“Well,” said Melody, spreading his hands. “Here we are again, out in the frigging cold.”
Coop nodded in mute agreement.
The detective studied him for a second, then took a step closer. “Specialist Cooper, is there something you need to tell me?”
This was straight cop now. All the chumminess was gone. Coop had experience being handled like a suspect. As a teenager he’d been questioned by local law enforcement on numerous occasions, though rarely for the things he’d actually done. And while he didn’t know what Melody was after, Coop was suddenly sure he needed to be very careful with his words.
“Sorry,” said Coop. “Can’t think of anything.”
“You sure?”
Coop didn’t reply. Melody nodded to himself and drew back toward the Maserati, where Theo was waiting. The detective stopped as if he was going to say something, but instead just shook his head, got in, and slammed the door. Coop watched the car pull away, leaving him alone in the street.
He stood for a few minutes at the intersection, his head turning over on itself as he tried to make sense of things. Coop imagined Theo snatching the envelope from the dashboard before he hit the brights, stuffing it someplace out of view.
But he’d been too late. Coop had gotten close enough to read the writing on the manila sleeve, and now the thick black capitals floated in front of him:
FOR K. BELLANTE FAMILY ONLY
And written below that, with two underlines for emphasis, there had just been a single word:
INFORMATION
CHAPTER TWELVE
A sandstorm had hit FOB Snakebite only a day after Coop learned of Kay’s death. Cold wind rose up from the valley, and for several days the base had been enveloped, with no planes allowed to fly in or out. In the interim Coop had been moved into the otherwise empty transitional tent, usually occupied by journalists, contractors, and other short-termers.
No one from the unit had come to see him. It wasn’t just because of his lunatic walk toward the wire, how he’d forced Sergeant Anaya to choke him out. Instead, Coop got the sense that folks were disturbed by the inauspicious cruelty of his loss. In Afghanistan, no one could afford to be jinxed with that kind of luck.
But on the third day, Anaya showed. Coop had been perched on a berm made of sandbags, and the sergeant waddled up within a few meters before Coop became alert to his presence.
“Specialist,” said Anaya.
“What do you want?” said Coop.
“Excuse me?” said Anaya. “ ‘What do you want,’ he says, sitting here all ate the fuck up. Like maybe he wants to get choked out again.”
Coop looked into Anaya’s bulging eyes, then down at his own uniform. His bootlaces were untied and just one button was fixed on his BDU jacket. He scratched at his jaw, feeling three days of stubble. The sergeant was right. Coop had allowed himself to descend into true shitbaggery.
“I’m sorry, Sergeant.”
“Damn right,” said Anaya. Then the sergeant came forward and sat himself down on the sandbag pile next to Coop. Anaya offered Coop a stubby, hand-wrapped cigar, and they smoked together and watched the sun fall. The dust from the storm had finally dissipated into the atmosphere, and it was the first sunset they’d seen in days.
“So you’re going to New York,” said Anaya.
“Yeah.”
“Where she’s from,” said Anaya. “But you’re a country boy, right? From Canada or something?”
“Maine,” said Coop.
Anaya frowned, thinking about it. “You know,” he said, “back in Pueblo, my neighborhood? I got popped at more times than we ever did, over here. You believe that?”
“Sure.”
Until meeting Sergeant Anaya, Coop hadn’t realized there were gangs of any kind in Colorado.
“Listen,” said Anaya. “I’m going to tell you something, but keep it to yourself.”
“Okay.”
The sergeant fingered his cigar in the sunlight. “Thing I’m hearing…we’re one of the first engineer units headed to Iraq.”
Coop raised his eyebrows, genuinely surprised. “No shit,” he said.
“Could be early as April. Sandbox number two.” Anaya blew a thick cloud of smoke from his mouth. “I’m just saying, over there in New York, you watch your six. Don’t leave me stuck with Greely.”
Coop shook his head. He found himself smiling weakly.
“I mean, you ever see those pictures he took?” said Anaya. “The man’s sick.”
They sat a little longer while the cigars burned down.
“Seriously,” said Anaya. “Let me tell you something. As fucked up as things are over here, it’s no different back home. Maybe worse.”
Coop wasn’t smoking anymore, just holding the cigar as it burned down. He thought worse might be just what he needed.
* * *
—
After the funeral, Coop lay sprawled under the dim light of his hotel room. From a room nearby he could hear the sounds of a man and woman arguing. Their voices drifted around the room, piping up from the cast iron radiator near the bed.
“We told each other we’d never to do this,” said the man.
The woman responded with a sharp, indiscernible noise.
“Embarrassed you?” the man said, his voice growing louder. “I embarrassed you?”
While he listened to the voices Coop made halted trapping motions in the air, trying to remember the Combatives technique Anaya had taught him for taking away an opponent’s knife. Coop wore a white undershirt and the standard tan camouflage underwear they’d all been issued before deploying to Afghanistan. “How come they give us desert-camo drawers,” Greely had once philosophized, “but everything we wear on the outside is bright fucking jungle green?”
