Persuader

said nothing. I was getting a sore neck from looking up into his eyes. My vertebrae are much more accustomed to looking downward at people.
    "OK?" I said again.
    "Or?"
    "Or you and I will have to go around and around."
    "I'd like that." I shook my head.
    "You wouldn't like it," I said. "Not one little bit. I'd take you apart, piece by piece."
    "You think?"
    "You ever hit an MP?" I asked. "Back in the service?" He didn't answer. Just looked away and stayed quiet. He was probably remembering his arrest. He probably resisted a little, and needed to be subdued. So consequently he probably tripped down some stairs somewhere and suffered a fair amount of damage.
    Somewhere between the scene of the crime and the holding cell, probably. Purely by accident. That kind of thing happens, in certain circumstances. But then, the arresting officer probably sent six guys to pick him up. I would have sent eight.
    "And then I'd fire you," I said.
    His eyes came back, slow and lazy.
    "You can't fire me," he said. "I don't work for you. Or Beck."
    "So who do you work for?"
    "Somebody."
    "This somebody got a name?" He shook his head.
    "No dice," he said.
    I kept my hands in my pockets and eased my way around the machine gun. Headed for the door.
    "We straight now?" I said.
    He looked at me. Said nothing. But he was calm. His morning dosages must have been well balanced.
    "Mrs. Beck is off-limits, right?" I said.
    "While you're here," he said. "You won't be here forever." I hope not, I thought. His telephone rang. The outside line, I guessed. I doubted if Elizabeth or Richard would be calling him from the house. The ring was loud in the silence. He picked it up and said his name. Then he just listened. I heard a trace of a voice in the earpiece, distant and indistinct with plastic peaks and resonances that obscured what was being said. The voice spoke for less than a minute. Then the call was over. He put the phone down and moved his hand quite delicately and used the flat of his palm to set the machine gun swinging gently on its chain. I realized it was a conscious imitation of the thing I had done with the heavy bag down in the gym on our first morning together. He grinned at me.
    "I'm watching you," he said. "I'll always be watching you." I ignored him and opened the door and stepped outside. The rain hit me like a fire hose. I leaned forward and walked straight into it. Held my breath and had a very bad feeling in the small of my back until I was all the way through the forty-yard arc the back window could cover. Then I breathed out.
    Not Beck, not Elizabeth, not Richard. Not Paulie.
    No dice.
    Dominique Kohl said no DICE to me the night we had our beer. Something unexpected had come up and I had to rain-check the first evening and then she rain-checked my makeup date, so it was about a week before we got together. Maybe eight days. Sergeants drinking with captains was difficult on-post back then because the clubs were rigorously separate, so we went out to a bar in town. It was the usual kind of place, long and low, eight pool tables, plenty of people, plenty of neon, plenty of jukebox noise, plenty of smoke. It was still very hot. The air conditioners were running flat out and getting nowhere. I was wearing fatigue pants and an old T-shirt, because I didn't own any personal clothes. Kohl arrived wearing a dress. It was a simple A-line, no sleeves, knee- length, black, with little white dots on it. Very small dots. Not like big polka dots or anything. A very subtle pattern.
    "How's Frasconi working out?" I asked her.
    "Tony?" she said. "He's a nice guy." She didn't say anything more about him. We ordered Rolling Rocks, which suited me because it was my favorite drink that summer. She had to lean very close to talk, because of the noise. I enjoyed the proximity. But I wasn't fooling myself. It was the decibel level making her do it, nothing else. And I wasn't going to try anything with her. No formal reason not to. There were rules back then, I guess, but there were no regulations yet. The notion of sexual harassment was slow coming to the army. But I was already aware of the potential unfairness. Not that there was any way I could help or hurt her career. Her jacket made it plain she was going to make master sergeant and then first sergeant like night follows day. It was only a matter of time. Then came the leap up to E-9 status, sergeant major. That was hers for the taking, too. After that, she would have a problem.
    After sergeant