The Enemy

We sat quiet. The counterman came over with a pad and a pencil. I looked at the menu and the forty-seven dollars on the table and ordered less than two bucks’ worth of coffee and eggs. Summer took the hint and ordered juice and biscuits. That was about as cheap as we could get, consistent with staying vertical.

“Am I done here?” my sergeant asked.

I nodded. “Thanks. I mean it.”

Summer slid out to let her get up.

“Kiss your baby for me,” I said.

My sergeant just stood there, all bone and sinew. Hard as woodpecker lips. Staring straight at me.

“My mom just died,” I said. “One day your son will remember mornings like these.”

She nodded once and walked to the door. A minute later we saw her in her pickup truck, a small figure all alone at the wheel. She drove off into the dawn mist. A rope of exhaust followed behind her and then drifted away.

I shuffled all the paper into a logical pile and started with Marshall’s personal file. The quality of the fax transmission wasn’t great, but it was legible. There was the usual mass of information. On the first page I found out that Marshall had been born in September of 1958. Therefore he was thirty-one years old. He had no wife and no children. No ex-wives either. He was wedded to the military, I guessed. He was listed at six-four and two hundred twenty pounds. The army needed to know that to keep their quartermaster percentiles up to speed. He was listed as right-handed. The army needed to know that because bolt-action sniper rifles are made for right-handers. Left-handed soldiers don’t usually get assigned as snipers. Pigeonholing starts on day one in the military.

I turned the page.

Marshall had been born in Sperryville, Virginia, and had gone all the way through kindergarten and grade school and high school there.

I smiled. Summer looked at me, questions in her eyes. I separated the pages and slid them across to her and stretched over and used my finger to point out the relevant lines. Then I slid her the memo paper with the Jefferson Hotel number on it.

“Go find a phone,” I said.

She found one just inside the door, on the wall, near the register. I saw her put two quarters in, and dial, and talk, and wait. I saw her give her name and rank and unit. I saw her listen. I saw her talk some more. I saw her wait some more. And listen some more. She put more quarters in. It was a long call. I guessed she was getting transferred all over the place. Then I saw her say thank you. I saw her hang up. I saw her come back to me, looking grim and satisfied.

“He had a room,” she said. “In fact he made the booking himself, the day before. Three rooms, for him, and Vassell, and Coomer. And there was a valet parking charge.”

“Did you speak to the valet station?”

She nodded. “It was a black Mercury. In just after lunch, out again at twenty to one in the morning, back in again at twenty past three in the morning, out again finally after breakfast on New Year’s Day.”

I riffed through the pile of paper and found the fax from Detective Clark in Green Valley. The results of his house-to-house canvass. There was a fair amount of vehicle activity listed. It had been New Year’s Eve and lots of people were heading to and from parties. There had been what someone thought was a taxi on Mrs. Kramer’s road, just before two o’clock in the morning.

“A staff car could be mistaken for a taxi,” I said. “You know, a plain black sedan, clean condition but a little tired, a lot of miles on it, the same shape as a Crown Victoria.”

“Plausible,” Summer said.

“Likely,” I said.

We paid the check and left a dollar tip and counted what was left of my sergeant’s loan. Decided we were going to have to keep on eating cheap, because we were going to need gas money. And phone money. And some other expenses.

“Where to now?” Summer asked me.

“Across the street,” I said. “To the motel. We’re going to hole up all day. A little more work, and then we sleep.”

We left the Chevy hidden behind the lounge bar and crossed the street on foot. Woke the skinny guy in the motel office and asked him for a room.

“One room?” he said.

I nodded. Summer didn’t object. She knew we couldn’t afford two rooms. And we weren’t new to sharing. Paris had worked out OK for us, as far as nighttime arrangements were concerned.

“Fifteen bucks,” the skinny guy said.

I gave him the money and he smiled and gave me the key to the room Kramer had died in. I figured it was an attempt at humor. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t mind. I figured a room a guy had died in was better than the rooms that rented by the hour.

We walked together down the row and unlocked the door and stepped inside. The room was still dank and brown and miserable. The corpse had been hauled away, but other than that it was exactly the same as when I had first seen it.

“It ain’t the George V,” Summer said.

“That’s for damn sure,” I said.