“What?”
“I’m not stupid, March. The point is, whatever your suspicions are, they’re just that: suspicions. You don’t know anything concrete, and you certainly can’t prove it. Right now, you’ve got to go with the flow. Stay under her radar, and she won’t feel like she has to do anything more to you for the time being.”
“So just rest,” I say. “Just relax. You sound like my doctor.”
“You should listen.”
The sound of a car outside. I glance through the kitchen blinds and see Charlotte pulling up to the garage. Bascombe rises, making for the front door.
“What about the ID on the guy who killed Lorenz? Have they gotten anything yet?”
“Nothing,” he says. “Nothing on the prints, nothing on the DNA. He wasn’t carrying any identification, just cash, and it turns out you can buy those skull rings pretty much anywhere. It’s like he never existed.”
“Or his files were erased.”
“Man,” he says, “I’m getting out of here. Pretty soon you’ll have me believing it.”
He closes the front door just as Charlotte comes through the back. She drops her purse and keys on the side table.
“Was somebody here?” she asks.
I stand there, uncertain what to say. The conversation fills my head like so much cotton wadding, muffling the sound of her voice. Then I flip the switch. I take the fears and suspicions and I bury them.
“Bascombe,” I say. “He just left. And now my bathwater is probably cold.”
She kicks her shoes off. “A bath sounds good.”
It’s a pleasure just to be in the same room with her. To be able to reach out and touch her. To have more in my life than her disembodied voice.
“You can join me,” I say.
“Tempting.” She tilts her head to one side, her expression an alloy of mischief and concern. “I would, baby, but I’m afraid you might hurt yourself.”
Interlude: 1986
One morning, already late and breathing hard, a lather of sweat on my skin, I veered off the path of my usual run, cutting through a stretch of parkland on base. I passed through clusters of empty picnic tables set in clearings draped with camouflage netting. Going this way, I could slice five minutes off my time and avoid the hard glare from Sgt. Crewes.
Rounding a corner, I wiped my brow on the sleeve of my olive drab T-shirt. When I looked up, a group of men were staring my way. Magnum and his death squad trainees sat huddled at one of the picnic tables. My sudden appearance had interrupted some kind of lesson. Magnum said something in what sounded like fluent Spanish, eliciting a laugh from his men. I should have kept jogging, but instead I pounded to a halt, doubling over to catch my breath.
“Don’t let us interrupt you,” he called. “It’s Lieutenant March, right?”
I nodded. A couple of weeks had passed since our first meeting, and in that time I’d mostly forgotten about Magnum and the so-called cabana boys. I’d even wondered whether Crewes had made all the cloak-and-dagger stuff up, having fun at the expense of a credulous officer. Now I knew better.
He held a long whippy reed in one hand and an open lockblade knife in the other, and he looked to be carving as he spoke. He held the reed at eye level, appraising the beveled end. Probably wondering if it was thin enough yet to slide under a fingernail.
At the table I noticed César, the man who’d been leaning against Magnum’s Buick. Once again he was smoking a panetella, and once again he gave an ironic salute. Up close, his courtly smile reminded me of young Omar Sharif. There was a dark mole on his cheek. While his fatigues, like all the others, bore no insignias of rank, his manner combined with the deferential way the others hedged around him backed up Crewes’s idea that he was the boss man. I held his gaze a moment before looking away.
Magnum glanced over his shoulder to see what was attracting my interest. Then he turned and gestured with the knife. “I’m sure you have somewhere to be.”
I nodded again, then got going.
I had some speed back then. For a couple of years in high school I’d gone out for track. The 440 was my race, and though I was never good enough to compete seriously, for a while I fancied myself quite a runner. Thanks to that conditioning I had aced my PT requirements, making it clear throughout ROTC and OCS that I could lead from the front.
Unfortunately a good officer needs more than physical courage. He must be someone that other men can look up to and follow. Having grown up a loner, I always had trouble with that part. The Army figured this out long before I did, sorting me to one side for staff and administrative work, tasks that didn’t require too much personal charisma. After my assignment to the battalion, where my duties consisted mainly of office work, I began to worry that I was getting soft. Which is why, every other morning, I’d drive in early to jog around the base before showering and reporting.
Brief as it was, my encounter with Magnum stirred something in me. By the time I reached my office I was half an hour late, still wrapped up in my own head. Crewes appeared at the door looking stern.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” I snapped, echoing Magnum’s words to me.
The sergeant stiffened at the unaccustomed rebuke and disappeared.
The next day I took the same route, slowing my pace through the park trail. As I approached the netted picnic table, Magnum appeared. He sat by himself on the tabletop, his soft loafers resting on the seat. He seemed lost in the pages of the fat paperback clutched in his hands, but he saw me as I passed and gestured me over.
“I thought you might drop by,” he said.
I paused, jogging in place.
“No, really. Have a seat. Let’s exchange a few words, Lieutenant.”
He closed the book and thumped it down on the table. Dante’s Inferno.
