“So who wants to see me?” Jack said to Karen, his voice surprisingly thin, the voice of a teenage boy on the verge of breaking. Definite boozer, Train concluded. Jack flicked a quick glance in Train’s direction, as if he had read Train’s thoughts. Train flipped out his credentials.
“My -name’s von Rensel, from the NIS. This is Commander Lawrence, Navy JAG.”
“Squid stuff. Big deal. So why should I give a shit?” Sherman said, fingering the package of cigarettes out from under the twist in the sleeve of his T-shirt. Camels, no filter, Train noted.
Tough guy indeed.
“This concerns your father,” she said.
The change in Jack’s face was dramatic-an immediate hardening. With the cigarette poised to go in his mouth, he stopped and looked at Karen as if she had just invoked the devil. “Then it don’t concern me, lady,” he snapped.
“We think it does,” Train said. “We want to know why you made an appearance at Elizabeth Walsh’s funeral, and again at the Naval Academy cemetery during Admiral Schmidt’s funeral.”
Jack made a slow business of sticking the cigarette in his mouth and getting it lit. Then he exhaled a solid stream of smoke in Train’s direction, an insolent look on his face. “Who says?”
“I saw you at Saint Matthew’s Church,” Karen said.
“Last Wednesday evening. On a motorcycle. Your father saw you, too.”
“And I saw you at Annapolis. Up on that hill. You left on a motorcycle.”
Jack shrugged. “Beats me. I get around. It’s a free country, last time I checked. How about you, lady? You free?”
Train moved in closer, staring down at the kid’s sneering face but turning slightly sideways so that his left forearm was in position to block any sudden moves. “Let me put it this way, Sherman,” he said.
“We’re helping the Fairfax County Homicide Section investigate two homicides. So far, they don’t know about your little cameos at the funerals.
You can either talk to us or talk to them. But’let me tell you something. You don’t know hassle until you’ve seen homicide hassle. Now, why were you there at those ‘funerals?”
Jack didn’t budge an inch under the physical force of Train’s massive presence. But his eyes betrayed him as they darted from Train’s looming face to Karen and back. Then his expression changed again. “Maybe,” he said with a crafty smile. “Maybe I was celebrating. Yeah. That’s it. I remember now. I was celebrating.”
“Celebrating?” Karen asked. “Celebrating what?”
Jack looked at her, then stepped back away from Train.
Then he looked again, a studied, staring, lascivious appraisal, from her shoes to her hair, point by point, as if he was sizing up a piece of meat, or a whore. Train got that itch in his palms again.
“Celebrating that bastard’s loss,” Jack continued. “You know, he lost some things of value. Yeah, that’s it, man.”
““Some things of value,’ “
Karen repeated, focusing on the familiar phrase. She looked over at Train.
“Yeah,” Jack said. “And I suppose you’re the new main squeeze, huh, lady? Commander, I mean. Excuse me. Commander, ma’am. Or is it ‘sir’?
Naw, it’s ‘ma’am.’ ” He stared intently at her breasts. “Those are definitely hooters.
Ma’am.”
Karen. never saw Train move, but suddenly Jack was stumbling forward, toward the Suburban, his right hand enveloped in Train’s left hand, his middle finger bending backward and his feet arching up against the pain, cigarette and jacket failing to the ground as he, was spun up against the Suburban. Train clamped down hard and put his face an inch away from Jack’s grimacing features.
“You … watch … your … mouth … dickhead,” he growled. “That is your name, right? Dickhead? Yes? You agree? Nod your dick head, dickhead!” Jack was almost kneeling now as Train bore down on the finger, bringing tears to the kid’s eyes. Train could see Karen off to one side, staring at him. “Good boy, dickhead. Now listen to me. Listen real good. We know you’re in this. Tell your buddy Galantz we know you’re in this’ That the whole god damned government knows what this is all about. And you dickhead, are a stupid little patsy if you’re helping him: understand? Think about this, dickhead: What’s he going to do to you when he’s done screwing around with your father, huh? You think he’s gonna give you a medal, huh?” Train bent down, getting eyeball-to-eyeball. “Now you talk to me, asshole. What’s your piece of this?”
Jack cried out as Train gave the finger an extra little nudge. His eyes were streaming and his face was red and straining. He was almost on the ground, trying to escape the crushing pain. His pack of cigarettes had spilled out on the concrete like a handful of nails. But he was still defiant.
“Fuck you, man,” he spat in a low, hoarse voice as his elbow touched the concrete. “Fuck you! I just do what my old man tells me to do, okay? So fuck you!”
Train, surprised, let him go then and stood up. He looked over at Karen, whose expression was a mask of shock. He wasn’t sure if it was over the way he had manhandled this punk or if she had heard what Jack had just said.
“Get out of here, asshole,” he said to the figure crouching at his feet.
“And remember, you can run, but you can’t hide. “
Jack grabbed his jacket and-scuttled backward, holding his right hand under his left armpit and clumsily wiping the tears off his face with the back of his left hand. But as soon as he was back out in full public view, he straightened up and sauntered back toward the hangar, head up, never looking back, as if nothing at all had happened. Train walked over to Karen. From the disapproving look on her face, he had a pretty good idea of what she was mad about.
“Sorry about that,” he began.
“No you’re not,” she snapped.
Okay, so now we know, he thought. “No, I’m not,” he agreed. “I just didn’t like the way he was-“
“You don’t listen so well, do you?” she said, those green eyes blazing.
“Let me say it again. When I need your protection, I’ll ask for it. We came here to find out something, and now that kid will never talk to us.
Now what are we-“
Train put up his hand to interrupt her. “Did you hear what he said?”
She checked her anger. “Yes, I did.” Some things of value.’ That phrase-“
“No, that’s not what I’m talking about. That last partwhere he said he was just doing what his old man told him to?” She stared at him. “What?
He said that? Working for his father!” She sighed and looked away across the airfield.
Train decided to say nothing for a moment. It wasn’t as if he had any answers, either. But finally, he felt compelled to break the silence.
“We need to go back to Great Falls,” he said. “It’s time to think. We need to get Gutter programmed f I or your perimeter. I didn’t like that crack he made about you being his father’s new girlfriend. I know, I know,” he said as her eyes started to flash again. “But remember what he just said. It’s time to think, Karen. That kid is definitely part of this. And as far as that little creep is concerned, you’re the admiral’s new girlfriend. Suppose Galantz thinks the same thing?”