Authors: Chris Knopf
About fifteen minutes later, a blocky woman strode into the lobby and approached us with an awkward gait that was nevertheless brisk and forthright. We both stood up in time to shake her outreached hand.
“Captain Jane Aubrey,” she said. “Brigade judge advocate.”
As we introduced ourselves, Jackie told me she was a military lawyer, which I already knew, but acted freshly informed.
“I’m not sure if we can help with your inquiry, but I’ll hear you out,” she said, addressing Jackie and ignoring me.
Jackie went through the same explanation she’d given the PR guy, which Captain Aubrey listened to intently. Then she asked us to follow her and brought us to a small conference room just inside the inner door. It reminded me of the interrogation room back at Southampton Town Police HQ, without the one-way mirror, cigarette burns on the tabletop, or other pleasant amenities.
We all sat.
“Let me be clear about one thing,” she said, without preamble. “Military records are maintained by the Federal Records Centers and are only accessible by the veteran personally, in this case not an option, or immediate family members.”
“Since Specialist Aldergreen was an orphan, that’s not an option either,” said Jackie, in a soothingly quiet way. “Though we’re not looking to get his records. We just want to find someone who can talk to us about his experience in Iraq. Someone willing to talk.”
“No one here is authorized to provide that sort of information.”
“Does anyone here care that one of your own was brutally murdered?” I asked.
“Is that a question or an accusation?” said Captain Aubrey, with no change of tone.
Jackie gave me a look I knew to be the equivalent of a swift kick under the table.
“This matter is being treated strictly as a civilian homicide,” said Jackie. “I’m only here to fill in some background on the decedent. Just doing my job as an officer of the court, and an advocate for my client, who deserves a full and thorough investigation of his death. What you would be doing if you were in my shoes.”
“I would never be in your shoes,” she said. “Very bad for your feet.”
“You’re right,” said Jackie. “I keep telling myself to be more age appropriate.”
That’s when I really knew I wasn’t actually part of the conversation.
“Tell me what you want,” said the captain.
“As I see it, there’re a few ways we can go about this,” said Jackie. “We can go through all the official channels, fill out applications, mount appeals, start pulling political strings, and make a general nuisance of ourselves, which we both know will mean you and I will be playing canasta in the old folks home before we learn anything of substance. Or we could go to the media with cries of bureaucratic intransigence, and implications of a cover-up. I’ve got the phone number of Roger Angstrom of the
New York Times
on speed dial.”
She pulled out her smartphone, pushed a few buttons, and slid it across the table before continuing.
“Or we can track down the men who served with Specialist Aldergreen through the public records that do exist, though who knows what they’ll say. Or my favorite option, you can direct us toward those most likely to have a credible and responsible recollection of the young man’s combat experience, giving us a clear and accurate picture that we can fold into our background profile, which might have some bearing on this investigation, unlikely as that seems at the moment.”
Then she sat back in her chair to give the captain some room to return the volley, which didn’t take long.
“You’re aware that Alfred Aldergreen was severely mentally ill,” said Captain Aubrey.
“He thought Elrond of Rivendell should run for president, if that’s what you mean,” I said.
“Alfie was a friend of ours,” said Jackie, back in her temperate mode.
“Then you’re also aware that he was being treated at the VA center in Nassau County,” said Captain Aubrey.
“We are,” said Jackie.
“So you must also know that Colonel David Cardozo of the New York National Guard, retired from the military and his practice in psychiatry, is a regular volunteer at the VA center. Such a fact could not have escaped the notice of a diligent advocate such as yourself.”
“Of course not,” said Jackie.
“So there is no reason for this office to provide any information beyond what you already know.”
“None that I can see,” said Jackie.
Captain Aubrey put both hands flat on the table.
“Very well,” she said. “Then this meeting has reached an appropriate conclusion.”
“I believe it has,” said Jackie.
