‘Don’t joke about it. They’re awful stirred up.’
‘They’re looking at the wrong guy.’
‘Can you prove that?’
I paused. Knowing and proving were two different things. I
dropped the bullet into my pocket and put my hands on the
table.
‘Maybe I can,’ I said.
‘You know who killed Carbone too?’ Summer said.
‘One thing at a time,’ I said.
‘Here’s your money,’ my sergeant said. ‘It’s all I could get.’
She went into her bag again and put forty-seven dollars on the
table.
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Call it I owe you fifty. Three bucks interest.’
‘Fifty-two,’ she said. ‘Don’t forget the babysitter.’
‘What else have you got?’
She came out with a concertina of printer paper. It was the
kind with faint blue rulings and holes in the sides. There were
lines and lines of numbers on it.
‘The phone records,’ she said.
Then she gave me a sheet of army memo paper with a 202
number on it.
‘The Jefferson Hotel,’ she said.
Then she gave me a roll of curled fax paper.
‘Major Marshall’s personal file,’ she said.
She followed that with an army phone book. It was thick and
green and had numbers in it for all our posts and installations
worldwide. Then she gave me more curled fax paper. It was
Detective Clark’s street canvass results, from New Year’s Eve,
up in Green Valley.
‘Franz in California told me you wanted it,’ she said.
‘Great,’ I said. ‘Thanks. Thanks for everything.’
She nodded. ‘You better believe I’m better than the day guy.
334
And someone better be prepared to say so when they start with
the force reduction.’
‘I’ll tell them,’ I said.
‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Won’t help a bit, coming from you. You’ll
either be dead or in prison.’
‘You brought all this stuff,’ I said. ‘You haven’t given up on
me yet.’
She said nothing.
Where did Vassell and Coomer park their car?’ I asked.
‘On the fourth?’ she said. ‘Nobody knows for sure. The first
night patrol saw a staff car backed in all by itself at the far end
of the lot. But you can’t take that to the bank. He didn’t get a
plate number, so it’s not a positive ID. And the second night
patrol can’t remember it at all. Therefore it’s one guy’s report
against another.’
‘What exactly did the first guy see?’
‘He called it a staff car.’
‘Was it a black Grand Marquis?’
‘It was a black something,’ she said. ‘But all staff cars are
black or green. Nothing unique about a black car.’
‘But it was out of the way.’
She nodded. ‘On its own, far end of the lot. But the second
guy can’t confirm it.’
‘Where was Maior Marshall on the second and the third?’
‘That was easier,’ she said. ‘Two travel warrants. To Frank
furt on the second, back here on the third.’
‘An overnight in Germany?’
She nodded again. ‘There and back.’
We sat quiet. The counterman came over with a pad and a
pencil. I looked at the menu and the forty-seven dollars on the
table and ordered less than two bucks’ worth of coffee and eggs.
Summer took the hint and ordered juice and biscuits. That was
about as cheap as we could get, consistent with staying vertical.
‘Am I done here?’ my sergeant asked.
I nodded. ‘Thanks. I mean it.’
Summer slid out to let her get up.
‘Kiss your baby for me,’ I said.
My sergeant just stood there, all bone and sinew. Hard as
woodpecker lips. Staring straight at me.
335
‘My morn just died,’ I said. ‘One day your son will remember
mornings like these.’
She nodded once and walked to the door. A minute later we
saw her in her pick-up truck, a small figure all alone at the
wheel. She drove off into the dawn mist. A rope of exhaust
followed behind her and then drifted away.
I shuffled all the paper into a logical pile and started with
Marshall’s personal file. The quality of the fax transmission
wasn’t great, but it was legible. There was the usual mass of
information. On the first page I found out that Marshall had
been born in September of 1958. Therefore he was thirty-one