Heart of War

by Lucian K. Truscott

  Mace came out of the bathroom with his toilet kit and stuck it in the overnight bag and zipped it shut. Picking up the bag, he walked to the door and turned around.

  “That’s not good enough, Kara. You’re an officer, and you might be able to talk about going up against the next chief of staff of the Army, but I’m a noncom, and I don’t play in those leagues.”

  He opened the door to leave, stopped, and turned around. “The thing that gets me is that you haven’t listened to me. You haven’t heard a thing I’ve said.”

  “I have!” she cried.

  “Then why don’t you go along with Hollaway and close the case? You’ve got both of our asses in a sling on this thing. That means me too, Kara. Not just you.”

  “What do you want me to do, Mace? Just forget I’ve got credible evidence that General Beckwith may have killed Sheila Worthy? You want me to throw away the obligation I’ve got to follow the law?”

  “I want you to think about us, and all you want to think about is your goddamned job.” With that, he walked out, slamming the door behind him.

  She sat there on the bed for what seemed like a long time after he left, his words still ringing in her ears. He was the best thing that had ever happened to her, and now he was gone, vanished into the night. What if he was right? Was it true that she was taking too many chances with their careers, especially his? She knew this much: He loved the Army in a way she did not. He loved being a platoon sergeant. He loved his men. The Army truly was more than a job for him. It was a home, and a life, and a fulfillment of his dreams.

  She thought about packing her bags and going after him. He couldn’t get a flight back to Atlanta until the morning, and if she drove all night, she could be back at Fort Benning by the time he arrived. She could apologize, and maybe, just maybe, they could go on from there.

  She stood up and walked toward the closet, but something stopped her: a girl’s laughter, on a side street below. She remembered that sound—the carefree noises you make when you’re twenty-two, twenty-three, and life is a series of discoveries and thrills, and if you have a care in the world, it’s tucked away in your back pocket with your dreams.

  Sheila Worthy had laughed like that, not so very long ago. She was a brand-new lieutenant, and she had a life ahead of her full of surprises and delights and wishes and hopes and dreams she never realized.

  She walked over to the balcony doors and stood there listening as the girl’s heels tip-tapped down the street, her laughter tinkling in the night air. When you’re twenty-two years old, you have more than twice that much time left on the earth, days and weeks and months and years you can fill any way you wish.

  All of that had been taken from Sheila.

  She would try to make Mace understand when she got back to Fort Benning. In the meantime she had a job to do. The Army had given her the prosecution in the case of the murder of Lieutenant Sheila Worthy, and she would not neglect her duty.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  The Hotel Maison de Ville was on Toulouse Street, just south of Bourbon. They said Tennessee Williams completed A Streetcar Named Desire in one of its slave-quarter cottages, but the story was probably apocryphal, like most stories about New Orleans, especially those about the French Quarter. Every summer when Kara had visited her grandparents in New Orleans, she had taken frequent jaunts through the Quarter, and its denizens had provided her with a colorful maze of fascinating legends and tales about the old section of the city. There was the one about the young man down on Urusulines Street who murdered his wealthy mother and kept this secret for years, because both of them were considered “shut-ins” and no one found it at all unusual that she hadn’t been seen in a while. They found her remains lying in bed where he had done the deed, the legend went. Then there was the fable of the photographer who lived down at the far end of Royal Street who was said to be able to photograph the dead. He took his cameras to the St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, across Rampart Street from the Quarter, and set up his tripod. If the atmospheric conditions were right, the fable went, the photographs he took of crypts revealed a ghost-like image of the person who lay within.

  She walked into the tiny lobby of the hotel. A languorous young man looked up from the desk with a weak smile. “Are you checking in?”

  “No. I’m looking for my friend. Do you have a Randy Taylor registered?”

  “Yes, we do. He’s in bungalow number five. I’ll ring his room now. You can take the call on the house phone, right over there.” He pointed at an antique instrument perched on a mahogany table. Kara picked up the receiver from its brass cradle. Randy answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Randy, it’s Kara Guidry.”

