Ah, Treachery!

Chapter 23

The Safeway was the one on Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown and, after a forty-two-minute wait, Colonel Ralph Millwed’s vigil was rewarded with the gray six-year-old Volvo station wagon that entered the parking lot and nosed into a space only one row up and four cars to his left.

The driver of the Volvo continued to sit in the car for a minute or so before she slowly got out, as if either stiff or tired, and headed for the Safeway’s entrance. She wore a denim skirt, a man’s white shirt and black leather speed-lace boots that didn’t quite reach mid-calf. The right boot even had a small snap-close pocket for a jackknife. For warmth, she wore an obviously old double-breasted navy-blue coat that would’ve had six ivory buttons if one of them hadn’t been missing. She wore the coat over her shoulders like a cape.

Shawnee Viar Lewis, only child of a CIA pensioner and widow of an AIDS victim, was halfway to the supermarket entrance when she turned, went back to the Volvo and locked it. The Colonel waited until she was well inside the Safeway before he got out of his rented black Mustang convertible.

Millwed wore what he’d always regarded as standard casual dress: a tweed jacket, tieless white shirt, sleeveless black cashmere sweater and twill pants of that peculiar shade once called officer’s pinks. On his feet were black cashmere socks and old but well-cared-for brown loafers.

They met at the frozen pizzas. Her shopping cart contained milk, a carton of Pall Malls, bread, butter, eggs, bacon, salad stuff and a matched pair of Idaho potatoes. The Colonel’s cart contained far more wholesome fare of nonfat milk, broccoli, three kinds of fruit, oatmeal and a small roasting chicken.

Shawnee Viar was reading the label on a twelve-inch pepperoni pizza when the Colonel said, “It’s none of my business, but if you’re going to eat that crap, you might as well eat the best. Here.”

He handed her a pizza that bore the name of Wolfgang Puck, a West Coast restaurateur who skillfully marketed not only his frozen pizzas but himself. Shawnee Viar put the pepperoni pizza back, accepted the one offered by the Colonel, examined it dubiously and said, “What’s so great about these?”

“They’re almost like the real thing.”

“Well, that’s about as close as I ever get,” she said, dropped the Puck pizza into her cart, gave his cart a quick inspection, looked up and said, “What happens when you come down with an acute attack of the munchies?”

“I drink a little gin or whiskey.”

“Then you’re no purist?”

“Purity’s pretty boring.”

She smiled slightly. “You’re trying to pick me up, aren’t you?”

“I’m inviting you to have a drink.”

“Where?”

“Know the Last Call way out on Wisconsin?”

“Damn near to Bethesda?”

He nodded.

“Afraid somebody’ll see us?”

The Colonel shrugged. “I’m not sure how broad-minded your husband is.”

“He’s dead. What about your wife?”

“When last heard from, she was still living in Tulsa.”

After two drinks at the Last Call, they drove in her car to the Sunrise Motel in Rockville, Maryland, where the Colonel registered them as Mr. and Mrs. F. Pierce and handed the room clerk $200 in lieu of a credit card. He also made up a license number for the Mustang, invented an address (741 N. Locust Street), a town (Mt. Morrison, Iowa) and used his own birthday, 71154, for a zip code. The room clerk scarcely glanced at any of it.

The motel room was neither larger nor smaller, cleaner nor dirtier than most motel rooms. It had a bathroom with a molded plastic tub and shower. The bed was queen-size. A sign on the big new Sony TV set offered free HBO but warned that the salacious-movie channel cost $8.00.

Shawnee Viar was sitting in the chair that went with the kneehole desk when the Colonel returned with two cans of Diet 7-Up and a bucket of ice. He placed them on the desk next to a bottle of Absolut vodka. After he mixed two drinks and handed her one, she tasted it, looked up at him and said, “This is almost like a real assignation, isn’t it?”

“Why almost?”

“Well, assignations are usually made up of people who know each other.”

“You’re thinking of trysts.”

“Am I? I thought they were the same.” She drank more of the vodka, inspected the room, then looked up at the Colonel again. “What do we do now, take off our clothes and hop into bed?”

“If that’s what you want. But I thought you might want to talk a little and make sure you haven’t hooked up with some weirdo.”

“I don’t mind weirdos.”

“Know many?”

“Well, I’m back living with my father and on a weirdo scale of one to ten, he’d rate a nine. Maybe a ten. My late husband was only a four, maybe even a three, and I, well, I’m maybe a ten. Some days even a ten-plus.”

“What’s so weird about you?”

“The fact that I’m sitting here drinking your booze and it’s not yet noon. That’s weird for me. And the fact that ten or fifteen minutes from now I’ll probably rip off my clothes, jump into bed and, with any luck, do stuff I never did with my husband, who believed there was some law that said people can only fuck Saturday nights — if they fuck at all.”

“Your husband died when?”

Shawnee Viar looked down into her drink, thought for a moment, looked up at him and said, “A year and three weeks ago tomorrow.”

“And you live with your father now.”

She nodded. “In Georgetown?”

“Maybe, but I’m not giving you my name, address or phone number till I find out if you’re a weirdo or not.”

“Then let’s find out,” he said, went over to her, put his drink on the desk, did the same with hers, gently pulled her to her feet and started unbuttoning her man’s white shirt.

“You want me to keep the boots on?” she asked.

