The boxed sign over the recruitment center was brightly lit. He recalled that down in Park View, in a similar recruitment office near the old Black Hole, the sign had always been lit and the windows kept smudge free. A clean storefront in a strip of run-down businesses, a beacon for the young men in the neighborhood who were looking for a job or a way out, many of them high school dropouts, many of them running from temptation and trouble, some of their own making, some not.
The times he’d been to places like Chevy Chase and Bethesda, Deon had never seen recruitment offices of any kind. But it made sense. Why would the army, navy, or Marine Corps waste their time, money, and effort on kids who were never going to sign up and serve? Those kids were going to college. Those kids had parents who would pay for their tuition and room and board, and later help usher them into the job market via their network of successful friends.
Looking through the plate glass of the center, he saw two life-size cardboard cutouts of soldiers, one black, one Hispanic, in full dress. In between the cutouts, large wire racks held dozens of pamphlets. He could guess that some of the pamphlets were printed in Spanish. Behind the racks were dividers, the kind that formed cubicles in offices. Deon wondered what these folks didn’t want citizens on the street to see.
On the window itself were numerous posters touting service. A picture of an aircraft carrier loaded with planes, troops, and equipment, ready for action, below the words “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of All Who Threaten It.” A photograph of a black woman, beautiful and proud eyed, a beret cocked jauntily on her head, the caption reading “There’s Strong. And Then There’s Army Strong.” Other posters mentioned enlistment bonuses of up to $20,000, thirty days’ vacation pay per year, 100 percent tuition assistance, and full health and dental benefits. Guaranteed training in a chosen career. The chance to travel.
Yellowish light bled out from beneath the padded dividers. Someone, some officer, was in there, burning the oil, alone and ready to talk.
Deon had nowhere special to go. He had the need to talk to someone, too.
He got out of the Mercury, passed under the bright, inviting light of the big sign hung over the recruitment office, and tried the handle of the front door. The door was unlocked. But Deon did not step inside.
Sixteen
Raymond Monroe stepped out of the therapy room a little after noon, intending to call Kendall and have lunch with her down in the cafeteria. As he pulled his cell from his pocket, he passed a young man, blinded in one eye, shrapnel wounds forming crescent scars around the socket, his head shaved and stitched on the side.
“Pop,” said the young man.
“How’s it going?” said Monroe.
“Awesome,” said the young man without sarcasm or irony, and he walked on in a square-shouldered stride.
At the elevator bank, Monroe waited for the down car beside a man his age who stood with his hands on the grips of a wheelchair. A young woman of about twenty sat in the chair, her hospital gown worn over a T-shirt. She had short black hair, blue eyes, and a bit of a mustache, most likely a growth spurred by steroids she had been taking postinjury. Both of her legs had been amputated high in the femur, not far below the trunk. One stump was badly burned and scarred with “dots,” small bits of shrapnel still embedded close to the skin surface. The other stump did not appear to have been burned but was twitching wildly.
“Hey,” said the young woman, looking at Monroe.
“Afternoon,” said Monroe. “How’s everybody doing on this fine day?”
“How am I doin, Daddy?” said the young woman.
“She just got fitted for her new legs,” said her father. His eyes were the same shade of brilliant blue as his daughter’s. “Won’t be long before Ashley’s walkin again.”
Both Ashley and her father had deep southern accents. Both of them smelled strongly of cigarettes.
“And after that,” said Ashley, “I’m gonna swim from one shore to the other and back again.”
“She wants to swim in the old lake,” said the father. “We got a nice clean one down by our home.”
“I will, too,” she said.
“Next summer, maybe,” said the father, as he reached down and touched her cheek. He smiled, his lip quivering with melancholy pride.
“Maybe you and I will get a chance to work together in the pool,” said Monroe.
“I’ll make you tired,” said Ashley.
“My little girl is game,” said the father.
“No doubt,” said Monroe. As the elevator doors opened, Monroe’s cell phone chimed in his hand, indicating that he had a message.
Outside the main building, he checked his messages. Alex Pappas’s voice told him he’d like to meet. Monroe hit auto-return and got Alex on the line.
“Pappas and Sons.” He sounded stressed amid the considerable noise in the background.
“It’s Ray Monroe.”
“Mr. Monroe, you got me in the middle of my lunch rush.”
“Call me Ray. Look, I didn’t know -”
“If you’d like to talk again, I’m stopping by Fisher House after work. Same time as the other night.”
“Okay. I was thinking we’d take a drive, go visit my brother.”
“I can’t talk now. I’ll see you then.” Pappas abruptly cut the connection. Monroe stood looking at the phone for a moment, then dropped the cell back into his pocket.
He went into building 2 and took the elevator up to Kendall’s floor. When he knocked on the open door to her office, he could already see that she was not there. Gretta Siebentritt, the outpatient therapist who shared the office with Kendall, swiveled her chair to face him.
“What’s up, Ray?”
“Lookin for my girlfriend. Is she hiding from me?”
“Hardly. She’s in conference with Private Collins. He’s been occupying a bit of her time.”
“The soldier about to do the voluntary amputation?”
“Him. Anything you’d like me to tell her?”
“I’ll get up with her later.”
Monroe ate lunch alone, thinking about James, Alex Pappas, Baker, and the trouble that was bound to come.
For his lunch appointment, Charles Baker had chosen to wear a deep purple sport jacket with white stitching on the lapels, triple-pleat polyester black slacks, a lavender shirt, and a pair of black tooled-leather shoes that almost looked like gators. He had put the outfit together over the past year, shopping at thrift places and the Salvation Army store on H Street in Northeast. He had never before had the occasion to wear the rig in full, and looking in the mirror on the way out of his group home, he felt that he looked clean and right.
“Where you off to?” said a man called Trombone, a recovering heroin addict with a very long nose, one of the four men on paper with whom Baker shared the house. “You look like folding money.”
“I got people to meet and places to be,” said Baker. “And none of’em are here.”
Baker did feel like a million dollars, walking out of the house.
But when he got downtown, coming off the Metro escalator at Farragut North, moving along into the bustle of Connecticut Avenue, he got that feeling again, the feeling he had whenever he left his insular world, that he was out of step and wrong. Around him, workingmen and women of all colors, finely and effortlessly attired, carrying soft leather briefcases and handbags, walking with purpose, going somewhere. He did not understand how they had gotten here. Who taught them how to dress in that quiet, elegant way? How did they get their jobs?
Baker put his thumb and forefinger to the lapel of his purple sport coat. The fabric felt spongy. All right, so he wasn’t in step with all these silver spoons down here. He’d dazzle Mr. Peter Whitten with his personality and force of logic. Flash him some Dale Carnegie smile.
The restaurant was an Italian place with an O on the end of its name, on L Street, west of 19th. He entered to the sound of relaxed conversation, the gentle movement and soft contact of china, silver, and crystal. Murals had been painted on the walls, looked to Baker like those fancy old paintings he’d seen at a museum he’d been to once, when he was coming in from the cold, wandering around, down on the Mall.