to my office. Summer went straight to the copy of the gate log.
It was still taped to the wall, next to the map.
‘Vassell and Coomer,’ she said. ‘They were the only other
people who left the post that night.’
‘They went north,’ I said. ‘If you want to say they threw the
briefcase out of the car, then you have to agree they went north.
They didn’t go south to Columbia.’
‘OK,’ she said. ‘So the same guy didn’t do Carbone and
Brubaker. There’s no connection. We just wasted a lot of time.’
‘Welcome to the real world,’ I said.
The real world got a whole lot worse when my phone rang
twenty minutes later. It was my sergeant. The woman with the
baby son. She had Sanchez on the line, calling from Fort
Jackson. She put him through.
‘Willard has been and gone,’ he said. ‘Unbelievable.’
238
‘Told you so.’
‘He pitched all kinds of hissy fits.’
‘But you’re fireproof.’
‘Thank God.’
I paused. ‘Did you tell him about my guy?’
He paused. ‘You told me to. Shouldn’t I have?’
‘It was a dry hole. Looked good at first, but it wasn’t in the
end.’
‘Well, he’s on his way up to see you about it. He left here two
hours ago. He’s going to be very disappointed.’
‘Terrific,’ I said.
‘What are you going to do?’ Summer asked.
‘What is Willard?’ I said. ‘Fundamentally?’
‘A careerist,’ she said.
‘Correct,’ I said.
Technically the army has a total of twenty-six separate ranks.
A grunt comes in as an E-1 private, and as long as he doesn’t do
anything stupid he is automatically promoted to an E-2 private
after a year, and to an E-3 private first class after another
year, or even a little earlier if he’s any good. Then the ladder
stretches all the way up to a five-star General of the Army,
although I wasn’t aware of anyone except George Washington
and Dwight David Eisenhower who ever made it that far. If you
count the E-9 sergeant major grade as three separate steps to
acknowledge the Command Sergeant Majors and the Sergeant
Major of the Army, and if you count all four warrant officer
grades, then a major like me has seven steps above him and
eighteen steps below him. Which gives a major like me considerable
experience of insubordination, going both ways, up
and down, giving and taking. With a million people on twenty
six separate rungs on the ladder, insubordination was a true art
form. And the canvas was one-on-one privacy.
So I sent Summer away and waited for Willard on my own. She
arguedabout it. In the end I got her to agree that one of us
should stay under the radar. She went to get a late dinner. My
sergeant brought me a sandwich. Roast beef and Swiss cheese,
white bread, a little mayo, a little mustard. The beef was pink. It
239
was a good sandwich. Then she brought me coffee. I was
halfway through my second cup when Willard arrived.
He came straight in. He left the door open. I didn’t get up.
Didn’t salute. Didn’t stop sipping my coffee. He tolerated it, like
I knew he would. He was being very tactical. As far as he knew I
had a suspect that could take Brubaker’s case away from the
Columbia PD and break the link between an elite colonel and
drug dealers in a crack alley. So he was prepared to start out
warm and friendly. Or maybe he was looking for a bonding
experience with one of his staff. He sat down and started
plucking at his trouser legs. He put a man-to-man expression on
his face, like we had just been through some kind of a shared
experience together.
‘Wonderful drive from Jackson,’ he said. ‘Great roads.’
I said nothing.
‘Just bought a vintage Pontiac GTO,’ he said. ‘Fine car. I put
polished headers on it, big bore pipes. Goes like shit off a shiny
shovel.’
I said nothing.
‘You like muscle cars?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I like to take the bus.’
‘That’s not much fun.’
‘OK, let me put it another way. I’m happy with the size of my