Black Market (19 page)

“It
means
that Country is dead.” The sergeant felt only contempt for the gutless doctor. He and Country had done all of the dirty work,
while the doctor and the ship’s captain took the biggest share of the profits. “We’ll have to ease up on our operation for
a couple of weeks until things cool off.”

“What about the
Gull
? She’s got fifty tons of meat still in her freezers.”

“Change the paperwork. We can’t risk operating now that so many people are watching the refrigeration yard.” The sergeant
was getting very angry. He hated losing money himself, but the doctor was just too damn greedy. “Captain Rankin wants a meeting
tonight at seven.”

“I’ll be there.” The veterinarian didn’t sound very enthusiastic.

“Good. Try not to fuck it up! Go back to jacking off your pigs!” Cutter dropped the telephone down and left his office. The
heat outside hit him like an invisible nuclear explosion. He hated the heat and bitched to himself as he walked over to the
perishable refrigeration yard that LeMoine used to run with an iron hand. A crowd was already starting to gather around the
base of the tower. Cutter put on his professional investigator’s face and strode up to the steps. The first thing he noticed
was the pink pool of blood and water in the almost white sand at the base of the tower. He started up the ladder and caught
the eye of one of the warehouse clerks from the nonperishable section. Cutter winked and the young specialist fifth class
smiled back at him. He had known the boy for two months, after having been introduced to him through LeMoine.

The air-conditioned tower felt good after the short walk over the sand. He looked down at LeMoine’s body sprawled out on the
floor and could see the drying trail of blood that went to the small hole drilled in the floor under the air conditioner.
That explained the pink pool at the base of the tower. Cutter frowned; from the amount of blood, LeMoine must not have died
right away and had lain there paralyzed for some time before death came. Cutter wondered what LeMoine had thought about as
he waited for death. A very brief picture of LeMoine cutting Masters’s throat and then shoving him overboard to the waiting
sharks flashed through the investigator’s thoughts. He struggled to get back to LeMoine’s body. A fairly large number of MPC
notes were scattered around the office, and one of the desk drawers was still open. Cutter glanced around the room and slowly
shook his head; someone wanted him to think that robbery had been the reason for killing LeMoine.

The depot commander was standing near a bank of windows, trying to act important. “It looks to me like someone robbed him
and dropped some of the money in their hurry to escape.”

“It could be, Colonel.” Cutter used his professional investigator’s low thinking voice.

“He played a lot of poker and was one of the big winners on this base.” The colonel tried adding some of his personal knowledge
to help solve the case as quickly as possible. Murder never looked good on a person’s command record.

Cutter nodded in mock agreement with the colonel and smiled before speaking. “Sir, do you think we could get someone to clear
the spectators away from the tower area?”

“Consider it done!” The colonel looked over at his MP lieutenant and conveyed the order with his eyes.

The CID investigator took his time going through all of LeMoine’s notepads and desk drawers. He was looking for anything that
would tie himself or the black-market operation to LeMoine, but to the colonel and the military police still present it looked
as if he was being very thorough in his investigation.

“Is it all right if we put him in a body bag and send him over to the morgue?” The MP lieutenant interrupted Cutter’s train
of thought.

“Make sure you empty everything out of his pockets first.” Cutter removed a large manila envelope from LeMoine’s desk. “You
can put it all in here.” He wrote a brief note on the outside of the container and handed it to the lieutenant. “Would you
send one of your MPs to the gate to get me the sign-in log for today?” Cutter looked over at the colonel and saw him nod his
approval.

Cutter finished sorting through LeMoine’s personal items and found nothing that linked the master sergeant to the black-market
operation. He looked up in time to see the lieutenant pull LeMoine’s custom-made knife off his belt and put it in the envelope.
The butt end of the handle stuck out. A shiver slipped down Cutter’s back. He had seen that knife cut before and it was very
sharp. The image of the young soldier’s face appeared again in front of his eyes.

