“Yes, sir.”
“Close the door.”
I closed the door. The office was identical to the Colonel’s, but without the welcoming pictures. Mr. Kelly was smiling. But it wasn’t the kind of smile that made you sleep easily.
“Are you a morning person, Harper?”
“Me, sir? Not as a rule, sir.”
“You play the piano,” he said. “That keeps you out pretty late, I’ll bet.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I go to bed at ten,” he said. “Because I love the mornings. I get up early, put in a little PT, get a good breakfast and a bowel movement. It makes me a happy man.” Kelly stood up and came around the desk where his threat filled the room like a steam heater. “This morning upset my schedule,” he said.
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“I missed my bowel movement.”
“I’m very sorry, sir.”
“Did you have a pleasant evening, Mr. Harper?”
“No, sir. Not really, sir.”
“Approximately sixteen hours in-country and you’ve already talked to more police than I’ve seen in thirty years. Must be some kind of record.”
“Yes, sir.”
“This reflects poorly on your employer.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Can I expect this kind of behavior to continue? I expected a disciplined soldier who knew how to play the piano but instead I get a musician who once wore a uniform.”
“I can explain.”
“So, tell me, is this how musicians live? I’d like to know so that perhaps I can adjust everyone else’s schedule to fit yours, so as not to disturb you. Is that what you think I should do, Mr. Harper?” On the word “do” he leaned into me, his pecs nearly jumping out of his jersey and shoving me into the wall.
“I’m sorry if I caused any trouble, Mr. Kelly. It was unintentional.”
“Oh, no trouble, Mr. Harper. Only one of my men is dead and another is in jail. Not bad for sixteen hours.”
“I wish there was something I could do.”
Kelly took a slight step back and perched on the edge of the desk, giving me a little space for oxygen.
“There is one thing, Harper. Right now the Colonel needs six men for a job and I find myself mysteriously short of manpower. Golly, I wonder how that happened?” Kelly’s eyes bored into me as if he were X-raying my soul and finding a gross malignancy. “Now, I know your contract calls for you to play the piano, but you also have some military experience.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, “I do.”
He let me stand in front of his desk for a long moment before saying, “Harper, about your military record.”
“Yes, sir?”
“You seem to have been assigned to highly regarded combat units, and yet there are no records of you doing anything other than music, is that accurate?”
“The army rarely makes mistakes in that regard, sir.”
“It must be quite difficult to kill terrorists with a piano.”
“Not if you drop it from a great height, sir.”
He smiled. “Ah, a sense of humor. Mr. Harper, one thing you need to know is that a sense of humor isn’t authorized equipment in this unit.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I am allowed to make jokes, Harper. You may be the musician, but I am the company’s resident comedian.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I will make jokes on a regular basis, usually at your expense. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
Kelly walked back around the desk and sat down in the swivel chair. He leaned on his elbows and twisted the paper clip into a tight knot. “Harper. You had a top secret clearance. Now I’m curious, why would a piano player need a top secret clearance?”
“I explained this to the Colonel, sir.”
“And now you can explain it to me.”
“Yes, sir. I worked at all sorts of functions, sir. Embassies, state receptions, diplomatic luncheons, that sort of thing.”
“Ah, yes, that would indeed explain it. But”—he held up a finger thick as a stump—“here’s the most perplexing question, the one conundrum that’s kept me awake ever since I saw your record cross my desk.” He paused, staring into my eyes, hoping to catch the truth as it flickered past. “Given what a fine life you had in Washington, why would you choose to come here?”
“I ran into an unfortunate situation, sir. I needed to leave the city and you needed someone familiar with firearms and Gershwin. We both win.”
Kelly stood up, walked to the window, and looked out on the ocean. His back to me, he said, “If it was up to me, you’d be on the first plane home.”
“The Colonel said you’d say that.”
Kelly turned his head just enough to look at me over his shoulder. “Did he? Did he also tell you he was the boss?”
“Yes, sir, he did.”
Kelly turned back to the window and chuckled. “We let him think that. We even occasionally give in to his whims, like his insistence that we have a piano player on staff.” Kelly turned around, his hands behind his back, his starched shirt pulled tight across mammoth pecs. “I let the Colonel have his piano player because musicians are, as a rule, harmless.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And if they prove otherwise, I find delight in breaking them.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Because music is a waste of human potential,” he said. “In fact, when I think of musicians I think of dancing monkeys, prancing around in little costumes, begging for fruit. Is that a fair assessment of your life’s ambition, Harper?”
“I would be a fool to disagree, Mr. Kelly.”
He laughed again, this time in appreciation. “Indeed. But you will find that I’m a remarkably tolerant man. What kind of music do you play?”
“Popular American music.”
“Not rock and roll.”
“No, sir, not rock and roll. I like the rhythms but it’s not melodically interesting.”
“Shut up.”
“Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard were intriguing—”
“Would you please shut up?”
“And bop had both, rhythm and melody—”
“Shut up!”
“Yes, sir.”
“So what is this popular music?”
