The Enemy

“Why do you want all that stuff?” Summer asked.

“I know what happened to Mrs. Kramer,” I said.

“How?”

“I figured it out,” I said. “Like I should have at the beginning. But I didn’t think. I didn’t have enough imagination.”

“It’s not enough to imagine things.”

“It is,” I said. “Sometimes that’s what it’s all about. Sometimes that’s all an investigator has got. You have to imagine what people must have done. The way they must have thought and acted. You have to think yourself into being them.”

“Being who?”

“Vassell and Coomer,” I said. “We know who they are. We know what they’re like. Therefore we can predict what they did.”

“What did they do?”

“They got an early start and flew all day from Frankfurt. On New Year’s Eve. They wore Class As, trying to get an upgrade. Maybe they succeeded, with American Airlines out of Germany. Maybe they didn’t. Either way, they couldn’t have counted on it. They must have been prepared to spend eight hours in coach.”

“So?”

“Would guys like Vassell and Coomer be happy to wait in the Dulles taxi line? Or take a shuttle bus to the city? All cramped and uncomfortable?”

“No,” Summer said. “They wouldn’t do either thing.”

“Exactly,” I said. “They wouldn’t do either thing. They’re way too important for that. They wouldn’t dream of it. Not in a million years. Guys like that, they need to be met by a car and a driver.”

“Who?”

“Marshall,” I said. “That’s who. He’s their blue-eyed gofer. He was already over here, at their service. He must have picked them up at the airport. Maybe Kramer too. Did Kramer take the Hertz bus to the rental lot? I don’t think so. I think Marshall drove him there. Then he drove Vassell and Coomer to the Jefferson Hotel.”

“And?”

“And he stayed there with them, Summer. I think he had a room booked. Maybe they wanted him on the spot to drive them to National the next morning. He was going with them, after all. He was going to Irwin too. Or maybe they just wanted to talk to him, urgently. Just the three of them, Vassell, Coomer, and Marshall. Maybe it was easier to talk without Kramer there. And Marshall had a lot of stuff to talk about. They started his temporary detached duty in November. You told me that yourself. November was when the Wall started coming down. November was when the danger signals started coming in. So they sent him over here in November to get his ear close to the ground in the Pentagon. That’s my guess. But whatever, Marshall stayed the night with Vassell and Coomer at the Jefferson Hotel. I’m sure of it.”

“OK, so?”

“Marshall was at the hotel, and his car was in valet parking. And you know what? I checked our bill from Paris. They charged an arm and a leg for everything. Especially the phone calls. But not all the phone calls. The room-to-room calls we made didn’t show up at all. You called me at six, about dinner. Then I called you at midnight, because I was lonely. Those calls didn’t show up anywhere on the bill. Hit three for another room, and it’s free. Dial nine for a line, and it triggers the computer. There were no calls on Vassell and Coomer’s bill and therefore we thought they had made no calls. But they had made calls. It’s obvious. They made internal calls. Room to room. Vassell took the message from XII Corps in Germany, and then he called Coomer’s room to discuss what the hell to do about the situation. And then one or the other of them picked up the phone and called Marshall’s room. They called their blue-eyed gofer and told him to run downstairs and jump in his car.”

“Marshall did it?”

I nodded. “They sent him out into the night to clean up their mess.”

“Can we prove it?”

“We can make a start,” I said. “I’ll bet you three things. First, we’ll call the Jefferson Hotel and we’ll find a booking in Marshall’s name for New Year’s Eve. Second, Marshall’s file will tell us he once lived in Sperryville, Virginia. And third, his file will tell us he’s tall and heavy and right-handed.”

She went quiet. Her eyelids started moving.

“Is it enough?” she said. “Is Mrs. Kramer enough of a result to get us off the hook?”

“There’s more to come,” I said.