  “Oh . . . Kara . . . what are you doing here?”

  “I saw you across the room at the mayor’s party last night. I was wondering if you’d like to have lunch.”

  There was a long pause before he answered. “I don’t know . . .”

  “We’ve got to talk, Randy. I know you were sitting with General King and that general from the Pentagon, Teese.”

  “Kara, what is this about?”

  She covered the receiver and turned her back on the desk man. “I think your interests and my interests coincide when it comes to your boss.”

  This time there was no hesitation. “I’ll be right out.”

  Kara hung up the phone. The sleepyhead at the desk pointed at some open French doors. “You can wait in the garden. His bungalow is just across the way.”

  She took a seat on a wrought iron bench under a banana tree. The door of a low-slung cottage opened, and Randy walked out.

  “Where shall we go?” asked Kara.

  “Someplace quiet, I hope,” said Randy.

  “I know just the place.” She led the way through the lobby, and they turned down Toulouse Street toward the river. The street was lined with crappy little souvenir shops and stands that dispensed margaritas and pina coladas from frozen-drink machines.

  “This place has turned into Disneyland for adults,” said Kara. “They blew out all the old shops so they could service the casino crowd. Play the slots, drink a frozen Hurricane or two, buy a T-shirt for the kids, and go home.”

  When they reached G & E’s Courtyard Grill on Decatur Street, across from the French Market, the owner escorted them to a canopied table in the garden near an open wood-fired rotisserie. They were the only ones there.

  “If you don’t get the fried soft-shell crab salad here, you are really missing out,” said Kara, picking up the menu.

  Randy glanced at his, and folded it shut. “I’ll take your suggestion. You seem to know what you’re doing around here.”

  The waiter took their orders and left. Randy squinted into the winter sun, which had crept around the edge of the canopy. “So. You called this little get-together. What’s on your mind?”

  Kara signaled the waiter. “You never took our drink orders. I’m having a Sazerac. Want to join me?”

  “I’ll have a Ramos gin fizz,” said Randy.

  “They invented that drink down the street at Tujaque’s,” said Kara.

  Randy said, “I know.”

  Kara leaned forward in her chair. “New Orleans is about food and drink and music, so let’s make this short and to the point, and I’ll let you get on with the serious business of enjoying yourself. Deal?”

  Randy nodded.

  The waiter brought the drinks. Kara gave hers a stir and lifted the glass to her lips. The taste, somewhere north of an old-fashioned and south of a Manhattan, made her throat tighten and her cheeks burn. “I could use some help here, Randy. I think Beckwith killed Sheila Worthy. What do you think?”

  A gust of wind caught the canopy, and it flapped loudly. Randy stared at her, speechless. He took a sip of his gin fizz. “That’s a very serious charge. I wouldn’t go repeating it around Fort Benning.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t,” said Kara, taking a sip of her drink. “I know you’re working with General Teese to prevent Beckwith f
rom getting appointed chief of staff. A mule with blinders could have seen that last night. I want to know why.”

  “Look, I’m not in favor of General Beckwith becoming chief of staff, but I certainly don’t think he’s a murderer.”

  “You know something, Randy? I think you withheld a few things when I questioned you. You knew Beckwith was having an affair with Sheila, and you kept your mouth shut. You knew he was supposed to see her that night, and you kept your mouth shut. You knew he was alone in his staff car that night, and you kept your mouth shut about that too. I don’t think you told me the truth then, and I don’t think you’re telling me the truth now.”

  “That’s your privilege, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it sure is my privilege, and because I’ve been put on the investigation of Sheila’s murder, I can act on it. How’d you like it if I arranged an Article 32 hearing and put you under oath, and asked you what you were doing here in New Orleans with generals King and Teese talking about Beckwith? Make you a little nervous, would it?”

  “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “That’s the wrong answer, Randy.”

