penis. I don’t need compensation.’
He went white. Then he went red. The same shade as
Trifonov’s Corvette. He glared at me like he was a real tough
guy.
‘Tell me about the progress on Brubaker,’ he said.
‘Brubaker’s not my case.’
‘Sanchez told me you found the guy.’
‘False alarm,’! said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Totally.’
‘Who were you looking at?’
‘Your ex-wife.’
‘What?’
‘Someone told me she slept with half the colonels in the
army. Always had, like a hobby. So I figured that might include
Brubaker. I mean, it was a fifty-fifty chance.’
24O
tie stared at me.
‘Only kidding,’ I said. ‘It was nobody. Just a dry hole.’
He looked away, furious. I got up and closed my office door.
Stepped back to my desk. Sat down again. Faced him.
‘Your insolence is incredible,’ he said.
‘So make a complaint, Willard. Go up the chain of command
and tell someone I hurt your feelings. See if anyone believes
you. Or see if anyone believes you can’t fix a thing like that all
by yourself. Watch that note go in your file. See what kind of an
impression it makes at your one-star promotion board.’
He squirmed in his chair. Hitched his body from side to side
and stared around the room. Fixed his gaze on Summer’s map.
‘What’s that?’ he said.
‘It’s a map,’ I said.
‘Of what?’
‘Of the eastern United States.’
‘What are the pins for?’
I didn’t answer. He got up and stepped over to the wall.
Touched the pins with his fingertips, one at a time. DoC.,
Sper .ryville, and Green Valley. Then Raleigh, Fort Bird, Cape
Fear, and Columbia.
‘What is all this?’ he said.
‘They’re just pins,’ I said.
He pulled the pin out of Green Valley, Virginia.
‘Mrs Kramer,’ he said. ‘I told you to leave that alone.’
He pulled all the other pins out. Threw them down on the
floor. Then he saw the gate log. Scanned down it and stopped
when he got to Vassell and Coomer.
‘I told you to leave them alone as well,’ he said.
He tore the list off the wall. The tape took scabs of paint with
it. Then he tore the map down. More paint came with it. The
pins had left tiny holes in the sheet rock. They looked like a
map all by themselves. Or a constellation.
‘You made holes in the wall,’ he said. ‘I won’t have army
property abused in this way. It’s unprofessional. What would
visitors to this room think?’
‘They’d have thought there was a map on the wall,’ I said. ‘It
was you that pulled it down and made the mess.’
He dropped the crumpled paper on the floor.
241
‘You want me to walk over to the Delta station?’ he said.
‘Want me to break your back?’
He went very quiet.
‘You should think about your next promotion board,’ he said.
‘You think you’re going to make lieutenant colonel while I’m
still here?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I really don’t. But then, I don’t expect you’ll be
here very long.’
‘Think again. This is a nice niche. The army will always need
cops.
‘But it won’t always need clueless assholes like you.’
‘You’re speaking to a senior officer.’
I looked around the room. ‘But what am I saying? I don’t see
any witnesses.’
He said nothing.
‘You’ve got an authority problem,’ I said. ‘It’s going to be fun
watching you try to solve it. Maybe we could solve it man to
man, in the gym. You want to try that?’
‘Have you got a secure fax machine?’ he said.
‘Obviously,’ I said. ‘It’s in the outer office. You passed it on
your way in. What are you? Blind as well as stupid?’
‘Be standing next to it at exactly nine hundred hours
tomorrow. I’ll be sending you a set of written orders.’
He glared at me one last time. Then he stepped outside and
slammed the door so hard that the whole wall shook and the air
current lifted the map and the gate log an inch off the floor.
I stayed at my desk. Dialled my brother in Washington, but he
didn’t answer. I thought about calling my mother. But then I