“Here you go, Sergeant.” A military policeman, wearing his shiny helmet, handed the daily log to the investigator. Cutter
ran his finger down the list until he reached the last entry, which had been the Koreans. The unit before them had been the
Recon Company of the First Brigade of the First Cavalry. Cutter frowned and then stood up. He was almost positive, but not
quite. He left the colonel and his MPs staring at his backside as he took the stairs three at a time down to the ground and
almost, but not quite, ran over to his office.

The row of filing cabinets lining the wall was still all locked up, and Cutter spent a couple of minutes fumbling with his
keys before he matched the numbers on the lock with its key and unlocked the classified file marked
SENSITIVE—DEATH INVESTIGATIONS
. He flipped through the fat folders until he came to the tab marked
MASTERS, DARYL
, and stopped. The file wasn’t as large as the rest, and he turned and dropped the folder onto his desk, leaving the file
drawer open. He flipped through pages of the report until he found the sheet that he was looking for and ran his finger over
the blocks until he found the one filled in with Masters’s unit while he was in Vietnam: Recon Company, First Brigade, First
Cav.

The CID sergeant’s hands began to shake. He was sure that someone else had been with Masters the day that he had overheard
their conversation. He had sensed it that day and had repeatedly asked the soldier if he had been alone. If only he had pushed
the issue at the time! There was no doubt in the investigator’s mind that LeMoine had been killed in revenge for the murder
of Masters.

Sergeant Cutter didn’t realize just how close to the truth he was. He lit a cigarette and hot-boxed it before making a telephone
call to the main gate where each one of the vehicles’ senior men had to sign in. He checked on the unit and the time that
matched his roster and nearly fell out of his chair when the MP at the gate told him that a Sergeant Shaw had signed in for
the recon company vehicle.

Koski folded the letter and carefully slipped it back into the envelope. Warner could see that something in the letter had
really bothered the big Pole, but he knew better than to just ask him what the problem was. The little recon man used his
K-Bar knife to cut open the cellophane wrapper on the gift box of fancy cheeses and smoked salmon. Normally he would receive
one of the large gift boxes around the first of the month from the store in the Oakland Mall, but this month he had received
two of the packages. Warner shook his head. He had told his mother how much his teammates enjoyed eating the hard-to-get items,
and she had doubled her order in the store.

Warner lifted a tin out of the box and read the label. “Hey! Russian caviar! We’re going to eat good tonight!”

Koski tinned and gave Warner a look of pure hatred. “You fucking rich bastard!” He reached for the ladder and pulled himself
out on the roof.

Warner turned and looked at Sanchez. “What’s his problem?”

“I think he got a bad-news letter from home.” Sanchez reached down and adjusted his pride before going back to looking at
the pictures in the new edition of
Hustler
.

Warner paused and looked at the color picture of The Sacred Heart of Jesus above Sanchez’s bunk and the cover of the
Hustler
magazine he was holding up. The contrast was a perfect example between the forces of good and evil.

“Well, I’m not going to leave it like that!” Warner started climbing up the ladder.

“Be careful or he might throw you off the roof.” Sanchez’s warning had a vein of reality running through it.

Koski sat on the sandbags, holding the open letter in his hands. Warner could see that his cheeks were shiny. The big Pole
had been crying.

“Otto, you were being a horse’s ass down in the bunker.” Warner lifted himself out of the trap door into the moonlight. Arnason
and Woods had been pulling guard duty together so that Woods could finish briefing Arnason on the day’s events. They stopped
talking and looked over to see what was wrong between Koski and Warner.

The Pole remained quiet for a couple of minutes and then, just as Warner was about to go back down inside of the bunker, he
spoke. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s fine!” Warner was pissed more over feeling helpless than at the comment Koski had made to him. “You know, I’d like
to help if I could…”

Koski turned on the sandbag and spat out the words. “Sure! You can if you’ve got fifteen thousand dollars lying around!” The
Pole knew that Warner came from a rich family, but with his limited capacity to understand real wealth, he thought that fifteen
grand was even out of Warner’s reach.

“Sorry … I don’t.” Warner’s voice lowered. “Why do you need fifteen thousand dollars?”

