I knew why Ambrose said that. He wanted us to remember that no one was safe until whatever was going on had been busted wide open. For some reason, I pictured telling Harmony Scott that I’d spoken with the last man to see her son alive. Harmony. I’d forgotten about her completely. “There is one last thing,” I said.
“Shoot.”
“Did Peyton ever talk about his mother?”
Ambrose shook his head slowly. “No, never. Never talked about her.”
I found that extraordinary, having met the woman. “He never mentioned Harmony? Not even in passing?”
Ambrose looked at me as if he’d misjudged me. “Harmony? She wasn’t Scotty’s mother, man. She was his
step
mother.”
“His stepmother?”
“Yeah. And he always talked about her enough to know he thought she was his
evil
stepmother; you know what I’m saying?”
Yeah, I knew what he was saying.
TWENTY-EIGHT
I
had to be slipping, or maybe going soft. Peyton’s death certificate said he was twenty-eight. Harmony herself had told me how long she’d been married to Abraham Scott. I even remembered the conversation.
I knew my husband. That’s what happens after twenty-four years of marriage.
Of course she was Peyton’s stepmom.
I was starting to get a picture of the Scott family, and, despite Harmony’s assertions that they were close, that wasn’t what I was seeing. Abraham and Peyton were tight. And maybe, at some stage at least, Abraham and Harmony had been an item. But Peyton and Harmony had been estranged from the beginning, if the photos collected in the garage and in Scott’s study were any indication. And I believed they were.
Masters and I batted this back and forth while we made our way to the Al-Rasheed.
“I wonder what happened to Scott’s first wife, Peyton’s mother?” asked Masters as we reached the row of haji shops.
Yeah, I wondered about that, too, and I now felt I knew enough to make an educated guess.
We both bought cheeseburgers and fries, and ate while we walked. The ibuprofen might have worked on the toothache, but not on anything else. My body ached so much I felt as if I’d been beaten like an egg. The walk to the Al-Rasheed was five hundred very long yards. But I was glad to count my blessings, even if some of them were pains and bone weariness. There were people in this place who’d no doubt woken up in the morning fully expecting that they’d see out the day. The woman with the missing spine awaiting Blood’s attention came to mind.
“What happened to your marriage?” asked Masters.
“What?”
“Your marriage. You’ve said something about a counselor. You asked me whether I wanted you to tell me about your marriage.”
“That was rhetorical.”
“I’m still asking.”
“I’m not married.”
Exasperated, she said, “Okay, so I deduce that you’re divorced. When you
were
married, what happened?”
I sighed. Masters was learning. Perhaps a little too quickly for my taste. My usual evasion tactics were becoming ineffectual. Common wisdom says you should talk things out. I don’t buy that. Some things are best buried in the damp earth and left to the worms. “Okay, I married for all the wrong reasons.”
“Such as?”
“Musical chairs.”
“What?”
“Musical chairs—my theory about marriage. Want to hear it?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Okay. People get married at a certain age because they think the music’s about to stop and they don’t want to be left without a chair to sit on, so they marry the nearest person before the switch is flicked.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Think about it.”
“What’s to think about? No one’s that cynical.”
“I didn’t want to be left standing. Brenda was nice, the sex was great, and I didn’t think I was going to find any better. I don’t think Brenda’s motivations were too much loftier or deeper than my own. Like I said, people get to a certain age, and that’s the age when they think they should be hitched. Maybe that’s why there are so many divorces. The music stops, you get hitched, and then one day you realize the people who didn’t find a chair were the real winners after all.”
“You’re damaged goods, aren’t you?”
“Why do
you
think people get married?”
“Because they meet someone they love and they decide they can’t go on without them.”
“Quaint.”
“Maybe I haven’t been kicked in the guts enough.”
“Yet.”
“So what happened? You haven’t told me anything.”
I sighed, the resigned sigh of someone who knows he can’t escape. “Brenda and I were having problems. She’d decided that she needed to find herself. Before I knew it, I was drinking green slime for breakfast and eating roots for dinner. I needed to grow a second stomach to digest it all. She stopped shaving her legs, took up yoga, and spent the household budget on kinesiology seminars and bulk purchases of aromatherapy oils.”
