The Enemy

Kramer, Vassell, and Coomer. The corporate face of Armor.”
    He stood up and stretched.
    “Start at midnight,” I said to him. “Tell me everything you did.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I don’t like coincidences. And neither do you.”
    “I didn’t do anything.”
    “Everybody did something,” I said. “Except Kramer.”
    Garber looked straight at me.
    “I watched the ball drop,” he said. “Then I had another drink. I kissed my daughter. I kissed a whole bunch of people, as I recall. Then I sang ‘Auld Lang Syne.’”
    “And then?”
    “My office got me on the phone. Told me they’d found out by circuitous means that we had a dead two-star down in North Carolina. Told me the Fort Bird MP duty officer had palmed it off. So I called there, and I got you.”
    “And then?”
    “You set out to do your thing and I called the town cops and got Kramer’s name. Looked him up and found he was a XII Corps guy. So I called Germany and reported the death, but I kept the details to myself. I told you this already.”
    “And then?”
    “Then nothing. I waited for your report.”
    “OK,” I said.
    “OK what?”
    “OK, sir?”
    “Bullshit,” he said. “What are you thinking?”
    “The briefcase,” I said. “I still want to find it.”
    “So keep looking for it,” he said. “Until I find Vassell and Coomer. They can tell us whether there was anything in it worth worrying about.”
    “You can’t find them?”
    He shook his head.
    “No,” he said. “They checked out of their hotel, but they didn’t fly to California. Nobody seems to know where the hell they are.”

    Garber left to drive himself back to town and Summer and I climbed into the car and headed south again. It was cold, and it was getting dark. I offered to take the wheel, but Summer wouldn’t let me. Driving seemed to be her main hobby.
    “Colonel Garber seemed tense,” she said. She sounded disappointed, like an actress who had failed an audition.
    “He was feeling guilty,” I said.
    “Why?”
    “Because he killed Mrs. Kramer.”
    She just stared at me. She was doing about ninety, looking at me, sideways.
    “In a manner of speaking,” I said.
    “How?”
    “This was no coincidence.”
    “That’s not what the doctor told us.”
    “Kramer died of natural causes. That’s what the doctor told us. But something about that event led directly to Mrs. Kramer becoming a homicide victim. And Garber set all that in motion. By notifying XII Corps. He put the word out, and within about two hours the widow was dead too.”
    “So what’s going on?”
    “I have absolutely no idea,” I said.
    “And what about Vassell and Coomer?” she said. “They were a threesome. Kramer’s dead, his wife is dead, and the other two are missing.”
    “You heard the man. It’s out of our hands.”
    “You’re not going to do anything?”
    “I’m going to look for a hooker.”

    We set off on the most direct route we could find, straight back to the motel and the lounge bar. There was no real choice. First the Beltway, and then I-95. Traffic was light. It was still New Year’s Day. The world outside our windows looked dark and quiet, cold and sleepy. Lights were coming on everywhere. Summer drove as fast as she dared, which was plenty fast. What might have taken Kramer six hours was going to take us less than five. We stopped for gas early, and we bought stale sandwiches that had been made in the previous calendar year. We forced them down as we hustled south. Then I spent twenty minutes watching Summer. She had small neat hands. She had them resting lightly on the wheel. She didn’t blink much. Her lips were slightly parted and every minute or so she would run her tongue across her teeth.
    “Talk to me,” I said.
    “About what?”
    “About anything,” I said. “Tell me the story of your life.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I’m tired,” I said. “To keep me awake.”
    “Not very interesting.”
    “Try me,” I said.
    So she shrugged and started at the beginning, which was outside of Birmingham, Alabama, in the middle of the sixties. She had nothing bad to say about it, but she gave me the impression that she knew even then there were better ways to grow up than poor and black in Alabama at that time. She had brothers and sisters. She had always been small, but she was nimble, and she parlayed a talent for gymnastics and dancing and jumping rope into a way of getting noticed at school. She was good at the book work too, and had