Part 15 (1/2)

Radke drained his bottle and signaled to Gerri for a second. She had it on the counter almost before his hand went down.

”So what were they fighting about?”

”Her drawings. He told Marty and me they gave him flashbacks.” Radke drank most of the second bottle in one big gulp. ”It was something to do with what went wrong when his unit was on the road to Kufah.”

”What was that?” I prompted when he fell silent.

”You ever been in a war? It's nothing like what they show on TV or video games. You're tired all the time. You're scared, you don't know who's a friend, who's an enemy. If fighting starts, it's not organized. You don't always know where the shots are coming from and, if you shoot back, will you hit your own guys? Maybe it was different in World War Two, but in Iraq-even me, I was in Support, but I still got caught in a couple of gun battles because there aren't any lines, yours or the enemy's.”

He shredded his napkin and started laying pieces out on the counter as if he were trying to establish some real battle lines. I shook my head at Gerri as she started toward us.

”Is that what happened on the road to Kufah?” I asked.

”Chad couldn't say, even at the VA when we were with one of those counselors. We got five sessions! Five sessions to undo five years of war!” Radke snorted in derision. ”Chad lost his whole squad. That's all he ever said, not any details about how it happened. You know what that's like? Guys you been eating and sleeping with, suddenly they're lying dead all around you. They sent him home after that for four months, then he had to redeploy. And he was fine, he said, as long as he was over there. But once he got discharged, once he got home, he couldn't take being around civilians. No one here gives a rat's a.s.s about what we went through. It's h.e.l.l to be there, to be going through it. But it's a hundred-no, a million-times worse to be here where no one cares.

”'I lost my whole squad on the road to Kufah,'” he mimicked in a savage voice. ”'b.u.mmer, man. But what about American Idol American Idol?' And the women are worse!”

”How'd you end up at Club Gouge?”

He gave me a sidelong look, checking me for signs of shockability or maybe prudery. ”We heard this gal sits naked on a stage. And the drawings . . . It was something to do.”

I'd printed out a copy of Alexandra Guaman's yearbook photo. I pulled it out and showed it to Radke.

”She was Nadia Guaman's sister and she was killed in Iraq. She wasn't with the Army, though-she worked for one of the private security firms. Hers is the face that Nadia kept painting on the Body Artist. I wondered if Chad knew Alexandra Guaman in Iraq.”

Radke shook his head. ”He never said. It's like I told you, it's a big country. And it's not just we're a big Army, but the contractors . . . You know they have more contractors than Uncle Sam's soldiers over there? Some guy, he said, 'Iraq isn't the war of the willing, it's the war of the billing.' And until you've seen it, you don't get it! The contractors, they're everywhere, building c.r.a.ppy housing for us, good s.h.i.+t for themselves. They're hustling a buck at the PX; they're taking convoys around. We're busting our a.s.ses for base pay, and we have to protect the contractors, who are drawing double overtime doing less work than we are!”

His voice was starting to rise again so I broke in. ”What would Chad say after you left Club Gouge if he never said whether he knew Alexandra or Nadia Guaman?”

”We'd come here-here to Plotzky's, I mean-a lot of times. Like, the night that gal got shot, we were here, right on these stools, watching the Hawks. Marty, one of our crowd who we met at the VA, you know, he'd say to Chad, 'Why are you letting that broad get under your skin? Did she ditch you or something?' But Chad, he'd just say, 'She's rubbing my face in it.'”

”Rubbing his face in what happened on the road to Kufah or in a busted relations.h.i.+p?”

Tim started peeling the label from one of his empties. ”If I had to guess, I'd guess the road to Kufah just because-if some girl is riding you, she can make you madder than h.e.l.l but she's not what's giving you flashbacks. Maybe Chad wrote about her on his blog. He kept one-a lot of guys did . . . do-where they write pretty much everything. It's not just that it pa.s.ses the time, but it makes you think that somewhere someone cares if you live or die.”

