The General's Daughter

So I helped him throw furniture, sexual paraphernalia, linens, and such onto the belt. He said, “I’m as good as my word, boy. Didn’t trust me, did you?”

“Sure I do. You’re a cop.”

“Right. What a fucked-up week. Hey, you know what? I cried all through that funeral.”

“I didn’t notice.”

“Cryin’ on the inside. Lots of fellas there cryin’ on the inside. Hey, did you get rid of that computer stuff?”

“I burned the disk myself.”

“Yeah? None of that shit floatin’ around, is there?”

“No. Everyone is clean again.”

“Until next time.” He laughed and pitched a black leather mask onto the conveyor. “God bless us, we’re all gonna sleep better now. Includin’ her.”

I didn’t reply.

He said, “Hey, sorry to hear about Bill.”

“Me, too.”

“Maybe them two are talkin’ it out now, up there at the pearly gates.” He looked into the incinerator. “Or someplace.”

“Is that it, Chief?”

He looked around. “Pretty much.” He took a photo out of his pocket and looked at it, then handed it to me. “Souvenir.”

It was a full frontal nude of Ann Campbell standing, or actually jumping, on the bed in the basement room, her hair billowing, her legs parted, her arms outstretched, and a big smile on her face.

Yardley said, “She was a lot of woman. But I never understood a goddamned thing about her head. You figure her out?”

“No. But I think she told us more about ourselves than we wanted to know.” I threw the photo onto the conveyor belt and headed back toward my Blazer.

Yardley called out, “You take care, now.”

“You, too, Chief. Regards to your kinfolk.”

I opened the car door and Yardley called out again, “Almost forgot. Your lady friend—she told me you’d be headin’ north on the interstate.”

I looked at him over the roof of my car.

He said, “She asked me to tell you good-bye. Said she’d see you down the road.”

“Thanks.” I got into the Blazer and drove out of the dump. I turned right and retraced my route to the interstate, along the road lined with warehouses and light industry, a perfectly squalid area to match my mood.

Down the road, a red Mustang fell in behind me. We got onto the interstate together, and she stayed with me past the exit that would have taken her west to Fort Benning.

I pulled off onto the shoulder and she did the same. We got out of our vehicles and stood near them, about ten feet apart. She was wearing blue jeans, a white T-shirt, and running shoes, and it occurred to me that we weren’t in the same generation. I said to her, “You missed your exit.”

“Better than missing my chance.”

“You lied to me.”

“Well… yes. But what would you have said if I told you I was still living with him, but that I was seriously thinking about ending it?”

“I’d have told you to call me when you got your act together.”

“See? You’re too passive.”

“I don’t take other people’s wives.”

A big semi rolled by, and I couldn’t hear what she said. “What?”

“You did the same thing in Brussels!”

“Never heard of the place.”

“Capital of Belgium.”

“What about Panama?”

“I told Kiefer to tell you that to get you to do something.”

“You lied again.”

“Right. Why do I bother?”

A state trooper pulled over and got out of his car. He touched his hat to Cynthia and asked, “Everything okay, ma’am?”

“No. This man is an idiot.”

He looked at me. “What’s your problem, fella?”

“She’s following me.”

He looked back at Cynthia.

Cynthia said to him, “What do you think of a man who spends three days with a woman and doesn’t even say good-bye?”

“Well… that’s mighty low…”

“I never touched her. We only shared a bathroom.”

“Oh… well…”

“He invited me to his house in Virginia for the weekend and never bothered to give me his phone number or address.”

The state trooper looked at me. “That true?”

I said to him, “I just found out she’s still married.”

The trooper nodded. “Don’t need that kind of trouble.”

Cynthia asked him, “Don’t you think a man should fight for what he wants?”

“Sure do.”

I said, “So does her husband. He tried to kill me.”

“Gotta watch that.”

“I’m not afraid of him,” Cynthia said. “I’m going to Benning to tell him it’s over.”

The trooper said to her, “You he careful, now.”

“Make him give me his phone number.”

“Well… I don’t…” He turned to me. “Why don’t you just give her your phone number and we can all get out of the sun, here.”

“Oh, all right. Do you have a pencil?”

He took a pad and pencil out of his pocket, and I told him my phone number and address. He ripped off the page and handed it to Cynthia. “There you are, ma’am. Now, let’s everybody get in their cars and go off to where they got to be. Okay?”

I walked back to my Blazer, and Cynthia went to her Mustang. She called out to me, “Saturday.”

I waved, got into my Blazer, and headed north. I watched her in my rearview mirror making an illegal U-turn across the center divide, then heading for the exit that would take her to Fort Benning.

Passive? Paul Brenner, the tiger of Falls Church, passive? I crossed into the outside lane, cut the wheel hard left, and drove across the center divide through a line of bushes, then spun the Blazer around into the southbound lanes. “We’ll see who’s passive.”

I caught up with her on the highway to Fort Benning and stayed with her all the way.

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