The Throat (51 page)

I went
back across the street and waited in the Pontiac for half an hour, but
the Sunchanas did not come home. Finally, I wrote my name and John's
phone number at the bottom of a note saying that I wanted to talk with
them about Bob Bandolier, tore the page from my notebook, and went back
up onto the screened porch. I turned the knob of their front door, and
the door opened. A residue of the sense of danger I had just
experienced went through me, as if the empty house held a threat.
"Hello, anybody home?" I called out, leaning into the room, but I
didn't expect an answer. I put the note on the polished floorboards in
front of the brown oval rug on the living room floor, closed the door,
and went back to the car.

Two
exits east of the stadium, I took Teutonia Avenue and slanted north,
deep into Millhaven's wide residential midsection. I wasn't quite sure
of the location of Fond du Lac Drive, but I thought it intersected
Teutonia, and I drove along a strip of little shops and fast-food
restaurants, watching the street signs. When I came to the traffic
light at Fond du Lac Drive, I made a quick guess and turned right.

Fond du
Lac Drive was a wide six-lane street that began at the lake before
crossing central Millhaven on a diagonal axis. This far west, no trees
stood along the white sidewalks, and the sun baked the rows of 1930s
apartment buildings and single-family houses that stood on both sides
of the street. As I had been doing since leaving Elm Hill, I looked in
my rearview mirror every couple of seconds.

One of
three identical poured concrete houses, 5460 had black shutters and a
flat roof. All three had been painted the same pale yellow. The owners
of the houses on either side of it had tried to soften the stark
exteriors by planting borders of flowers along their walks and around
their houses, but Oscar Writzmann's house looked like a jail with
shutters.

Before I
knocked on the door, I checked up and down the empty block.

"Who's
there?" said a voice on the other side of the door.

I gave
my name.

The door
opened part of the way. Through the screen I saw a tall, heavyset bald
man in his seventies taking a good look at me. Whatever he saw didn't
threaten him, because he pulled the door open the rest of the way and
came up to the screen. He had a big chest and a thick neck, like an old
athlete, and was wearing khaki shorts and a tired blue sweatshirt. "You
looking for me?"

"If
you're Oscar Writzmann, I am," I said.

He
opened the screen door and stepped forward far enough to fill the
frame. His shoulder held the door open. He looked down at me, curious
about what I was up to. "Here I am. What do you want?"

"Mr.
Writzmann, I was hoping that you could help me locate one of the
officers of a corporation based in Millhaven."

He
rotated his chin sideways, looking skeptical and amused at once. "You
sure you want Oscar Writzmann? This Oscar Writzmann?"

"Have
you ever heard of a company called Elvee Holdings?"

He
thought for a second. "Nope."

"Have
you ever heard of an Andrew Belinski or a Leon Casement?"

Writzmann
shook his head.

"The
other officer was named Writzmann, and since you're the only Writzmann
listed in the book, you're sort of my last shot."

"What is
this all about?" He leaned forward, not yet hostile but no longer
friendly. "Who are you, anyhow?"

I told
him my name again. "I'm trying to help an old friend of mine, and we
want to acquire more information about this company, Elvee Holdings."

He was
scowling at me.

"It
looks like the only genuine officer of Elvee Holdings is a man named
William Writzmann. We can't go to the offices, because—"

He came
out through the open door, stepped down, and jabbed me hard in the
chest. "Does Oscar sound like William to you?"

"I
thought you might be his father," I said.

"I don't
care what you thought." He poked me in the chest again and stepped
forward, crowding me backward. "I don't need tricky bastards like you
coming around bothering me, and I want you to get off my property
before I knock your block off."

He meant
it. He was getting angrier by the second.

"I was
just hoping you could help me find William Writzmann. That's all." I
held my hands up to show I didn't want to fight him.

His face
hardened, and he stepped toward me. I jumped back, and an enormous fist
filled my vision, and the air in front of my face moved. Then he stood
a yard from me, his fists ready and his face burning with rage.