I could have given him the entire history of Tin Pan Alley, the music that formed the foundation of popular American song, but instead I abbreviated it to: “Ellington, Gershwin, Cole Porter.” I wanted to add, “a Negro, a Jew, and a homosexual,” just to see how he’d take it, but I didn’t. Some things are best left a mystery.
“Jazz,” he said, and it had all the appeal of something sticky you accidentally touched in a men’s room. “Can you play sacred music?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good, because we need a musician in the chapel.” Kelly paced in front of the window. “I wonder,” he said, “you not only have the piano-playing abilities the Colonel wants, but you also come to us with solid attaboys from real soldiers. Tell me, how skilled are you with firearms?”
“I prefer Steinway, sir.”
“That’s unfortunate. Let me see your hands.”
I held them out, palms down. Kelly gripped them. He turned them over, examining my palms closely, looking for my future, no doubt. He rubbed his thumbs over my skin and declared, “Too soft. In fact, I think you’re soft all over.” He put one hand on my chest and shoved with as little effort as I would use to open a door. I flew backward, hit the far wall and fell to the floor, sitting upright, my legs straight out in front of me.
Kelly moved back behind his desk and sat down.
I stood, rubbing my chest. I felt like I’d been struck by a small planet.
“Now, you’re here for a very brief time, and if you behave yourself, do what you’re told, go only where you are authorized, then perhaps you can return to your soft little life in Washington, without having your hands broken.”
“I’d like that, sir.”
&nbs
p; “In your time here, I would suggest that you not try to fuck me.” He smiled that discomforting smile. “You won’t try to fuck me, will you, Mr. Harper?”
“Never, sir, no, not ever, not a thought. No fucking in my future, sir, trust me.”
“Outstanding. And if you ever bring legal scrutiny to this hotel again, I will pin your testicles to my office door. Do we understand one another?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now get cleaned up. The stink of that whore’s perfume is polluting my military air.”
I turned toward the door, thankful to get out while I was still alive. My chest throbbed where the man had so casually shoved me.
Ramirez and Cooper were waiting for me in the lobby. They were dressed to run in sweats, even though the morning temperature was in the low eighties with determination to climb even higher. Ramirez was hungover. He perched on the edge of a sofa, his head in his hands. But Cooper looked as though he could run to Canada and back before lunch. He bounced from foot to foot, shaking his hands, eager to go.
“Get your shit, Harper,” he said. “We’re going to run your ass off.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Let’s go, let’s go.” Cooper clapped his hands.
Ramirez looked up at Cooper with bloodshot eyes and said, “If you don’t stop that, I might have to kill you.”
“You have to catch me first,” Cooper said, and bounced on the balls of his feet.
“I’ll be right back,” I said.
“Take your time,” Ramirez mumbled. “I might be dead by the time you get back.”
I took the steps two at a time, which was about the limit to my running. The truth was, I hated running. I could swim every day, and I worked out with weights, and even did a little kickboxing with a few of the Washington wives, but jogging was as enjoyable as being run over by a bus full of Promise Keepers. I didn’t like it.
Sometime in the night, the airlines had delivered my lost bag and there it was, on my bed, its airline tag still attached to the handle. I opened the bag and found the contents all there, but they had been searched. By whom I didn’t know, but under the tumble of clothing, among the books and the CDs I’d packed, I found a CD that didn’t belong to me. It was a recording of Willie “The Lion” Smith, one of the finest stride players ever. I opened it, put the disk into my player, and put on my headphones. The first cut was “Finger Buster,” an aptly named piece. I forwarded to the second cut and heard the hiss of a tape player instead of the muffled pop of a remastered seventy-eight. A man said, “So, which one you think?”
A second man replied, “I am very curious about this one.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“There is some indication of special operations training.”
“Yet no certifications.”
“And no combat assignments.”
“That’s the way they’d do it, wouldn’t they?” This first man had a New England accent and I recognized my new boss, the Colonel. “Wouldn’t they want us to overlook him?”
“How was he recruited?”
“We needed a musician for the party, someone who could also double as security.”
“Did he come with references?”
“Yes, a man in the company vouched for his capability and we have letters from several others.”
The second man, the younger man, had foreign music in his voice and he lacked the easy familiarity with contractions. “Well, if he is our spy, he will be easy to eliminate…” The foreign man let the idea float out there by itself.
“What about this one? The Mexican?”
“He, I think, is very dangerous.”
“And Cooper?”
“He is good, but naïve, is what my sources tell me.” The younger man laughed and said, “They referred to him as a Boy Scout.”
Somewhere, a salsa band started up, forcing the younger man to speak louder. “What about the clerk? What do we do with the clerk?”
“Right. Yes. Vasquez.”
“You no longer trust him?”
“Kelly worries about his loyalty.”
“But didn’t Vasquez recommend the piano player?”
“Yay-uh,” the Colonel said. “He did. That’s something to watch.”
“So you green-light the clerk?”
“Yes, but after Vasquez, no more until the New Year. It was Winstead’s death, remember, that we drew this attention.”
“That was sloppy, I admit.”
“And the other boy with the shark. I don’t think anyone believed it was an accident.”
“We intended only to drown him, not feed the fish.”
“That is a comfort to his family, I’m sure.”
