Darth Vader chewing on marbles. On the other hand, him being the toughest man anyone ever saw, maybe he was born that way.
I said, “Hey, sir, Sean Drummond here.”
“Drummond? Drummond? Ah yeah, the dumbass who quit and went to law school.”
“Right, sir. Same Drummond. Listen, I need a big favor.”
“Favor? Then I’ll give you the number for May’s escort service. Old May’ll do you a favor you’ll never forget.”
Tingle had a lousy sense of humor. I laughed anyway. “Sir, if you don’t mind, we have to go secure.”
Tingle grunted, then we went through the laborious process of using the special keys to change our phones from unsecure to secure. The secure mode scrambled a perfectly human voice and made it sound like Tingle sounded normally. You can only imagine what it did to Tingle’s voice. Made you think you were talking to the guy who ran hell.
It took about thirty seconds, then I said, “Listen, I think I’m in real deep shit, and I need some help.” Raw candor was always the best way to deal with Tingle.
“All right, spill it, Drummond.”
And I did. I spilled everything that had happened, right down to breaking into Jones’s room and stealing his passport and ID. He listened to it all and said nothing for a moment.
Finally he broke the silence. “Don’t know nothin’ about it.”
“I didn’t think you did. That’s not why I called.”
“Why did you call?”
“I need to find out more about this Jack Tretorne guy.”
“And you figure I can do that?”
“Yes, sir. You’ve got all kinds of contacts up there. Maybe you can find who I’m up against.”
There was a long silence for another moment. I heard Tingle cough a few times. On a secure phone, it sounded like little mines detonating in his throat. He really needed to quit smoking.
He finally said, “All right, Drummond. By the way, you ever hear of Operation Phoenix?”
I said, “Vaguely. One of those Vietnam things, wasn’t it?”
“Right. Look it up,” he ordered me. “I’ll get back to you.”
“Colonel,” I said, “if you don’t mind, that’s not a good idea. I think my phones are bugged. I’ll call you.”
“Whatever.”
“By the way, I ran into another outfit vet out here. A Sergeant Major Williams. Remember him?”
“We’ve had three Williamses come through the outfit. Of course, one died. Mogadishu, I think. Yeah, it was Mogadishu. Poor bastard.”
“This one’s still kicking. He worked the POW hard sell when I went through screening. He told me you kept having him kick the crap out of me.”
“Ahh, that asshole. You stay away from him. He’s a bad egg.”
“Really?”
“One of them white supremacist nuts. Was even helping train some group of goombahs in the backwoods. Williams was a real wacko. That’s why we booted him out.”
“How’d you find that out?” I asked.
“Ah, we tapped all of your phones. Bet you never knew that, did ya?”
I instantly tried to recall every phone conversation I had ever had when I was with the outfit. “No, sir,” I managed to croak.
“Oh yeah,” he said, “I heard every word you ever said about me, Drummond.”
“Well, you know. The heart grows fonder and all that crap.”
“Okay, Drummond, get back to it. And watch your ass, boy. Don’t forget. Read up on Phoenix.”
I hung up, returned the secure key to the duty sergeant, and walked back to my tent. Then I lay down and got three more hours of sleep before I showered and shaved, got dressed again, and went to our little wooden building.
Imelda was still asleep on her cot by the file cabinets when I came in. She could’ve had one of her girls do the guard duty, but that wasn’t Imelda’s style. I tiptoed over to the coffeemaker and prepared a pot. Then I went into my office and waited till it was percolated. Imelda awoke while I was pouring a cup.
“Fix two,” she growled.
“Cream or sugar?”
“Black. Bone black. That cream and sugar, that crap’ll kill ya.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I mumbled. I quickly maneuvered my shoulder to block her view as I added a third spoonful of sugar to mine.
While Imelda crawled out of her sleeping bag I carried the two cups over, politely turning around to give the lady some privacy. After a minute I heard her stomping her combat boots on the floor, and I turned back and handed her the coffee. Then I hooked a finger and indicated for her to follow me.
I sat at my desk and began writing on a legal pad while asking, “So, how’d you sleep?”
“Good as can be. You?”
“Like a baby. Went to bed early and got the first full night of rest since we got here,” I said, holding up what I’d written on the page.
It read, “Research this: Operation Phoenix.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Good. Maybe you won’t be such a grumpy asshole to my girls anymore.”
I wrote out: “Vietnam era. Might find it on Internet.”
I said, “Today, what I’d like to do is work on the summary statement. I told Delbert and Morrow I’d write it.”
“Yeah, okay,” she said, also nodding her head at what I wrote on the paper.
“You know how I like to do these things. I’ll be wandering in and out all day, trying to compose my thoughts.”
“You don’t need to tell me, Major. I know how you like to work.”
“Good. Thanks, Imelda.”
“No problem,” she said, wandering back out of my office.
In the interest of authenticity, since I couldn’t be sure whether one or more of Imelda’s girls was informing on me, I quickly began scribbling out a long, rambling statement about how Sanchez and his men were completely innocent of all charges. I wrote fast and didn’t worry about syntax or literary refinement. It only had to be convincing enough that if anyone checked, they would believe I was doing my part in the whitewash.
I scribbled for two hours, then there was a knock on the door. When I looked up, Martie whoever and David the wimp, my two favorite CID agents, were standing there.
“What?” I said.
“Could you spare another moment of your time, Major?” Martie asked.
I decided to be politic. “Sure. Can I get you coffee?”
“No thanks,” he said as the two of them entered and sank into the chairs across from my desk. “We’ve already had half a dozen cups. I’m jittery as hell.”
Their haberdashery had not improved in the past two days. Today Martie was dressed in a checkered suit, with a checkered shirt and a checkered tie. He looked like a walking chessboard done in three shades. David wore a more conservative chintzy-looking blue blazer, a dark blue shirt, and a garish tie covered with pastel-colored flowers that looked as if they were exploding. He reminded me of a hybrid between a mobster and Bozo the Clown. These guys were hard to take seriously.
“How’s the investigation going?” I asked.
“Oh, you know. A piece here, a piece there. These kinds of things, you rarely find a golden nugget that breaks it all open. Usually it takes a lot of small clues.”
“You took the footprints, right?”
“Yeah. They’re back in the lab in Heidelberg.”
“Anything else interesting in Berkowitz’s notebook?”
“Tough to tell. You learn a lot about a guy when you investigate his death. Take Berkowitz. The guy was a real slob. Dirty clothes and candy wrappers everywhere. Left notes and scribbles all over his damn room. We’re still