With that the captain escorted us back out to the lobby and all the way to the walkway outside the building, where she told us to have a nice day, and then disappeared back inside. Jackie led the way to the Grand Prix, which we used to execute a strategic retreat.
“That went well,” I said.
“It would’ve gone better if you’d waited in the car.”
A
S
I drove, Jackie did some digging around on her smartphone before placing a call to the VA center. She told the person on the other end of the line that the New York National Guard asked her to get in touch with Retired Colonel Cardozo, a frequent volunteer at the center. The person was unable to confirm or deny the colonel’s whereabouts, but would gladly pass along a message. So we ended up riding around Nassau County for a while hoping to hear back. Which we did, right before throwing in the towel and heading for home.
“Hello, Colonel Cardozo, or is it doctor?” said Jackie, then after a pause, “Okay, David.”
Then she gave him the same story we gave the judge advocate. From her animated tone, the conversation was going well. It ended with an agreement to meet at a bar in Center Moriches, a shore town well on the way back to the Hamptons, which to me meant it couldn’t have gone any better.
Once you took away the art galleries, mansions, and stock brokerages, Center Moriches, like most places on the East End, was basically a small town, with a main street, firehouses, schools, public library, and locals’ favorite seafood restaurant, this one you got to by walking through the gaping jaws of a shark. Jackie said that, given her line of work, the entrance felt right at home. We found places at the bar, already well patronized, including by a tall, bony guy with a long, hooked nose. His eyebrows and temples were grey where the hair tufted out from under a Mets cap. It wasn’t hard to figure him for Cardozo, especially after he caught sight of Jackie and stood up from the bar.
“The lawyer, I presume,” he said, offering his hand.
“You presume well,” she said. “This is my associate, Sam Acquillo.”
“Thanks for meeting me here,” he said. “It’s close to home and if I don’t stop by every night they call missing persons.”
“It’s the least we could do,” I said, scanning the shelves behind the bar for regular, non-flavored Absolut.
We arranged the bar stools so all three could easily share in the conversation. As the drinks arrived, Cardozo told us he’d been a widower in good standing for more than ten years and never learned to cook, another reason to be a restaurant regular, a situation Jackie and I had little trouble relating to. As he spoke, I noticed a gentle accent, which I asked him about.
“I grew up in Lisbon,” he said. “Portuguese father and English mother. And how did I end up here, you’re going to ask next?”
“I was.”
“Medical school and a US military in desperate need of psychiatrists, even ones with big noses and funny accents.”
“Not that big,” said Jackie, looking appraisingly.
“You should meet my friend Rosaline Arnold,” I said. “Make you look like a pug.”
We all shared some more personal information, which surprised me given we’d just met, until I realized the guy was a shrink trained to pull that kind of stuff out of people. Even though my track record with folks in that line of work was a bit checkered, I liked him. You got the feeling he was genuinely interested in you, so if it was just part of the act, he was pretty good at it.
Eventually we got down to talking about Alfie. He’d heard through the veteran grapevine that Alfie had been killed, and how, which brought him a great deal of pain and sorrow. He said if you knew Alfie, which we clearly did, you’d know a violent death would have been particularly horrifying for him, not that any are easy.
“That he expected something like that to happen to him is no consolation,” he said.
“We just learned a little about his time in Iraq,” said Jackie. “So he did see combat.”
Cardozo gave a sad nod.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Of the most serious kind.”
“So I guess his mental state was no big surprise,” she said.
This time he shook his head.
“It’s very important to understand that what Specialist Aldergreen suffered from was not post-traumatic stress disorder. There could have been some comorbidity there, and I think the stress of his environment might have triggered his first psychotic break, but Aldergreen was a person with paranoid schizophrenia. It’s a condition inherent to a diseased mind, not something you acquire from your environment, no matter how ugly the experience.”
For some reason, I always thought that was the case, though it was good to hear it from someone who knew something about that stuff. Not that it would help Alfie much now.
Jackie encouraged him to go into more detail about the clinical aspects of the psychopathology, which he took to eagerly. You’re not the only one good at pulling information out of people, doc, I thought to myself.