“My mother has cancer.” The words came out of the huge man like bullets. “My father wrote me to see if I had anything saved
up.” Koski shook his head slowly. “Bless the old man, but he thinks that soldiers are
rich
. I send them
everything
that I make, but I tell them that it is something I had extra.”

Woods looked over at Arnason, who felt as bad as he did. There wasn’t anything really comforting that they could say. Warner
asked the same question all of them had been thinking. “How about your family’s insurance?”

Koski stood up and stretched. “Only people like you can afford to pay for the insurance premiums. My parents came from Europe
after the war, with my grandfather. None of them spoke English and they have struggled very hard just to make ends meet.”
He started to squat down and jump off the bunker roof. “I’ll think of something … maybe I can get a loan.” He spoke without
hope in his voice.

“Hey Otto! Maybe the doctor was wrong. You should tell her to get a second opinion.” Warner tried cheering up his teammate.

“Sure … maybe.” Koski dropped off the roof and disappeared into the shadows.

It was quiet on the bunker roof for the rest of the first shift. Warner slipped back down inside to wake up Sanchez and to
get his gear for their shift. Koski still hadn’t returned back to the bunker and Arnason was beginning to worry.

Woods read his mind. “He’s probably over at one of the other bunkers talking to another Pole from Detroit.”

“Hamtramck!” Koski’s voice came from behind the bunker as he approached carrying two large sandwiches he had scrounged up
at the mess hall.

“You’ve got the last shift by yourself tonight.” Arnason smiled and slipped down through the trap door. Koski had to be feeling
a little better to eat that much food.

Koski unwrapped the last sandwich and started eating it just as the first rays of light appeared in the east. A slight chill
had come with the ground mist and he sat in the guard seat with his camouflaged poncho liner wrapped around his shoulders.
The sound of a chopper arriving broke through the peace of the morning. Even the guards on the other bunkers hadn’t started
moving around yet. Koski couldn’t remember a helicopter arriving at An Khe so early in the morning.

Sergeant Cutter didn’t like getting up so early either, but he had to hurry just in case Shaw’s personal possessions were
claimed by someone else. He could use his authority as the chief investigator to claim the items and check to make sure that
Shaw hadn’t kept a black book on the operation. Paranoia was really beginning to set in, causing a lot of undue nervousness
in the key black-market operators.

Cutter had reappraised his position and had decided that after checking Shaw’s death out, he would be in an excellent posture.
LeMoine was the one who had cut the boy’s throat, and he was dead. Shaw and his friend Simpson were dead, and that left only
Captain Rankin and Doc McPeters. The captain would be smart enough to disappear, and the doc had only six weeks left in-country;
he was going to be discharged from the Army as soon as he arrived back in the States. There was only one loose end for Cutter
to secure in the investigation, and that was to find out who else was on the supply truck with Shaw and Simpson. The military
police report that he had received had stated that Shaw and Simpson had been killed by VC in the village of An Khe along with
another soldier, named Kirkpatrick. There had been another NCO with them named David Woods, and he was the problem. Cutter
had to find out just how much this sergeant knew about Shaw’s operation.

Captain Youngbloode had eaten early as usual and was leaving the mess hall when he saw his first sergeant waving for him to
hurry over to the orderly room. He could see a stranger wearing a civilian walking suit standing under one of the open shutters.
Youngbloode cursed under his breath. He had eaten a second helping of shit-on-a-shingle, knowing that it would not sit right
with him for the rest of the day, but at the same time he was unable to resist one of his favorite military breakfasts. SOS
could be prepared two ways: with greasy hamburger or with dried beef. The mess sergeant had found a case of dried beef and
had surprised Youngbloode with a very passable version of chipped beef on toast, or shit-on-a-shingle as the soldiers called
it.

As soon as Youngbloode got in range the first sergeant called out, “Sir, Sergeant Cutter from the CID would like to talk with
you.”

Youngbloode nodded. That explained the silly civilian suit in the middle of a fire base.

“Can I help you,
Sergeant
?”

Cutter was a little nervous, especially when he was addressed by his military rank. The CID enlisted men liked being called
agents.