we’ll get somewhere when I get this film developed this afternoon, print it in tomorrow’s paper, and send a clip down to the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, inquiring about what his noble employees were doing on a coffee break during their surveillance of Irit Dov’s boutique. What do you think, gentlemen? Do you think that will produce some answers to my questions?”

  “Let’s have that film,” stated one of the men flatly. He was wearing a navy blue suit and tie, and his face looked like a pane of glass, his skin was so shiny.

  Josie grabbed her camera and her purse, tossing two quarters on the counter. Just then, Buck, Lugar, and Slaight
walked in.

  “Nothing doing,” she said.

  “I said I want the film,” said the man. “This is official business. You are interfering with government business. Now, give me that film, miss.”

  Buck, Lugar, and Slaight stood next to her silently.

  “I’ve spent my whole career interfering with official government business, mister, most of it rather unsavory. You two remind me of poolroom stiffs I know in Hoboken. Only there, they’ve got something constructive to do with their time. They watch people shooting pool. What are you guys watching? To see if the knees on Irit’s stockings sag by the end of her day?”

  “That will be enough of your wisecracks, miss. Now give us the film.”

  Lugar grabbed the camera and slung it over his shoulder. Slaight stepped forward. He decided to play the scene to the hilt. If he was going to go, many as well be in style.

  “It’s my understanding that you two dipsticks, and the two you replaced last night, are denizens of something called the Defense Intelligence Agency. Is that right?”

  Nothing.

  “Well, I’m Ry Slaight, the guy you’ve probably been waiting for. I’m here for two reasons. One, to ask you—no, to tell you—to get off my girl friend’s back. If you don’t pack up your shit and shut down this crummy little stake-out, I’m going to notify the ACLU and have a team of lawyers up here serving you with every kind of goddamn civil writ they can crank out. Two. I’m going over to see my girl friend in her shop, and from there, to her house. My friends here are going to photograph everything you do while I walk over to her shop, and while we walk up to her house. Then they’re going to hop in cars and drive downtown and make sworn statements as to what they have seen today and last night.”

  Slaight waited for the men to say something. They said nothing.

  “We know where you’re staying. We know where you go every day. We know when you change shifts and cars. Look at that hunk of shit you’ve got out there now! What is that, some kind of practical joke? A goddamn Falcon!”

  The men didn’t say anything. They weren’t taking the bait. Slaight was hoping for some sort of confrontation Lugar could photograph, but it wasn’t coming. He reached in his pocket and withdrew two envelopes. Each contained a carbon of a letter to the director to Defense Intelligence Agency, outlining the “moves” of Rysam Parker Slaight III and Irit Dov on Saturday, October 26, 1968. He handed them to the men at the table.

  “There is your report, guys. File the fucker. I already sent it special delivery to Washington last night. Your boss has probably already gotten it.” To Slaight’s great surprise, the men took their envelopes and pocketed them. Fingerprints. The men left money on the table, stood up, and left wordlessly.

  “Weird,” said Lugar. “You gave those two enough reason to kick your ass from here to Philly, and they didn’t do nothin’.”

  “Yeah? Well, fuck them and their marching orders,” said Slaight. He was feeling good, better than he’d felt in months, in fact. They all walked over to Irit’s shop, she told her assistant to run things for the rest of the day, and the group headed for her place. They drank, cooked, talked, and joked all afternoon and into the night. Three cadets and a lady reporter, putting the arm on a couple of spooks from God-only-knows-where! Think of it! Think of the report old Hedges would get up at Woo fuckin’ Poo! Wait’ll he puts an eyeball on the bottom of the report Slaight handed the men in the drugstore. Sketched at the bottom of the page, about three inches high, was a replica of the clenched fists which emblazoned T-shirts, flags, banners, and placards at every demonstration photographed and films for the past year! Not just any fist, but the fist! Wouldn’t that give old Hedges something to train his binoculars on!

  They laughed and laughed but never so hard as they laughed at Leroy Buck. He was taking a course in advanced Ordnance Engineering, and just yesterday, his small five-man section had been given a secret lecture on military weaponry. One of the two majors who taught them held up a Plexiglas model of an artillery shell, a 105-mm howitzer round. But this howitzer round was full of wires and transistors and little round balls and weird shit, inside the Plexiglas casing of the shell’s warhead. The instructor told them the model howitzer round was still in the early stages of development, that he was holding a dream, really. He hinted broadly that the model howitzer round represented the furthest reaches of tactical nuclear weaponry development. Then he got so exited, holding the model howitzer round, fondling it, gazing into its multicolored interior, he just burst out with it:

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “this puts tactical nuclear weapons down where they belong, at the company level. With this round a company commander will be able to knock out an entire enemy company with a single round. Imagine that! One call on the radio, and zap! And it’ll be clean, gentlemen, the company commander will be able to move his men through that area within a matter of hours. This is tac-nuke of the future, gentlemen. Maybe by the time you’re company commanders you’ll have the privilege and the pleasure of deploying this little baby!”

