Ping-Pong Heart

– 17-

The hallway was floored with cheap brown tile, Army-issue. After passing three or four closed doors, we went through an archway into what appeared to be your typical Orderly Room. Grey desks in the center, even greyer filing cabinets lining the walls, telephones and in-trays scattered around the room. A bulletin board with a white organizational chart and yellow carbon-paper duty roster, bristled with stainless steel thumbtacks. Off to the left, a sealed door with a double-paned glass window in the center was marked secure communications. It was dark, but the room behind it appeared small, like a phone booth.

“A direct line to DC,” I whispered to Ernie. Secure satellite communications with the Pentagon.

Another door was open in the right corner, and Captain Blood flicked on its overhead fluorescent light and strode into the small office. As we caught up with him, he was pulling shut a long curtain over a huge map on the wall. He turned and glared at us.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” he asked.

I told him.

“CID,” he said, shaking his head. “Criminal freaking investigation. Whoop-dee-doo.”

He was the type of guy who liked to use plenty of obscenities so that no one missed the fact that he was tough. He backed that up with muscles so pumped up from lifting weights that his fatigue blouse could barely contain his shoulders. On his desk, where a photo of the wife and kids would normally be, stood a photo of Captain Blood almost nude, greased down and wearing the silk briefs of a body-builder, facing the camera, every tendon tensed, flexing and smiling with all the wattage he could muster.

Ernie pointed at the photo. “Did you win?”

Captain Blood seemed thrown by the question. “Win what?”

“That body-building contest.”

His forehead crinkled over bushy eyebrows. “Came in second. The winner had a fix in with the judges.”

I was going to ask him how he knew that, but decided to drop it. Instead, I asked, “When did you last see Major Frederick M. Schultz?”

Blood plopped down in his big leather chair, crouching first, then letting his entire weight fall from a height of three feet, as if his bulk were too much for his knees to bear.

“That asshole,” he said. “That’s why you’re here?”

“That’s why,” I said.

He grabbed a rubber ball about the size of a grapefruit and started to squeeze, his massive fingers straining, turning white, then red. Before he answered, he switched the ball to the other hand and squeezed again, ten times, as if wringing someone’s neck.

“Do you realize what that moron was trying to do?” he asked. His eyes were wide, his face grim. When we didn’t answer, he continued squeezing and grimacing. “To save a few dollars,” Blood said, “that moron Schultz was planning on eviscerating our hard-won ability to go after Communist agents. Eviscerating it! Do you know what that means?”

Again, we didn’t answer.

“It means cutting the guts out of our counterintelligence operation. Cutting the guts out of the very thing that is holding the line against those Commie bastards up north.” He pointed to the north, waving his forefinger as if he were ordering a hot dog at a crowded ball game. “The GI villages in this country are crawling with Communist agents. All these Korean bitches have to do is spread their legs and the dumb-as-bricks American GIs tell the whore anything she wants to know. Anything. I’ve seen them bring reams of classified information out to their yobo just because she refused to give head. I mean they’re dumb, manipulated by every cunt who bats her fake eyelashes.”

He paused, studying us, his eyes so wide they were moist.

“You didn’t answer my question,” I said.

“What?”

“When did you last see Major Schultz?”

He stared at me, incredulous, and then slowly, like bubbling magma rising from his chest, his rage grew. “When did I last see him?”

“That’s the question,” I replied.

His eyes widened, and he ponderously lifted his tremendous bulk from his seat. He placed both hands on the edge of his desk and leaned toward us. “You think I did it, don’t you?”

“Did what?”

“Don’t play innocent with me. You think I killed the poor dumb son of a bitch.”

I shrugged. “We’ve come to no conclusions, Captain. We’re just investigating.”

“Just investigating? No, you’re not. You’re doing more than that. You’re messing with our operations here. You’re going to take up my time and take up the time of my counter-intel agents, and all because you think I’m the guy who offed that prissy asshole Schultz. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You think I killed the twerp.”

Twerp. The same thing Ernie had called Fenton, now being tossed around as an insult to a dead man.

Ernie took a half step forward. “Hold on there, Captain Blood.” He dragged out the name, letting him know that it sounded phony. “We’re here on an official investigation. A homicide investigation. Now, you can answer our questions here, or you can answer them down at the MP station. It’s up to you.”

I wished Ernie hadn’t said that. The fact of the matter was, we didn’t have the authority to take him in. At least not yet, because the Provost Marshal hadn’t signed off on this part of the investigation. He was still banking on pinning Schultz’s murder on the fugitive Miss Jo. So we had neither the legal authority, nor apparently the manpower to take him in. Especially if those three, still-standing GIs returned any time soon.

Captain Blood realized Ernie’s mistake.

“Have I been brought up on charges?”

“The investigation hasn’t reached that stage yet.”

“Then you have no right to take a commissioned officer into custody. Who do you think you’re bluffing?” He waggled his finger at us. “I could eat you two guys for lunch.”

I was getting a little tired of these tough-guy cliches. “You make that one up yourself?”

“What?” Blood seemed genuinely befuddled. He was so impressed with his own bluster that he probably wasn’t even hearing himself anymore.

“If you don’t cooperate,” I told him, “it’s not going to look good for you or for the Five Oh First.”

“What the hell do you know about what looks good? I’ve been dealing with this Command for the last three years. And dealing with it well. The Eighth Army Chief of Staff understands the importance of our mission, even if you two half-assed gumshoes don’t.” I was about to reply when he said, “Now get out of my office.”

I looked at Ernie, he looked at me. He shrugged. We hadn’t really expected any cooperation, but we’d had to stop here and put the 501st Commander on notice. Give him a chance to cooperate. Document that we’d asked him questions and he’d refused to answer. That’s the way Colonel Brace, the Provost Marshal, always insisted investigations be conducted. We’d done what we could. If Blood wanted to do things the hard way, that was up to him. We turned to leave.

“And one more thing,” Captain Blood said. “Don’t think you can go questioning my agents. It won’t do you any good. They’re loyal to me and the Five Oh First.”

That proposition remained to be tested.

Ernie and I stepped out of his office. Blood followed us down the hallway. Earlier he’d been reluctant to talk, but now he didn’t seem to want the conversation to end. “And one more thing,” he said again, “what was your name? Sween-o? We know about what you’ve done-and your contacts up north. You keep pushing this and we’ll find out more.”

In the middle of the hallway, I stopped and turned back to face him. “What are you talking about?” There was a low menace in my voice, one I hadn’t intended, but that was there nevertheless.

Captain Blood smirked at my discomfort and lowered his voice, too. “We’ll find out what we need to find out, Sween-o,” he said. “About you and your girlfriend.”

Ernie grabbed my elbow, as if to say don’t react.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

“Sure you don’t.”

I turned and continued toward the exit. Outside, Ernie and I hopped down the wooden steps. Blood was standing on the porch. As we crossed the gravel parking lot, he said what I’d been fearing he’d say. “And your son. We’ll find out more about him, too. You can count on it!”

Ernie hustled me into the jeep, started the engine, and we backed up and sped away. On the way down the incline, the three-quarter-ton truck passed us in the opposite direction. The same three soldiers were in it, heading back to their lord and master.