“Now tell me about your life,” she said.
“Mine?” I said. Mine was different in every way imaginable. Color, gender, geography, family circumstances. “I was born in Berlin. Back then, you stayed in the hospital seven days, so I was one week old when I went into the military. I grew up on every base we’ve got. I went to West Point. I’m still in the military. I always will be. That’s it, really.”
“You got family?”
I recalled the note from my sergeant: Your brother called. No message.
“A mother and a brother,” I said.
“Ever been married?”
“No. You?”
“No,” she said. “Seeing anyone?”
“Not right now.”
“Me either.”
We drove on, a mile, and another.
“Can you imagine a life outside the service?” she asked.
“Is there one?”
“I grew up out there. I might be going back.”
“You civilians are a mystery to me,” I said.
Summer parked outside Kramer’s room, I guessed for authenticity’s sake, a little less than five hours after we left Walter Reed. She seemed satisfied with her average speed. She shut the motor down and smiled.
“I’ll take the lounge bar,” I said. “You speak to the kid in the motel office. Do the good cop thing. Tell him the bad cop is right behind you.”
We slid out into the cold and the dark. The fog was back. The streetlights burned through it. I stretched and yawned and then straightened my coat and watched Summer head past the Coke machine. Her skin flared red as she stepped through its glow. I crossed the road and headed for the bar.
The lot was as full as it had been the night before. Cars and trucks were parked all around the building. The ventilators were working hard again. I could see smoke and smell beer in the air. I could hear music thumping away. The neon was bright.
I pulled the door and stepped into the noise. The crowd was wall-to-wall again. The same spotlights were burning. There was a different girl naked on the stage. There was the same barrel-chested guy half in shadow behind the register. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew he was looking at my lapels. Where Kramer had worn Armored’s crossed cavalry sabers with a charging tank over them, I had the Military Police’s crossed flintlock pistols, gold and shiny. Not the most popular sight, in a place like that.
“Cover charge,” the guy at the register said.
It was hard to hear him. The music was very loud.
“How much?” I said.
“Hundred dollars,” he said.
“I don’t think so.”
“OK, two hundred dollars.”
“Hilarious,” I said.
“I don’t like cops in here.”
“Can’t think why,” I said.
“Look at me.”
I looked at him. There was nothing much to see. The edge of a downlighter beam lit up a big stomach and a big chest and thick, short, tattooed forearms. And hands the size and shape of frozen chickens with heavy silver rings on most of the fingers. But the guy’s shoulders and his face were in deep shadow above them. Like he was half-hidden by a curtain. I was talking to a guy I couldn’t see.
“You’re not welcome here,” he said.
“I’ll get over it. I’m not an unduly sensitive person.”
“You’re not listening,” he said. “This is my place and I don’t want you in it.”
“I’ll be quick.”
“Leave now.”
“No.”
“Look at me.”
He leaned forward into the light. Slowly. The downlighter beam rode up his chest. Up his neck. Onto his face. It was an incredible face. It had started out ugly and it had gotten much worse. He had straight razor scars all over it. They crisscrossed it like a lattice. They were deep and white and old. His nose had been busted and badly reset and busted again and badly reset again, many times over. He had brows thick with scar tissue. Two small eyes were staring out at me from under them. He was maybe forty. Maybe five-ten, maybe three hundred pounds. He looked like a gladiator who had survived twenty years, deep inside the catacombs.
I smiled. “This thing with the face is supposed to impress me? With the dramatic lighting and all?”
“It should tell you something.”
“It tells me you lost a lot of fights. You want to lose another, that’s fine with me.”
He said nothing.
“Or I could put this place off-limits to every enlisted man at Bird. I could see what that does to your bar profits.”
He said nothing.
“But I don’t want to do that,” I said. “No reason to penalize my guys, just because you’re an asshole.”
He said nothing.
“So I guess I’ll ignore you.”
He sat back. The shadow slid back into place, like a curtain.
“I’ll see you later,” he said, from out of the darkness. “Somewhere, sometime. That’s for sure. That’s a promise. You can count on that.”
“Now I’m scared,” I said. I moved on and pressed into the crowd. I made it through a packed bottleneck and into the main part of the building. It was much bigger inside than it had looked. It was a big low square, full of noise and people. There were dozens of separate areas. Speakers everywhere. Loud music. Flashing lights. There were plenty of civilians in there. Plenty of military too. I could spot them by their haircuts, and their clothes. Off-duty soldiers always dress distinctively. They try to look like everybody else, and they fail. They’re always a little clean and out-of-date. They were all looking at me as I passed them by. They weren’t pleased to see me. I looked for a sergeant. Looked for a few lines around the eyes. I saw four likely candidates, six feet back from the edge of the main stage. Three of them saw me and turned away. The fourth saw me and paused for a second and then turned toward me. Like he knew he had been selected. He was a compact guy maybe five years older than me. Special Forces, probably. There were plenty of them at Bird, and he had the look. He was having a good time. That was clear. He had a smile on his face and a bottle in his hand. Cold beer, dewy with moisture. He raised it, like a toast, like an invitation to approach. So I went up close to him and spoke in his ear.