Chad's blog, of course, I should have been reading that already. Maybe John Vishneski had been right to suggest I was incompetent. Despite my brave words, I was being a slow-footed, clumsy seeker, something like a two-toed sloth cras.h.i.+ng through a jungle. I was making it easy for a skilled hider to stay twenty steps ahead of me.

”The night before Nadia died, when Chad confronted her in the parking lot, you came out and brought him back to the club. He had some kind of dark object, looked like a cloth about yea big.” I sketched the shape in the air. ”Did he show you that? Do you have any idea what it could be?”

Tim shook his head. ”A dark cloth about eight or ten inches wide? Could it have been, like, a scarf folded into a square? Maybe he thought she'd knitted it for him.”

That hadn't occurred to me. Don't pretend you don't know what this is, Don't pretend you don't know what this is, Chad had yelled. Maybe it had been something some woman mailed him. Maybe he thought Nadia had been a secret correspondent sending him presents while he was in the desert. Yet another unprovable idea. It seemed impossible to get real information about anything or anyone connected with Nadia and Chad. Chad had yelled. Maybe it had been something some woman mailed him. Maybe he thought Nadia had been a secret correspondent sending him presents while he was in the desert. Yet another unprovable idea. It seemed impossible to get real information about anything or anyone connected with Nadia and Chad.

I tried not to let the weight of impossibility drag me down. I thanked Tim and signaled Gerri for the check. Tim gave me the names and numbers of the three other guys in his and Chad's band of post-Iraq brothers, as well as the name of their counselor at the VA. Chad might have told her something privately that he hadn't felt able to say in front of the group.

23.

What's in a Blog?

Eleven American soldiers were killed Tuesday on the road to Kufah when they were trapped in an ambush and insurgents burned their Hummers with incendiary devices, the Army reported today. Convoys had been traveling that route with relative safety since May. Insurgents loyal to Amir Harith al-Ha.s.san, a dissident s.h.i.+a mullah, claimed responsibility.

That was all I could find about any incidents on the road to Kufah. Only three of the dead were mentioned by name, because they were from New York, and the story had been carried in the New York Times. New York Times. I didn't find any mention of it in the Chicago papers, which surprised me since a Chicago youth had been the sole survivor of the attack. No wonder Tim was bitter about the American response to him and his comrades. I didn't find any mention of it in the Chicago papers, which surprised me since a Chicago youth had been the sole survivor of the attack. No wonder Tim was bitter about the American response to him and his comrades.

I was curled up on my living-room couch with the dogs and my laptop. The dogs still smelled faintly of lavender, and they were still tired enough from their morning run that they'd been content to chase tennis b.a.l.l.s in the backyard while I made a pot of spaghetti. Mr. Contreras had shared it with me, even though I only put in mushrooms and peas instead of the tomato sauce he preferred. After dinner, he'd gone out to spend an evening with some of his remaining pals from his old local.

I turned to Chad's blog. As John Vishneski had reported when he hired me, the early entries were filled with a kind of happy zest, as if Chad were writing up a road trip with his buddies. When he reached Iraq and was reporting in the blistering heat, you still got a sense of underlying good humor and a serious commitment to his country.

A few months ago I was playing football and going nowhere. Now, even though I know it's hard on my folks and my friends, I feel like I'm serving my country and doing the right thing. So, naming no names, you guys back home think all I can do is drink beer. Let me tell you, here in Iraq I STILL drink beer, plus carry a hundred pounds of equipment into the desert. And do a hundred push-ups. Of course, football training didn't hurt my conditioning, but I'd like to see the Bears forward line go through the workout we get here!

Even after his first year in Iraq, when he'd been under fire a number of times, he managed to keep his spirits up in his posts.