“The next will be better, I promise, cleaner,” the younger man said. “We will give you, how do the politicians describe it, ‘plausible deniability.’”
“The memory of those boys,” the Colonel said, his voice barely audible above the band’s horn section, “keeps me awake at night.”
“It is the overenthusiasm of the men,” the younger man said. “You train them to be ruthless too well.”
“I see those boys everywhere,” the Colonel said, “even in my dreams. That is, when I can sleep.”
“Have your new pet, this piano player, play you a lullaby, Señor Pepe. While you sleep, my men will locate and dispose of this spy.”
“And if it’s the piano player?”
“His music will not protect him, señor.”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s just here to play the piano,” the Colonel said sadly.
“Maybe,” the younger man said. “In the meantime, give him to Kelly.”
The Colonel laughed.
“You see a joke in this?”
“Give him to Kelly. I just remembered the first time I saw a cow fall into a river of piranha.”
The younger man snorted in agreement. They both thought it was funnier than I did.
“But maybe there is no spy,” the Colonel said.
“There is a spy. My contacts are never wrong.”
“Then why can’t they tell us who it is?” The Colonel was frustrated.
“Because this is being played outside of normal channels.”
“Goddamn it to hell!” This shout was accompanied by a loud bang, and I pictured the Colonel’s fist smacking the table. The Colonel’s voice dropped to a whisper. “In the old days we didn’t have Americans spying on our operations, not unless it was Hoover, the blackmailing son of a bitch, and his butt boy, Tolson. But today, it’s not enough we keep the reporters with their goddamn safari suits and lip gloss contained. Now we have agencies cobbled together by Congress, DOD, Justice, hell, anytime you get three people together for lunch in that town, one of them’s goddamn intel.”
The Colonel stopped and I wondered why. He had been on such a rant I wondered if maybe he’d popped an artery. Then I heard the waitress ask if they wanted another round and the foreign man said yes.
When she left the foreign man said, “That is one fine beauty there. It is a waste that she is not waiting for me in my bed.”
“Can we get back to business?”
“It must be awful to be old,” the young man said. His voice was so clear that I knew the microphone must have been planted very close. That meant someone had been watching them, and noticing their habits. This wasn’t a chance pickup or surveillance with a shotgun mic.
“Remember, Colonel, your plan depends on everything going smoothly at the New Year’s Eve party.” The younger man stressed “your plan.” “We’ve laid out all of the clues, everything that would lead them to all the right conclusions. That is the genius of this operation. That is your genius, sir.”
“It wasn’t my plan alone,” the older man said.
“Oh, sir, please. Do not be the modest person.” The second man said something else, something neither the microphone nor the Colonel picked up.
“What did you say?”
“I said that we need more money.”
�
��It was just a matter of time. Like Laos.”
“Like Laos,” agreed the younger man. “So our clients will move more product, we get more money, it is an easy thing, right?”
“I don’t want to know about it,” the Colonel said. “It all seems so sordid, somehow. But if you think it’s right, just do it.”
“Before New Year’s.”
“Yes, before New Year’s.”
The recording ended and I sat for a moment on the edge of my single bed, suddenly cold. The recording had come from Smith, I knew, but how and when did he get this? And who recorded it? And the bigger question was, How long would it be before the Colonel and this younger man had me fingered? And what about Ramirez? So far he hadn’t impressed me with his dedication to covering anything but his bar tab.
A knock interrupted my wallow and Cooper stuck his head in the door. “Come on, man, we have to go.” He looked at my shorts and said, “Christ, Harper, you think you’re running through the damn country club? Put on some long pants or these jungle bugs will eat you alive.”
A few minutes later I stood in the driveway, as ready for the run as I’d ever be. Cooper stretched and Ramirez smoked. Ramirez dropped his cigarette, stepped on it, and without a word started a quick but lumbering jog toward the treeline, hunched over like the Bambino running bases. Cooper followed, and I followed Cooper.
Cooper ran easily, all long-legged strides that were graceful and easy, as if he could do this all day. Where Cooper was a loping giraffe, Ramirez was a rhinoceros, crashing through the brush.
I ran more like a three-legged dog. I could get where I wanted to go, but it wasn’t fast and it wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t anything you wanted to watch for too long except out of a twisted sense of wonder. At first it wasn’t too bad. The running trail was clear, and beautiful. Flowers added their fragrance to the path. Monkeys chattered in the trees. Birds offered their song. It was an easy jog through paradise.
An hour later my legs ached, my throat was raw with inhaled pollen, I had a pain between my ribs like molten steel, and the goddamn birds wouldn’t stop shrieking. “Christ … Jesus,” I wheezed. “Can’t … we … stop?”
“The enemy eats those who stop,” Ramirez said.
“What enemy?”
“He’ll show,” he said, “and you better be ready.” He and Cooper picked up the pace and I limped after them. After a few miles I’d exhausted my vocabulary of obscenities and was forced to start all over with variations on the “ass” theme. About the time I’d hit the Ps, I found them stopped in a small clearing. Both men were sweating, I was happy to see, but neither had succumbed to a coronary.
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