“Spread the word for me,” I said. “This is nothing official. Nothing to do with our guys. Something else entirely.”
“Like what?” he said.
“Lost property,” I said. “Nothing important. Everything’s cool.”
He said nothing.
“Special Forces?” I said.
He nodded. “Lost property?”
“No big deal,” I said. “Just something that went missing across the street.”
He thought about it and then he raised his bottle again and clinked it against where mine would have been if I had bought one. It was a clear display of acceptance. Like a mime, in all the noise. But even so a thin stream of men started up, shuffling toward the exit. Maybe twenty grunts left during my first two minutes in the room. MPs have that effect. No wonder the guy with the face didn’t want me in there.
A waitress came up to me. She was wearing a black T-shirt cut off about four inches below the neck and black shorts cut off about four inches below the waist and black shoes with very high heels. Nothing else. She stood there and looked at me until I ordered something. I asked for a Bud, and I paid about eight times its value. Took a couple of sips, and then went looking for whores.
They found me first. I guess they wanted me out of sight before I emptied the place completely. Before I reduced their customer base to zero. Two of them came straight at me. One was a platinum blonde. The other was a brunette. Both were wearing tiny tight sheath dresses that sparkled with all kinds of synthetic fibers. The blonde got in front of the brunette and headed her off. Came clattering straight toward me, awkward in absurd clear plastic heels. The brunette wheeled away and headed for the Special Forces sergeant I had spoken to. He waved her off with what looked like an expression of genuine di
staste. The blonde kept on track and came right up next to me and leaned on my arm. Stretched up tall until I could feel her breath in my ear.
“Happy New Year,” she said.
“You too,” I said.
“I haven’t seen you in here before,” she said, like I was the only thing missing from her life. Her accent wasn’t local. She wasn’t from the Carolinas. She wasn’t from California either. Georgia or Alabama, probably.
“You new in town?” she asked, loud, because of the music.
I smiled. I had been in more whorehouses than I cared to count. All MPs have. Every single one is the same, and every single one is different. They all have different protocols. But the Are you new in town? question was a standard opening gambit. It invited me to start the negotiations. It insulated her from a solicitation charge.
“What’s the deal here?” I asked her.
She smiled shyly, like she had never been asked such a thing before. Then she told me I could watch her onstage in exchange for dollar tips, or I could spend ten to get a private show in a back room. She explained the private show could involve touching, and to make sure I was paying attention she ran her hand up the inside of my thigh.
I could see how a guy could be tempted. She was cute. She looked to be about twenty. Except for her eyes. Her eyes looked like a fifty-year-old’s.
“What about something more?” I said. “Someplace else we could go?”
“We can talk about that during the private show.”
She took me by the hand and led me past their dressing room door and through a velvet curtain into a dim room behind the stage. It wasn’t small. It was maybe thirty feet by twenty. It had an upholstered bench running around the whole perimeter. It wasn’t especially private either. There were about six guys in there, each of them with a naked woman on his lap. The blonde girl led me to a space on the bench and sat me down. She waited until I came out with my wallet and paid her ten bucks. Then she draped herself over me and snuggled in tight. The way she sat made it impossible for me not to put my hand on her thigh. Her skin was warm and smooth.
“So where can we go?” I asked.
“You’re in a hurry,” she said. She moved around and eased the hem of her dress up over her hips. She wasn’t wearing anything under it.
“Where are you from?” I asked her.
“Atlanta,” she said.
“What’s your name?”
“Sin,” she said. “Spelled S, i, n.”
I was fairly certain that was a professional alias.
“What’s yours?” she said.
“Reacher,” I said. There was no point adopting an alias of my own. I was fresh from the widow visit, still in Class As, with my nameplate big and obvious on my right jacket pocket.
“That’s a nice name,” she said, automatically. I was fairly certain she said it to everybody. Quasimodo, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, that’s a nice name. She moved her hand. Started with the top button of my jacket and undid it all the way down. Smoothed her fingers inside across my chest, under my tie, on top of my shirt.
“There’s a motel across the street,” I said.
She nodded against my shoulder.
“I know there is,” she said.
“I’m looking for whoever went over there last night with a soldier.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No.”
She pushed against my chest. “Are you here to have fun, or ask questions?”
“Questions,” I said.
She stopped moving. Said nothing.
“I’m looking for whoever went over to the motel last night with a soldier.”
“Get real,” she said. “We all go over to the motel with soldiers. There’s practically a groove worn in the pavement. Look carefully, and you can see it.”
“I’m looking for someone who came back a little sooner than normal, maybe.”
She said nothing.
“Maybe she was a little spooked.”
