Gone Tomorrow

feel like killing herself.”
    “Peter’s OK. Don’t worry about it. He’ll be home soon, weak at the knees but happy.”
    I said nothing more. The waitress came by with the food. It looked pretty good, and there was a lot of it. Jake asked, “Did the private guys find you?”
    I nodded and told him the story between forkfuls of tuna.
    He said, “They knew your name? That’s not good.”
    “Not ideal, no. And they knew I talked to Susan on the train.”
    “How?”
    “They’re ex–cops. They’ve still got friends on the job. No other explanation.”
    “Lee and Docherty?”
    “Maybe. Or maybe some day guy who came in and read the file.”
    “And they took your picture? That’s not good, either.”
    “Not ideal,” I said again.
    “Any sign of this other crew they were talking about?” he asked.
    I checked the window and said, “So far, nothing.”
    “What else?”
    “John Sansom isn’t exaggerating about his career. He seems to have done nothing very special. And that kind of a claim isn’t really worth refuting.”
    “Dead end, then.”
    “Maybe not,” I said. “He was a major. That’s one automatic promotion plus two on merit. He must have done something they liked. I was a major too. I know how it works.”
    “What did you do that they liked?”
    “Something they regretted later, probably.”
    “Length of service,” Jake said. “You stick around, you get promoted.”
    I shook my head. “That’s not how it works. Plus this guy won three of the top four medals available to him, one of them twice. So he must have done something special. Four somethings, in fact.”
    “Everybody gets medals.”
    “Not those medals. I got a Silver Star myself, which is pocket change to this guy, and I know for a fact they don’t fall out of the box with the breakfast cereal. And I got a Purple Heart too, which Sansom apparently didn’t. He doesn’t mention one in his book. And no politician would forget about a wound in action. Not in a million years. But it’s relatively unusual to win a gallantry medal without a wound. Normally the two things go hand in hand.”
    “So maybe he’s bullshitting about the medals.”
    I shook my head again. “Can’t be done. Maybe with a combat pip on a Vietnam ribbon, something like that, but these are heavy-duty awards. This guy’s got everything except the Medal of Honor.”
    “So?”
    “So I think he is bullshitting about his career, but in reverse. He’s leaving stuff out, not putting stuff in.”
    “Why would he?”
    “Because he was on at least four secret missions, and he still can’t talk about them. Which makes them very secret indeed, because the guy is in the middle of an election campaign, and the urge to talk must be huge.”
    “What kind of secret missions?”
    “Could be anything. Black ops, covert actions, against anybody.”
    “So maybe Susan was asked for details.”
    “Impossible,” I said. “Delta’s orders and operational logs and after-action reports aren’t anywhere near HRC. They’re either destroyed or locked up for sixty years at Fort Bragg. No disrespect, but your sister couldn’t have gotten within a million miles of them.”
    “So how does this help us?”
    “It eliminates Sansom’s combat career, that’s how. If Sansom is involved at all, it’s in some other capacity.”
    “Is he involved?”
    “Why else would his name have been mentioned?”
    “What capacity?”
    I put my fork down and drained my cup and said, “I don’t want to stay in here. It’s ground zero for this other crew. It’s the first place they’ll check.”
    I left a tip on the table and headed for the register. This time the waitress was pleased. We were in and out in record time.
    Manhattan is both the best and the worst place in the world to be hunted. The best, because it is teeming with people, and every square yard of it has literally hundreds of witnesses all around. The worst, because it is teeming with people, and you have to check each and every one of them, just in case, which is tiring, and frustrating, and fatiguing, and which eventually drives you crazy, or makes you lazy. So for the sake of convenience we went back to West 35th and walked the shady side of the street, up and down opposite the row of parked cop cars, which seemed like the safest stretch of sidewalk in the city.
    “What capacity?” Jake asked again.
    “What did you tell me were the reasons behind the suicides you saw in Jersey?”
    “Financial or