They were gone by morning. I made it to the O Club OK. At nine o’clock the dining room was pretty much empty, which was an advantage. The disadvantage was that whatever food remained had been stewing on the buffet for a while. But on balance I thought it was a good situation. I was more of a loner than a gourmet. Summer and I sat across from each other at a small table in the center of the room. Between us we ate almost everything that was left. Summer consumed about a pound of grits and two pounds of biscuits. She was small, but she could eat. That was for damn sure. We took our time with our coffee and walked over to my office at ten-twenty. There was mayhem inside. Every phone was ringing. The Louisiana corporal looked harassed.
“Don’t answer your phone,” he said. “It’s Colonel Willard. He wanted immediate confirmation that you’d gotten your orders. He’s mad as hell.”
“What are the orders?”
He ducked back to his desk and offered me a sheet of fax paper. The phones kept on ringing. I didn’t take the sheet of paper. I just stood there and read it over my corporal’s shoulder. There were two closely spaced paragraphs. Willard was ordering me to examine the quartermaster’s inward delivery note file and his outward distribution log. I was to use them to work out on paper exactly what ought to be there in the on-post warehouse. Then I was to verify my conclusion by means of a practical search. Then I was to compile a list of all missing items and propose a course of action in writing to track down their current whereabouts. I was to execute the order in a prompt and timely fashion. I was to call him to confirm receipt of the order immediately it was in my hand.
It was a classic make-work punishment. In the bad old days they ordered you to paint coal white or fill sandbags with teaspoons or scrub floors with toothbrushes. This was the modern-day MP equivalent. It was a mindless task that would take two weeks to complete. I smiled.
The phones were still ringing.
“The order was never in my hand,” I said. “I’m not here.”
“Where are you?”
“Tell him someone dropped a gum wrapper in the flower bed outside the post commander’s office. Tell him I won’t have army real estate abused in that way. Tell him I’ve been on the trail since well before dawn.”
I led Summer back out onto the sidewalk, away from the ringing phones.
“Asshole,” I said.
“You should lay low,” she said. “He’ll be calling all over.”
I stood still. Looked around. Cold weather. Gray buildings, gray sky.
“Let’s take the day off,” I said. “Let’s go somewhere.”
“We’ve got things to do.”
I nodded.
“Can’t stay here,” I said. “So we can’t do much about Carbone.”
“Want to go down to Columbia?”
“Not our case. Nothing we can do that Sanchez isn’t doing.”
“Too cold for the beach,” Summer said.
I nodded again. Suddenly wished it wasn’t too cold for the beach. I would have liked to see Summer on the beach. In a bikini. A very small one, for preference.
“We have to work,” she said.
I looked south and west, beyond the post buildings. I could see the trees, cold and dead against the horizon. I could see a tall pine, dull and dormant, a little nearer. I figured it was close to where we had found Carbone.
“Let’s go to Green Valley,” I said. “Let’s visit with Detective Clark. We could ask him for his crowbar notes. He made a start for us. So maybe we could finish up. A four-hour drive might be a good investment at this point.”
“And four hours back.”
“We could have lunch. Maybe dinner. We could go AWOL.”
“They’d find us.”
I shook my head.
“Nobody would find me,” I said. “Not ever.”
I stayed there on the sidewalk and Summer went away and came back five minutes later in the green Chevy we had used before. She pulled in tight to the curb and buzzed her window down before I could move.
“Is this smart?” she said.
“It’s all we’ve got,” I said.
“No, I mean you’re going to be on the gate log. Time out, ten-thirty. Willard could check it.”
I said nothing. She smiled.
“You could hide in the trunk,” she said. “You could get out again when we’re through the gate.”
I shook my head. “I’m not going to hide. Not because of an asshole like Willard. If he checks the log I’ll tell him the hunt for the gum-wrapper guy suddenly went interstate. Or global, even. We could go to Tahiti.”
I got in beside her and racked the seat all the way back and started thinking about bikinis again. She took her foot off the brake and accelerated down the main drag. Slowed and stopped at the gate. An MP private came out with a clipboard. He noted our plate number and we showed him ID. He wrote our names down. Glanced into the car, checked the empty rear seat. Then he nodded to his partner in the guard shack and the barrier went up in front of us, very slowly. It was a thick pole with a counterweight, red and white stripes. Summer waited until it was exactly vertical and then she dropped the hammer and we took off in a cloud of blue government-funded smoke from the Chevy’s rear tires.
The weather got better as we drove north. We slid out from under a shelf of low gray cloud into bright winter sunshine. It was an army car so there was no radio in it. Just a blank panel where the civilian model would have had AM and FM and a cassette slot. So we talked from time to time and whiled the rest away riding in aimless silence. It was a curious feeling, to be free. I had spent just about my whole life being where the military told me to be, every minute of every day. Now I felt like a truant. There was a world out there. It was going about its business, chaotic and untidy and undisciplined, and I was a part of it, just briefly. I lay back in the seat and watched it spool by, bright and stroboscopic, random images flashing past like sunlight on a running river.
“Do you wear a bikini or a one-piece?” I asked.
“Why?”
“Just checking,” I said. “I was thinking about the beach.”
“Too cold.”
“Won’t be in August.”
“Think you’ll be here in August?”
“No,” I said.
“Pity,” she said. “You’ll never know what I wear.”
“You could mail me a picture.”
“Where to?”
“Fort Leavenworth, probably,” I said. “The maximum security wing.”
“No, where will you be? Seriously.”
“I have no idea,” I said. “August is eight months away.”
“Where’s the best place you ever served?”
I smiled. Gave her the same answer I give anyone who asks that question.
“Right here,” I said. “Right now.”
“Even with Willard on your back?”
“Willard’s nothing. He’ll be gone before I am.”
“Why is he here at all?”
“My brother figures they’re copying what corporations do. Know-nothings aren’t invested in the status quo.”
“So a guy trained to write fuel consumption algorithms winds up with two dead soldiers in his first week. And he doesn’t want to investigate either one of them.”
“Because that would be old-fashioned thinking. We have to move on. We have to see the big picture.”