She said nothing.
“Maybe she met the guy there,” I said. “Maybe she got a call earlier in the day.”
She eased her butt up off my knee and pulled her dress down as far as it would go, which wasn’t very far. Then she traced her fingertips across my lapel badge.
“We don’t answer questions,” she said.
“Why not?”
I saw her glance at the velvet curtain. Like she was looking through it and all the way across the big square room to the register by the door.
“Him?” I said. “I’ll make sure he isn’t a problem.”
“He doesn’t like us to talk to cops.”
“It’s important,” I said. “The guy was an important soldier.”
“You all think you’re important.”
“Any of the girls here from California?”
“Five or six, maybe.”
“Any of them used to work Fort Irwin?”
“I don’t know.”
“So here’s the deal,” I said. “I’m going to the bar. I’m going to get another beer. I’m going to spend ten minutes drinking it. You bring me the girl who had the problem last night. Or you show me where I can find her. Tell her there’s no real problem. Tell her nobody will get in trouble. I think you’ll find she understands that.”
“Or?”
“Or I’ll roust everybody out of here and I’ll burn the place to the ground. Then you can all find jobs somewhere else.”
She glanced at the velvet curtain again.
“Don’t worry about the fat guy,” I said. “Any pissing and moaning out of him, I’ll bust his nose again.”
She just sat still. Didn’t move at all.
“It’s important,” I said again. “We fix this now, nobody gets in trouble. We don’t, then someone winds up with a big problem.”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Spread the word,” I said. “Ten minutes.”
I bumped her off my lap and watched her disappear through the curtain. Followed her a minute later and fought my way to the bar. I left my jacket hanging open. I thought it made me look off duty. I didn’t want to ruin everybody’s evening.
I spent twelve minutes drinking another overpriced domestic beer. I watched the waitresses and the hookers work the room. I saw the big guy with the face moving through the press of people, looking here, looking there, checking on things. I waited. My new blonde friend didn’t show. And I couldn’t see her anywhere. The place was very crowded. And it was dark. The music was thumping away. There were strobes and black lights and the whole scene was confusion. The ventilation fans were roaring but the air was hot and foul. I was tired and I was getting a headache. I slid off my stool and tried a circuit of the whole place. Couldn’t find the blonde anywhere. I went around again. Didn’t find her. The Special Forces sergeant I had spoken to before stopped me halfway through my third circuit.
“Looking for your girlfriend?” he said.
I nodded. He pointed at the dressing room door.
“I think you just caused her some trouble,” he said.
“What kind of trouble?”
He said nothing. Just held up his left palm and smacked his right fist into it.
“And you didn’t do anything?” I said.
He shrugged.
“You’re the cop,” he said. “Not me.”
The dressing room door was a plain plywood rectangle painted black. I didn’t knock. I figured the women who used the room weren’t shy. I just pulled it open and stepped inside. There were regular lightbulbs burning in there, and piles of clothes, and the stink of perfume. There were vanity tables with theater mirrors. There was an old sofa, red velvet. Sin was sitting on it, crying. She had a vivid red outline of a hand on her left cheek. Her right eye was swollen shut. I figured it for a double slap, first forehand, then backhand. Two heavy blows. She was pretty shaken. Her left shoe was off. I could see needle marks between her toes. Addicts in the skin trades often inject there. It rarely shows. Models, hookers, actresses.
>
I didn’t ask if she was OK. That would have been a stupid question. She was going to live, but she wasn’t going to work for a week. Not until the eye went black and then turned yellow enough to hide with makeup. I just stood there until she saw me, through the eye that was still open.
“Get out,” she said.
She looked away.
“Bastard,” she said.
“You find the girl yet?” I said.
She looked straight at me.
“There was no girl,” she said. “I asked all around. I asked everybody. And that’s what I heard back. Nobody had a problem last night. Nobody at all.”
I paused a beat. “Anyone not here who should be?”
“We’re all here. We’ve all got Christmas to pay for.”
I didn’t speak.
“You got me slapped for nothing,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry for your trouble.”
“Get out,” she said again, not looking at me.
“OK,” I said.
“Bastard,” she said.
I left her sitting there and forced my way back through the crowd around the stage. Through the crowd around the bar. Through the bottleneck entrance, to the doorway. The guy with the face was right there in the shadows again, behind the register. I guessed where his head was in the darkness and swung my open right hand and slapped him on the ear, hard enough to rock him sideways.
“You,” I said. “Outside.”
I didn’t wait for him. Just pushed my way out into the night. There was a bunched-up crowd of people in the lot. All military. The ones who had trickled out when I came in. They were standing around in the cold, leaning on cars, drinking beer from the long-neck bottles they had carried out with them. They weren’t going to be a problem. They would have to be very drunk indeed to mix it up with an MP. But they weren’t going to be any help either. I wasn’t one of them. I was on my own.
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