“OK,” I said.
“OK what?”
“OK, sir?”
“Bullshit,” he said. “What are you thinking?”
“The briefcase,” I said. “I still want to find it.”
“So keep looking for it,” he said. “Until I find Vassell and Coomer. They can tell us whether there was anything in it worth worrying about.”
“You can’t find them?”
He shook his head.
“No,” he said. “They checked out of their hotel, but they didn’t fly to California. Nobody seems to know where the hell they are.”
Garber left to drive himself back to town and Summer and I climbed into the car and headed south again. It was cold, and it was getting dark. I offered to take the wheel, but Summer wouldn’t let me. Driving seemed to be her main hobby.
“Colonel Garber seemed tense,” she said. She sounded disappointed, like an actress who had failed an audition.
“He was feeling guilty,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because he killed Mrs. Kramer.”
She just stared at me. She was doing about ninety, looking at me, sideways.
“In a manner of speaking,” I said.
“How?”
“This was no coincidence.”
“That’s not what the doctor told us.”
“Kramer died of natural causes. That’s what the doctor told us. But something about that event led directly to Mrs. Kramer becoming a homicide victim. And Garber set all that in motion. By notifying XII Corps. He put the word out, and within about two hours the widow was dead too.”
“So what’s going on?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” I said.
“And what about Vassell and Coomer?” she said. “They were a threesome. Kramer’s dead, his wife is dead, and the other two are missing.”
“You heard the man. It’s out of our hands.”
“You’re not going to do anything?”
“I’m going to look for a hooker.”
We set off on the most direct route we could find, straight back to the motel and the lounge bar. There was no real choice. First the Beltway, and then I-95. Traffic was light. It was still New Year’s Day. The world outside our windows looked dark and quiet, cold and sleepy. Lights were coming on everywhere. Summer drove as fast as she dared, which was plenty fast. What might have taken Kramer six hours was going to take us less than five. We stopped for gas early, and we bought stale sandwiches that had been made in the previous calendar year. We forced them down as we hustled south. Then I spent twenty minutes watching Summer. She had small neat hands. She had them resting lightly on the wheel. She didn’t blink much. Her lips were slightly parted and every minute or so she would run her tongue across her teeth.
“Talk to me,” I said.
“About what?”
“About anything,” I said. “Tell me the story of your life.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m tired,” I said. “To keep me awake.”
“Not very interesting.”
“Try me,” I said.
So she shrugged and started at the beginning, which was outside of Birmingham, Alabama, in the middle of the sixties. She had nothing bad to say about it, but she gave me the impression that she knew even then there were better ways to grow up than poor and black in Alabama at that time. She had brothers and sisters. She had always been small, but she was nimble, and she parlayed a talent for gymnastics and dancing and jumping rope into a way of getting noticed at school. She was good at the book work too, and had assembled a patchwork of minor scholarships and moved out of state to a college in Georgia. She had joined the ROTC and in her junior year the scholarships ran out and the military picked up the tab in exchange for five years’ future service. She was now halfway through it. She had aced MP school. She sounded comfortable. The military had been integrated for forty years and she said she found it to be the most color-blind place in America. But she was also a little frustrated about her own individual progress. I got the impression her application to the 110th was make-or-break for her. If she got it, she was in for life, like me. If she didn’t, she was out after five.
“Now tell me about your life,” she said.
“Mine?” I said. Mine was different in every way imaginable. Color, gender, geography, family circumstances. “I was born in Berlin. Back then, you stayed in the hospital seven days, so I was one week old when I went into the military. I grew up on every base we’ve got. I went to West Point. I’m still in the military. I always will be. That’s it, really.”
“You got family?”
I recalled the note from my sergeant:
“A mother and a brother,” I said.
“Ever been married?”
“No. You?”
“No,” she said. “Seeing anyone?”
“Not right now.”
“Me either.”
We drove on, a mile, and another.
“Can you imagine a life outside the service?” she asked.
“Is there one?”
“I grew up out there. I might be going back.”
“You civilians are a mystery to me,” I said.
Summer parked outside Kramer’s room, I guessed for authenticity’s sake, a little less than five hours after we left Walter Reed. She seemed satisfied with her average speed. She shut the motor down and smiled.
“I’ll take the lounge bar,” I said. “You speak to the kid in the motel office. Do the good cop thing. Tell him the bad cop is right behind you.”
We slid out into the cold and the dark. The fog was back. The streetlights burned through it. I stretched and yawned and then straightened my coat and watched Summer head past the Coke machine. Her skin flared red as she stepped through its glow. I crossed the road and headed for the bar.
The lot was as full as it had been the night before. Cars and trucks were parked all around the building. The ventilators were working hard again. I could see smoke and smell beer in the air. I could hear music thumping away. The neon was bright.
I pulled the door and stepped into the noise. The crowd was wall-to-wall again. The same spotlights were burning. There was a different girl naked on the stage. There was the same barrel-chested guy half in shadow behind the register. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew he was looking at my lapels. Where Kramer had worn Armored’s crossed cavalry sabers with a charging tank over them, I had the Military Police’s crossed flintlock pistols, gold and shiny. Not the most popular sight, in a place like that.
“Cover charge,” the guy at the register said.
It was hard to hear him. The music was very loud.