“What were
you
doing all that time?”
“The usual. Jumping out of planes, killing people who disagreed with Uncle Sam.”
“You grew apart.”
“No. We didn’t grow apart. We just stopped liking each other. Nevertheless, we followed advice and went to a counselor to find out why. After a while, I refused to go, when I felt the advice from the counselor was maybe a little one-sided in my wife’s favor. I was told these feelings were just a manifestation of my resentment toward her spiritual growth. And I was even starting to believe it until I came home early one day and found her on her knees in the shower, blowing him.”
“The marriage counselor? Oh, shit.”
“Yeah. Actually I think they were precisely the words he used when my wife stopped trying to suck his tonsils out through his cock and he opened his eyes and saw me standing in the doorway.”
“What did you do?”
“I dragged him naked onto the lawn. Then I bitch-slapped him in front of the neighbors until he begged me to stop.”
“And did you?”
“Stop? No. I got blindsided by the MPs. My wife called them. Maybe it was just as well. I don’t think I’d have been able to stop.”
“Why not?”
“It was that moment when I ceased to believe in the dream. You know, the one you have when you’re growing up and you imagine what you’re going to be and do, and how you’re going to be different. That was the moment I realized I wasn’t any different from anyone else. I was just an ordinary, everyday fuckup. I beat the colonel up for it.”
“Jesus! The shrink was a colonel?”
“Right. Didn’t I mention that?”
Masters half laughed, half snorted.
We walked in silence. Part of me hoped Brenda was happy now that the divorce was through and we really were going our separate ways, free to pursue the life we each wanted. The other part of me hoped she’d choke on the colonel’s genitalia.
“My turn to ask a question.”
Masters replied, “Depends what it is.”
“When you were parked outside the pensione the other night, were you about to pay me a visit? Or did you have my apartment under surveillance? And if you were watching me, why?”
Masters didn’t answer immediately. Then she said, “If I was staking out your apartment, do you think I’d do it in a mandrill’s butt, as you call it, and park it right across the road from you?”
“No.”
Silence.
“Well…?” I prodded.
“If you must know, I had a bottle of wine and a couple of packets of peanuts with me. I remembered you had a toothache and decided the nuts were a bad idea, so I went home.”
“Come on, you can do better than that.”
Masters considered the challenge. “Okay, the truth? The case was closed. You were going back to the States. I felt bad about the way we’d started off. I decided that was mostly my fault. So I bought some wine. I figured we could just talk about the case and perhaps part on better terms. Also, I didn’t buy the suicide thing, and I wanted to see how you felt about it. But then I had second thoughts about coming up. I thought maybe you’d misunderstand my intentions—it was nighttime, the wine, your hotel room, you know…I was wrestling with this when a cab pulled up and Ms. Viagra stepped out ready to party, and hustled into your building. I decided three would be a crowd.”
“I would have.”
“Would have what?”
“Misread your intentions.”
We arrived at the Al-Rasheed. It had been a hell of a day at the office. I felt like I’d been awake for a week straight. I wanted to spend some time thinking through the case but my brain was wandering around the place like a drunk in the dark. Several servicemen and-women were sitting out front in the cool dark night air having cigarettes, the tips glowing and illuminating their faces momentarily. Here and there, faces appeared in the blackness and then vanished. The effect was eerie.
Being so near the perimeter and well within range of RPGs and sniper fire, the hotel was blacked out. We dragged our carcasses up the short flight of stairs outlined in low-light red and made it to the reception area. The same sergeant was still on duty, and still watching television. Masters gave the room number, obtained the key, and we shuffled toward the elevator.
“The first day’s always the worst,” the sergeant offered behind us.
“What’s day two like?” I asked.
“Fucking awful, I’m afraid. Oh, and you’ll have to take the stairs. The elevator’s out.” She added a shrug by way of apology. It was only two flights to the first floor, but I felt every step.
