“That’s a goddamn lie,” the major shouted, leaping to his feet. “I don’t even know this man. I’ve got a wife and baby at home. I’m no fairy.”
“You’re for it, Tobin,” Hammett said to the MP. “He doesn’t leave anything to chance. Why, he tried to shoot me last night just on the off chance I might know something. I’ll bet he does have a wife and child. And I’ll bet there’s nothing to connect him to either you or the corpse. And there’s the love letters Michael found in your foot-locker.”
“Love letters?” the MP said. “What love letters?”
He looked at Hammett, then at the major. Understanding flooded his face.
“You set me up!” he screamed at the major. “You set me up as a fairy!”
The automatic barked. The slug seemed to pick the major up and hurl him backwards. The temporary blonde screamed. All over the room, men were taking guns from holsters and pockets. They seemed to be moving in slow motion. The MP swung the gun toward Hammett.
“You should have kept your nose out of this,” the MP said, leveling the automatic. His finger closed on the trigger.
Don Miller stepped out of the hallway behind the MP and laid a sap on the back of his head. The MP collapsed like he was filled with sawdust.
Miller and Hammett looked at one another for a long moment. Hammett took his hand off the pistol in the pocket of his coat.
“I think that calls for a drink,” he said, pouring himself one.
The marshal was putting cuffs on the MP. Carey looked up from where the major lay and shook his head.
“I guess this means you’ll be able to open up again, Zulu,” Hammett said.
The following afternoon Miller found Hammett lying on a table in the cramped offices of the magazine Army Up North, reading Lenin.
“I’ve got some errands to run in town,” he told Hammett.
“Fine by me,” Hammett said, sitting up. “I’ve been thinking I’ll put in my papers. The war can’t last much longer, and this looks like as close as I’ll get to any action.”
“You’d have been just as dead if that MP shot you as you would if it’d been a Jap bullet,” Miller said.
“I suppose,” Hammett said. “This morning the general told me they were going to show Major Allen as killed in the line of duty. They’ll give Tobin a quick trial and life in the stockade. The whole thing’s being hushed up. The brass don’t want to embarrass the major’s father, and they don’t want the scandal getting back to the president and Congress. This is the country I enlisted to protect?”
Miller shrugged. “I got to be going,” he said.
“Right you are,” Hammett said. “And by the way, thanks for stepping in last night. I didn’t want to shoot that kid, and I didn’t want to get shot myself.”
Miller turned to leave.
“I suppose I’ll just give the Moon to Zulu if I go,” Hammett said.
“That’d be real nice,” Miller said over his shoulder.
He went out, got into a Jeep, drove downtown, and parked. He walked into the federal building, climbed a set of stairs, walked down a hallway, and went through an unmarked door without knocking. He sat in a chair and told the whole story to a man on the other side of the desk. “That’s all very interesting,” the man said, “but did the subject say anything to you or anyone else about Marx, Lenin, or communism?”
“Is that all you care about?” Miller asked. “I keep telling you, I’ve never heard him say anything about communism.”
“You’ve got to understand,” the man said. “This other matter just isn’t important. The director says we are already fighting the next war, the war against communism. This war is a triumph of truth, justice, and the American way. And it’s over.”
Miller said nothing.
“You can let yourself out,” the man said. Then he turned to his typewriter, rolled a form into it, and began to type.
Brendan DuBois
Richard’s Children
From Much Ado About Murder
For mid-October, the weather in London was quite warm and the sun was out, another rare occurrence in this cloudy town. Kevin Tanner, assistant professor of English at Lovecraft University in Massachusetts, sat on a park bench in the middle of a small courtyard at the Tower of London. He still felt a bit jet-lagged, like everything he saw was too bright and loud, and the scents and sounds were too strong and forceful. He was near one of the largest stone buildings in the Tower of London complex, the White Tower, and there he waited. He had been here once before, as a grad student, more than sixteen years ago, and it seemed like not much had changed over the years. There were manicured lawns, sidewalks, and walls and battlements and towers, all representing nearly a thousand years of English history. And beyond the Tower complex, the soaring span of the Tower Bridge — looking ancient, of course, but less than a hundred years old — and the wide and magnificent Thames.
At his feet was a small red knapsack, and just a half-hour ago — after spending nearly twenty minutes in line for the privilege of spending eleven pounds to gain entry — a well-dressed and polite security officer had examined his bag and its contents. Inside the bag was a water bottle, two candy bars, a thick guidebook to London, and secured in a zippered pouch within the knapsack, his passport and round-trip airline ticket. He supposed that if the security guard had been more on the job, he would have looked at the airline ticket and inquired as to how an assistant professor at a small college with a savings account of just over two thousand dollars could have afforded a round-trip, first-class airline ticket. Now that would have been something worth investigating.
Despite the oddity of this whole trip and the arrangements, he had enjoyed the flight over. He had never traveled business class in his life, never mind first class, and he felt slightly guilty at having all the attention and comforts of being up in the forward cabin. But after ten or so minutes, he quickly realized why it was so special. How could anybody not want to fly first class if they could afford it? The wide, plush seats, with plenty of elbow- and legroom, and the flight attendants who were at his beck and call. That’s when he felt that familiar flush of anger and embarrassment. Anger at being someone supposedly admired in society, a teacher of children, a molder of future generations, and the only way he could come to England and in first class was through the generosity of strangers. And embarrassment, for he was a grown man, had made grownup choices, and he shouldn’t be angry at that.
Still, he thought, looking down at his bag, it was going to be pleasant flying back.
He looked around him, seeing the crowds of tourists. There were two types: those moving about the grounds of the Tower by themselves, with brochures and maps, and those in large groups following one of the numerous Yeoman Warders, dressed in their dark blue and red Beefeater uniforms. Each uniform had ER written on the chest in fine script. Elizabeth Regina. Kevin crossed his legs, waited, checked his watch. It was 11 A.M., and a man came over to him, wearing a red rose in the lapel of his suit coat. He was tall, gaunt, with thick gray hair combed back in a lionlike mane. The suit and shoes were black, as was the tie, and the shirt was white. The man came to him and nodded.