"Us. Me and him. What I'm going to do."
"What do you want to do about Evan?"
"If I knew that, I wouldn't be confused, would I? I haven't been fair to him either. I should write and tell him what I've been feeling."
"And what is that?"
"That maybe we still have a chance if he's willing to try to get through all this stuff. But that has to be in the future, when he gets back, if he does get back. I can't commit again until then, till we see what we've got. Does that sound fair to you?"
"I'm not an unbiased source," he said. "It sounds to me like you just said you weren't committed to him."
"We broke up five months ago, Ron." She took in a breath. "What were you really doing out here?" she asked.
"I was enjoying the night, the smells, the absence of gunfire." He looked up at her. "I was also hoping you might not be able to sleep and you'd see me down here, and that you'd come down and that I'd see you again. Maybe walk you back to your door."
After a second, she said, "You could do that."
6
In San Francisco, Deputy Chief of Inspectors Abe Glitsky entered the homicide detail at nine-thirty on the following Monday morning. Darrel Bracco, one of Glitsky's early protégés, looked up from the report he was writing and almost spilled his coffee standing up to attention, saluting, yelling, "Ten-hut!"
Glitsky felt the scar through his lips straining against the rare urge to smile. In the end, as usual, the smile never appeared. Some inspectors in the room looked up, of course, though nobody else went military on him. But Bracco was still on his feet, expectantly. He evidently had some knowledge of why the head of homicide, Lieutenant Marcel Lanier, had summoned the deputy chief. "Marcel told me to keep an eye out for you, sir. I was just warning him that you're here."
Glitsky stopped. "On the off chance that he's misbehaving in some way?"
"You never know," Bracco said. He fell in beside Glitsky, then nodded at another inspector, a woman named Debra Schiff, who looked up and was getting to her feet while Bracco went on. "Schiff was in there with him with the door closed for an hour already this morning. To look at her, you'd never know she was a screamer."
Schiff, gathering some stuff from her desk, nodded at Abe and replied in a conversational tone, "Bite me, Darrel."
Glitsky kept walking, Bracco and Schiff behind him. At Lanier's open door, he knocked. The lieutenant was on the phone, feet up on his desk, and waved everybody in. His new office upstairs was at least twice as large as the cubicle he (and Glitsky before him) had inhabited one floor below. There was room for as many as half a dozen people in front of his desk, with four chairs folded up against the back wall with its "Active Homicides" blackboard. Glitsky unfolded one of the chairs and let the other two inspectors grab theirs.
"I understand," Lanier was saying into the phone. "Yes, sir. That's why I've asked Abe to come down and get briefed. No"-he rolled his eyes with the tedium of it all-"I realize we don't want to…" He moved the telephone away from his ear and Glitsky could hear a voice he recognized as Frank Batiste's, the chief of police. So whatever this was about, it had some profile already. "Yes, sir," Lanier repeated in the next pause, "that's the idea. I will. Yes, sir." Finally, he hung up, got his feet back down on the ground, and brought his upper body in close to the desk, elbows on it. "That was the chief."
"I got that impression," Glitsky said. "How's Frank doing this fine morning?"
"Frank's concerned about our citizenry, lest they panic."
"And why would they do that?"
"Well, that's what I asked you down to talk about, since the media's going to be all over this if it gets out, and I know how much you cherish all things that give you face time in front of cameras." Everyone appreciated the irony of Lanier's statement. Within the department, Glitsky was notorious for two things: He didn't tolerate or use profanity, and he hated interactions with any form of media. Unfortunately, this latter made up about eighty-five percent of his job.
Now, a tight look of resigned patience firmly in place, Abe sat back and crossed one leg over the other one, ankle on knee. "Okay. What do we got?"
Lanier glanced at his two inspectors, came back to Glitsky. "We've got the possibility of a serial killer."
"Ah," Glitsky said. "And we haven't had one of those for a while."