He looked down at the heavy black leather boots with their bulbous toes. “Sure,” he said. “They might add a kink or two to what we’ve got in mind.”

When the sex ended thirty-six minutes later, Shawnee Viar lay nude on the bed except for her boots. Colonel Millwed was also nude save for a corner of a sheet that covered his groin, not out of modesty, but because that was how the tangled sheet, blanket and counterpane wound up after the final variation.

Once his breath was back to normal, the Colonel said, “You must’ve memorized a couple of shelves of sex manuals.”

“Any complaints?”

“None. You’re exactly what you claim to be — a first-class weirdo.”

“I had this funny feeling,” she said.

“When?”

“During it. The fucking. I had this feeling somebody was watching us.”

“Some people like being watched — or to pretend they’re being watched. What about you?”

She seemed to think about it. “I guess it did sort of spice things up.”

“If somebody’d made a tape of us,” the Colonel said, “would you want to see it?”

“Sure. Who wouldn’t?”

Millwed rose, went over to the TV set, pushed the eject button on the built-in VCR without switching the set on, and a videotape slid out. Shawnee Viar sat up. He turned, handed her the tape and said, “Be sure to rewind it first.”

She looked down at it, then up at him. “But this isn’t the original, is it?”

“No, that’s next door,” he said, using an over-the-shoulder thumb to indicate the room behind the TV set. He then picked up his Jockey shorts, pulled them on, sat down on a chair and reached for his black cashmere socks.

“What’s this supposed to buy you?” she said, moving the videocassette back and forth a little.

“An in-house live monitor on your daddy, Hank Viar,” he said, slipping his feet into his loafers. “We need to know where he goes, when he goes and who he talks to — either in person or by phone or fax.” By then, the Colonel had his pants on and was buttoning his shirt. “We’ll want two daily reports,” he continued, “one at noon, the other at midnight.”

“Or what?” she said. “You’ll send him this tape?”

“It won’t be sent to him,” he said, pulling the sleeveless sweater down over his head. “It’ll be sent to his friends and enemies.”

“With your face and little-bitty cock prominently on display?”

The Colonel smiled. “Electronic magic will white out my face. As for my cock, it’s just average. No birthmarks. No tattoos. Just your run-of-the-mill circumcised prick.”

“Where do I call you?”

“Nice try. Somebody’ll call you.”

She was again studying the featureless videotape cassette when she said, “A full report will go something like this: ‘Dear old Dad awoke at nine, saw no one, talked to no one and passed out dead drunk at eleven thirty-five P.M. right after the news.’ Except there aren’t going to be any reports.”

“Fine,” the Colonel said. “Then copies’ll be sent to his three friends and his host of enemies — a lot of ’em still with the agency. They’ll have a giggle over it. Pass it around. Old Hank Viar’s kid, they’ll say, fucking and sucking the mystery man.”

“He won’t care.”

“But you will.”

“Not really,” she said, put the tape down, pulled the sheet loose from its tangle and draped it around her shoulders. When she had it the way she wanted, she looked at him again and said, “You didn’t ask me much about my husband, did you, Colonel Millwed?”

There was a sudden absolute silence, the kind that ends not only noise but also time and motion. After hearing his name, Colonel Millwed froze — his right arm almost through the sleeve of his tweed jacket. Then time, motion and noise started again and the Colonel put his left arm through the other sleeve, tugged at the jacket’s lapels, buttoned its center button and resisted the temptation to look at himself in the mirror.

“Hank talked to you about me,” he said. “Probably when he was shitfaced. Even showed you a photo or two.”

“Only one photo,” she said. “Of you and him and the then Colonel — now General — Walker Hudson. There was one other guy in the photo. A Major Partain. Edd-with-two-ds Partain. For some reason, Twodees Partain gnaws at my old man a lot.”

“I believe all that except the gnawing part,” he said. “Nothing ever gnawed at Hank Viar. Not Partain. Not even the suicide of his wife. Your mother.”

She continued to stare at him without expression until he nodded and said, “Okay. It’s a standoff. You won’t make any reports and I won’t pass out any copies of the tape.”

She continued to look at him without expression, neither accepting nor rejecting the offer.

“You recognized me this morning, didn’t you?” he said. “From that photo.”

“Why else would I be here?”

The Colonel looked unsure for a moment, as if he really didn’t want to know the answer. He held out his right hand and, using his harshest command tone, barked an order. “Gimme the fucking tape.”

She shook her head. “That’s not part of the deal.”

“What deal?”

“When I saw you this morning in that dumb convertible, I went back and pretended to lock my car and make sure it was you — one of the two guys my daddy warned me about. When you popped up at the frozen pizzas, the deal sort of popped into my mind.”

“What fucking deal, goddamnit?”

“Know what killed my husband, Colonel?”

“I heard pneumonia.”

She shook her head. “AIDS. And for more than a year now I’ve had myself checked weekly. Day before yesterday, my test turned out to be HIV positive even though I’m still asymptomatic.”

He shook his head. “That doesn’t mean you gave it to me.”

“No, but under certain circumstances I might consider it my civic duty to report all of my recent sexual partners. And that means you. Just wonderful you.”

Millwed gave her a bleak stare, then a nod of dismissal, and headed for the motel room door. Just before reaching it, he turned back and said, “Don’t show that tape to anyone.”

“I won’t, unless there’re certain circumstances.”

“There won’t be,” he said, opened the door and was gone.