"I'm
going," I said. "I didn't mean to disturb you."

He
dropped his hands.

He
stayed on the lawn until I got into the car. Then he turned himself
around and trudged back toward his house.

I went
back to Ely Place and my real work.

I let
myself into the house and called out a greeting. The answering silence
suggested that the Ransoms were all napping. For a moment I felt like
Goldilocks.

In the
kitchen I found the yellow flap of a Post-It note on the central
counter beside a bottle of Worcestershire sauce and three glasses
smeary with red fluid. Tim—
Where are
you? We're going to a movie, be
back around 7 or 8. Monroe and Wheeler dropped in, see evidence
upstairs. John.

I
dropped the note into the garbage and went upstairs. Marjorie had
arranged little pots and bottles of cosmetics on the guest room table.
A copy of the AARP magazine lay splayed open on the unmade bed.

Nothing
had been disturbed in John's bedroom, except by John. He had stashed
his three-hundred-dollar vodka on the bedside table, no doubt to keep
Ralph from sampling it. Shirts and boxer shorts lay in balls and
tangles on the floor. Byron Dorian's two big paintings, powerful
reminders of April's death, had been taken down and turned to the wall.

On the
third floor, Damrosch's satchel still lay underneath the couch.

I
crossed the hall into April's office. A pile of corporate reports had
been squared away, and old faxes lay stacked on the shelves. I finally
noticed that most of the white shelves were bare.

Monroe
and Wheeler had packed up most of April's files and papers and taken
them away. By nightfall, an Armory Place accountant would be examining
her records, looking for a motive for her murder. Monroe and Wheeler
had probably emptied her office at Barnett that morning. I pulled open
a desk drawer and found two loose paper clips, a tube of Nivea skin
cream, and a rubber band. I was a couple of hours too late to discover
what April had learned about William Damrosch.

I went
back to John's office and picked up Colonel Runnel's book. Then I
stretched out on the couch to read until the Ransoms came back from the
movies.

Happily
unaware of the disadvantages of being a terrible writer with nothing to
say, Beaufort Runnel had marshaled thirty years of boneheaded
convictions, pointless anecdotes, and heartfelt prejudices into four
hundred pages. The colonel had ordered himself to his typewriter and
carved each sentence out of miserable, unyielding granite, and it must
have been infuriating for him when no commercial publisher would accept
his masterpiece.

I
wondered how Tom Pasmore had managed to find this gem.

Colonel
Runnel had spent his life in supply depots, and his most immediate
problems had been with thievery and inaccurate invoices. His long,
sometimes unhappy experiences in Germany, Oklahoma, Wisconsin,
California, Korea, the Philippines, and Vietnam had inexorably led him
to certain profound convictions.

The
finest fighting force on the globe is beyond doubt the Army of the
United States of America. This is cold fact. Valorous, ready to dig in
and fix bayonets at any moment, prepared to fight until the last man,
this is the Army as we know and love it. Working on many bases around
the world over a long and not undistinguished (though unsung) career,
the Army has placed me in many "hot" spots, and to these challenges
this humble Colonel of the Quartermaster Corps, with his best efforts,
has responded. I have seen our fighting forces worldwide, at ease and
under pressure, and never have they deserved less than my best and most
devoted efforts.

What
makes our Army the foremost in the world? Several factors, each of them
important, come into play when we ask this question.

Discipline,
which is forged in training.
Loyalty, our American birthright.
Strength, physical and of numbers.

Here I
skipped a handful of pages.

I will
recount some experiences in setting up a well-stocked, orderly depot in
places around the world by way of explanation. I promise the reader
that the amusing "touches" are in no way the inventions or
embellishments of the author. This is the way it happened, from the
twin perspectives of long experience and the front porch of my modest
but comfortable retirement home in a racially unified section of Prince
George's County, Maryland.

Groaning,
I turned to Runnel at Cam Ranh Bay, Runnel in Saigon, Runnel in the
field. Then a familiar place-name caught in my eye like a fishhook.
Runnel had been at Camp White Star, my first stop in Vietnam. I saw
another name I knew and started reading in earnest.