  “You can’t prove I’m working for King.”

  “I may not be able to prove it with hard evidence, but I would say that the fact you were sitting at that table last night with generals King and Teese was way more than coincidence. The fact of the matter is, you and I are loaded down with what the law calls guilty knowledge. I know you’re working for King, and you know I think Beckwith is a murderer. We’re in the same boat, Randy, and we may as well each pick up an oar and start rowing in the same direction, or we’re going to go round and round and round.”

  He took a sip of his gin fizz and licked the foam from his lips. “I don’t know why I should cooperate with you. You’ve got your agenda and I’ve got mine, and I don’t see how they’re at all the same.”

  “You’ll cooperate because it serves your interests.”

  Randy looked uncertainly around the garden. A tourist couple carrying a brace of shopping bags came in and were seated over next to the old slave quarter building that housed the kitchen. The rest of the courtyard was still empty. “You’re putting me on the spot, Kara.”

  “You don’t have to think Beckwith’s a killer to help me out here. What I want to know is, what’s going on with you and generals Teese and King?”

  “I’m sworn to secrecy on that. I’m sorry.”

  “Well, your secret’s out, and if you don’t want it to go further, you’d better start elaborating.”

  Randy took another long pull on his gin fizz. The waiter brought their orders. Kara started eagerly tearing the claws from her soft-shell crab. Randy stared at his plate, poked at the food with his fork, and looked up.

  “It isn’t that I don’t get along with General Beckwith. In most ways I do.”

  “Do you want another drink?” asked Kara. “I’m going to have one.”

  “Sure.”

  Kara signaled the waiter to bring another round. “You were saying?”

  Randy took a deep breath. “There is a list of forty generals who have pledged to publicly resign if Beckwith is made chief.”

  Kara whistled.

  “The feeling among the younger generals is that Beckwith is way too political. He owes his career to his political connections, and the way they’re downsizing the Army, that’s not a good thing. Their thinking is, how’s he going to fight for us, the men in the military, when he’s so deeply indebted to the politicians who are taking the Army apart, unit by unit?”

  “And how about you? Do you agree with them?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “But that’s not all of it.”

  “Let’s put it this way. I agree with the logic of their thinking, and I agree with them on the character issue. He’s not the right man for the job, but he looks inevitable at this point.”

  “So General Teese approached you because you’re the closest person to Beckwith.”

  “General Teese is a friend. I worked for him a few years ago, back at the Infantry School. I trust him, and I value his judgment. He is one of the generals who have pledged to resign, but he doesn’t think it’s a particularly good idea. He thinks if there’s a mass resignation of junior generals, the Army will come out looking like a bunch of ragtag martinets in a banana republic.”

  “He wants to force Beckwith out of the race before a mass resignation becomes necessary.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So you’re spying on Beckwith for him.”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Have you told him about Sheila? That she and Beckwith were having an affair?”

  “Yes, and I’ve told him about Lannie too.”

  Kara dropped her fork. Randy smiled.

  “I see your friend hasn’t let you in on her little secret. She’s been seeing Beckwith since way before Sheila came into the picture. It’s been going on since she was up in the Pentagon. Apparently, he’s told her that he’s leaving his wife as soon as they promote him, and she’s going to become Mrs. Chief of Staff. Lannie has a lot riding on Beckwith, and she’s in love with him. Deeply.”

  Kara picked up her fork and looked idly at her salad for a moment. “It was right in front of me, and I didn’t see it,” she mused. “Out of the blue she shows up at Benning, no letter saying she’s getting transferred, no advance warning. And who does she work for? Not just work for, but report directly to? None other than the dark prince himself. How could I have been so dumb?”

  “They’ve done a pretty good job of keeping it secret. I don’t think his wife even knows.”

  “She knew about Sheila.”

  “How did you find that out?”

  “Mrs. Beckwith told me. She knew Beckwith was supposed to see her that night, but the storm came up, and he never made it. She’s his alibi. She said he was at home with her.”

