angelicism fled from her features. She actually turned this deep, dark shade of red, like there was a fire burning beneath her skin.
“Get out!” she said, coldly, controlled, but clearly on the verge of screaming.
I shrugged nervously. “Hey, don’t take it personally.”
“Get out, right now! I don’t want to see your face.”
I momentarily considered defying her, but one of the things I’ve learned in life is that when a woman’s angry at you, neither logic nor reason have a chance of prevailing. Like a vacuum sucks air from a room, a woman’s fury sucks every bit of rationality from a situation. I therefore did the only wise thing I could. I swiftly got lost.
It didn’t help that Imelda grazed me with another sizzling look when I passed by. Grumpy and the amazon stared at me, too, and they didn’t look real pleased to see me, either.
I suddenly realized something here. I was sexually stranded, isolated, alone. I was the only straight lawyer, for one thing. I was also the only male left on the defense team. Well, there was Keith, but he was in a coma (which I vaguely envied), so that left only me.
I went back to my room and turned on CNN again. I was sort of idly watching out of the corner of my eye while I relaxed on the bed and tried to think through my next step, when I caught a quick glimpse of Michael T. Barrone, one of those flashy, thirtysomething megabillionaires who’d made more money than God by being one of the early Internet pioneers. I don’t know why, because megabillionaires normally bore me to tears, but I turned up the sound.
“That’s right,” Barrone was saying to some hidden interviewer. “I did contribute the money. And I’ll keep contributing money until they tell me it’s enough.”
The interviewer’s voice said, “You’re a businessman, Mr. Barrone. And right now, this is a very unpopular cause. The Southern Religious Leaders Conference is calling for a boycott against your company. Aren’t you afraid it will harm your business?”
Barrone’s face got very steely. “The hell with my business. OGMM asked me for the money, and I’m only too damned pleased to give it to them. What’s happening here is wrong. I’ve got gay employees… Everybody does. I’m putting my money where my principles are.”
Then Michael Barrone evaporated into thin air, replaced by a shot of several hundred Americans in the cavernous lobby of what looked to me to be the Shilla Hotel, one of the swankest inns in all of Korea.
A female voice, struggling to sound dramatic, was saying, “And so, three more planeloads of gay activists arrived in Seoul today, adding to the three that landed last night, and three more are expected tomorrow, adding a new twist to what has already proven to be the most dramatic military court case in many decades. This is Sandra Milken, reporting live in Seoul.”
I fell back hard and cursed loudly. The effect was lost, because Carlson couldn’t hear me, and the cursing was directed entirely at her.
She wanted a cultural war, and by God she was going to have one. This had to be her idea, her response to all these preachers. And believe me, it was a fantastically awful idea.
You don’t import a few hundred angry, screaming American homosexuals to Korea, of all places, and expect things to work out. She was courting the worst kind of calamity and grief.
CHAPTER 15
Chief Warrant Officer Three Michael Bales could not have been more amiable or polite. He smiled so hard it was a miracle he didn’t break his face. He shook hands with holy fury and said “pleased to meet you” like he really, really meant it. He invited me into his office, offered me a seat, brought me coffee, asked me how I was doing, how I liked Korea, how I liked the accommodations at the hotel, and so on, and so on.
As performances go, it was a doozy; about what you’d expect from a professional cop who knows the way things are. See, Bales, being an experienced CID investigator, knew that he and I were on a collision course. He was the investigator who broke the case. He was the chief witness for the prosecution. He was the linchpin to every iota of evidence that pointed at my client.
He was going to end up on a witness stand where Carlson or I were going to try our best to bend him over backward and slip him the willie. We had to prove he was an incompetent bungler, the damned fool who messed up the evidence, jumped to conclusions, mishandled the witnesses, overlooked things that would exonerate my client, and just generally dicked it up.
This was inevitable. He knew it and I knew it. Any attorney representing a seemingly guilty client has no other option but to attack the credibility of the key prosecution witness.
That’s why he was turning on the charm. As we say in the Army, he was presetting the conditions of the battlefield.
The moment I laid eyes on him, I silently cursed. Young, maybe thirty-five or so, dark-haired, strong-featured, with pleasant, pale blue eyes and a benevolent, engaging smile. Unlike most CID guys, who dress horribly, he wore a finely cut gray pinstripe suit with a plain white, freshly starched cotton shirt and a simple striped tie. Lord Fauntleroy he wasn’t, but he looked dapper enough. Worse, he seemed competent and damned handsome in a very earnest, midwestern, likable way.
Here’s why this was bad. Court-martial boards are as susceptible to appearances as anybody else. In fact more so. They’re trapped in their chairs ten hours a day with nothing to do but observe the main actors. They watch and they listen, and they watch and listen some more, and they form opinions. And military men and women, just because of the screwy way they are, are more swayed by appearances than just about anybody else.
I would’ve been much happier if Bales was a middle-aged, balding guy with grungy teeth, a hefty beer gut, scuffed-up shoes, and a plaid sport coat and striped trousers. At least then, when I tried to persuade the board that he’d been criminally negligent, they’d look at Bales, and say to themselves, “Yep, I could see that.”
Anyway, Bales got done with his pleasant routine, and we sat and stared at each other like a bull and matador.
Then I broke the ice. “So, Chief, I’ve read your statements, and, as you might imagine, I’ve got a few questions.”
“Yes sir,” he said, perfectly straight-faced. “I thought you might.”
“Right. Question one, then. When you first got to Whitehall’s apartment building, exactly how many South Korean police were there?”
Suspecting I was up to something clever, he paused, appeared thoughtful, then said, “To the best of my recollection, perhaps twenty.”
“Perhaps twenty, huh? Does that mean you don’t exactly know how many?”
Again, he appeared thoughtful. He said, “That’s correct, Major. I don’t know exactly how many.”
“Pardon me for asking again. I just want to be clear on this point. You don’t know how many Korean police officers were at the apartment building?”
He looked at me very steadily. Crime scenes are supposed to be tightly controlled, almost hermetically sealed. From reading his and Sergeant Wilson Blackstone’s earlier statements, I already had some fairly strong suspicions that things had gotten out of hand. Now I had the feeling I was getting that big break – the stuff we defense attorneys dream about.
He said, “No.”
“Then you have no idea who passed in and out of that crime scene? Is that right?”
Without blinking, he said, “I didn’t say that.”
“No? Well, that’s what I asked you.”
“No, you asked me how many Korean police officers were at the apartment building – and that, I don’t know. There were two guarding the front entrance of the building when I arrived, but they might’ve put more there after I went upstairs – I don’t know. There may have been some guarding the rear entrance – I don’t know. Then there were three or four in the hallway leading into Captain Whitehall’s apartment. There might’ve been more – I don’t know.”
He paused and examined my face. “But if you want to know how many entered Captain Whitehall’s apartment,
