“We’ll see,” Katherine said.

That was the moment when the door opened and First Sergeant Carl Moran was led in. His eyes roved around the room and locked on each of us for a brief second.

Eddie stood and held out a chair. Moran lumbered over and sat.

If I had any lingering misperceptions that you could pick gays out of a crowd, they went right up in smoke. He looked much like his photograph, except the picture didn’t do justice to his size and apparent physical strength. The man was a mountain of muscle. An instant mental picture formed of him with his big paws gripped around an Army web belt as Lee No Tae coughed and choked and bucked out the last moments of his life.

Katherine went through her introductions again; same routine – I’m your real buddy here, not the well-groomed creep to your left. He believes gays should be drawn and quartered. Just tell me everything.

Carl Moran, though, wasn’t Everett Jackson. He didn’t look frightened, or vulnerable, or cowed. He was an old soldier, leathery and scarred, and despite what Katherine had confided to me about him being a big teddy bear in the bedroom, he looked like a kingsize hardass to me.

Katherine then proceeded through the same drill of asking about his arrest, and he said essentially the same things as Jackson: a trip to the Itaewon station, a standard booking, a brief stay in a Korean cell, a trip to the MP station, a by-the-book interrogation, a tortured battle with his conscience, a visit to a lawyer, a voluntary return to the MP station – a progression that ended in a voluntary, full-up confession.

I sat still and patiently waited for Katherine to get through her questions. I didn’t intervene or interrupt once. She did a first-rate job, too, although it was completely hopeless. She made no headway. When she was finished, I bent forward, placed my elbows on the table, and stared skeptically at Moran a long time.

He tried to ignore me, till that grew awkward, then he said, “What? You got somethin’ you wanna ask, Major?”

“Yeah, actually. You said you were never beaten?”

“That’s right.” He chuckled. “Do I look like a guy who’d take a beating from some gooks? Shit, one of them slant-eyes touches me, I’ll bury his ass.”

He was staring at my bruises and lumps, and I had the sense he knew how I got them. I had an even stronger sense he was taunting me.

I said, “Not if you’re in manacles or tied to a chair, Moran. Not if they’re ten of them and one of you. Not if you’re scared stiff about being charged with murder. Come on, now, there’s no shame in it. Tell us. Did anyone touch you?”

He leaned across the table and looked me right in the eye. “Nobody never touched me. I swear nobody touched me. No gooks touched me. Bales never touched me. That’s the God’s-honest truth. Nobody never touched me.”

Then, on a quick instinct, I said, “One last question. You went to see your lawyer, then what’d you do? Did you at least warn Jackson you were about to confess?”

“Yeah, sure. Jackson’s just a kid, y’know? I felt responsible for him.”

And that’s all it took. Voila! The man’s ego tripped him up.

Eddie, instantly aware of the disconcerting discrepancy, hastily announced, “All right, all right, we’ve exhausted this angle. First Sergeant Moran, thanks for your help. Go ahead and return to your cell.”

Moran’s face revealed his puzzlement. He knew he’d said something wrong, he just wasn’t sure what. Anyway, he got up and lumbered back to the door, where two MPs were waiting to return him to his cell.

The door closed, and Eddie sat back and smiled. It was his man-eating smile, one of those things where the corners of his lips stretched so far they touched his earlobes.

“Satisfied?” he asked.

This was the one risk we’d run by coming over here. Now Eddie knew where we were trying to go. And like us, he’d just heard his witnesses walk on each other over who’d gone to see the lawyer first, and who’d advised who to confess. There was a chink in his armor, but now he knew where. Knowing Eddie like I know Eddie, I had no doubt he’d walk them through a few rehearsals and make sure they got all the kinks ironed out by the trial.

“Very satisfied,” Katherine said, and both of us did our best to smile confidently, like we had just learned something providential and compelling.

“Drop it,” he sternly warned, standing up and looking at his watch again. “Trust me on this, Carlson, don’t screw with Bales on the stand. I won’t allow it. This judge won’t, either.”

He walked out with a satisfied strut. The instant he was gone, our phony smiles turned into gloomy pouts. We had nothing to smile about. Katherine and I did the usual lawyer’s second-guessing when you come up short, wondering what questions we should’ve asked that we didn’t, what we should’ve phrased differently, how we misplayed the witnesses, how we blew our big chance.

Then we walked out and dejectedly headed back to the parking lot and our sedan.

“You two did good back there,” Imelda announced.

“What?” Katherine asked.

“I said you did good.”

“We did?” I asked.

“Got it all figured out now, right?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “Which part are you talking about?”

Imelda spun around and faced me. She reached up and adjusted her glasses around her ear. “Moran wasn’t lyin’. They never touched him.”

“Of course they didn’t,” I said – uncertainly, but I said it.

Imelda turned back around and chuckled. “That Bales, he’s got good instincts. A man like Moran, he’s all ego. A man like that, you could beat him silly and he won’t talk. Nuh-uhh. Imagine pickin’ the weak one to make the big one break.” She chuckled some more.

And of course, Imelda was right. That’s exactly what had happened. Bales and Choi had somehow gotten the two of them back in the Itaewon station for a second visit. They had somehow figured out the relationship between Moran and Jackson. They figured that Moran had an ego like a battleship, which wasn’t too hard to guess, so they kicked the crap out of Jackson until Moran, the big teddy bear, broke to protect his boyfriend.

I looked at Katherine, but her eyes were still fixated on the back of Imelda’s head.

I said, “Did you know the JAG office keeps a log of everybody who stops by to seek legal counsel?”

She smiled. “No, I didn’t. How very convenient for us.”

“Yes,” I said. “All we need to do is check what day Jackson and Moran sought counsel, then we’ll have proof of whether they were persuaded by their lawyers, or by a bunch of sadistic cops. If there’s a discrepancy, maybe you can break it off in Eddie’s ass.”

“Already done that,” Imelda mumbled from the front seat.

Katherine bent forward. “I’m sorry. What was that?”

“I said I’ve already done that. Jackson and Moran didn’t visit no lawyer till a week after they made their final statement.”

See, that’s the thing with Imelda. She doesn’t play fair. She knew before we even sat down with them that Moran and Jackson were lying about the lawyers. That’s why she was able to unravel their fabrications.

If I were twenty years older, I’d marry that woman.