  Leroy Buck told the story perfectly, imitating the major’s authoritarian inflection, uncannily accurate even through his thick southern drawl.

  “Next thing you know,” he went on, “they’ll pull us down there in the goddamn basement of Thayer Hall, and they’ll hold up a little Plexiglas sphere, and say, this here, gentlemen, is the nculear grenade. Now this little bugger puts tac-nukes down where they really belong, in the hand of the lowly infantryman. With one pitch, even the dullest PFC’ll be able to knock out a whole enemy squad, the little tac-nuke just makin’ the neatest little mushroom cloud you ever did see. A fuckin’ nuclear grenade! That’s gonna be the next goddamn thing!”

  They all guffawed, even Irit, Leroy Buck’s imitation of the major was so perfect, the twisted extension of logic of the nuclear grenade was so—well—so goddamn funny! What else could you do but laugh your ass off at the concept of the nuclear grenade after a day like today—hell, after the last goddamn three and a half years!

  The more grim the joke, the harder they laughed, the more they drank, the funnier it all was. It was the way.

  31

  Charlie Napier, a clean-sleeve firstie with whom Slaight had walked the area many times, came to the table the next night, Sunday night, October 27, 1968. Napier had gotten slugged cow year, 66 demerits, 132 punishment tours, and six months’ confinement to his room, for that unique cadet “offense,” PDA—public display of affection. PDA effectively speaking made it illegal for a cadet to touch a girl in public. Public was defined as anywhere—literally, anywhere, on or off academy grounds. Affection was defined as touching with the hand, and went onward and upward past the kiss on the cheek to the nether regions of the embrace, and finally, as in the case of Charlie Napier, to the act of intercourse itself. In Napier’s case, it was suspected intercourse, but it was PDA just the same.

  What had Napier done to justify the stiffest punishment meted out at West Point, short of expulsion? He and his girl friend had checked into a motel one Saturday night. The motel keeper, a local Highland Falls cadet-hater, had sought to report him for PDA, but the room was registered in the girl’s name. So the motel keeper had gone to the West Point library and leafed through company photographs—some 3,200 cadets in all—in the Howitzer, the cadet yearbook, until he found Napier’s face. He found his name. He reported Napier to his company tactical officer. The tac in turn reported Napier on a two-dash-one. The tac had thought Napier ought to get some kind of slap on the hand, and 8 & 8 for being dull enough to use a local motel if nothing else. But when the form came back from old Two-Dash Hedges, Napier’s “offense” had been reworded:

  “Gross lack of judgment, so as to bring discredit on himself, the Corps of Cadets, the United States Military Academy, the United States Army, and the Nation, i.e.: sharing a motel room with a member of the opposite sex on or about April 15, 1968.”

  The announcement of Napier’s offense, made by the brigade adjutant at lunch in the mess hall
one day in early May, had been a clear warning to others who might be entertaining similarly licentious thoughts about girls and motel rooms. The reading of the “offense” over the booming PA left the mess hall hushed, stunned. Hell, everyone knew what went on behind closed doors, especially the closed doors of motel rooms. But the word was already around the mess hall. In Napier’s case, there had been no evidence. He could have slept in the tub, he could have napped in a chair. The motel keeper, Two-Dash Hedges, nobody knew what went on between Napier and his girl friend, because a motel room was not public. The message was clear. Hedges had decided to make an example of Napier. Not only was touching a girl on academy grounds illegal, so was the presumption of sex—not sex itself, merely the presumption of sex—even off the grounds of the academy, even in a motel room.

  Eventually, the cadets laughed it off, as they laughed off everything else that made no goddamn sense at all. They went about their business of fucking anything wearing a skirt—cautiously, is all. Just about everyone, that is. John Lugar, Slaight’s roommate, had spent three and a half years in the cadet library, combing its stacks, its collections of rare academy memorabilia, its unclassified “papers,” in a futile search for the man he called “the sick motherfucker who conceived of PDA.” If he ever found the man’s name, he said he was going to plaster it all over every company bulletin board in the Corps, a total slander of the bastard, let everybody know who had first decreed cadets could only look at girls—unless, of course, you could get off-post and into a motel room with a girl, and now with the Napier slug, old Two-Dash Hedges had attempted to proscribe even that normal, healthy, male sexual activity.

  So when clean-sleeve Charlie Napier, by this time something of a hero—or at least a public figure in the Corps—showed up at the Buck/Lugar/Slaight table on Sunday night, his presence was especially ominous. Slaight had just finished flaunting the fact that he was going to spend the night with Irit Dov in front of two intelligence agents of some sort, and if that couldn’t be defined as public display of affection, what could? But Napier’s visit brought still grimmer news.