His dress uniform and boots were piled in the corner, the uniform soaked in sweat and snowmelt from his chase across the churchyard. Knife or not, Coop couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d made a mistake by letting the man with the manila envelope get away. Or better still, he could have ignored the runner and gone straight for the letter he was carrying. INFORMATION. The block print lettering was branded on his mind.
* * *
—
“I got no more patience,” said the woman from the other room. “And I definitely don’t have no fucking time.” Then came the man’s voice, angry and muffled.
Hey man, be nice to her, Coop thought. You never know what might happen.
It was supposed to be Coop’s last night in America. His plan tomorrow was to check out of the hotel, go back to LaGuardia, and tell the officials he’d misplaced his orders, just like Moko had instructed. If all went well he’d be back in Karshi-Khanabad the same night, then on to Afghanistan, where he could rejoin Anaya and the rest of his unit.
Coop saw himself flying back to the desert, the scene similar to when he’d first landed in Afghanistan. He remembered watching the mouth of the C-17 fall open, the murmurs and shifting of gear from the troops packed in around him, everyone hungry to see this country they were invading. The plane had landed at night, and his first glimpse of Afghanistan was a constellation of red tactical lights, the tarmac of Kandahar airport, and beyond, a barely visible landscape of gravel and low tents.
Now Coop imagined himself on the same plane, except this time he’s alone. The ramp drops open. No tarmac on the other side, just a black stretch of starless night. The empty dark and sense of a steep drop makes it feel like he’s on a night jump, only there’s no roar of wind, no static line gripped in his hand, no parachute weighing him down. Coop sees himself standing at the ramp’s edge, staring off into the great abyss beyond the plane.
“Baby, I wasn’t trying to fuck with you,” said the woman next door. Their tone had changed, the woman talking in a low, throaty cooing. A minute later, from the man: “You just make me crazy, i
s all.”
Then the squeak of bedsprings. Laughter. “Oh yeah?” he heard the woman say, teasingly.
* * *
—
Coop rolled over in bed and grabbed the television remote. He flipped through weather, commercials, a cop show, cartoons. Cop show. Cop show. Baseball. Several more cop shows. And then here was Colin Powell. The general was seated in a crowded hall, speaking into a microphone. In front of him was a placard that said UNITED STATES. Coop liked Powell. On television he always came off soft-mannered and thoughtful, without the usual buzz-cut evangelism you saw with other senior officers. He turned up the volume to listen.
“This council placed the burden on Iraq to comply and disarm, and not on the inspectors to find that which Iraq has gone out of its way to conceal…”
Powell wore a navy suit with a tiny American flag pin on his lapel. Behind him sat more men in suits, each of them wearing a chunky white receiver over one ear. Captions scrolling below the footage told Coop this was a repeat video from a United Nations speech Powell had given earlier that day.
“Inspectors are inspectors,” said Powell. “They are not detectives.”
The video jumped forward to the next sound bite.
“I cannot tell you everything that we know. But what I can share with you, when combined with what all of us have learned over the years, is deeply troubling.”
Under Powell’s voice Coop heard a series of low groans coming from the next room. He heard the breathing, a squeaking voice—like someone talking through a valve that kept opening and shutting.
“What you will see is an accumulation of facts…”
“Yes, yes…oh fuck yes…”
“…and disturbing patterns of behavior.”
Coop put down the remote. For the first time in days he felt the movement of blood through his body. He remembered another hotel room and saw Kay, naked and wet in the shower, paint-chipped nails clawing the wet marble. She had just dyed her hair black, and the product ran in dark streaks down her back, seeping toward him. She turned her head sideways at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, her face screwed up like she was begging, or just about to accuse him of something.
Coop felt the sudden urge to grab himself through his desert camo underwear. He wanted something, wanted her, with many months’ force of stored-up sexlessness.
“Oh yeah, girl,” Coop heard the man in the other room say. “Like that like that like that.” The bed squeaking faster.
Coop tried grabbing her hair to pull her closer, but all he got was a handful of black foam, and they both laughed so hard Coop slipped and almost fell in the big shower. The next morning they had to sneak out of the hotel because all the towels and sheets were stained. Later that afternoon, on a woozy drive back to Bragg, Kay suddenly got quiet and sick, remembering she’d put the hotel room on her mother’s card.
Now Coop was thinking about the chase across the churchyard, the snow dripping off his parade boots. The man jumping the fence, the envelope left on the steps. The bright curl of the knife he’d waved in Coop’s face.
From somewhere came a high-pitched yell and Coop hit the mute button. For a moment all he heard was his own labored breath. Then came another scream, the girl in the nearby room, a crying out for the entire hotel to hear, until suddenly the sound was smothered, like a hand had gone over her mouth. Maybe her face pushed into the pillow.
Coop listened, aware of the humming silence.
He wondered about using his phone to call the front desk, report a disturbance.
Then he heard the man and woman moaning together, and the bed started squeaking again.
He let out a long breath, turned the TV back on. Powell was still talking.
“Our sources tell us that, in some cases, the hard drives of computers at Iraqi weapons facilities were replaced. Who took the hard drives? Where did they go? What’s being hidden? Why?”
