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I kept tight hold on the ten-dollar bill and took her through it, step by step She told us that after I slid her off irls to check with She had ed whispered conversations withNone of them had any information at all, either firsthand or secondhand There were no ru a problem in the motel She had checked back in the private rooone to the dressing rooood Everybody else was either up on the stage or across the street She knew she should have kept on asking But there was no gossip She felt sure so bad had actually happened So she figured she would just give up on it and blowto stepped into the dressing rooood description of Carbone Like most hookers she had trained herself to renized It makes them feel special Makes them tip better She told us Carbone had warned her not to tell any MP anything She put e his own fro Then to make sure she took him seriously he had slapped her twice, hard, fast, forehand, backhand She had been stunned by the blows She hadn&039;t seen the She sounded iainst other blows she had received Like a connoisseur And looking at her I figured she was reasonably faain," I said "It was the soldier, not the owner"

She looked at me like I was crazy

"The owner never hits us," she said "We&039;re his ave her the ten bucks and we left her there at the quiet table

"What does it ," I said

"How did you know?"

I shrugged We were back in Kraetting ready to hit the road one last tiuess I started to realize in Paris When aiting for Joe at the airport That crowd They atching people coreet the That&039;s hoas in the bar that night I walked in, I&039; They were curious for a split second But they didn&039;t know me and they didn&039;t like what I was, so they turned away again and shut e Except for Carbone He didn&039;t shut ht it was just rando hi me just as much"

"It had to be random He didn&039;t know you"

"He didn&039;t know es when he saw them He&039;d been in the ar at"

"So why turn toward you?"

"It was like a double-take Like a stutter step He was turning away, then he changed his mind and turned back He wanted me to come to him"

"Why?"

"Because he wanted to knohy I was there"

"Did you tell hi back, yes, I did Not in detail I just wanted hi worried, so I told hi to do with anyone, just some lost property across the street, uy Very subtle He reeled ot it out ofI once said to Willard I said things happen in order to dead-end other things Carbone wanted ht fast And suys, that&039;s for sure He went in and s And then he came out and let me think the owner had done it He didn&039;t even lie about it He just let me assume He wound me up like a clockwork toy and pointed me in the direction he wanted And off I went I sht it out in the lot And there was Carbone, watching He saork the guy over like he kneould and then he put in the coot both ends bottled up The girl was silenced and he thought I would be taken out of the picture because of the disciplinary procedure He was a very suy, Summer I wish I had met him before"

"Why did he want you dead-ended? What was his motive?"

"He didn&039;t want me to find out who took the briefcase"

"Why not?"

I sat down on the bed

"Why did we never find the woman Kramer met in here?"

"I don&039;t know"

"Because there never was a woman," I said "Kramer met Carbone in here"

She just stared at ay too," I said "He and Carbone were getting it on"

"Carbone took the briefcase," I said "Right out of this room Because he had to keep the relationship secret Just like we thought about the phanto personal to hi about the Irwin conference Talking about how Arht its corner So maybe Carbone was curious Or even concerned He&039;d been an infantryets into Delta, he&039;s got a lot of unit loyalty Maybe more loyalty to his unit than to his lover"

"I don&039;t believe it," Summer said

"You should," I said "It all fits Andrea Norton more or less told us I think she knew about Kramer Either consciously or subconsciously, I&039;m not sure which We accused her, and she wasn&039;t annoyed, remember? She was amused instead Or bewildered, uy, maybe she&039;d picked up a vibe, professionally Or the absence of a vibe, personally So in our minds we had her in bed with Kramer, and she just couldn&039;t et mad It just didn&039;t connect And we know Krae was a sham No kids He hadn&039;t lived at home for five years Detective Clark wondered why he wasn&039;t divorced He once asked eneral, is it? I said, No, it isn&039;t But being gay is That&039;s for daeneral That&039;s why he kept the irlfriend photo in Carbone&039;s wallet"

"We have no proof"

"But we can get close Carbone had a condoets ten it&039;s from the same pack as the one Walter Reed took off Kraets ten we can conment orders and find out where and when theyPlus Carbone was a vehicle guy for Delta Their adjutant told me that He had access to their whole stable of Huets ten we&039;ll find Carbone was out in one, alone, on New Year&039;s Eve"

"Was he killed for the briefcase? In the end? Like Mrs Kramer?"

I shook my head "Neither one of them was killed just for the briefcase"

She just looked at me

"Later," I said "One step at a time"

"But Carbone had the briefcase You said so He ran off with it"

I nodded "And he searched it as soon as he got back to Bird He found the agenda He read it And so in it made him call his CO immediately"

"He called Brubaker? How could he do that? He couldn&039;t say, Hey, I was just sleeping with a general and guess what I found?"

"He could have said he found it somewhere else On the sidewalk,if Brubaker knew about Carbone and Kra It&039;s possible Delta is a family and Brubaker was a very hands-on type of CO It&039;s possible he knew And ence purposes These guys are incredibly cole or any advantage or any wrinkle So maybe the price of Brubaker&039;s tolerance was that Carbone had to pass stuff on, from the pillow talk"