She asked how much of it related to Alfie specifically, conceding that we might have traveled into confidential territory. He was unfazed.
“Who’s going to complain?” he asked. “The man’s dead with no next of kin.”
Then he went on to call Alfie’s a textbook case, presenting classic symptoms in his early twenties. He was born to a single mother, who committed suicide before Alfie turned two. Cardozo felt strongly that she suffered the same condition, since “there’s a strong hereditary correlation with first-degree relatives.”
He then reversed course a little by admitting that no symptoms for any mental illness were classic, since every person’s brain was a unique vessel. For example, he noted, Alfie was generally a happy sort.
“Not all his hallucinations were threatening,” he said. “I think he had a rich inner life, complex and engaging, albeit entirely delusional. Who wouldn’t like a lot of imaginary friends?”
I had to agree with him, realizing for the first time that Alfie might have thought I was no different from some guy with long robes and a staff sitting there with us. It prompted me to ask a gnawing question.
“Before he died, Alfie told Jackie the cops were after him,” I said. “He’d complained about them before, but it wasn’t his regular thing. Is it possible to separate his real experience from his hallucinations?”
Cardozo seemed amused by that.
“You know the old joke, ‘Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean people aren’t out to get you.’ So no, you can’t separate those things. Though let me put it another way. Aldergreen could have absolutely perceived a genuine threat and responded to it in a completely appropriate way. Don’t forget he’d been in real battles with real enemies shooting at him.”
Cardozo slid his Mets cap back on his head, revealing a full head of hair, mostly white, but thick and long. His fingers were long and slender, though his hands looked strong enough to crack cue balls.
“You said it was bad over there,” said Jackie, giving the conversational course another gentle shove.
Cardozo took a big pull from his drink and then looked down at the barroom floor. We waited.
“He was in one of the nastiest actions of the war,” he said. “You probably read about it, then forgot, because it’s impossible to really keep track of these things much less absorb them from afar. It’s impossible for me, and I hear it every day directly from the mouths of these young, devastated men and women.”
He paused again, organizing the memory.
“Aldergreen and Watruss were in their Bradley Fighting Vehicle. They were about an hour from base when they got ambushed by a well-armed bunch of insurgents who obviously had some intel on the platoon’s activities. It gets really messy, and half the platoon is hit with RPGs—rocket propelled grenades. Including our boys Aldergreen and Watruss. But it’s worse than that. They also have the company commander on board their vehicle, Captain Herschel Bergeron. The three of them had been together since training days and it’s a tribute to Watruss and Aldergreen that they were trusted by the highest ranking officer in their unit.”
“This is where Jimmy Watruss gets shot up,” I said.
“It is. Aldergreen is knocked out by the initial concussive force of the grenade, but is otherwise intact. Watruss, on the other hand, is pretty mangled. Bergeron isn’t in great shape himself, but he’s the one who drags the other two clear of the burning Bradley, which subsequently gets blown entirely to shit by another RPG.”
“Presumably with no one else on board,” I said.
“Yeah, thank God. It could have been filled with troops. According to the official report, Bergeron continued to lead the platoon, mounting a counterattack, pulling wounded to safety, even manning a machine gun in a disabled vehicle, laying down covering fire that allowed another of his team to get in position and basically mow down the bulk of the insurgents. It was a bad day for the Forty-Third, but most of the people who ambushed them never made it back home. So who knows.”
“That captain is quite a hero,” said Jackie.
Cardozo again looked amused, though I began to realize there was more than an element of irony in his every smile.
“Was. You can only get shot so many times before all the blood drains out. I hear rumors of a posthumous Medal of Honor, though they’ve been stingy with those things.”
Cardozo’s voice was so precisely moderated that I was as much hypnotized by the style as the content of his story. He partially broke the trance with an uptick in volume.
“What else does a guy have to do to win one of those goddamned things?” he asked the whole barroom, rhetorically of course.