They -went back outside and got in Train’s car to drive down the flight line to the maintenance hangars beyond the Quonset hut. The last hangar in the line was smaller than the others. There were two helicopters already encased in the white shrink-wrap coating parked out in front.
Without their rotor blades and tail rotors, they looked like giant grasshoppers that had been dipped into a can of gray-white paint. The insect look was accentuated by the bulging blisters covering the front windshield of the aircraft.
As they parked and got out, they could hear a loud hissing noise from inside the hangar. The front door of the hangar had been lowered to within one foot of the sill, and there were signs up warning of flammable fumes and telling people to keep out of a hazardous-spray area. They went to the side door, as the warrant had suggested. When they cracked the door, the hissing noise was much louder. A reek of paint solvent wafted over them. A crew of three men, fully suited up, were standing on a pipe stage platform and operating what looked like a small cannon that was spraying a white foam over the front end of a large helicopter. Most of the body was already encased and they were focusing the spray on the final front quarter of the aircraft. One man operated the nozzle while the other two tended supply lines. Two stainless-steel bottles the size of barbecue propane containers fed the spray. A large six-foot-diameter exhaust fan built into the back of the hangar was roaring away to extract the strong fumes. They watched for a few minutes through the cracked door as the team finished covering the front of the aircraft. The foam seemed to dissolve upon contact with the aircraft’s skin, solidifying into a thick white second skin.
The team shut down the spray unit but left the big fan going.
“Help you people?” a voice asked from behind them, startling both of them.
“We need to see Jack Sherman,” Train said, producing his credentials.
“NIS to see Jack, huh? What a surprise.” The man was heavyset and in his forties. There were bits of foam stuck to the. outer edges of his beard where the mask had left marks on his skin. His spray suit was covered in the stuff and it stank of chemical solvent. “He’s the skinny guy, running the spray gun. I’ll tell him you’re here. Be about tenn-minutes.
You-maybe want to wait out front, okay? Fumes are gonna be strong in here, they shut that big fan down.”
“That’s some amazing stuff,” Train said, indicating the cocoon material.
“Tougher’n nails, I’m here to tell you,” the man said.
“Takes me a week to get this shit outta my hair.”
“How do they get it off at the rework facility?”
“Really big knives. You all better move now.”
It was fifteen minutes before Jack Sherman walked out of the hangar bay.
Train sized him up as Jack slouched his way across the concrete apron in front of the haar. Fiveng six, maybe five-seen in boots, scrawny, wearing ancient v’t black jeans, a wide black belt hat was mostly there for decoration, and a stained white T-shirt. A pack of cigarettes was twisted into the upper-right sleeve of the T-shirt, above pronounced biceps. He carried a black leather jacket slung casually over his shoulder. Train could see some facial resemblance to the admiral in the young man’s face, but a lot of the character was missing. Pale, white face, over which a scraggly black beard wandered uncertainly; long, bony nose; thin black eyebrows; and a weak, not quite chinless mouth set in what looked like a perpetual sneer. He had muddy dark brown eyes, with the purple-stained pouches of the confirmed boozer. The eyes were now appraising Karen Lawrence’s body with a casual, “I’d like to take your clothes off with my switchblade” stare. Train revised the height to maybe five-eight as Jack got closer, and he resisted the urge to smack this kid for the way he was staring at Karen’s body.
“So who wants to see me?” Jack said to Karen, his voice surprisingly thin, the voice of a teenage boy on the verge of breaking. Definite boozer, Train concluded. Jack flicked a quick glance in Train’s direction, as if he had read Train’s thoughts. Train flipped out his credentials.
“My -name’s von Rensel, from the NIS. This is Commander Lawrence, Navy JAG.”
“Squid stuff. Big deal. So why should I give a shit?” Sherman said, fingering the package of cigarettes out from under the twist in the sleeve of his T-shirt. Camels, no filter, Train noted.
Tough guy indeed.
