The War Heist

by Ralph Dennis

  “That was booze talking Friday night.”

  “You and me, we could plan it.” Johnny tapped the side of his head. “That’s where it works or fails, in the planning.”

  “As a party game it might beat playing bridge. And that’s all it was, a party game. Some way to pass the time while the host and hostess aren’t speaking to each other and it’s still not time to say good night and leave.” Tom dressed quickly. He looped the tie under his collar. “If you believe you can pull this off, all it means is that too many footballs bounced off your head.” He tossed his sweat clothes in the wire basket. “Anyway, I’ve got other plans.”

  Johnny trailed him from the locker room to the equipment compartment. He watched as Tom pushed the basket through the window to the attendant. “Going to Kansas, huh?”

  “What does that mean?” Tom stepped around him and stood in front of the mirror. He began tying his tie.

  Johnny leaned toward him and grinned into the mirror. “You know. What’s the town there where they’ve got the stockade where officers do their prison time?”

  “I wasn’t thinking about Leavenworth.”

  “It might not be your choice, Tom.”

  Tom adjusted his tie. An itching began high up, between his shoulder blades. “What does all this mean to me? You’re talking nonsense.”

  Johnny backed away. His eyes flicked toward the attendant behind the equipment cage. “Not in here.”

  Tom waved a hand at the attendant and pushed through the door that led to the parking lot. A blast of hot air hit him as soon as he reached the stairs. The full sweat broke out over the length of his body. He raised a hand and wiped his forehead.

  “You can give me a lift,” Johnny said from behind him.

  “Where’s your car?”

  “Lila dropped me. She was going to the beach.”

  “All right.” Tom led the way to the Chevy coupe. He got behind the wheel. Johnny entered from the passenger side, but he didn’t close the door. “I guess you didn’t hear what happened last night.”

  “What?”

  “They’ll want to talk to you.”

  “Who?”

  “The Provost Marshal,” Johnny said. “Somebody broke into Company D last night.”

  “Is that right?”

  “They pried off all the locks and broke into all the cabinets.”

  “Who?”

  “Nobody knows. Probably some dogface needed booze money.” Johnny put out a hand and touched the dashboard. He drew his hand away. “Hot as a griddle.” He turned and stared at Tom. “They broke into your office, too. I understand they emptied the Company Recreation Fund.”

  “My cabinet?”

  “You’re slow today, Tom. They took everything that was there.”

  “It should have been more than five hundred dollars.”

  “Should have been,” Johnny said softly.

  “You put a funny emphasis on should.”

  “Maybe it deserves one.” Johnny closed the door on his side of the coupe. “That dumb dogface did a night’s work for very little pay.”

  “That’s a funny remark.”

  “Of course,” Johnny said, “nobody knows this but the thief and me.”

  “It doesn’t bother you that you seem to know what the thief knows?” Tom put the Chevy in reverse and backed out of the parking spot. He turned into the road and headed for Married Officers’ Row.

  “You’d be surprised all I know. For example, I hear you had rotten cards last week.”

  “They were so-so.”

  “They were dog slime, and you know it. You might say I’ve done a study of your gambling habits. All on the quiet, you know.”

  “Of course.”

  “The run of cards you had last week. Somebody might get the idea the thief was doing you a favor.”

  Tom turned onto Custer Road. Johnny’s house was halfway down the street on the left.

  “But we know better,” Tom said.

  “Know what?”

  “We know it’s blackmail.”

  “How can you blackmail an innocent man?” Johnny stretched and yawned. “I understand that dogface even stole your account book.”

  “I guess that’s why the Provost Marshal’ll want to talk to me. He’ll want to know the balance in the fund.” Tom swung the coupe across the road and braked in front of Johnny’s quarters.

  “Maybe. On the other hand, if the Provost knew about your gambling, he might have some other questions for you. The way I heard it, you lost somewhere between four and five hundred dollars to George Marsh.” Johnny pushed the door open and stepped into the road. “Come in for a few minutes.”

