travelling alone he might have been on a DoD travel voucher
and he was paranoid about a desk clerk seeing the girl and
calling the Washington Post. That happens. So he preferred to
pay cash in some anonymous dive. Three, even if he wasn’t on a
government ticket he might have been a well-known guest or
a familiar face in a big-city hotel. So likewise he was looking for
anonymity somewhere out of town. Or four, his sexual tastes
ran beyond what you can get from the D.C. Yellow Pages, so
he had to go where he knew for sure he could get what he
wanted.’
‘But?’
‘Problems one, two, and three could be answered by going
ten or fifteen miles, maybe less. Two hundred and ninety-eight
is completely excessive. And whereas I’m prepared to believe
there are tastes that can’t be satisfied in D.C., I don’t see how
they’re more likely to be satisfied way out here in the North
Carolina boonies, and anyway I would guess such a thing would
cost a lot more than twenty bucks wherever you eventually
found it.’
‘So why did he take the six-hundred-mile detour?’
She didn’t answer. Just drove, and thought. I closed my eyes.
Kept them closed for about thirty-five miles.
‘He knew the girl,’ Summer said.
I opened my eyes. ‘How?’
‘Some men have favourites. Maybe he met her a long time
ago. Fell for her, in a way. It can happen like that. It can almost
be a love thing.’
‘Where would he have met her?’
‘Right there.’
‘Bird is all infantry. He was Armored Branch.’
‘Maybe they had joint exercises. You should check back.’
I said nothing. Armored and the infantry run joint exercises
all the time. But they run them where the tanks are, not where
the grunts are. Much easier to transport men across a continent
than tanks.
‘Or maybe he met her at Irwin,’ Summer said. ‘In California.
Maybe she worked Irwin, but had to leave California for some
37
reason, but she liked working military bases, so she moved to
Bird.’
‘What kind of a hooker would like working military bases?’
‘The kind that’s interested in money. Which is all of them,
presumably. Military bases support their local economies in all
kinds of ways.’
I said nothing.
‘Or maybe she always worked Bird, but followed the infantry
to Irwin when they did a joint exercise out there one time.
Those things can last a month or two. No point in hanging
around at home with no customers.’
‘Best guess?’ I said.
‘They met in California,’ she said. ‘Kramer will have spent
years at Irwin, on and off. Then she moved to North Carolina,
but he still liked her enough to make the detour whenever he
was in D.C.’
‘She doesn’t do anything special, not for twenty bucks.’
‘Maybe he didn’t need anything special.’
‘We could ask the widow.’
Summer smiled. ‘Maybe he just liked her. Maybe she made
damn sure he did. Hookers are good at that. They like repeat
customers best of all. It’s much safer for them if they already
know the guy.’
I closed my eyes again.
‘So?’ Summer said. ‘Did I come up with something you didn’t
think of?’
‘No,’ I said.
I fell asleep before we were out of the state and woke up again
nearly four hours later when Summer took the Green Valley
ramp too fast. My head rolled to the right and hit the window.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘You should check Kramer’s phone records.
He must have called ahead, to make sure she was around. He
wouldn’t have driven all that way on the off-chance.’
‘Where would he have called from?’
‘Germany,’ she said. ‘Before he left.’
‘More likely he used a pay phone at Dulles. But we’ll check.’
‘We?’
‘You can partner with me.’
38
She said nothing.
‘Like a test,’ I said.
‘Is this important?’
‘Probably not. But it might be. Depends what the conference
is about. Depends what paperwork he was taking to it. He
might have had the whole ETO order of battle in his case. Or
new tactics, assessment of shortcomings, all kinds of classified
stuff.’
‘The Red Army is going to fold.’