"Hence the panic," Lanier said, "which Frank would so like to avoid. Anyway, I thought I'd let Darrel and Debra get you up to speed and you can decide where we are exactly and how we handle things if it gets hot." He nodded at his female inspector, whose pretty face she tried to make invisible, with limited success, by wearing a tough expression most of the time. "Debra, you want to start?"
"Sure." Bent over slightly in her chair, she had her elbows on her knees, her hands clasped in front of her. Raising her chin, she shifted a little to face Glitsky. "It's not much of a story by itself, but last Wednesday, I got a late call down in the Mish, early a.m. There's a body in an alley down there around the corner from the Makeout Room. White male, decently dressed, his wallet's still in his back pocket. Turns out he's a thirty-six-year-old ex-Navy SEAL named Arnold Zwick. No criminal record, unmarried and unconnected, currently unemployed. But he'd evidently come back from Iraq recently where he'd done some work for Allstrong Security, which is based here in town."
"What kind of work?" Glitsky asked.
"Whatever they do over there with former military guys. I went back to Allstrong and they told me that their main contract right now is protecting Baghdad Airport. But they didn't know where Zwick had gone to. The manager of the office told me they thought that he might have been killed over there. One day he just disappeared. Except that we now know he came back here. And some witnesses I talked to-neighbors he'd made friends with-seemed to have had the impression that he had a lot of money. But it's not in a bank account that I've been able to find, and there wasn't any cash in his apartment, so robbery might still be a motive, either that or he had the stuff hidden pretty well."
Glitsky asked, "Do you think it's possible he stole money from Allstrong over there?"
Debra nodded, apparently pleased at the question. "That was my assumption, too, sir. Especially given the way he died."
"And how was that?"
"Somebody snapped his neck."
"Close work," Glitsky said. "Not that easy."
"It's even harder when you factor in Zwick's training and that there was no sign of struggle or a weapon from his attacker. And Zwick was heavily armed. He had a knife in a sheath on his leg and a forty-five carried loose in his coat pocket. Both still on him when I got to him."
"So his killer," Glitsky said, "was another commando. You were thinking probably with Allstrong, somehow, getting back their money."
Debra nodded. "That is kind of where I was going until Marcel called me yesterday and told me about Darrel's latest."
Glitsky shifted his interest over to Bracco. "Talk to me," he said.
" Three street thugs, all with sheets. All of 'em young, strong, and armed, out for a good time on Saturday night in the Tenderloin. All of 'em killed by hand. Maybe they just decided to mug the wrong guy, the same guy who killed Zwick, but that's a stretch, don't you think?"
"The stretch is why he would have stayed around," Glitsky said, "if he's one of the Allstrong people."
"There aren't any Allstrong people, though," Debra said. "The whole staff is over in Iraq. They've got a woman manager over here in a tiny office by Candlestick and a couple of clerks. None of 'em had ever met Zwick personally. And I believe them."
"On the other hand," Lanier interjected, "maybe we got a bona fide wacko who's getting off on killing people with his hands. These Tenderloin meatballs, we got two broken necks and a septum jabbed up into the brain. But there's no connection we can come up with between Zwick and these dirtbags. None of the victims had anything stolen off them."
Glitsky scratched at his cheek. "How many broken-neck murders have you seen in the past twenty years, Marcel?"
The l
ieutenant nodded. "I know what you're saying, Abe. And every one of the very few was in the course of some kind of a fight. These guys, there was hardly a sign of a struggle. The problem is that we got reporters already onto the story-I got a call at home this morning, and so did Frank-and they're salivating over this serial killer possibility."
Glitsky chewed the inside of his cheek for a minute. "And Allstrong hires Navy SEALs and guys like that for their security work over in Iraq?"
"That's what I gather," Debra said. "They've got nice brochures, but really, as I said, no people."
"But let's not lose sight of the main question," Lanier said. "We don't want to spin this toward a serial killer loose in the city. Frank would have my balls. Excuse me, Debra."
But Glitsky was standing up. "I'm doing my very favorite Monday-morning press briefing in fifteen, Marcel. I'll put that fire out at least until we get another broken neck."
"What are you going to tell 'em?" Lanier asked.
