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“Yes, I think you’re right. We do seem to be having a communications problem. I’ll be waiting for the Pevsner dossier. Nice to talk to you, Mark.”
He pushed the END CALL button and put the phone in his pocket.
“The turf war has begun,” he announced. “I was afraid of that.” He turned to Major Miller and said, “I hope you’ll understand I have to ask this.”
“Sir?”
“Did you make a pass or anything that could be construed as a pass at Mrs. Wilson?”
“No, sir, I did not.”
"When you had dinner with her, how much did you have to drink?”
“I have never had dinner with Mrs. Wilson, sir.”
“Did you have drinks with her?”
“No, sir.”
“I did,” Charley said.
“You did?” Hall asked, and, when Charley nodded, asked, “And did you make a pass at her?”
“It was more that she made a pass at me,” Charley said.
“And?”
“I was in a receptive mood, sir,” Charley said.
“Jesus Christ!” Miller said. “I told you she was dangerous! ”
“You also told me she wasn’t getting what she needed at home. And she is a very attractive female. At the time, I was supposed to believe her story that she was a reporter for Forbes and she thought I was a fellow journalist named Gossinger.”
“But you knew who she was?” Hall pursued.
“Yes, sir. Dick told me who she was.”
“And that ‘she wasn’t getting what she needed at home.’ Just what did you mean by that, Miller?”
“Sir, the fact is that Mrs. Wilson is twenty years or so younger than her husband. The rumors going around have it he likes young men and married the lady as a beard.”
Hall looked at him for a long moment but didn’t respond. Instead, he turned to Castillo.
“Tell me, Charley. And the truth, please. The cow is out of the barn, so to speak. Why did you take Mrs. Wilson to bed?”
“In hindsight, sir, it was irresponsible. What happened was that she wanted to look at my story . . .”
“Why?”
“Probably to see if I really had a story; was, in fact, a journalist. She smelled something; she sent Dick to check me out. And then, presuming I had a story, she wanted to know what I had found out and was reporting about the missing 727.”
“What’s that got to do with taking her to bed?”
“I told her she could have the story just as soon as the Tages Zeitung went to bed. She replied, ‘Why not as soon as we do?’ ”
“Whereupon you shut off your brain and turned on your dick,” Miller blurted, almost in disbelief.
“You could put it in those terms, I suppose,” Charley said.
