As the dawn began to break over the Indiana countryside they made love, slowly, gently, tenderly as if they were afraid of hurting each other-which in a measure they were-and as if it were their last time-which possibly it was.
Afterward, they lay in each others arms, and she began to talk about her father; how it had been when she was a young girl and her mother was still alive, and afterward when she would come back from college to be with him. He had been her Rock of Gibraltar, her mentor, her best friend, her confidant; the one person in the world for whomshe had to put on no false face, the one person on this earth who knew and loved her for exactly what she was.
As she talked, McAllister thought about his own father, and the fact that although he had had a deep love and respect for the old man, he had felt cheated because of when and how his father had died.
It had been listed as an accident. The fact of the matter was he had simply worn out and had taken his own life.
There had been no note, no explanation, no last words. He couldn’t remember the funeral, but he could remember in vivid details the nightmares afterward in which he thought about his father lying in a dark, cold grave alone on a windswept hill.
Chapter 25
They entered the city from the south a few minutes past eight, the tracks angling away from Lake Michigan, morning traffic in full swing on the Dan Ryan Expressway. In the distance the Sears Tower rose up into the cobalt-blue sky. Chicago hadn’t got much snow, what there was lay in dirty piles. It looked extremely cold outside.
Stephanie had worked on their makeup again this morning, giving them a sallow, used-up look. The transformation was complete. Looking at himself in the mirror, McAllister could believe that he wasn’t himself. He looked almost military.
The train had slowed down in the city. They entered the tunnel that would bring them into Union Station downtown. Stephanie got up as McAllister flipped on the compartment lights, and she took her gun out of her coat pocket. She took the clip out of the butt of the gun, cycled the round out of the firing chamber, reloaded the bullet into the clip, snapped the clip back into the gun, and cycled a round back into the firing chamber, checking to make sure the safety catch was on before she stulled the gun back into her coat.
She looked up, catching McAllister watching her. “I meant it, what I told you last night,” she said, the tenderness that had been in her eyes while they made love gone.
“Don’t become one of them,” he said.
“I don’t want to hear it,” she snapped, a catch in her voice. She was frightened but she was also angry.
“We can’t fight them all, not this way.”
“No?”
“No,” McAllister said. “You’re going to do it my way, and you’re going to follow my instructions.”
“Up to the point that someone tries to arrest me. I won’t let it happen.”
“You’d shoot an innocent cop trying to do his job?”
“If need be,” she said evenly.
McAllister held out his hand. “Give me your gun,” he said. She backed up a step and shook her head, her left eyebrow rising. “No.”
“Not that way,” McAllister said. “I want your gun.”
“Goddamnit, David…” she started to protest when someone knocked at their door, and he held up his hand for her to keep silent.
“Yes?” he called out.
“Five minutes until the station, folks,” a man’s voice called back.
It wasn’t their porter from last night. “All right, thank you,” McAllister said.
“If you’ll just let me in, sir, I’ll give you a hand with your bags,” the man said, and there was something about his accent that was suddenly bothersome. There was a connection somewhere. McAllister had heard that voice before, or one similar to it. Where?
The door handle turned slowly. “I’ll get you a redcap in the terminal, sir.”
The accent was Italian. A snow-covered road, a dark-brown Thunderbird. A man in a bombardier jacket. It was the same accent. New Jersey. Mafia. The Mafia controlled a segment of the Teamsters union. Cabbies, train porters?
Stephanie’s eyes had grown wide. She had made the same connection. She grabbed her gun out of her coat pocket.
McAllister motioned for her to move aside as he pulled out his gun and flipped off the compartment lights, plunging them into darkness.
“All right,” he called out. “Just a moment please.” He moved to the door and silently slipped the lock. He glanced at Stephanie, then yanked the door open.
A short, heavyset man with thick features, a blue watch cap perched on the back of his head, stood there, his right hand inside his sheepskin jacket. His mouth dropped open when he caught sight of McAllister. “What?” he stammered.
McAllister grabbed a handful of his jacket and pulled him into the compartment, spinning him around, and slamming him up against the bathroom door, his pistol against the man’s neck, his left hand holding the man’s gun hand in place. Behind him, Stephanie closed and locked the door, then turned on the compartment lights. The man’s eyes were bugging half out of their sockets, and he kept swallowing over and over, though he did not resist.
“The window shade,” McAllister said. Stephanie lowered it.
“It’s a mistake,” the man croaked, talking difficult because of the gun jammed into his throat.
“No it’s not,” McAllister said. “Who sent you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man said, but it was obvious he was lying.
Stephanie reached around and pulled his hand out of his coat, and then reached inside and pulled out his gun, a big.357 Magnum with a thick silencer tube screwed onto the end of the shortened barrel. A devastating weapon, especially at close range. “Who sent you?” McAllister demanded, pressing the barrel of his gun even harder into the man’s throat. “Now, or I’ll blow your neck apart!”
“I don’t know,” the man croaked. “We got orders from out East that you and the broad were coming in on this train. I got on at Dyer.”
“Orders from whom?”
“I don’t know, I swear to God I don’t know. We just got a call, that’s all.”
“Is someone waiting in the station for us?”
“No,” the man said. Stephanie brought the barrel of the silenced Magnum up against his temple. “Yes… yes,” he cried.
“How many of them?”
“Four. A redcap, two by the stairs, and a cabbie outside.”
“How will we recognize them?”
“They’re all dressed like me, except for the redcap.”
“Then what?” McAllister asked. “What were your orders? Specifically.”
“Just to take you, that’s all.” The train was slowing down, coming to a stop. Stephanie cocked the Magnum’s hammer.
“Oh, Jesus and Mary, mother of God,” the man stammered. “I was supposed to kill you. If that didn’t work, you’d get it on the platformor out on the street. Somewhere. We weren’t supposed to fail. This was a big job.”
“Who sent you? You’ve got to have a name.”
“I don’t know, I swear it.”
“This was a big job?” Stephanie asked. “Yeah, yeah, important, like I said.. “Like Baltimore?” Stephanie asked. “Yeah, like Baltimore…” the man said.
At the last instant McAllister realized what was about to happen, but he was powerless to stop it. He managed to step back as Stephanie moaned, the sound animallike, coming from the back of her throat, and she pulled the trigger.
The man’s head was slammed violently against the bathroom door, a large piece of the back of his skull blown away, his eyes and nose and mouth filling with blood as he crumpled on the floor dead.