The Enemy

“Your ex-wife.”

“What?”

“Someone told me she slept with half the colonels in the army. Always had, like a hobby. So I figured that might include Brubaker. I mean, it was a fifty-fifty chance.”

He stared at me.

“Only kidding,” I said. “It was nobody. Just a dry hole.”

He looked away, furious. I got up and closed my office door. Stepped back to my desk. Sat down again. Faced him.

“Your insolence is incredible,” he said.

“So make a complaint, Willard. Go up the chain of command and tell someone I hurt your feelings. See if anyone believes you. Or see if anyone believes you can’t fix a thing like that all by yourself. Watch that note go in your file. See what kind of an impression it makes at your one-star promotion board.”

He squirmed in his chair. Hitched his body from side to side and stared around the room. Fixed his gaze on Summer’s map.

“What’s that?” he said.

“It’s a map,” I said.

“Of what?”

“Of the eastern United States.”

“What are the pins for?”

I didn’t answer. He got up and stepped over to the wall. Touched the pins with his fingertips, one at a time. D.C., Sperryville, and Green Valley. Then Raleigh, Fort Bird, Cape Fear, and Columbia.

“What is all this?” he said.

“They’re just pins,” I said.

He pulled the pin out of Green Valley, Virginia.

“Mrs. Kramer,” he said. “I told you to leave that alone.”

He pulled all the other pins out. Threw them down on the floor. Then he saw the gate log. Scanned down it and stopped when he got to Vassell and Coomer.

“I told you to leave them alone as well,” he said.

He tore the list off the wall. The tape took scabs of paint with it. Then he tore the map down. More paint came with it. The pins had left tiny holes in the Sheetrock. They looked like a map all by themselves. Or a constellation.

“You made holes in the wall,” he said. “I won’t have army property abused in this way. It’s unprofessional. What would visitors to this room think?”

“They’d have thought there was a map on the wall,” I said. “It was you that pulled it down and made the mess.”

He dropped the crumpled paper on the floor.

“You want me to walk over to the Delta station?” he said.

“Want me to break your back?”

He went very quiet.

“You should think about your next promotion board, Major. You think you’re going to make lieutenant colonel while I’m still here?”

“No,” I said. “I really don’t. But then, I don’t expect you’ll be here very long.”

“Think again. This is a nice niche. The army will always need cops.”

“But it won’t always need clueless assholes like you.”

“You’re speaking to a senior officer.”

I looked around the room. “But what am I saying? I don’t see any witnesses.”

He said nothing.

“You’ve got an authority problem,” I said. “It’s going to be fun watching you try to solve it. Maybe we could solve it man-to-man, in the gym. You want to try that?”

“Have you got a secure fax machine?” he said.

“Obviously,” I said. “It’s in the outer office. You passed it on your way in. What are you? Blind as well as stupid?”

“Be standing next to it at exactly nine hundred hours tomorrow. I’ll be sending you a set of written orders.”

He glared at me one last time. Then he stepped outside and slammed the door so hard that the whole wall shook and the air current lifted the map and the gate log an inch off the floor.

I stayed at my desk. Dialed my brother in Washington, but he didn’t answer. I thought about calling my mother. But then I figured there was nothing to say. Whatever I talked about, she would know I had called to ask: Are you still alive? She would know that was what was on my mind.

So I got out of my chair and picked up the map and smoothed it out. Taped it back on the wall. I picked up all seven pins and put them back in place. Taped the gate log alongside the map. Then I pulled it down again. It was useless. I balled it up and threw it in the trash. Left the map there all on its own. My sergeant came in with more coffee. I wondered briefly about her baby’s father. Where was he? Had he been an abusive husband? If so, he was probably buried in a swamp somewhere. Or several swamps, in several pieces. My phone rang and she answered it for me. Passed me the receiver.

“Detective Clark,” she said. “Up in Virginia.”

I trailed the phone cord around the desk and sat down again.

“We’re making progress now,” he said. “The Sperryville crowbar is our weapon, for sure. We got an identical sample from the hardware store and our medical examiner matched it up.”

“Good work,” I said.

“So I’m calling to tell you I can’t keep on looking. We found ours, so we can’t be looking for yours anymore. I can’t justify the overtime budget.”

“Sure,” I said. “We anticipated that.”

“So you’re on your own with it now, bud. And I’m real sorry about that.”

I said nothing.

“Anything at your end? You got a name for me yet?”

I smiled. You can forget about a name, I thought. Bud. No quo, no quid. Not that there ever was a name in the first place.

“I’ll let you know,” I said.

Summer came back and I told her to take the rest of the night off. Told her to meet me for breakfast in the O Club. At nine o’clock exactly, when Willard’s orders were due. I figured we could have a long leisurely meal, plenty of eggs, plenty of coffee, and we could stroll back over about ten-fifteen.

“You moved the map,” she said.

“Willard tore it down. I put it back up.”

“He’s dangerous.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not. Time will tell.”

She went back to her quarters and I went back to mine. I was in a room in the Bachelor Officers’ row. It was pretty much like a motel. There was a street named after some long-dead Medal of Honor winner and a path branching off from the sidewalk that led to my door. There were posts every twenty yards with streetlights on them. The one nearest my door was out. It was out because it had been busted with a stone. I could see glass on the path. And three guys in the shadows. I walked past the first one. He was the Delta sergeant with the beard and the tan. He tapped the face of his watch with his forefinger. The second guy did the same thing. The third guy just smiled. I got inside and closed my door. Didn’t hear them walk away. I didn’t sleep well.