"It's wrong, Chief, all wrong. You have to turn yourself in."
"Oh, please!" Bale snorted, the neon blue outlining the contours of his cheekbone. "Are you kidding? Right now, when I'm this close? When I finally got over? Are you nuts?"
"You have no other choice!"
"You want me to do time with the clowns I convicted, Vick? Ruin my wife and family?"
"No, I don't, but it's the only way."
Bale stepped back in anger, as if pushed. "You're pretty high and mighty for a kid, you know. So full of yourself. So naïve, so gullible. You think I'm the only one who cuts a corner or two? You're a rich kid, you don't know jack about how things get done."
"Chief-"
"You think I worked alone?" Bale's eyes flashed in the blue darkness. "You know I didn't. You know I was in it with a white man. Don't you want to know who he is?"
The white guy.
"Guess. We'll play a little game. Guess the white man who worked with me to set Bristow up. Guess the white man who found Jackson in the first place."
"It's not Dan, is it?" Vicki blurted out, before she realized she'd even suspected him.
And Bale smiled.
FORTY-EIGHT
"That altar boy?" Bale said. "Malloy? No way."
"Not Strauss."
"The boss?" Bale snorted. "Nah, he didn't know a thing. He turns his head away. He only knows what he wants to know. He doesn't like to get his hands dirty."
"Then who?"
"Morty."
Vicki felt stunned, as if from a blow.
"Yes, it was Morty."
No. "Chief, you're lying."
"The hell I am! Your great Morty, your beloved Morty, everybody's beloved Morty." Bale looked almost gleeful. "It was Morty who knew Jackson, not me. He found her for me. He was the white man with me that night, when we went to her house, to get her ready for Bristow's trial."
Morty. "That can't be. He would never-"
"Yes, he would. He did. He was dedicated, all right. He wanted the guns off the street and he did what it took. Ha!" Bale seemed to draw strength from revealing the secret, a seasoned prosecutor saving his best argument for last. "Your case, Bristow, was the last case, the last one, and we woulda made it happen if those kids hadn't broken in that night!
Morty didn't see that one comin,' poor guy."
"But why would he-"
"Morty wanted the guns off the street, Vick! You know that! You heard at the wake, nobody worked harder. He was happy to do whatever he could do, and you should be, too. You know, you and him were a lot alike."
Vicki felt too heartsick to ask what he meant.
"You and Malloy, you think I don't know about you two? The way you look at each other? Mixing business with pleasure. Morty was, too. Had to go and fall in love with the CI, with Jackson. She was twenty years younger than him." Bale leaned over. "And it was his baby she was carrying."
The baby in the postmortem report. She was mixed race.
"He was gonna marry the bitch! That's Morty for you! That's the real Morty! Married to the job, for real! Surprised?"
Vicki couldn't speak. She flashed to the night Morty was killed. Him lying there, blood bubbling on his lips. The first thing he'd asked: "How's the CI?"
"See, that's my point, Vick. Morty was in on it because it was the right thing to do. It got us what we wanted, what we're all working for."
Vicki remembered Mrs. Tillie Bott, telling her that Shayla had said she was going to change her life. She'd been planning a future with Morty.
"If it was good enough for Morty, isn't it good enough for you?"
Vicki couldn't answer. Agent Thompson, just today, had said, "He seemed so happy since you two have been working together, this past year." But it was Shayla Jackson whom Morty had been with this past year. He'd fallen in love and was going to be a father.
"You should've let it go, Vick. I told you to get off it, I warned you to get off it! I even assigned you to another case, but you wouldn't let it go."
"How can I, Chief?" Vicki asked, aching. "You have to." "I can't. I won't." "Come on, kid. What're you doin' here? What're you doin' to me?" Bale's gaze shifted, suddenly jittery. "You're backin' me into a corner here, you know that?"
"You backed yourself into it, Chief. I know about you and so does Reheema. Dan will know, too, when he finds out Montgomery shot Reheema. Nobody's gonna let it go, Chief. It's over."
"I thought we were friends! We got along pretty good, didn't we? I didn't fire you when I could have, I knew you would never let go then. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, right?" Bale's eyes looked suddenly wet, and Vicki felt a twinge of sympathy.
"I'm not your enemy, Chief." "Sure you are, you're gonna turn me in!" "I have to turn you in, if you don't turn yourself in." "You and Malloy! You're gonna ruin my career, my life!"
Bale's voice went higher and he grew panicky, desperate. "You want to ruin my life? My kids' lives? That what you want?" "No, but-" "I'm not goin' in, Vick. I can't. I know I did wrong, but I can't go in. Sorry." Suddenly Bale slipped his hand into his jacket and pulled out a dark Beretta. His pained eyes locked with Vicki's over the gun, and she knew from his tears what he was going to do. She had faced a loaded gun before, and this bullet wasn't meant for her.
"Chief, no!" Vicki shouted. She lunged for Bale's wrist just as he started to turn the gun on himself.
Crak! the Beretta fired, and Bale fell backward, knocked off balance. They both tumbled back and fell hard on the snowy sidewalk, the gun flying from Bale's open palm.
"CHIEF!" Vicki screamed, terrified that Bale had been hit, but behind her, the glass window of the jewelry store shattered. A security alarm went off in the next minute, earsplitting in the quiet night.
"No!" Bale moaned, lying still and beginning to sob, and Vicki held him close as a shout came from the entrance of Angelo's.
"VICK! VICK!" It was Dan. Then there was another shout from someone else, then another, closer. The cops and AUSAs were coming, running to them. They would arrest Bale, who was wracked with sobs, and take him away.
Vicki felt like crying, too, but she couldn't give in to emotion just yet.
Reheema.
FORTY-NINE
Vicki and Dan sat together in the waiting room of the hospi-tal's emergency department, which was empty except for a couple waiting to see an ER doctor about a flu. Fluorescent lights shone harshly in the allegedly comforting room, with its pastel-blue walls, hotel watercolors, and pink pamphlets about wellness and the importance of dietary fiber. Newspapers and magazines, their covers curled, made a periodical pile on the wooden coffee table, and the place smelled vaguely of McDonald's French fries from a bag left in the waste can. An old TV mounted in the corner was on low volume, but Vicki couldn't bear to watch again the footage of her Cabrio with Reheema's blood on the door. She had left her parents a phone message, so they didn't freak when they saw the TV.
She rested her head on Dan's shoulder, but she couldn't stop thinking about Reheema, who was still in surgery after three hours. Vicki was going crazy without an update on her condition; the doctors were working on her, and the nurses and other emergency staff were busy. She had cried all the tears she could cry and sat in the chair, still in her down coat, feeling exhausted, tense, and guilty.
"I should've been with her, Dan."
"No, you couldn't. You did everything you could."