One of the men at the warehouse was familiar to him. He had seen him twice before, at Cabrini Green, in uniform then, relentless, going from building to building, checking, rechecking, asking questions. There had been a lot of uniforms at the Green since Malleck ordered that lieutenant wasted, but this one Scales remembered most clearly. He was black and his face seemed more bitter and dangerous than all the others.
As Scales walked back over the courtyard he saw Malleck standing at the window, watching him. He waved and called out, “You just rest yourself, sarge. I’m watchin’ for you.”
At that moment Malleck spotted the Army vehicle as it slowed at the front gate and turned into the courtyard with a screech of rubber. And right on plan there were two men in the front seat.
A surge of relief swept through the sergeant’s body, so rousing and satisfying that he felt as if he had had a sexual catharsis. His legs, then his torso trembled with an emotion so violent that he had to sit down. It was going to happen, the matching condos, the sea breezes, the choice of broads, the numbered bank accounts. Sergeant Malleck, Mr. Karl Malleck, was definitely going to be a rich and envied man. He folded his hands to control the shaking, fixed his eyes on the main entrance to his office, and waited.
He waited several minutes and though the delay was not long enough to cause alarm, Malleck was taken by surprise when the door to Scales’ cubicle opened and Durham Lasari stepped into the room. He was in uniform, his face pale and expressionless, but his eyes were dark with derision.
He gave Malleck a snappy salute and said, “Private George Jackson reporting, sir. Private George Jackson making delivery.”
Lasari took three steps toward the desk, duffel bag in hand, and then Malleck gasped with disbelief as he saw three men with drawn guns and Private Andrew Scales step into the room directly behind Lasari.
“Sergeant Malleck, I am Sergeant Gordon of the Chicago Police Department,” a big black man said. “You are under arrest.”
“Goddamn it, Scales,” Malleck shouted, his voice almost breaking. “What the hell is this...”
With a panicked reflex he opened a desk drawer and found a gun. As he raised it, there was a sharp pop in the air, the sound of a single shot from an automatic pistol with a silencer, and Malleck’s body jerked once, then spun around and he fell face downward on the rug, his gun falling from his hand.
He looked almost graceful as he lay there, head resting on one arm as though trying to sleep, but there was blood on the rug beside him and a perfect curve of mandible bone that had fragmented when Scales’ bullet had shattered his jaw.
“You fucking idiot!” Sergeant Gordon said with fury as he snatched Scales’ gun from his hand. “You had my orders, all of you. This was to be a lawful, a peaceful bust. We needed that man, we wanted him alive.”
“You don’t understand, boss,” Scales said. “It had to be this way. Sergeant Malleck and I, we been together a long, long time. We’re something special. He’d of wanted me to do it for him, I know that.”
Lasari set the duffel bag on a chair, as though it had become repugnant to him. Sergeant Gordon nodded and one of the plainclothes officers stepped over to claim it.
“I’m not sure what happens from here on,” Lasari said. “Tell me, am I under arrest, Sergeant Gordon?”
“More or less protective custody, Mr. Lasari, like that shit we just confiscated.”
Chapter Forty
Three days later, after a four o’clock appointment, Laura Devers drove Bonnie Caidin home from the doctor’s office.
“It’s too early to tell really,” Caidin said as they left downtown Springfield, “but the doctor agrees I’m probably pregnant. At first I told myself I’d been knocked off my menstrual schedule by that godawful beating, but, no, there are other signs. My breasts have been sensitive, and I felt ghastly three mornings in a row. I thought that might have been worrying about Duro and the general.” She sat huddled in a tweed coat, a yellow scarf at her throat, and her face was pale and still. The older woman reached over and patted her knee.
“The doctor doesn’t do abortions, he made that clear,” Bonnie Caidin said. “He told me that under some circumstances he and a consulting physician might come to an administrative decision to prevent the birth. He acted as if, he just assumed, Laura, that I wanted to get rid of it.”
“He’d never seen you before,” Laura Devers said. “He must have wondered why you didn’t go to your own doctor.”
“I didn’t want to wait,” Caidin said. “I felt I wanted to know before I saw Duro again.”
“Did you tell him you had a doctor’s appointment?”
Caidin shook her head. “No, I haven’t even talked to him. I asked Sergeant Gordon to tell him to do whatever he had to do, square himself away with the Army and the police before he got in touch with me. But I did hear his voice. I listened in when he was calling from Frankfurt.” She laughed softly. “He didn’t ask for me. I’m not even sure he plans to call...”
“Would you like to have the baby?”
“I don’t know,” Bonnie Caidin said. “I’m not sure I want to love anything for a while. Right now I can’t be sure what’s truth and what’s fantasy. Sometimes I think I just imagined the past... my brothers, Mark and even Duro.”
It was dusk and lights from the Weir farmhouse laid flat squares of yellow on the gravel driveway when they reached the front door. Laura declined the invitation to come in for a drink.
“To tell you the truth, Bonnie, I want to go home and write a letter to Scotty. I feel better about him when I stay in touch.”
“But you told me you called the hospital twice.”
“Three times, actually, but I just get to talk to the floor orderly. He tells me Scotty’s doing just fine, seeing no one except his doctors. You’d think at my age I could make up my mind,” she said, “but I’ve been arguing with myself whether or not I should fly over to Frankfurt. Or at least fly over to bring him home when he’s fit.”
“Why don’t you? I think he’d love that.”
“And then again he might not,” Laura said. “We’re old, old friends, and good friends, and I know how I feel about him, but he’s stubborn, you know. I wouldn’t want to rile him. I’ve got a hunch Scotty Weir’d rather find his own way home.”
“There’s a number for you to call in Chicago, Miss Bonnie. It’s Sergeant Gordon. He tried to reach you three times. Can I bring you a pot of tea? You haven’t eaten a bite today.”
“Tea would be just fine,” she said. “Tea with lots of sugar and dry toast.”
Grimes hesitated and the skin above his collar flushed red as he spoke. “You’ll forgive me, Miss Bonnie, but is it Mark’s boy you’re carrying?”
“No, Grimes,” she said, “it isn’t. That just wasn’t meant to be, Mark and I.”
“The general would’ve been pleased,” the man said. “We’d have made a fine pair of grandfathers, don’t you think? Jesus, we’d have carried on...”
Bonnie Caidin sat at the general’s desk and picked up the phone pad with Grimes’ writing on it.
Gordon answered at once in a voice so booming, so vibrant that she said, “Doobie, what is it? Have you been drinking?”
“Drinking, hell, Bonnie. I’m just on one big success high. When you get to the bottom of a case as deep and rotten as this one, it’s like sniffing pure oxygen. Get your pencil ready, lady.”
“Doobie,” she said, “I’m off duty. I haven’t even called the office since Grimes drove me down here.”
“Don’t give me that, Bonnie. You’re too pro to turn down a byline on something like this. The whole city is upside down, I’ve had a hard time protecting it for you, but remember, Mark said this would be your story.”