“Apparently so. She’s the one who called.”
“Never heard of her. What did she want?”
“What she wants is for us to meet her at the field office. She wouldn’t say what it was about, but I have a good idea.”
“Are you going to share, sir?”
“Well, I got this call maybe half an hour after I checked on your John Doe’s DNA test results. And it came on my cell, March, not my office line. Agent Kuykendahl made a point of asking us to be discreet.”
My mind whirls with possibilities, the humiliation on the range all but forgotten.
“If I didn’t know better,” he says, “I’d guess that we’ve got a hit on our identification. And whoever our victim is, he had something to do with the Feds.”
Interlude: 1986
After the passage of years, I can’t recall whether or not Sgt. Crewes gave Magnum his nickname, but he was certainly the first to use it in my hearing. On a rainy Friday afternoon, as I sat at my desk watching the clock tick down, mentally planning my fifty-odd-mile drive over to Alexandria, where I hoped to meet a girl and catch a movie, Crewes appeared in my doorway holding a fierce-looking plastic gator. Without any explanation, he shifted my stapler and tape dispenser around to make room for the animal.
“You prefer it with the jaws facing you, or facing the door?”
“Facing the door,” I said. “What’s the deal?”
“I believe it’s intended to instill fighting spirit. Everybody’s getting one.”
I reclined in my chair, smiling. “I’m going to miss all this.”
My four years were counting down quickly, and while I’d originally planned to re-up for life, making a career of the U.S. Army, somewhere between getting my commission after ROTC and my most recent assignment to the MP battalion at Ft. Polk, Louisiana, all that had changed. At the time, I couldn’t have put my finger on the inciting incident. Looking back, it was probably the ball I had reluctantly attended in Austin the year before, invited by a fellow officer to make up the numbers, instructed to wear my dress blues. There I met Charlotte for the first time. Several years would pass before we saw each other again. But it was a fateful night.
Sgt. Crewes, who’d put in eighteen of his twenty years, including a wild and well-remembered tour as an MP in Saigon, looked at me like I was crazy. However surreal military life could get-and he made no excuses on that score-compared to the insanity of the outside world, it all made sense. But then Crewes had come back from Germany with a cherished Audi coupe, which he lovingly detailed every other weekend, and a foulmouthed, chain-smoking bride he called his Marlene Dietrich. He was no judge of normality.
Something about the tail end of the plastic gator didn’t look right to me, so I rotated him so that the painted white teeth and the red mouth growled up at me.
Crewes stood at ease in the doorframe, arms crossed. “When you’ve got your gator squared away, sir, you’re wanted in Major Shattuck’s office on the double.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I jumped from my chair, excited to be called and equally anxious that whatever duties the major had in mind would make me late for my evening plans. As I passed, the sergeant shook his head and smiled for the millionth time at the irrationality of the officer class, the way a misogynist smiles at the ways of women. I liked Shattuck, but for the sergeant’s benefit I called over my shoulder: “What does he want this time?”
The sound of Crewes chuckling made me happy.
“Don’t complain,” he said. “You’ll get to meet Magnum face-to-face.”
On the stairwell between floors, I paused, but not to wonder who Magnum was. I felt ashamed, as I often did after an encounter with Sgt. Crewes. I’d made a cheap crack in hope of pandering favor. He’d laughed, but the joke was on me. Didn’t the silver bar on my shoulder mean anything? Not for the first time I cursed myself for being such a bad, such a weak officer, then took comfort in the thought that I wouldn’t be one for much longer. Life had other plans for Roland March.
Though he’d never seen combat, never fired a single shot in anger, in his sharp-creased woodland camo BDUs, Maj. Shattuck looked the part of a battlefield commander. Whenever Shattuck arrived on scene, men fell naturally into line. I’d seen generals who couldn’t boast the same. The way he carried himself reminded me of a fishing line with a little slack left in, ready at the first sign of action to be pulled taut. I’d actually practiced this stance in the mirror, hoping I might become a better officer by looking the part.
I found him at his rain-streaked window taking in the gray skies, his hands clasped at the small of his back. The air-conditioning formed condensation at the four corners of the glass. Before I could announce myself, he turned and motioned me to stand at attention in front of his desk. I could perceive from the corner of my eye a second man in the room, a slack civilian seated on the stiff vinyl couch beside the entrance, his arm draped languidly along the back of the sofa. This, presumably, was Magnum.
“Now,” Shattuck said, addressing the man on the couch, “I’d like you to repeat what you’ve just told me in the presence of this officer.”
The iron in his tone was unmistakable. Shattuck was angry.
Magnum answered with a snort, a response so unexpected that I turned my head to look. He wore a charcoal suit and a black knit tie, his thick eyebrows balanced by the full mustache. A long, pale face with a hint of a smile on the lips. Laugh lines that bracketed the mustache in parentheses. He wasn’t cowed by the major’s authority. Instead, he seemed amused.
“You’re not going to say anything?” Shattuck demanded.
“Hey,” Magnum said. “No offense.” He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I guess I’ll get out of here and leave you to it. Just thought maybe I could spare us both some trouble.”
He eased himself off the couch.
“I’d like you to repeat your offer in Lieutenant March’s presence.”
“Is that his name, this witness of yours?” Magnum peered at the name above the breast pocket of my fatigue jacket, like he doubted the major’s words. “Well, now, Lieutenant”-he patted my shoulder in a familiar way-“I expect we’ll be seeing more of each other.”
And with that, he walked out. The major let him go.
“Close the door,” he said.
I did.
“If you see that man, if he asks for anything or seems to be engaged in any activity out of the ordinary, I want you to inform me immediately.”
“Sir.”
“I’m serious, Lieutenant March. Whatever you may think, men like that are nothing but trouble.”
“Sir,” I repeated. I hadn’t been thinking anything at all.
The major dismissed me and I went downstairs in search of Crewes, finding him in the corridor outside my office. Waiting for me, I realized, which sent a slight thrill through me. Crewes was as anxious to hear what had happened as I was to talk about it.
“Well? What happened in there?”
I stopped myself. Maybe I shouldn’t say anything.
“What happened in there, sir,” I said, channeling Shattuck for an instant, then immediately feeling stupid.
“All right.” The sergeant narrowed his eyes. “What happened in there, sir?”
Then I told him, ignoring my inner disgust at my own weakness, the words coming out in an eager rush. Once I’d spilled, it was his turn. “So you wanna tell me what’s going on?” I asked. “Who is this Magnum guy? And where does he get off disrespecting the major like that?”
“What do you think he is?”
“How should I know?”
“Really?” He shook his head at my ignorance. “That’s your best guess?”
He led me into my office and closed the door. Before saying anything, he took me to the blinds for a look at the parking lot and, beyond it, the parade grounds. Magnum was crossing the lot with a newspaper to shield him from the rain, heading toward a big Buick with tinted windows. Slouched elegantly on the bumper, a brown-skinned man in woodland camo smoked a thin cigar, indifferent to the rain.