  Tom leaned on the steering wheel. “What were you doing last night, Johnny?”

  “Me? Nothing. Lila was feeling sick, so we stayed home and listened to the radio.”

  “All evening?”

  “The whole evening.” Johnny rounded the front of the Chevy and opened the door on the driver’s side. “And we did a lot of talking. You know what? Lila thinks the trip to Canada is a great idea.”

  “That makes all the difference in the world,” Tom said.

  “Don’t it?” Johnny waved a hand at his house. “Come on in.”

  Tom followed him up the walk to the front porch.

  Lila had made a pitcher of tea before she left for the beach. Johnny got a handful of ice from the refrigerator and dropped it into two glasses. While he poured the tea, Tom stood at the screen door and looked into the backyard.

  It had happened there. Damn himself for a loose tongue.

  “Have some tea,” Johnny said. “It’ll cool you off.”

  “I’m not hot.”

  “You’re boiling.” Johnny held the glass toward him.

  Tom moved from the doorway. He took the glass. “Say the rest of it.”

  “I don’t like the word blackmail.”

  Tom sipped the tea. “It’s a rotten word.”

  “But say somebody tried to do you a favor. Say it was a way of making you owe them. Instead of that, while they were doing the favor, that person got his hands on something really damaging.”

  Tom knew. It was the operatic gesture, the IOU $532.27 scrawled in the ledger to balance the books for Major Griggs when he came by. And he’d signed it, in inch-high letters.

  “If that evidence, if we call it that, got mailed to the Provost, all hell’d break loose. Somebody’d hang by the balls.”

  “If it got mailed,” Tom said.

  “That’s right. What’s bad about blackmail is that it means you’re forcing somebody to do some action they don’t want to. It means you’re pulling at them and they’re digging in their heels the whole way. It’s a waste of time and energy dealing with them.”

  “The solution’s simple. The one who’s reluctant, you let him sit out the game.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “Why not?” Tom said.

  “The way I figure it, at a minimum, we need at least two chiefs and six indians. One chief can’t handle all the details.”

  “Find another chief. Promote somebody.”

  Johnny shook his head. “That’s another problem with blackmail. The one who doesn’t want to go along with it, say you let him out. What’s to keep him from coming by afterward and doing his own version of blackmail?”

  “His word,” Tom said. “His complete lack of interest.”

  “In a hundred million dollars?” Johnny stared at him, his look steady and unblinking. “No, the other chief is in it, like it or not. Of course, it would be better if he liked it.”

  Tom placed his glass of tea on the table. “Can I use your bathroom?”

  “Like it was your own.”

  Tom ran water in the sink until it changed from lukewarm to cold. Then he filled the basin and ducked his face in it several times. He dried himself on a towel that smelled of Lila’s perfume.

  He could fake it. That was the only choice he had. The whole idea had an ice chip’s chance in hell of
getting under way in the first place. Johnny said he needed two chiefs and six indians. Against that number, there was the Canadian National Railway and the Canadian Army and the Mounties and British security and God knows who else.

  He could go along with it until Johnny got deep enough into it so he’d see how impossible it was. It might take a matter of days, no more than a week. Humor the child until he discovers that the puzzle he’s putting together is too difficult for him. It was that or he’d have to explain the accounts to the Provost. That could, as Johnny had warned him, mean prison time at the stockade in Leavenworth, Kansas. It wasn’t a pleasant prospect. No, he’d humor the child for a few days.

  When he returned to the kitchen, Johnny was seated at the table. There was a sheet of paper and a pen in front of him.

  “I guess I’m in,” Tom said. “But I can’t lie about it. One heel’s still dragging.”

  “At least it’s progress.”

  Johnny capped the pen and shoved the paper across the table. When it was closer, Tom lifted it and saw that there were six names listed on it.