  “I was aware she knew about Sheila, but I’m almost positive she doesn’t know about Lannie. For about a year the only time Beckwith saw her was when he went up to Washington for meetings. I was surprised when he got her shipped down to Benning, to tell you the truth. He must be very confident that his wife has no suspicions.”

  “You must know her pretty well. What’s Mrs. Beckwith like?”

  “Long-suffering. Worldly wise. Socially adept. A typical general’s wife in many ways, but completely atypical in others. She doesn’t wear her ambitions on her sleeve the way many of them do.”

  “But she’s got them, all right. In spades.”

  “Oh, you can be certain she does. Her trick is, she has been able to conceal her ambitious side, so she’s got a lot of sympathy from the other wives. Even generals’ wives are on her side.”

  “And she’s playing that sympathy for all she’s worth, trying to get him appointed chief, I’ll bet.”

  “That’s a bet you’d win in a walk.”

  “Whew. What a piece of work that marriage is.”

  “She’s organizing a big party the first night of the AUSA convention. She’s calling in every chit she has amassed in three decades of Army life. It’s going to be the richest mix of active-duty and retired Army officers and politicians and captains of industry this country has ever seen, and General and Mrs. Beckwith are going to be the red-hot center of it all.”

  “Are you helping out?”

  “Up to my bloody neck . . . excuse the expression.” He smiled nervously. He was digging into his soft-shell crab in earnest now. He swallowed a large bite and pushed his plate away. “If I eat another bite, I’m going to pop.”

  Kara signaled the waiter for the check. “Tell me more about Lannie and Beckwith.”

  “I’ve been bearding her for him a long time now. It’s like we’re buddies. I know all her secrets.”

  “Who is she seeing up in Atlanta?”

  “No one. That’s a cover for Beckwith.”

  “She suggested that we get together and double-date sometime. Why would she do that?”

  “She
probably figures you’ll never take her up on it. Or if you did, she’d find a way to wiggle out of it. That’s what you do when you’re having an affair with a married man. You wiggle in, around, and out of stuff. She’s good at it. Very good at it.”

  “Well, she fooled me.”

  The waiter brought the check, and Kara handed him a credit card. Randy reached for his wallet, but she waved him off. “My treat.”

  “Well, thank you. This was delicious.”

  “I’m sorry if I came on a little strong there at first,” said Kara. “I think he’s a very dangerous man. I guess I tend to go a little overboard.” They walked through the front part of the restaurant and stepped outside. It was about seventy-five and sunny. New Orleans winter weather.

  “I still don’t think he killed her, Kara. I’ve known him awhile now, and I don’t think it’s in him.”

  They were walking up Decatur Street, passing under wrought iron balconies laced with bougainvillea and purple trumpet vines, many of them still in bloom. They stopped at the corner of Toulouse, where Randy would make the turn to go back to the Maison de Ville.

  “I almost forgot,” said Kara. “Where was Beckwith stationed before Benning?”

  “At the Pentagon, and before that at the White House.”

  “When was his last command time?”

  “He had a brigade at Fort Polk about five, six years ago. He couldn’t wait to get out of there, the way I heard it.”

  “Thanks, Randy,” said Kara.

  They shook hands, and Randy walked north on Toulouse. Kara walked over to the levee and sat on the grass and watched the Mississippi flow past. The current was surprisingly strong. When she was a girl, her grandmother had always been telling her of people who fell in and drowned, but she hadn’t paid any attention. Now she watched a huge piling from a rotted pier flow rapidly past and get caught in the swirling wake of a tug and get sucked under. It was a dangerous river.

  She turned around and looked at the spire of the St. Louis Cathedral, rising above the rooftops of the Quarter like a piece of noble sculpture. In the summertime, when she was a girl, it would get really hot in the afternoons, and she and her friends would open the big doors to the cathedral and go inside, where it was dark and quiet and cool.