It was
during my overburdened weeks at Camp White Star that one of the single
most unpleasant events of my career took place. Unpleasant and
revealing it was, for it told me in no uncertain terms that the old
army I loved, had fallen prey to unhealthy ideas and influences.
Noxious trends were loose in its bloodstream.

Here I
began skimming again, and turned a couple of pages.

I had,
of course, heard of the Green Berets created by the Catholic demagogue
put into office by the corrupt expenditure of his father's ill-gained
millions, as who had not? This was trumpeted throughout the land, and
many otherwise bright and patriotic young fellows tumbled into the
trap. But I had never come into contact with the breed until a certain
Captain, later, incredibly, Major, Franklin Bachelor entered my depot
at Camp White Star. It was an education.

He
strode in, in no discernible uniform but clearly an officer with an
officer's bearing. One gave leeway to the men in the field. I should
explain the normal procedure, at least as I ran my operations. It can
be stated in one simple maxim. Nothing in without paperwork, nothing
out without paperwork. That is the basis. Of course, every
Quartermaster has known what it is to "improvise," and I, when called
upon to do so, acquitted myself splendidly, as in the case of the six
oxen of Cho Kin Reservoir. The reader will remember the episode. I rest
my case.

In the
normal instance, papers are presented at the desk, the goods requested
are assembled and then loaded into the waiting vehicle or vehicles, and
copies of the forms are sent to the relevant authority. It goes without
saying that Captain Bachelor observed none of the usual amenities.

He
ignored me and began ordering his minions to take articles of clothing
from the shelves. These were, emphatically, not soldiers of the United
States Army. Aboriginal in stature, ugly in face and form, some even
smeared gaudily with dye. Such were the "Yards," the tribesmen with
whom many Green Berets were forced to consort. My command to return the
stolen goods to the shelves was completely ignored. I struck my counter
and asked, in what I hoped was an ironic tone, if I might see the
officer's requisition forms. The man and his goons continued to ignore
me. Whirling, bestial little creatures daubed in mud and crested with
feathers had taken over my depot.

I
emerged from behind the counter, sidearm conspicuously in hand. This, I
said, was not acceptable, and would cease forthwith. I approached the
officer and as I did so heard from behind me the sound of an Ml6 being
readied to fire. The officer advised me to remain calm. Slowly, very
slowly indeed, I turned to face one of the most astounding spectacles
with which the Asian conflict had thus far provided me. A woman of
considerable beauty, dressed in conventional fatigues, held the weapon
pointed at my head. She too was a "Yard," but more highly evolved than
her scampering compatriots. I knew two things almost at once: this
beauty would shoot me where I stood, with the well-known Asian
indifference to life. Secondly, she was the mate of the Green Beret
officer. I use no more elevated word. They were mates, as creatures of
the barnyard are mates. This indicated to me that the officer was
insane. I relinquished all resistance to the pair and their tribe. My
staff had scattered, and I stood mute.

I
proceeded on the instant to the office of the commanding officer, a
gentleman who shall remain nameless. He and I had had our disagreements
over the course of my reorganization of various matters. Despite our
differences, I expected full and immediate cooperation. Restoration of
the stolen goods. Full reports and documentation. Disciplinary action
appropriate to the deed. To my amazement, the CO at White Star refused
to lift a finger.

I had
merely been visited by Captain Franklin Bachelor, I was told. Captain
Bachelor stopped in once every two years or so to outfit his soldiers.
The Captain never bothered with paperwork, the Quartermaster assessed
what had been taken and filled out the forms himself. Or he wrote it
off to pilferage. My problem was that I tried to stop him—you couldn't
stop Captain Bachelor. I enquired why one could not, and received the
stupefying reply that the Captain was a legend.

It was
this asinine CO who told me that Franklin Bachelor was known as "The
Last Irregular." Irregular, indeed, I allowed sotto voce.