Free The Summer Soldier by Nicholas Guild Page B

a push in the right direction, or at
least in some direction away from you, and allow him to chart his
course on that.
    “The analogy with bulls and red flags should
be obvious.”
    Creon, it seemed, had the beginnings of a
theory, and he was very busy fitting the world around it.
    His office was a little partitioned off cube
on the second floor of the new city hall, and, although lacking the
floor space taken up by a queen size bed, it represented a shade
more than 10 percent of the working quarters of the whole police
force, which had to share the second floor with the comptroller’s
office and the Department of Youth Services.
    There wasn’t much in that cramped space to
suggest the character of its occupant. Aside from the usual pale
gray metal desk, which was covered with half filled out yellow
forms, nested chrome in and out trays, and of course the black
plastic telephone with one red and five clear plastic buttons,
there were only a metal filing cabinet and two chairs, both made
out of metal and naugahyde, both on rollers and both pale gray.
There wasn’t even the usual little clear plastic cube on the desk,
filled up on five of its six sides with pictures of Mrs. Creon and
her brood.
    Well, you couldn’t fault him for that;
perhaps he preferred to keep those parts of his life separate.
    Still, as he waited there alone for the great
man to come and take his statement, Guinness couldn’t help but
compare Creon’s office with his own, which was twice the size, had
furniture made out of real wood, and was decorated with four
paintings—three watercolors and an oil—which he had bought at
various times from students in the art department. It gave him a
small psychological boost to think of the policeman grubbing out
his life in this soulless little box.
    Of course Guinness didn’t have any pictures
of his wife and daughter on his desk either.
    As it always did, the thought of his daughter
left him feeling faintly depressed. His hand crept up until it
rested lightly over his right inside breast pocket, within which he
could feel the slight bulge of his wallet. There he kept, almost as
a secret from himself, the only photograph of her he owned: a
snapshot taken when she was three months old. It was how he
remembered her; he hadn’t seen her since. He couldn’t even be sure
she was still alive.
    Guinness had known a few bad moments on that
score since all this with Louise had started. But no, whoever was
zeroing in on him would have had to have done one hell of a lot of
homework to have tracked down his ex¬-wife and daughter. Kathleen
had probably remarried, human nature being what it was, and might
be living anywhere.
    He brought his hand back down on his lap and
pushed the idea out of his mind. At the moment it was his own
safety he should be thinking about. It was his own damn neck that
was stretched out so gracefully over the chopping block.
    But first there was this idiot cop to shake
off. Guinness hoped he would hurry his ass up. He was tired of
waiting for Creon to decide that Anxious Anticipation Time was
over. Being sweated like this was such a bore; it almost made you
nostalgic for the white lights and the rubber truncheons.
    Finally it was over, and Creon came in to
settle himself behind his desk. Somehow he looked taller sitting
down; anyway, he looked solid enough. There were deep furrows
tapering down from his cheekbones almost to the line of his jaw;
they made his face appear hard and immovable, as if it had belonged
to some Polynesian idol carved in wood. It could have been a dead
face except for the eyes. They were small and angrily blue and all
the more startling for the fact that the eyebrows and lashes were
blond to the point of invisibility.
    “Before we begin,” he said quietly, as if he
were reading something prepared in advance, “you should know that
this conversation is being tape recorded and that anything you say
may eventually be introduced in evidence against you.”
    “Am I