"I'll say I can't comment on ongoing investigations, except to say that it would be irresponsible to print or run rumors of a serial killer when there is no evidence to support it. And none of these victims are high profile. We got three dead brothers in the hood and one dead unemployed white guy in the Mish. This stuff is unfortunate but it happens. And the story goes away."
"Even if this guy's the same guy," Bracco said, "who did all of them?"
"If it was," Glitsky said, "I've got to believe he's long gone by now and never coming back."
7
Major Charles Tucker, the Senior Auditor for Aviation Issues, didn't like to leave the Green Zone any more than anyone else did. But in the past ten days, since Ron Nolan had shown up downstairs at the Republican Palace with his $2 million requisition, he had signed off on another $3.3 million in cash to Allstrong Security-all of it approved by Airbase Security Services Coordinator Colonel Kevin Ramsdale.
Jack Allstrong himself had shown up at his desk four times, patiently explaining to Tucker that obviously, if he continued to question the need for money, he was unaware of the sheer vastness of the task that Allstrong Security had contracted to undertake. The airport itself, BIAP, was enormous-thirty-two thousand acres. Securing even half of all that land alone in a hostile country was a monumental job. Besides that, Allstrong needed immediate money to buy the cars and trucks that would deliver the new dinar cash all over the country on his latest contract. He also needed more money for the bomb-sniffing dogs, for his enormous payroll, for food for his constantly growing influx of employees.
In spite of the danger inherent in every trip outside of the Green Zone, Tucker decided he had to see for himself what was going on out at BIAP. Leaving the Republican Palace in the early afternoon, and in uniform, he was chaffeured through the city and out to the airport by a three-Mercedes convoy of KBR security people who carried only sidearms-the irony wasn't lost on him. Nevertheless, by the time they arrived at the first airport checkpoint, it was nearly four o'clock in the afternoon.
There was, as always, a long line of cars ahead of his convoy, all of them waiting to be searched and to have their papers inspected. At this rate, Tucker's convoy wasn't going to get inside for at least another hour. So to save himself the time, he decided to get out of his vehicle and enter the compound on foot. With any luck, he could complete his informal inspection and start back to Baghdad before his convoy even made it as far as the gate anyway. They could U-turn away and be gone with that much less of a hassle.
But no sooner had he gotten out of his car than he became aware of the sound of gunfire. Not distant gunfire, which was so common in Baghdad and often relatively harmless, but nearby gunfire that seemed to be coming from the neighborhood just to his left, adjacent to the eastern border of BIAP. In contrast to the airport's western edge, which bordered the Euphrates River and opened into a plain of flat and formless ditch-crossed farmland that gradually degraded into desert, this eastern no-man's-land was a densely populated area of the ubiquitous low-lying, dung-brown structures that seemed to make up so many of Baghdad's suburbs, and that Tucker knew to be home to hundreds of Saddam Hussein's former officers. Gunfire in this area wouldn't be good news. But still, if it was confined to the neighborhood, he knew that it needn't necessarily concern him here.
Squatting, moving along the safe side of the line of vehicles, Tucker had almost made it to the gate when he realized that the gunfire was in fact close by. Stopping, he saw a handful of men scurrying along just outside the compound, by the barricades that had sprung up along the perimeter's fence. All of the black-clad men had camo'd their faces-Tucker knew that they weren't regular Army. They all carried rifles and belts of ammunition, and they were firing out into the suburbs.
Still keeping low, he sprinted to the gate, where four men-also heavily armed, in matching dark fatigues-were manning the entrance, seemingly unconcerned with the firing going on behind them. Tucker walked up to the nearest of them. "Hey!" Holding up his hand. "Major Charles Tucker. What the hell's going on over there?"
The man, who was not American, looked over his shoulder, then back at Tucker. He shrugged and spoke in a stiltedly correct British accent. "We were taking some fire from over there. Jack Allstrong ordered our men to put them down."
"You're attacking them?"
"It appears so, yes."
"You can't do that. That's against policy."
Again, the man shrugged. "Mr. Allstrong called them out."
