and linear. As a whole it was a bold, proud, legible, self
confident signature, developed no doubt by long years of
signing checks and bar bills and leases and car papers. No
signature was impossible to forge, of course, but I figured this
one would have been a real challenge. A challenge that I
guessed would have been impossible to meet, between mid
night and 0845 on a North Carolina army post.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘The complaint is genuine.’
I left it on the desk. Summer reversed it and read it through,
although she must have read it plenty of times already.
‘It’s cold,’ she said. ‘It’s like a knife in the back.’
‘It’s weird,’ I said. ‘That’s what it is. I never met this guy
before. I’m absolutely sure of that. And he was Delta. Not
2O3
too many gentle pacifist souls over there. Why would he be
offended? It wasn’t his leg I broke.’
‘Maybe it was personal. Maybe the fat guy was his friend.’
I shook my head. ‘He’d have stepped in. He’d have stopped
the fight.’
‘It’s the only complaint he ever made in a sixteen-year career.’
‘You been talking to people?’
‘All kinds of people. Right here, and by phone far and wide.’
‘Were you careful?’
‘Very. And it’s the only complaint you ever had made against
you.’
‘You checked that too?’
She nodded. ‘All the way back to when God’s dog was a
puppy.’
‘You wanted to know what kind of a guy you’re dealing with
here?’
‘No, I wanted to be able to show the Delta guys you don’t
have a history. With Carbone or with anyone else.’
‘You’re protecting me now?’
‘Someone’s going to have to. I was just over there, and they’re
plenty mad.’
I nodded. Brubaker.
‘I’m sure they are,’ I said. I pictured their lonely prison
barracks, first designed to keep people in, then used to keep
strangers out, now serving to keep their unity boiling like a
pressure cooker. I pictured Brubaker’s office, wherever it was,
quiet and deserted. I pictured Carbone’s cell, standing empty.
‘So where was Carbone’s new P7?’ I said. ‘I didn’t find it in his
quarters.’
‘In their armoury,’ Summer said. ‘Cleaned, oiled, and loaded.
They check their personal weapons in and out. They’ve got a
cage inside their hangar. You should see that place. It’s like
Santa’s grotto. Special armoured Humvees wall to wall, trucks,
explosives, grenade launchers, claymores, night vision stuff.
They could equip a Central African dictatorship all by themselves.’
‘That’s very reassuring,’ I said.
‘Sorry,’ she said.
‘Why did he file the complaint?’
204
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
I pictured Carbone in the strip club, New Year’s night. I had
walked in and I had seen a group of four men I took to be
sergeants. The swirl of the crowd had turned three of them
away from me and one of them towards me in a completely
random dynamic. I hadn’t known who was going to be there,
they hadn’t known I was going to show up. I had never met any
of them before. The encounter was as close to pure chance as it
was possible to get. Yet Carbone had tagged me for the kind of
tame mayhem he must have seen a thousand times before. The
kind of tame mayhem he must have joined in with a hundred
times before. Show me an enlisted man who claims never to
have fought a civilian in a bar, and I’ll show you a liar.
‘Are you Catholic?’ I asked.
‘No, why?’ Summer said.
‘I wondered if you knew any Latin.’
‘It’s not just Catholics who know Latin. I went to school.’
‘OK, cui bono?’ I said.
‘Who benefits? What, from the complaint?’
‘It’s always a good guide to motive,’ I said. ‘You can explain
most things with it. History, politics, everything.’
‘Like, follow the money?’
‘Approximately,’ I said. ‘Except I don’t think there’s money
involved here. But there must have been some benefit for
Carbone. Otherwise why would he do it?’
‘Could have been a moral thing. Maybe he was driven to do
it.’
‘Not if it was his first complaint in sixteen years. He must
have seen far worse. I only broke one leg and one nose. It was