“Them Gila lizards mostly. There ain’t nothing down here to guard. Worst problem they got is all the antelope tripping over the sensor wires they got running everywhere.”
“That’s why they shoot them?”
“Yeah, that’s the excitement. Just the shooting. Nothing to eat and nothing to fuck. At least they got women on the Hill. Once some of the WACs came down to keep us company, but they don’t put out, never, so what the fuck?”
Connolly put out his cigarette. “Well, it won’t be much longer.”
“According to who?”
Connolly shrugged. “What do they tell you?”
“You kidding me? Brother, they don’t tell us nothing. We’re not supposed to know. They told us when Roosevelt died-that’s it. For all I know, the war’s over.”
“It’s not,” Connolly said.
The kid took off his hat to wipe his forehead, the skin now turned permanently red under the short blond hair. “Well, I got to get going. I was just on my break. Nice talking to you.”
Connolly looked at him to see if he was joking, but the face was earnest.
“Watch out for the centipedes, they sting like hell.”
“I’ll do that. Mind if I ask you a question?”
The kid, about to move away, turned toward him, his eyes suddenly wary. Connolly had seen the look before, the automatic reaction of someone used to the police, the legacy of too many Saturday night brawls that had got out of hand. He waited.
“When you were on the Hill, did you know a guy called Karl Bruner?”
“Karl?” he said, looking puzzled. “Sure. He was G-2. Everybody knew him. Why?”
“He’s dead.”
“Karl?” He was genuinely surprised. So not even gossip had penetrated the news blackout. Or maybe nobody had cared.
“He was killed.”
“No shit. How?”
“He was murdered.”
The kid stared at him. “You kidding me?” he said quietly.
“No. He was found in the river park in Santa Fe, off the Alameda. You hadn’t heard?”
“I told you, we don’t hear nothing down here. Who did it?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”
“You’re a cop,” he said, an accusation, as if Connolly should have declared himself earlier.
“No. Army Intelligence. We’re looking into it on our own.”
“I don’t understand. What happened?”
Connolly watched his reaction as he answered. “We don’t know. The police think it might have been a homosexual murder.”
It was a surprise punch. The kid caught his breath with a nervous laugh of disbelief. “That’s fucking crazy.”
“Why?”
“Why? Karl wasn’t any fruit.”
“How do you know?”
He sputtered. “How do I know? He just wasn’t, that’s all. Christ Almighty. Karl?”
“Did you know him well?”
“He was just a guy in the office. He used to give me duty assignments after I came off the mounteds.”
“So you don’t know who his friends were? Whether he was seeing anybody?”
“No.”
“Okay. I just thought you might have noticed something. He talk to you much?”
“Some.”
“What about?”
“Nothing. Stuff. You know.”
“What kind of stuff?”
He hesitated for a minute, and Connolly could see him debating with himself, embarrassed.
“Did he ask about your girlfriends?” Connolly said, steering him.
“Like whether I was getting any? Yeah, he asked that.”
“And you liked to tell him.”
“Go fuck yourself,” he said, angry now.
“No, it’s important. Did you get the sense that he was interested or just making conversation to make you think he was interested?”
But this was too complicated for him, and he looked at Connolly blankly. “He was interested. He liked to know where you could go, things like that.”
“And who?”
“Sometimes.”
“And did you tell him?”
He darted his eyes away, searching for a way out, wondering how they had got here. “Sometimes.”
“But he was just curious? He didn’t want the names for himself?”
“No,” he said, seeing the implication, “but not because he was a fruit. He was already fucking somebody.”
Connolly was quiet, unsure where to go with this. It was possible that in the Texan’s mind, bored and adolescent, somebody always had to be fucking somebody. It was possible that Bruner had used this as a cover, a lure for a braggart’s gossip. But it was just possible that it was true, the missing link.
“What makes you think so?”
“I don’t know-things he said, I guess. You know, like he’d say he had a date.”
“Those exact words? He had a date?”
“Something like that. Yeah, exact, I guess. I didn’t pay much attention.”
“He mention a name? How did you know it was a woman?”
The Texan flushed. “Well, what else? Jesus Christ. I mean, why would he want to hear about what I was doing if he was a fruit?”
“That’s a good question.”
“What do you mean by that?” It was at once hostile and uncertain, as if the situation were so foreign to him that he wasn’t sure he should resent it.
“Did he ever ask for any sexual details? You know-”
“No. You don’t talk about stuff like that.”
“So it was just ‘I had a good time last night,’ or ‘Boy oh boy, you should see-’ ”
“Yeah. Like that. Nothing dirty. Look, he asked. What was I supposed to say?”
“Maybe your reputation preceded you. Maybe he was looking for pointers.”
“Is that supposed to be funny?”
“So how often did you guys compare notes?”
“For two cents I’d push your face in. You got a right to ask all this, I suppose?”