The night was getting cooler by the minute. With the sun gone, the heat leached rapidly from the dry desert air. Masters opened the door to our room. A night-light was on, throwing a thin yellow veil across the shadows. The windows were blacked out by heavy plastic taped to the frames. “You know what would really improve this place?” said Masters.
“A truck bomb?” I suggested.
“No, lava lamps.”
I grunted and collapsed on the double bed, which instantly took on the shape of a hammock. It’s beds like this that keep chiropractors in Porsches. But I was way past caring.
There was a thunderous pounding on the door. I wasn’t sure what it was at first. I thought maybe it was mortar fire coming in real close, or maybe an RPG round or two had decided to join us. How long had I been asleep? Where was my M9? I hate being awakened.
“Can’t you answer the door, Cooper?” said Masters as she stormed out of the bathroom, toweling her wet hair, dressed in light blue men’s pajamas. She went to the holster lying on the night table, extracted her weapon, pulled back the slider, and thumbed off the safety.
I glanced at my watch and realized I’d been asleep all of twelve minutes. I felt like I’d been arc-welded to the bed.
“Who is it?” Masters demanded.
The door was thick and I couldn’t hear the reply, but Masters seemed satisfied. She opened it. General Harold Lee Edwards’s adjutant strode in. I managed to peel myself off the bed and give him the courtesy of standing up. The man looked like he’d swallowed something that didn’t agree with him; either that or his sphincter had been sewn closed and his personality had gone septic. He was the type that collected clipboards.
“Can we help you, sir?” said Masters, replacing her weapon in its holster.
“Get your bags packed. There’s been a change of schedule. Your plane leaves in…” he checked his wrist, “…fifty-two minutes. I hope you’ve enjoyed your stay with us and that you tell the folks back home only good things. Transport downstairs will take you to the marshaling area. Your names are already on the BIAP manifest.”
His eyes shifted behind his dirty glasses from Masters to me and then back. I knew just what was going on in his mind. I half expected him to lick his lips, and I thought of a lizard digesting a fly. I decided not to disappoint him. I took a step toward Masters and put my arm across her shoulders. To tell the truth, I think I was just looking for an excuse. The perfume from her freshly washed hair filled the air around her. Her skin felt soft and smooth and clean and warm beneath the cool cotton fabric.
TWENTY-NINE
I
stretched the sleep out of my body when I stepped off the back of the C-130’s ramp and onto the Ramstein tarmac, careful not to rip the sutures out of my arm, and then shambled toward the building indicated by the loadmaster. Winter wasn’t retreating from Germany without a fight. A cold, hard rain was slanting in, driven by a blustering wind that also picked up the water pooled on the ground and blew it forward in sheets. After the heat of Baghdad, the cold was a shock. It went straight to my tooth, which, despite the bullet wound, reigned supreme in the land of pain and discomfort that my body had become. Masters and I were both drenched by the time we made it to shelter.
I’d only a vague recollection of the last five hours. I’d snoozed in the Humvee to BIAP, dozed while waiting for the Black Hawk to Balard, and sat frozen with terror as we jinked and swooped through the full range of the aircraft’s performance envelope in the sightless void of a moonless night over the desert, with only the fluid sloshing around in my inner ears for reference. Sleep hit with the force of a left hook as the C-130 taxied to the Balard threshold markers. And, mercifully, that’s all I remembered till we bounced down the runway at Ramstein.
Beneath the nerve-jangling effect of an ambient temperature just a handful of degrees above freezing, I was still bone tired, and so was Masters. The local time was 2345 hours, and I had a date with my mattress back at the Pensione Freedom. We hitched a ride with one of the flight crew to the parking lot at the main gatehouse. Masters and I both looked at her Mercedes and came to the same conclusion without speaking a word.
“Cab it?” she said.
“Yeah.”
We’d both caught a little paranoia from Ambrose. I wasn’t keen on getting in her car until it had been checked over. We could have done that ourselves, but the thought of doing it in the rain didn’t appeal. A couple of taxis were leaving the base, having dropped off fares. We shared one back to K-town. The cab smelled of garlic sweated out of the driver’s pores.