“This concerns your father,” she said.
The change in Jack’s face was dramatic-an immediate hardening. With the cigarette poised to go in his mouth, he stopped and looked at Karen as if she had just invoked the devil. “Then it don’t concern me, lady,” he snapped.
“We think it does,” Train said. “We want to know why you made an appearance at Elizabeth Walsh’s funeral, and again at the Naval Academy cemetery during Admiral Schmidt’s funeral.”
Jack made a slow business of sticking the cigarette in his mouth and getting it lit. Then he exhaled a solid stream of smoke in Train’s direction, an insolent look on his face. “Who says?”
“I saw you at Saint Matthew’s Church,” Karen said.
“Last Wednesday evening. On a motorcycle. Your father saw you, too.”
“And I saw you at Annapolis. Up on that hill. You left on a motorcycle.”
Jack shrugged. “Beats me. I get around. It’s a free country, last time I checked. How about you, lady? You free?”
Train moved in closer, staring down at the kid’s sneering face but turning slightly sideways so that his left forearm was in position to block any sudden moves. “Let me put it this way, Sherman,” he said.
“We’re helping the Fairfax County Homicide Section investigate two homicides. So far, they don’t know about your little cameos at the funerals.
You can either talk to us or talk to them. But’let me tell you something. You don’t know hassle until you’ve seen homicide hassle. Now, why were you there at those ‘funerals?”
Jack didn’t budge an inch under the physical force of Train’s massive presence. But his eyes betrayed him as they darted from Train’s looming face to Karen and back. Then his expression changed again. “Maybe,” he said with a crafty smile. “Maybe I was celebrating. Yeah. That’s it. I remember now. I was celebrating.”
“Celebrating?” Karen asked. “Celebrating what?”
Jack looked at her, then stepped back away from Train.
Then he looked again, a studied, staring, lascivious appraisal, from her shoes to her hair, point by point, as if he was sizing up a piece of meat, or a whore. Train got that itch in his palms again.
“Celebrating that bastard’s loss,” Jack continued. “You know, he lost some things of value. Yeah, that’s it, man.”
““Some things of value,’ “
Karen repeated, focusing on the familiar phrase. She looked over at Train.
“Yeah,” Jack said. “And I suppose you’re the new main squeeze, huh, lady? Commander, I mean. Excuse me. Commander, ma’am. Or is it ‘sir’?
Naw, it’s ‘ma’am.’ ” He stared intently at her breasts. “Those are definitely hooters.
Ma’am.”
Karen. never saw Train move, but suddenly Jack was stumbling forward, toward the Suburban, his right hand enveloped in Train’s left hand, his middle finger bending backward and his feet arching up against the pain, cigarette and jacket failing to the ground as he, was spun up against the Suburban. Train clamped down hard and put his face an inch away from Jack’s grimacing features.
“You … watch … your … mouth … dickhead,” he growled. “That is your name, right? Dickhead? Yes? You agree? Nod your dick head, dickhead!” Jack was almost kneeling now as Train bore down on the finger, bringing tears to the kid’s eyes. Train could see Karen off to one side, staring at him. “Good boy, dickhead. Now listen to me. Listen real good. We know you’re in this. Tell your buddy Galantz we know you’re in this’ That the whole god damned government knows what this is all about. And you dickhead, are a stupid little patsy if you’re helping him: understand? Think about this, dickhead: What’s he going to do to you when he’s done screwing around with your father, huh? You think he’s gonna give you a medal, huh?” Train bent down, getting eyeball-to-eyeball. “Now you talk to me, asshole. What’s your piece of this?”
Jack cried out as Train gave the finger an extra little nudge. His eyes were streaming and his face was red and straining. He was almost on the ground, trying to escape the crushing pain. His pack of cigarettes had spilled out on the concrete like a handful of nails. But he was still defiant.
“Fuck you, man,” he spat in a low, hoarse voice as his elbow touched the concrete. “Fuck you! I just do what