"Well, let's get Mr. Allstrong here so he can call them off. You can't conduct an offensive with nonmilitary personnel."
Another man, with the same accent as the first, broke away from his inspecting comrades and got in front of Tucker. "Is there a problem, sir?"
"You bet there's a problem." He pointed to the shooters. "I'm assuming those men are working with Allstrong. Who's in charge here?"
"I am."
"What's your name?"
"Khadka Gurung."
"Where are you from?"
" Nepal."
"Well, Mr. Gurung, I'm a major in the U.S. Army. Private military forces are not allowed to attack insurgent groups."
"But we were fired upon first. From over there." He pointed vaguely to the general neighborhood.
"You were fired upon?"
"Yes, sir."
Tucker pointed. "Was anyone in this line of cars hit?"
"I don't believe so. No, sir."
"But the cars were just sitting here, like they are now?"
"That's correct."
"And none of them were hit?"
"I don't believe so."
"And nobody's firing from over there now?"
"No. We must have driven them off."
"Either that, Mr. Gurung, or there wasn't much of a concerted attack, if they couldn't manage to hit stationary vehicles at less than a hundred yards. Maybe the attack was just celebratory gunfire, which we hear all the time in Baghdad. How about that?"
"That's not impossible."
At that moment, several of the group of commandos broke into a run across an open area toward the Iraqi buildings. "They're attacking, for Christ's sake! That's blatantly illegal. Where's Jack Allstrong now? He's got to call this off. I need to talk to him right away. Do you think you could manage to arrange that?"
Gurung, nonplussed by Tucker's apparent anger, said, "Of course. Please to wait here and I'll try to reach him." In no great hurry, he walked over to a small stucco building that looked as though it had recently been constructed just inside the gate. He picked up a telephone.
Tucker, meanwhile, whirled back to face the first man he'd talked to. "Who are you?" he snapped.
"I am Ramesh Bishta."
"Well, Mr. Bishta, while we're waiting for Mr. Allstrong, can you tell me what's holding things up so badly here? Why can't you get this line moving?"
"The drivers," he explained. "So many do not speak English. It is difficult."
"Of course they don't speak English. They're mostly Iraqis. They're delivering Iraqi goo
ds, doing Iraqi business. Don't you have people here at the gate who speak Arabic?"
"No, sir. I'm sorry, but no."
"How about translators?"
"Again. No. Maybe someday."
Tucker brought his hands to his head and squeezed his temples. He'd personally overseen the transfer of nearly six million dollars to Allstrong Security in the past two weeks and apparently Jack Allstrong couldn't find one local worker to speak Arabic to the Iraqis who needed to get into his airport? To say nothing of the fact that against all regulations he was paying his private commandos to lead offensive military strikes against the civilian population. Tucker had come to believe that Allstrong was playing fast and loose with the chaos that was Iraq, but now he was starting to believe that he didn't understand the half of it.
Gurung returned and informed Tucker than Mr. Allstrong was on the way. The next car at the gate finally got approval and moved on into the compound. The raiding party seemed to have stopped for the moment at the back line of the neighborhood buildings. Tucker took the opportunity to ask Gurung about the dogs.
"I'm sorry?" The unfailingly polite guard shrugged.
"The bomb-sniffing dogs. I would assume they would be here at the gate, checking the cars. The trunks."
"No. I haven't seen these dogs yet. Perhaps soon." Still smiling, the soul of cooperation, Gurung asked to be excused for a moment. He went over to Bishta, and after a short conversation, the two men went and had a few words with their other two colleagues. Almost immediately, they stepped away from the next car in the line and waved it through the gate. And then the next. And the next. The line was starting to move.
Tucker watched for a minute, then stepped in front of the next car up, holding up his hand to stop it. The driver laid on his horn, but Tucker kept his hand up where it was, holding him back. "Mr. Gurung!" he yelled out. "What's happening now? You've kept these people sitting here for hours and now you're just letting them in?"
This finally brought a disturbed frown to Gurung's face. "Mr. Bishta said you told him the line should be moving faster."
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