“I deal with it like this,” said Lucas. “Being with a woman like you puts me in the here and now.”
“Thank you.”
“I mean it.”
“When you were over there...” Charlotte reached up and touched his face. “Did you kill many men?”
Not just men.
“Yes,” said Lucas, staring up at the ceiling. “I told you I did.”
“And you have no problem with that?”
“I was there to kill the enemy. They were trying to kill me. They would’ve killed my friends.”
“All of them? Were they all shooting at you and your friends?”
“Combat’s not an exact science,” said Lucas. “You make a decision and you commit.”
Lucas thought of the woman.
It had been a particularly brutal day of fighting on a residential street of Fallujah. They were all brutal days. The city was a fortress, the streets mined, the bunkerlike houses booby-trapped. Fortified buildings, some with walls several feet thick, many roofed with firing slits. Unlike other areas of combat in Iraq, Fallujah was loaded with experienced, fanatical insurgents, veterans of Afghanistan and Chechnya, Iranians, Europeans, and Asians, well-armed with AK-47s, RPGs, and PKM machine guns. Russian weapons, rifles from Iran, full-auto assault weapons manufactured in Germany. Enemy combatants wearing Kevlar helmets and full-body armor made in America. Some carrying the M-16s they’d taken off dead soldiers and marines. Their fighters were ready.
The woman. He’d observed her on her cell phone, running from house to house. He’d seen her raise two, three fingers as she talked. He supposed she was using the phone to observe and report the tactical positions of him and his fellow marines to the insurgents who had them pinned down. At least, that was Lucas’s best guess. There was no opportunity or reason to ask her.
An hour earlier, he had lost his lieutenant, Randy Polanco, a man he’d admired and idolized, a thirty-two-year-old father of three who’d left his family in Houston and returned to active duty to be with his men. He’d been cut in half, parts of him vaporized, by an IED. The news of Lieutenant Polanco’s death had energized and enraged Lucas and the men of his unit. There would be many enemy kills that day.
Lucas, peering over a tank-blown Texas barrier pocked with AK rounds, sighted the woman as she prepared to dash across the courtyard. Without hesitation or deliberation he shot her with a burst of his M-16. Feeling no emotion, he watched blood arc off her torso as she fell in a heap to the courtyard floor. Later, after the fighting had momentarily ceased, he went to where she lay, triggered his rifle, stitched her from groin to neck, and watched her body jump and come to rest. Lucas walked on, detached, because it meant nothing to him. She meant nothing in death.
“No regrets?” said Charlotte.
“None,” said Lucas.
But he did dream.
“I shouldn’t have asked you so many questions,” said Charlotte, later, as they had gotten off the bed. “What you did in the war is none of my business.”
“It’s okay,” said Lucas. “I like talking to you.”
She kissed him. “I should take a shower.”
“I’ll come in with you.”
“If you come in the shower with me, only my tits will get clean.”
“But they’ll be really clean.”
“I think I can manage myself. Besides, you don’t want to get that hand wet.”
“I think it’s too late for that.”
Charlotte smiled. “You know what I mean.”
“My hand can get wet now. It’s fine.”
“Let me see it.”
Lucas took off the bandage. The cut was no longer throbbing or swelled, and beneath the stitches its crescent shape was more defined. Charlotte held his hand and looked at the wound.
“Does it still hurt?”
“Not really.”
“Tough guy.”
“Not really.”
“You don’t have to be so stoic all the time. You’re much more complicated than you let on.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Still waters,” she said.
“Maybe.”
“I wish—”
“What?”
“I don’t know how to help you.”
“You are.”
She kissed him and walked naked to the bathroom. She looked over her shoulder at him briefly, and in her eyes he saw pity, and maybe something like fear. He watched her, thinking, Please don’t go. But he knew she’d soon be gone, back to her home, her husband, her life.
Lucas drove home thinking of what came next. It seemed to him that now there was only one way to find Billy Hunter and the painting. This disturbed him, and excited him, too.
In his apartment, he smoked some herb, grabbed a green bottle of beer from the refrigerator, and put a classic Keith Hudson dub CD on the stereo. High and pensive, he sat down in his favorite chair and phoned his brother.
“What’s that you got playin in the background?” said Leo. “Sounds nice.”
“Pick a Dub.”
“That record. You must be up on something good.”
“This smoke I’ve got is sweet. You could come over and burn some of this tree.”
“You know I don’t play that.”
“‘To each his reach...’”
“‘And if I don’t cop it ain’t mine to have.’ You quoting Parliament? Now I know you’re high.”
“Baba had that one on vinyl.”
“I remember. Dad said it was gonna be worth something someday.”
“Look, Leo...”
“What?”
“I’m in a fix. That woman I been seein...”
“I told you, man.”
“I know.”
“Get out of it. It can’t come to any good.”
“I don’t know if I can. I’m in love with her. She’s the only one I can talk to.”
“You’re talkin to me.”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“Why, ’cause I don’t have a lady-garden?”
Lucas chuckled. “Where’d you get that?”
“British friend of mine. They have the most creative names for pussy.”
Lucas swigged his beer. “Leo?”
“What?”
“I think I’m about to go someplace bad.”
“With this woman?”
“Work.”
“So don’t do it. Whatever it is, stop.”
“It’s not that simple. I took a job and I’ve got to see it through.”
“Marine Corps must have loved you. High school wrestler, all those pins. They targeted guys like you.”
“It’s who I am,” said Lucas.
“Nah. Don’t talk that bullshit to me.”
“Anyway...”
“Don’t hang up.”
“No, I need to go. I just wanted to say hey. It’s good to hear your voice.”
“Spero...”
“Talk to you soon. Love you.”
“I love you.”
Lucas ended the call. He sat for a while longer, listening to music, deliberating. Then he phoned Winston Dupree.
“Winston, it’s Spero.”
“What’s up?”
“The sky is up. Birds are up, too.”
“Oh, shit. You’re high, boy.”
“A little. How’s that tendonitis?”
“Acute. Why you asking after my health?”
“I got some work for you. You interested?”
“Depends on what it is.”
“Let’s meet tomorrow,” said Lucas.
“Come by my spot,” said Dupree. “You can meet my dog.”
Seventeen
In the morning, Lucas made a couple of calls, packed a heavy-duty nylon bag, picked up a Buick Enclave SUV from his increasingly less-tolerant car rental agent, and drove over to North Capitol Street, where he met Abraham Woldu and traded a key in exchange for cash. Lucas then drove over to Winston Dupree’s apartment, which took up the first floor of a 4th Street row house, just south of Missouri Avenue, in Manor Park.