“General Stigmuller has his special point of view on a lot of things,” the sergeant said. “He contends he was working closely with Tarbert Weir and that Durham Lasari was in their plans from the beginning. Lasari’s been cooperating in every way, he’s holding back nothing. I thought you’d want to know, Bonnie.”
“I’ll explain what you just told me to the desk,” she said, “and see how they want to handle it. Maybe they’ll want to put someone from the Washington bureau on that angle, direct quotes from the three big names.”
“Okay, Ace. I’ll be in the office for a half hour or so, and you’ve got my home number if there’s anything you need to recheck,” Gordon said. “McDade and Lasari flew into Chicago about an hour ago. We’ll want him up here for more questioning and as a witness at the trials, of course, but McDade gave him a couple of days off. Lasari said to tell you he’s driving down there tonight.”
Bonnie paused, took a sip of tea to compose herself, then said, “One more important thing, Doobie. General Weir — are you going to send him a report on all this?”
“I already talked to him, Bonnie.”
“You talked to him?”
“Well, it was rather a one-sided conversation but a nurse held a phone over the bed and I gave him an official report. I knew there were two things he was adamant about. He wanted those GI killings stopped and he wanted to find out who’d murdered his son. I said, ‘Mission accomplished, sir’ and that was that.”
“You’re sure he heard you?”
“The nurse said he made one hand into a fist, held it up like a victory sign. He can talk, she said, but he’s still got those damned tubes in his throat.”
“Just one last thing, Doobie. I’m not sure I have these numbers right. You said the first four couriers brought in three to four pounds of white, then Malleck got greedy. That means that Lasari’s duffel had more?”
“Yes, they stuffed in seven pounds this time, all balanced out so the weight was even.”
“And the cuckoo clocks with a pound and a half in each of two pendulums, that’s another twelve pounds?”
“Right.”
“So all together on this loop Malleck was trying to bring in nineteen pounds of heroin. In street money, when they’re dealing, how much would all that be worth, Doobie?”
“Drug Enforcement figures quantity in kilos, and there’s two point two pounds to a kilo so, in this case, we’re talking about eight and a half kilos, a little more.”
“And?”
“At retail level, with the stuff cut for street sale, this high-grade stuff sells, all told, for about two million dollars a kilo.”
“I don’t have a calculator, Doobie. What did you come up with?”
“We’ll have accurate figures when the German agents send us exact weights and measures,” Doobie said, “but this haul would have been worth from sixteen to eighteen million dollars, and if the market is dry, even a little more.”
“And this was the fifth try,” Bonnie said. “I’m speechless, Doobie. Thanks, and whether or not I get a bonus on this. I’m going to call you and take you out to lunch.”
She hung up and dialed Larry Malloy on the city desk at the Tribune and talked with him for an hour.
Bonnie folded the notes and put them in a sweater pocket, straightened the top of the desk, switched the lamp to low. When she’d lit the logs and tinder in the fireplace, she decided to ask Grimes to chill some red wine from the cellar.
For the doctor’s visit in Springfield her choice had been brown slacks and a cashmere cardigan set, but she wanted to shower and change into a dress. What had she been wearing when she saw Lasari last, she wondered. With a start she remembered her tom and bloody clothes had been destroyed at Henrotin Hospital. She had reached the foot of the staircase when the phone rang.
“I’m sure it’s for me, Grimes,” she called out. “Malloy must have found something I skipped. And, please, can you chill a couple of reds for us? Lasari’s coming.”
She picked up the study phone and was surprised to see Grimes watching her from the doorway. After listening briefly, she held out the phone. “It’s for you. Person to person, the overseas operator.”
As a voice sounded on the overseas end of the line, Grimes squared his shoulders, standing almost at attention. “Yes, sir,” he said. “John Grimes here.”
Bonnie saw the warning flick of shock in the man’s expression, the sudden sag of his shoulders.
“Yes, I hear you, sir. I was just listening. But we’d been given to understand...” His face was ashen and she could see the shine of tears in his eyes. After some moments he said, “I see, I see. Thank you, major, and God bless you, sir. This can’t be easy for you.”
He replaced the phone and turned to Caidin. “The hospital in Frankfurt’s been trying to reach us for an hour or more, but the line was tied up.”
“I was talking to Sergeant Gordon in Chicago, and then my paper.”
“A doctor just told me, a medical major, that the general died an hour ago. Scotty Weir didn’t make it after all, Miss Caidin. Can you believe that?” Grimes watched the young woman closely, studying her eyes, her mouth, as if to find an answer somewhere in her expression. She nodded helplessly.
“He was so alive to me,” she said. “I was just using his paper and pencils. There are some playbills in the desk drawer, a deck of cards...”
Grimes seemed not to hear. “It wasn’t the gunshot wounds at all, according to the major. That skulking bastard never killed him. It was an embolism, the doctor said, a blood clot that got loose and went for the heart,”
“It’s too much for me to take in,” Bonnie said. “I know I should weep, but it’s too soon, I feel I honor him by not crying.”
There was a flash of headlights across the windows, a crunch of gravel as a car pulled into the drive and Grimes went to the front door.
Duro Lasari came into the study, a rush of cold air around him, tired, his face troubled and dark. He put his arms around Bonnie and his lean, hard body felt hot, almost fevered through his clothes.
“I heard it on the car radio. I should have stayed with him, but goddamn it, he ordered me to leave him.”
“Please, Duro. You’re hurting my shoulders. I’m still bruised there.”
He slackened his grip and said, “ ‘It’s never as bad as it looks, soldier,’ those were the last words. But he’d called out to warn me, he took that shot for me. He just didn’t give a damn.”
“You’re wrong about that,” Grimes said. “Scotty Weir knew what he was doing. He always gave a damn.”
Lasari dropped his arms to his sides and began to pace the small study. “This is the last thing I expected. I had begun to understand him. I believed I would see him again.” He paused. “Maybe it was a decision he made out there at Schwartzwald. Maybe it was a moral one, but it was an action he’d conditioned himself to take.”
“We were friends for more than thirty years,” Grimes said. “I knew the man and respected him, but I’m just a snapass corporal. I don’t know if he’s the last of his kind or the start of a new breed.”
He looked around the study, the walls of books, the empty trophy cabinets, the folders of maps and papers stacked on shelves. “It shouldn’t end like this,” he said. “It has to mean more than that. We should talk about him, remember him. Someone should put it all on paper.”