“What makes you think the Army computers won’t cough up the truth about Durham Lasari?”
“Because this is one trip Lasari ain’t gonna take,” Malleck said. “You’re going back into uniform as a man with a good, clean record — George Jackson.”
“Yeah, but I have only your word that I get out of this a free man.” Malleck shrugged and held the canteen cup close to his face, sniffing at the warm fumes of whiskey.
“You’re between a rock and a hard place, soldier,” he said. “You got only one friend left in this world and you’re looking at him. Maybe ‘friend’ is the wrong word because we both know I wouldn’t give you a glass of water in hell if you couldn’t pay for it. You take the offer I just made you, or you pick the federal slammer, peddling your ass to horny blacks just to keep alive and get cigarette money. Make up your own mind. Don’t come to me for sympathy. If you’re looking for sympathy, it’s between ‘shit’ and ‘sweat’ in the dictionary and that’s the only place you’ll find it. But I’m willing to help you, Lasari, because you can help me. Everybody else has already fucked you over good.”
... “everybody else has already fucked you over good”... Lasari felt a tightening of rage and emotion in his throat muscles so strong that he could barely speak.
“That brings us back to our first question, sergeant. I want to know how you found me...”
Malleck shook his head in mock sadness. “Why don’t you use that bright IQ of yours, soldier? The little newspaper cunt has been on my payroll from the beginning.”
As he came out of his chair, Lasari was sure of only one thing, to touch Malleck violently, to make a connection between their flesh, to hurt him as he’d been hurt, and he did that by swinging his foot high and arched over the desk, catching the sergeant squarely in the stomach and knocking him to the floor.
Lasari scrambled across the desk, scattering files, and grabbed the neck of the whiskey bottle. Leaping toward Malleck’s back, he swung the bottle toward the big man’s head, but Malleck jerked an elbow into Lasari’s face, knocking him aside and sending the bottle shattering against a wall.
Standing now, his face tight with anger, Malleck drew back his foot and slammed it into Lasari’s side. It was a potentially murderous kick, even fatal if the victim tried to roll away from it, exposing his kidneys, spleen and testicles. But Lasari was trained in unarmed combat and he swung the full weight of his body forward into the force of Malleck’s swinging leg, blocking its destructive power and toppling the sergeant off balance.
Castana and Homer Robbins burst into the room, with Eddie Neal just behind them. Neal pushed the other men aside and said, in his honeyed drawl, “You all let me have him, sarge. You don’t have to take this shit.”
“Stay back!” Malleck shouted at the man. “Don’t come near this ginny bastard!” The sergeant locked his hands together and brought them down like a swinging axe against the back of Lasari’s neck.
Lasari fell to the floor, his cheek wet with his own blood, whiskey stinging the cuts in his face. He knew that Malleck was going to kick him in the ribs and there was nothing he could do about it. He experienced a curious, almost therapeutic disorientation. He knew he was alone again, he had always been alone, alone in his childhood, alone in ’Nam, alone in Jackson Hole, and now once again. That’s what Malleck wanted him to know.
The sergeant was panting heavily. “You just don’t think good, ginzo,” he said. “You hear any knocks last night? You were waiting for knocks, weren’t you? My men opened the door and walked right in, don’t you know that?”
Malleck kicked him in the side and Lasari began to retch, feeling the acid bile rushing into his throat.
“Who do you think gave us the fucking key, you ginny bastard?” Those were the last words Duro Lasari remembered hearing.
Chapter Nineteen
Even though he had not gone to bed, Scotty Weir went through the motions of waking up to a new day. The logs in the study fireplace had long since burned down to a white ash and he knew by the chill in the room that there would be a frost on the fields, some ice on the backroads.
He made coffee in the kitchen, careful not to wake Grimes, then showered in his upstairs bathroom, put on his jogging clothes and spiked running shoes, and went back to the study.
The general opened the gun cabinet and took out a Winchester and a .410 Purdy that had been given to him by a British captain he’d served with during the early years of the German occupation. After his run he planned to call Laura Devers to ask if she’d join him for a few hours of pheasant shooting on the grounds. Maybe they wouldn’t shoot at all, much as he loved to kick up a few pheasant from the bramble bushes, but a walk through the fields might soothe his restlessness. He could circle back to the house around lunchtime to check Grimes on whether Stigmuller had called in.
Scotty Weir hooked a flashlight to his waistband and poured himself a half mug of coffee, letting himself out the back door to walk along the graveled driveway toward the entrance gate. He paused there, sipped his coffee and listened to the silence of the predawn day.
From the direction of the house he thought he heard a phone ring and stopped to listen, but he heard nothing.
Scotty Weir hung his empty coffee mug on the branch of a wineberry bush and set off jogging down the road, the flashlight throwing bouncing circles of light to guide his footsteps.
When he turned into the gate again an hour later, the dogs were at the end of the drive to greet him, barking, tails wagging. That meant that Grimes had been up to feed them and open the gates of the kennel run. But it was the sight of John Grimes himself, standing halfway down the drive, that sent a chill of premonition through Scotty Weir’s body.
Grimes was waiting for him, without coat or jacket, head bare to the winds, his face broken and collapsed with emotion. Weir ran toward him and then stood still, hand on the dogs’ heads to quiet them.
“Something’s happened to Mark, is that it, Grimes? Tell me yourself. I don’t want to hear it from strangers.”
“He’s dead, sir. He was shot last night, somewhere in the city.”
Weir put a hand on Grimes’ thick, hard shoulder and gripped it hard. For a moment the two men stood on the open ground between the old farmhouse and the rimed fields, faces firming and hardening gradually, by training and habit, into acceptance of what could not be changed. The hurt and loss and real pain would come later, the general knew, but still he allowed himself a moment now to imagine what this day could have meant if Mark had driven down to see him yesterday as Bonnie Caidin had suggested.
“Grimes, pack me a bag for a day or so, and bring the car around. Can you do that for me?”
“Certainly, sir,” Grimes said. “And do you want me to call Mrs. Devers?”
The general shook his head. “No, I’ll call her myself from Chicago. Let her enjoy the morning. She’ll hear soon enough, good lady.”
The two men drove to the county morgue in an unmarked squad car, Sergeant DuBois Gordon at the wheel, Tarbert Weir in the passenger seat, his bulky overcoat bunched up on his knees.
“You understand, sir, that I already made the official identification, not that there was any doubt. But I checked the morgue myself right after I called you,” Gordon said.
“This is something I want to do,” the colonel said and paused. “I hadn’t been in touch with my son for some time.”