  Randy Gipson

  Clark Gipson

  Harry Churchman

  Vic Franks

  Richard Betts

  Gunny Townsend

  “You know them?” Johnny took the list from Tom and placed it on the table in front of him.

  Tom nodded. “And every one of them is trouble.” He leaned across the table and drew a line with a fingernail under Clark Gipson. “Except him. He doesn’t fit in with that bunch. Why do we need him?”

  “We don’t. But we need Randy, and without Clark we don’t get Randy.”

  “Two for the price of one?”

  “A fire sale.” Johnny tapped the list with a finger. “First thing in the morning we see what the Army’s got on them. Home addresses, Army addresses.”

  “Harry Churchman’s out. He’s been ex-Army for months. Vic Franks took his discharge. So did Betts. Gunny Townsend retired with his full time in. I don’t know about the Gipsons. Hell, they’re all grown boys and they won’t be home with their mothers.”

  “I didn’t say it would be easy.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t say that.”

  “That’s why I’ve given us three days to locate them.” Johnny Whitman folded the list and stuffed it in his shirt pocket. “And not one day longer.”

  Talking is the easy part. It’s no trouble making a list of names.

  It was small comfort, no matter how much Tom tried to convince himself.

  The son of a bitch really thought he could do it.

  But in a few days, in a week …

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Money changed hands. Captain Whitman and the clerk in the records office knew what twenty dollars was worth. The hunt for the six men began in the files early Monday morning, as soon as the office was open for business.

  Gunny Townsend was easy. It was simply a matter of finding out where they mailed his retirement check each month. One call, and the clerk had that address for Johnny.

  The Gipson brothers weren’t much harder. Randy Gipson, as he’d been most of his Army time, was in trouble, and he was serving his sentence in the Fort Bragg stockade. Clark had taken his discharge about a month before. There wasn’t any address for him, but he wouldn’t be far away from his brother. He’d be somewhere in Fayetteville. The Gipsons were like the evil and the good halves of a character in a Russian novel. Find one, and the other would step out of a doorway down the street.

  The enlistment papers for Vic Franks showed that his mother had signed for him so he could join up at seventeen. The chance was that she might know where her son was. It was, however, a long shot. Maybe they weren’t in touch.

  That was the morning’s work. Two definites and two possibles. A good start when you considered that he’d allowed himself three days.

  At noon, on his lunchtime, Johnny drove into town and sent two telegrams from the Western Union office. One to Gunny Townsend and the other in care of Mrs. Franks in Detroit. Both telegrams were the same.

  I HAVE A BIG PROJECT. UNLIMITED

  FUNDS. CONTACT ME NOW.

  Ten words exactly. Right on the head for the minimum length.

  The enlisted men’s mess was through serving for the day when Johnny got back from town. He walked around the building to the loading platform. Lunch might be over, but the cleaning up was still going on. Johnny found the mess sergeant’s desk and asked for Alvin Hart. The sergeant checked a clipboard and directed him to the pot sink.

  Hart, a sad-faced private with bad skin, was there, up to his elbows in soapy water. Mountains of dirty pots and baking pans surrounded him.

  Yellow meat-grease scum floated around his elbows. His fatigues were soaked down the front, and he stood in a pool of the same water.

  Private Hart saw Captain Whitman and didn’t know whether to salute or stand at attention.

  Johnny solved it for him by saying, “Stand easy.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You about done here?”

  “I ain’t hardly started,” Hart said.

  “Somebody told me you buddied about some with Richard Betts.” The somebody was Sergeant Jefferson.

  “That’s right, sir.”

  “You hear from him?”

  “I had a letter a week ago,” Hart said.

  “It have a return address?”

  Private Hart nodded. “The letter’s at the barracks.”

  Johnny looked around. The mess sergeant stood at a distance, watching them. Johnny waved a hand at him and the sergeant trotted over, quick step.

  “Yes, sir, Captain?”

  “I need Private Hart for a special detail. Somebody else will have to take over the pot sink until the breakfast shift in the morning.”