I keep thinking of that Tommy Lee Jones flick Men in Black. Men in Black. When we see men in black here, we know we're in trouble, and I wish to G.o.d some alien would rise up out of the desert and put a big old tentacle around their necks. Or just one of our local little pets. When we see men in black here, we know we're in trouble, and I wish to G.o.d some alien would rise up out of the desert and put a big old tentacle around their necks. Or just one of our local little pets.

Vipers are a big deal here, something they never talked about during Basic. We have a snake guy here. His name is Herb, which is so right because a snake man is a herpetologist when he's at home, so we call him Herbie the Herpes. But you'd better believe it's in good fun because old Herpes is the go-to guy if you find one of his little friends crawling around your tent. He tries to get us to love them like they are our brothers in nature, but nothing doing for this infantryman!

Anyway, men in black came up on us in the middle of the night. We fought for three hours. I can't tell you how scared I was, RPGs exploding around us, IEDs, the whole nine yards. How we didn't lose anyone I don't know, but we had five guys with big-time wounds, including Jesse Laredo. You've read about him if you've been with me from the get-go, great joker, littlest guy in the unit, but the strongest. Jesse would give his right arm for a buddy, and that's just what he did tonight. So all of you reading this blog send a prayer Jesse's way, and for his mom and dad in Albuquerque.

We love you, Jess, we're praying for you. And a big thank-you prayer to our medics, too, in here with their choppers in no time, getting Jess and the rest of them off to the hospital s.h.i.+p out in the Gulf.

Chad wrote about collecting food and toys for Iraqi orphans during Ramadan, and setting up a football squad at his forward operating base. He wrote about warm showers on hot days, cold showers on cold rainy days, but it wasn't until his third deployment that his tone turned bitter.

Maybe if I had a wife back home, I'd love my time Stateside the way the other guys do, but there's no one who can really relate to what I'm going through here. My mom and dad read my posts, they send me care packages, but it's not like having a wife or a buddy who stays up nights hoping I'll make it through another day. I spent four months in Chicago, and every day got me longing more and more for the desert and the vipers. Everyone's got their own life to live, I understand that, mortgages, dental bills, trips to the mall, but does anyone remember we're fighting a war over here?

The blog entries ended there, a week before the news report of the incident on the road to Kufah. I couldn't figure it out. The archive list down the right-hand column showed thirteen more weeks of posts, but when I clicked on them, only a blank page came up.

I did as many searches as I had the skills to figure out, but I couldn't come up with Chad's post about the battle he'd survived.

It was going on ten p.m., but I called the client, anyway, to ask him if he remembered Chad's blogs.

”I'm trying to read about the battle where he lost all the men in his unit, but all his posts after October second that year have disappeared from his website. Did you or Mona print them out? Or do you remember what he wrote in them?”

”Why does it matter?” John Vishneski asked. ”That was almost two years ago now. What does that have to do with this dead gal?”

”Maybe nothing. But Tim Radke says Nadia's paintings were giving Chad flashbacks to the road to Kufah. The dead woman's sister also died in Iraq when an IED exploded. I'm wondering if the sister was present at the battle for some reason.”

Vishneski sighed heavily. ”I read his blog, of course I did, but I never printed them out. You think, with a computer, it'll always be there. So, no, I don't remember, except he was trying to give first aid to these guys who had phosphorus burns on them. And I think that's when he really started to fall apart, he felt so helpless. Helpless! I felt so G.o.dd.a.m.n helpless myself.”

His voice suddenly cracked. ”I called him every day. I could tell he was hurting and I couldn't get anywhere near him to help. That's why that prison hospital just about did me in. At least now I can sit with him. Believe me, I am real grateful to you for making that happen even if you can't figure out why someone framed my boy for killing that woman. I went over and played my clarinet for Chad for an hour, even though I expect the other patients thought they were hearing a cat being tortured.”

It was a gallant effort on his part not to break down on the phone.

”Bet if you played like Larry Combs, Chad wouldn't know it was you, would he?”

He gave a little laugh. I thanked him for the tulips before he hung up. Another gallant gesture on his part.