After what Maj. Shattuck had told me, I should have bolted. But I wouldn’t have come in the first place if I’d intended to do that. Besides, running away would be an unworthy response for an officer. I posted myself a few feet from the table, arms crossed, keeping a wary distance between us, trying to look hostile rather than defensive.
“Suit yourself.” He fixed me with a disarming smile, a smile that lit up his face and said he was my friend and only wanted what was best. “What I’m wondering,” he said, easing the words out, “is whether your commanding officer put you up to this. Don’t try to lie to me, either. I can always tell when I’m being lied to.”
“Nobody ordered me to run,” I said.
“I’m pretty sure that’s not true.”
“What I mean is-”
“Never mind.” The smile broadened. “So if you’re not spying on me, what are you doing here?” He patted the table next to him, inviting me to mount up. I stood my ground. “All right, then. What exactly did you see yesterday? I’m assuming you don’t speak the language?”
“I’m from Texas.”
“So you don’t.”
He chuckled at his joke, then slid off the table. At the edge of the perimeter, he passed a hand through the draped netting and plucked a cattail from the bushes opposite. Then he dug a knife out of his pocket and cut the ends off, making toward me.
“If you’re forcing me to guess, I will. What would I assume if I were you, stumbling onto a scene like that? I know-” He sliced one end of the stalk into a crude spear. “Maybe you figured I was teaching these boys to make punji stakes. Or how to make shoots to stick under people’s fingernails.” He tossed the reed away. “Or maybe I’m just one of those people who likes to whittle things as he talks.”
“I know why you’re here,” I said.
“Do you?” He slipped the knife away. “Or do you just think you do?”
“Everybody on base knows.”
I could hear my voice wavering. Nothing good could come of this conversation and I knew better than to continue. But I was weak. And frankly I was also intrigued. Whatever Crewes thought about the spooks, I’d grown up in the last phases of the Cold War. In college I’d dutifull
y attended Russian language classes, which in those days were populated almost entirely by ROTC students learning not to appreciate the culture or the literature, but how to interrogate prisoners. I’d grown up watching James Bond, too, and now here I was, in the presence of a real-life secret agent. Anxious as I was, I was excited, too. And Magnum had no trouble picking up on this. He gave me another one of those smiles.
“Let me tell you something,” he said. “Everybody on base may think they know what’s going on, but they have no idea.”
“What are you doing, then?”
“Put it this way: I’m a talent scout. These guys you see me with, they may not seem like much today. They aren’t, and most of them never will be. Some of them will go nowhere, some will end up blindfolded against the wall. Some will end up jumping out of an airplane with no parachute.” He laughed. “Don’t worry, though, not all of them will sink. A couple will swim, and one of them? He might even fly.”
“And when he does,” I said, “you’ll already be his friend.”
“You’re smarter than you look. But no, I won’t be his friend. We will. The United States of America. And right here is where it all will have started. There are names I could mention-powerful men today-who are friends to this country as a result of relationships forged just like this. I’m not looking for quick results here. I take the long view.”
I stood there not knowing whether to be appalled or electrified, whether to judge Magnum’s long view as ruthlessness or just common sense. Despite the Buick and the boxy suits, there was a glamor to the man. While the rest of us were playing soldier, he was fighting the secret war-the real war-and didn’t that lift him above our standards of judgment? Whatever Shattuck might think, I knew why I’d come, and it wasn’t to judge. I was here to be noticed. I was here to make my availability known. Here am I, send me.
“It’s César, isn’t it?” I asked, hoping to impress him. “The one who’s gonna fly?”
“You’re sharp, you know that? I spotted it right off. Like I said, I’m a talent scout. I don’t need much time to get the measure of a man. Now, tell me something. .” He leaned closer. “Can you keep a secret, Lieutenant March?”
I stepped toward him, the hair on the back of my neck standing up.
“Yes,” I said. “I can.”
“Good.” He patted my shoulder for the second time. “Prove it.”
He got up and walked away.
PART 2
THE VESTIBULE
. . credo ch’un spirito del mio sangue piangala colpa che là giù contanto costa.
. . a spirit of my own blood laments the guilt that brings so great a cost below.
Dante accepts the idea of neutral agents
in the quarrel between God and Satan. And he puts
them in Limbo, a sort of vestibule of his Hell.
We are in the vestibule, cher ami.
— ALBERT CAMUS
CHAPTER 11
Saturday in the Heights. Johnny Cash on the stereo and steaks on the grill, the neighbor’s automatic sprinklers wick-wick-wicking on the far side of the wooden fence. I’m stationed, spatula in hand, comfortable as a lizard in the sun, trying to tell myself this is the life and I could get used to it. Charlotte, who’s flowering now that she’s practicing law full-time, has lectured me twice already about a man being more than his job description.
I’m trying to take it in stride.
Behind me, Carter Robb is trapped in a conversation with Cavallo’s husband, Dean, who gulps down Shiner like water and has none of the veteran’s stereotypical reticence when it comes to boasting about wartime exploits. Robb slips in the occasional yeah and uh-huh. Most of Dean’s stories seem to involve some combination of exploding goats and friendly fire, and I suspect he plays up the details, testing the young reverend.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, though, being over there,” he says, “it’s that people are more similar than they are different.”
