The Enemy

Technically the army has a total of twenty-six separate ranks. A grunt comes in as an E-1 private, and as long as he doesn’t do anything stupid he is automatically promoted to an E-2 private after a year, and to an E-3 private first class after another year, or even a little earlier if he’s any good. Then the ladder stretches all the way up to a five-star General of the Army, although I wasn’t aware of anyone except George Washington and Dwight David Eisenhower who ever made it that far. If you count the E-9 sergeant major grade as three separate steps to acknowledge the Command Sergeant Majors and the Sergeant Major of the Army, and if you count all four warrant officer grades, then a major like me has seven steps above him and eighteen steps below him. Which gives a major like me considerable experience of insubordination, going both ways, up and down, giving and taking. With a million people on twenty-six separate rungs on the ladder, insubordination was a true art form. And the canvas was one-on-one privacy.

So I sent Summer away and waited for Willard on my own. She argued about it. In the end I got her to agree that one of us should stay under the radar. She went to get a late dinner. My sergeant brought me a sandwich. Roast beef and Swiss cheese, white bread, a little mayo, a little mustard. The beef was pink. It was a good sandwich. Then she brought me coffee. I was halfway through my second cup when Willard arrived.

He came straight in. He left the door open. I didn’t get up. Didn’t salute. Didn’t stop sipping my coffee. He tolerated it, like I knew he would. He was being very tactical. As far as he knew I had a suspect that could take Brubaker’s case away from the Columbia PD and break the link between an elite colonel and drug dealers in a crack alley. So he was prepared to start out warm and friendly. Or maybe he was looking for a bonding experience with one of his staff. He sat down and started plucking at his trouser legs. He put a man-to-man expression on his face, like we had just been through some kind of a shared experience together.

“Wonderful drive from Jackson,” he said. “Great roads.”

I said nothing.

“Just bought a vintage Pontiac GTO,” he said. “Fine car. I put polished headers on it, big bore pipes. Goes like shit off a shiny shovel.”

I said nothing.

“You like muscle cars?”

“No,” I said. “I like to take the bus.”

“That’s not much fun.”

“OK, let me put it another way. I’m happy with the size of my penis. I don’t need compensation.”

He went white. Then he went red. The same shade as Trifonov’s Corvette. He glared at me like he was a real tough guy.

“Tell me about the progress on Brubaker,” he said.

“Brubaker’s not my case.”

“Sanchez told me you found the guy.”

“False alarm,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Totally.”

“Who were you looking at?”

“Your ex-wife.”

“What?”

“Someone told me she slept with half the colonels in the army. Always had, like a hobby. So I figured that might include Brubaker. I mean, it was a fifty-fifty chance.”

He stared at me.

“Only kidding,” I said. “It was nobody. Just a dry hole.”

He looked away, furious. I got up and closed my office door. Stepped back to my desk. Sat down again. Faced him.

“Your insolence is incredible,” he said.

“So make a complaint, Willard. Go up the chain of command and tell someone I hurt your feelings. See if anyone believes you. Or see if anyone believes you can’t fix a thing like that all by yourself. Watch that note go in your file. See what kind of an impression it makes at your one-star promotion board.”

He squirmed in his chair. Hitched his body from side to side and stared around the room. Fixed his gaze on Summer’s map.

“What’s that?” he said.

“It’s a map,” I said.

“Of what?”

“Of the eastern United States.”

“What are the pins for?”

I didn’t answer. He got up and stepped over to the wall. Touched the pins with his fingertips, one at a time. D.C., Sperryville, and Green Valley. Then Raleigh, Fort Bird, Cape Fear, and Columbia.

“What is all this?” he said.

“They’re just pins,” I said.

He pulled the pin out of Green Valley, Virginia.

“Mrs. Kramer,” he said. “I told you to leave that alone.”

He pulled all the other pins out. Threw them down on the floor. Then he saw the gate log. Scanned down it and stopped when he got to Vassell and Coomer.

“I told you to leave them alone as well,” he said.

He tore the list off the wall. The tape took scabs of paint with it. Then he tore the map down. More paint came with it. The pins had left tiny holes in the Sheetrock. They looked like a map all by themselves. Or a constellation.

“You made holes in the wall,” he said. “I won’t have army property abused in this way. It’s unprofessional. What would visitors to this room think?”

“They’d have thought there was a map on the wall,” I said. “It was you that pulled it down and made the mess.”

He dropped the crumpled paper on the floor.

“You want me to walk over to the Delta station?” he said.

“Want me to break your back?”

He went very quiet.