"Was he gay?"
"What? Of course not. "
I said nothing.
"You're saying Carbone was a fag?" the captain whispered.
I pictured Carbone in my mind, lounging six feet from the strip club runway, six feet from whoever was crawling around at the time on her elbows and knees with her ass up in the air and her nipples brushing the stage, a long-neck bottle in his hand and a big smile on his face. It seemed like a weird way for a gay man to spend his leisure time. But then I pictured the detachment in his eyes and his embarrassed gesture as he waved the brunette hooker away.
"I don't know what Carbone was," I said.
"Then keep your damn mouth shut," his captain said. "Sir. "
I took Carbone's file with me back to the mortuary and collected Summer and took her to the O Club for breakfast. We sat on our own in a corner, far from everyone else. I ate eggs and bacon and toast. Summer ate oatmeal and fruit and glanced through the file. I drank coffee. Summer drank tea.
"The pathologist is calling it gay-bashing," she said. "He thinks it's obvious. "
"He's wrong. "
"Carbone's not married. "
"Neither am I," I said. "Neither are you. Are you gay?"
"No. "
"There you go. "
"But misdirection has to be based on something real, right? I mean, if they knew he was a gambler, for instance, they might have crammed IOU slips in his mouth or thrown playing cards all around the place. Then we might have thought it was about gambling debts. You see what I mean? It just doesn't work if it's not based on anything. Something that can be disproved in five minutes looks stupid, not clever. "
"Your best guess?"
"Carbone was gay, and someone knew it, but it wasn't the reason. "
I nodded.
"It wasn't the reason," I said. "Let's say he was gay. He was in sixteen years. He survived most of the seventies and all of the eighties. So why would it happen now? Times are changing, getting better, he's getting better at hiding it, going out to strip joints with his buddies. No reason for it to happen now, all of a sudden. It would have happened before. Four years ago, or eight, or twelve, or sixteen. Whenever he joined a new unit and new people got to know him. "
"So what was the reason?"
"No idea. "
"Whatever, it could be embarrassing. Just like Kramer and his motel. "
I nodded again. "Bird seems to be a very embarrassing place. "
"You think this is why you're here? Carbone?"
"It's possible. Depends on what he represents. "
I asked Summer to file and forward all the appropriate notifications and reports and I headed back to my office. Rumor was spreading fast. I found three Delta sergeants waiting for me, looking for information. They were typical Special Forces guys. Small, lean, whippy, slightly unkempt, hard as nails. Two of them were older than the third. The young one was wearing a beard. He was tan, like he was just back from somewhere hot. They were all pacing in my outer office. My sergeant with the baby son was there with them. I guessed she was pulling a swing shift. She was looking at them like they might have been alternating spells of pacing with spells of hitting on her. She looked very civilized, in comparison to them. Almost genteel. I ushered them all into my inner office and closed the door and sat down at my desk and left them standing in front of it.
"Is it true about Carbone?" one of them asked.
"He was killed," I said. "Don't know who, don't know why. "
"When?"
"Last night, nine or ten o'clock. "
"Where?"
"Here. "
"This is a closed post. "
I nodded. "The perp wasn't a member of the general public. "
"We heard he was messed up good. "
"Pretty good. "
"When are you going to know who it was?"
"Soon, I hope. "
"You got leads?"
"Nothing specific. "
"When you know, are we going to know too?"
"You want to?"
"You bet your ass. "
"Why?"
"You know why," the guy said.
I nodded. Gay or straight, Carbone was a member of the world's most fearsome gang. His buddies were going to stand up for him. I felt a little envious for a second. If I got offed in the woods late one night, I doubted if three tough guys would go straight to someone's office, eight in the morning, champing at the bit, ready for revenge. Then I looked at the three of them again and thought, This particular perp could be in a shitload of trouble. All I'd have to do is drop a name.
"I need to ask you some cop questions," I said. I asked them all the usual stuff. Did Carbone have any enemies? Had there been any disputes? Threats? Fights? The three guys all shook their heads and answered every question in the negative.
"Anything else?" I asked. "Anything that put him at risk?"
"Like what?"
"Like anything," I said. It was as far as I wanted to go.
"No," they all said.
"Got any theories?" I asked.
"Look at the Rangers," the young one said. "Find someone who failed Delta training, and thinks he still has a point to prove. "
Then they left, and I sat there chewing on their final comment. A Ranger with a point to prove? I doubted it. Not plausibl
e. Delta sergeants don't go out in the woods with people they don't know and get hit on the back of the head. They train long and hard to make such eventualities very unlikely, even impossible. If a Ranger had picked a fight with Carbone, it would have been the Ranger we found at the base of the tree. If two Rangers had gone out there with him, we'd have found two Rangers dead. Or at the very least we would have found defensive injuries on Carbone himself. He wouldn't have gone down easily.
So he went out there with someone he knew and trusted. I pictured him at ease, maybe chatting, maybe smiling like he had done in the bar in town. Maybe leading the way somewhere, his back to his attacker, suspecting nothing. Then I pictured a tire iron or a crowbar being fumbled out from under a coat, swinging, hitting with a crunching impact. Then again. And again. It had taken three hard blows to put him down. Three surprise blows. And a guy like Carbone doesn't get surprised very often.
My phone rang. I picked it up. It was Colonel Willard, the asshole in Garber's office, up in Rock Creek.
"Where are you?" he asked.
"In my office," I said. "How else would I be answering my phone?"
"Stay there," he said. "Don't go anywhere, don't do anything, don't call anyone. Those are my direct orders. Just sit there quietly and wait. "
"For what?"
"I'm on my way down. "
He clicked off. I put the phone back in its cradle.
I stayed there. I didn't go anywhere, I didn't do anything, I didn't call anyone. My sergeant brought me a cup of coffee. I accepted it. Willard hadn't told me to die of thirst.
After an hour I heard a voice in the outer office and then the young Delta sergeant came back in, alone. The one with the beard and the tan. I told him to take a seat and pondered my orders. Don't go anywhere, don't do anything, don't call anyone. I guessed talking with the guy would amount to doing something, which would contravene the don't do anything part of the command. But then, breathing was doing something, technically. So was metabolizing. My hair was growing, my beard was growing, all twenty of my nails were growing, I was losing weight. It was impossible not to do anything. So I decided that component of the order was purely rhetorical.
"Help you, Sergeant?" I said.
"I think Carbone was gay," the sergeant said.
"You think he was?"
"OK, he was. "
"Who else knew?"
"All of us. "
"And?"
"And nothing. I thought you should know, is all. "
"You think it has a bearing?"
He shook his head. "We were comfortable with it. And whoever killed him wasn't one of us. It wasn't anyone in the unit. That's not possible. We don't do stuff like that. Outside the unit, nobody knew. Therefore it wasn't a factor. "
"So why tell me?"
"Because you're bound to find out. I wanted you to be ready for it. I didn't want it to be a surprise. "
"Because?"
"Then maybe you can keep it quiet. Since it's not a factor. "
I said nothing.
"It would trash his memory," the sergeant said. "And that's wrong. He was a nice guy and a good soldier. Being gay shouldn't be a crime. "
"I agree," I said.