  It didn’t matter one way or the other to the sergeant. The peacetime Army didn’t have any shortage of warm bodies. The only one it mattered to was Private Hart. He’d miss the lunch and the supper cleanup. That was two less sessions in the grease barrel.

  Within ten minutes Johnny had an address for Richard Betts. He copied it from the pencil smear on the envelope. Private Hart had a free afternoon and he considered it a fair swap.

  Ex–Master Sergeant Harry Churchman was a hard man to find. He hadn’t left a lot of footprints behind when he took his discharge and left the Army. Added to that, he had always been something of a loner, a man without anybody you could call a close friend.

  Half a dozen phone calls and twice that many questions, and Johnny didn’t know one new fact about Harry. He’d walked off the base with the discharge in his hand and dropped right off the edge of the world. That’s the way it seemed.

  And then, around suppertime, Johnny drove off the base to the Green Lantern Tavern.

  The road outside the military reservation, as it was at Bragg and Jackson, was elbow to elbow with junk-car dealers and roadhouses and trailer camps. And during his time in the Army, Johnny Whitman didn’t recall one of these payday strips that didn’t have one tavern called the Green Lantern.

  A former top sergeant named Billy Corkran owned the one in Fort Belwin. He had the big belly of a man who’d spent half his life in mess hall and might have slept there between meals. His head was as bald as a peeled onion.

  Johnny found him in a room in back of the Green Lantern. It was a makeshift office. His desk and chair were planted in the middle of stacks and stacks of beer crates and soft-drink boxes.

  “Harry? That bastard.”

  “I thought you used to drink with him, Billy.”

  “I drink with anybody.”

  “You know where he is now?”

  “I heard something,” Billy said. “I forget what it is I heard.”

  “You’re not much help, Billy.”

  “You maybe noticed I didn’t stand up and salute when you walked in here. It might be because I ain’t in that man’s Army anymore.”

  Bastard. But Johnny kept it easy and even. “Where’d you hear this about Har
ry? The part you don’t remember anymore?”

  “I think it was from a girl works night at Emma’s.” Billy gave Johnny an amused look. “You wouldn’t know Emma’s, would you?”

  “Only from the VD reports that go across my desk.”

  “The girl goes by the name of Angela.”

  “That’s a classy name,” Johnny said.

  “Ain’t it though?” Billy shifted his weight and made a reach into a beer crate. He pulled out a warm beer and pried the cap away on the side of the desk. A swallow and he said, “Oh, hell, this is a waste of my time. It’s not like I gave a crap one way or the other. Look, I’ll save you a trip over there. Lord only knows why. This girl from Emma’s comes in one night and she gets in my private bottle back here, and it turns out she’d been giving it to Harry on her free time. She got it in her head, the dumb cow, that Harry was going to send for her as soon as he got settled up north. She heard from him this once. She got to worrying, and she got this guy she knows in New York to look him up.” Billy tipped the bottle and the warm beer slid down. “This guy—I think he was a pimp—tracked Harry from a flophouse on Second Avenue to a fancy penthouse on Riverside Drive. It turns out that Harry is now working for Mr. Arkman. That scares the pimp or whatever and he backs off.”

  “Harry works for who?”

  “Arkman. He’s a mob money man.”

  “He got a first name, Billy?”

  Billy laughed. “He don’t need a first name.”

  That night, with a fake leave excuse—an uncle who’d had a heart attack in New York—Johnny Whitman drove to Raleigh, where he caught the night train.

  He left the Gipson brothers to Tom Renssler.

  It was hell to be old. To be useless. To be tossed on the junk heap and treated like some piece of machinery that wasn’t worth using or repairing. To be at a time of your life when all the food you liked didn’t agree with you and even if you lived with the heartburn your bowels didn’t want to move for you.

  Gunny Townsend had a roll call of all the bad there was about being fifty-one years old—and hell to know you weren’t one quarter of the man you’d been twenty or even ten years ago.