“Uh-huh,” Robb says. He must know, judging by what’s gone before, that there’s more to Dean’s heartwarming pronouncement than meets the eye.
“Take this, for example. The Arabs, they think all the bad stuff that happens to them is the result of some international Zionist conspiracy. The family goat walks into a minefield, and they blame the Jews. Crazy, huh?”
“Yeah,” Robb says.
“Then I come back here, and Terry says we’re going to church. And I meet this old guy there, and when he finds out where I’ve been, he starts in on how the president won’t produce his birth certificate and steel doesn’t melt just because some jet wrecks into it. See what I mean? Different players, same idea. Somebody’s running things behind the curtains. Nothing ever just happens.” Dean chuckles to himself. “Although this guy, he really seemed big on Israel.”
Cavallo’s husband may be a bit of a blowhard, but I figure he’s earned the right. And it’s not like he doesn’t have a point.
“Don’t get me started on conspiracy theorists,” I say.
Dean perks up. “Oh yeah?”
“I’ve got this cousin who thinks her brother was murdered by Dean Corll-you remember him? He was a serial killer here in the Heights back when we were kids. The Candy Man, they called him. Anyway, she devoted a website to all this, convinced all these other fruit loops that she was right-”
Charlotte brings out a bowl of tossed salad from the kitchen, her sundress fluttering in the breeze. “Who are you talking about?”
“Nothing, dear.” I smile ironically and Dean starts to laugh.
“Don’t talk bad about people behind their backs.” With a wink she rejoins the women inside. A moment later, they all emerge, their arms laden with plates, glasses, pitchers-Cavallo in white shorts and oversized sunglasses, Gina Robb pink-skinned and waddling, looking ready to pop, but still as radiant as she was in front of the camera.
Carter rises to make room around the patio table, probably relieved for the deliverance.
Over lunch, Dean fades a little, not having much to contribute to a discussion of baby names and due dates. The Robbs have settled into their new place, but they’ve had to suspend their planned repainting because the fumes are giving Gina headaches. She lights up as she describes the nursery’s two perfect marigold walls and the two untouched sides that still sport the hideous original flocked velvet wallpaper, dating back to before either one of them was born. “When I’m at the hospital in labor,” she says, “I told Carter he has to run home and finish painting the room.”
Cavallo gives Dean a few meaningful looks during the baby talk, which he either doesn’t pick up on or chooses to ignore. According to Charlotte, Theresa’s gone a little baby crazy: “She’s tired of snoozing the biological alarm clock.” A hard image for me to square with her flinty work persona. It would be strange if she rode Wanda’s coattails into Homicide only to take a time-out for maternity leave.
“So how are you settling in at the new job?” I ask.
Charlotte makes a threatening motion with her steak knife. “No work at the table!”
“I’m just asking.”
“It’s fine,” Cavallo says. “They think you’re some kind of legend, the other detectives. They ask a lot of questions about. .” She pauses, glancing over at the Robbs. They actually knew Hannah Mayhew, the subject of my recent comeback case, whereas for us she was just another victim, albeit an all-important one. “About the task force,” she finishes.
Dean jumps in. “I’ll bet you’re a legend now, the way you put that shooter down. Terry told me all about that, man. That was righteous.”
Cavallo gives him an elbow. The rest of them ignore the remark.
Yet I find his approbation strangely satisfying. Dean strikes me as the type who’s a boor on principle, the kind of guy who tramples social conventions like he wouldn’t know what else to do with them, but would carry a wounded buddy out of enemy territory, humping fifty miles if he had to. When he met Cavallo, he was a cop and an Army reservist, and he’ll
probably end up working on one of the city or county tactical response teams once he’s considered all the options. I like him, but I’ve never quite figured out the attraction between the two of them. I have a theory it was mainly physical, intensified by Dean’s long absences, and now that they’re together things aren’t going particularly smooth.
Trying to segue, Cavallo produces her new business cards and starts showing them off. I take one, turning it over in my hand, remembering the first time I’d seen my own name and the word HOMICIDE on the same card. I gave those cards out to everyone.
“So you’re keeping your maiden name?” Robb asks.
Next to me, Charlotte deflates. Doesn’t anyone besides her know anymore what questions are appropriate to ask? I try not to smile. Dean makes a show of turning in his chair to face his wife, like it’s a question he’s wondered himself and he can’t wait to hear the answer.
“We haven’t really talked about it,” Cavallo says, not looking at Dean. “For me, it’s sort of like how celebrities, once people know them by a certain name-”
“But it’s not like you’re famous or anything,” Dean says.
“I know that.”
“Is it maybe a feminist thing?” He grins at the dig. “Now, Charlotte, you’re a professional woman. Did you change your name when you two got married?”
Charlotte sputters, caught on the horns of a dilemma. She doesn’t want to side with Dean against Theresa, but on the other hand she’s about as traditional as they come. Her father was a conservative kingmaker in Texas politics back in the day, and as the elder daughter, Charlotte took after him, leaving her wayward sister to drift toward the other extreme.
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