Coop studied his fist, the glow from the television reflecting off his wedding band. Flashing into his mind came the bright headlights of Theo’s Maserati, the envelope Coop had seen on the dashboard. Something was being hidden from him. But why?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Hello,” said an unfamiliar voice. “Military Rights Center, this is Craig.”
“Oh,” said Coop, momentarily thrown off. “Is Jackie there?”
“I’d be happy to assist you, sir. Just need a few secs to look you up in the system. What’s the name?”
“Jackie told me I didn’t have to give a name.”
“That’s correct. Can I just get your case designator code?”
“Listen,” said Coop, “can I just talk to Jackie?” He lay on the hotel bed, looking up at the cold green shadows thrown on the ceiling by the muted TV.
“I’m going to need that code, sir,” said Craig.
“I don’t have a fucking code.”
“Hey Craig?” said a new voice, breaking in on the line. “This is Jackie. I’ll take it.”
“You sure? I can—”
“Take another call, Craig,” said Jackie. “It’s fine. Yes…yeah, you too.”
The line clicked. Coop found himself grinning.
“Is that Mr. AWOL?” said Jackie. Her voice was louder, warmer, less diluted now that Craig was gone.
“I don’t like that other guy,” said Coop. “And what’s this about a code?”
“We’re supposed to give anonymous clients a reference phrase, something easy to remember. You hung up before I could give you one.”
“Do I get to pick it?”
“You sure don’t,” said Jackie. “Believe it or not, we have state-of-the-art software for that purpose. It’s like a random word generator, apparently the same thing you guys use for naming military operations. So don’t be surprised if you get ‘Thundering Eagle’ or whatever.”
“That would be a major improvement over ‘Mr. AWOL.’ ”
“Okay, hang on a sec…”
Coop heard Jackie typing.
“Wow,” she said, after a minute. “Oh man.”
“What?”
Coop heard Jackie stifling a laugh, then she cleared her throat, assuming a more formal tone.
“Sir, are you absolutely certain you wish to remain anonymous for the purpose of these discussions?”
“Yes,” said Coop. “Definitely.”
“Okay. Your designator for all future contact is the following—do you have a pen?”
“Sure.”
“Fancy Dancer.”
“Say again?” said Coop.
“Your code name is Fancy Dancer.”
“Do you have a problem with me or something?”
“You know, I have some other clients waiting, so if you called for advice…”
“All right, so it looks like I might be gone longer than I thought,” said Coop. “There are some things I need to do, to figure out…”
Coop trailed off.
“Still there?” said Jackie.
Coop took a deep breath. “If I’m gone longer than the seventy-two hours, I just want to know what I’m facing, punishment-wise.”
“Well,” said Jackie, “like I told you, a lot of depends on the disposition of your commander. Assuming they only charge you with AWOL.”
“Wait, what else could I get?”
“Desertion.”
“What?” said Coop. He sat himself up on the edge of the bed, feet slapping against the floor.
“You hung up before I could explain. Under the UCMJ there’s a difference between administrative classifications and disciplinary action. It all comes down to intent.”
“But I was supposed to get leave,” said Coop, hearing the plaintive pitch in his voice.
“Regardless, the key thing they’d consider is whether you intended to return yourself to military contr
ol.”
“How do I prove that?”
“Honestly?” said Jackie. “Don’t get caught before you have a chance to turn yourself in.”
Coop kneaded his scalp, feeling the bristle of new hair. “What if I do get caught?” he said. “What can they do to me?”
“If they charge you with desertion? From a combat theater?”
“Fuck, Jackie,” said Coop. He stood up and began pacing the room. “Fuck.”
“Don’t overreact.”
“It’s the death penalty, isn’t it?”
“Well, technically. But look, nobody’s actually been executed for desertion in quite some time…”
“I’m hanging up on you again,” said Coop.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Detective Melody had said Kay was working at a place called Next Start, and sure enough, Coop found a listing for the clinic in the hotel phone book. The next morning he left the hotel and walked to the nearest subway stop. In the underground tunnels Coop pushed his way through a surge of morning commuters, violin music floating over the clamor.
Emerging from the station in the Bronx, he found himself in a neighborhood abandoned to the grip of winter. City buses rumbled down unplowed streets. Snow blew freely through the shattered windows of vacant storefronts, many still decorated with old signage: discount liquor, old time candy, we buy gold, real human hair. Coop headed up Valentine Avenue, following his foldout pocket map of the city. It was only after several minutes of walking that he began to notice the black crosses. There were dozens of them, a cross stuck to every light pole that lined the wide avenue, each made from two slats of cheap wood, with the words “Drugs Crucify” painted along the horizontal slat.
His pace quickened, and at every corner he had the instinct to stop and crouch, his eyes jerking up toward the rising buildings, tracking the rooftops for movement.
Next Start was housed inside a shabby two-story building next to a gated parking lot. The sidewalk in front of the clinic had been hastily shoveled, and chunks of rock salt lay scattered like debris around the entrance. As Coop arrived at the clinic, a man came shuffling out with a steaming cup of coffee. His cheeks bulged, like he was holding his breath. The man poured his coffee into the snow, shaking out the drops, and then leaned over to regurgitate a mouthful of foam into the empty cup. Then he looked up, caught Coop staring.
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