get it all the time. It’s when fluid collects in the ear, causing
the cartilage to die and harden. The result ain’t pretty, but
it’s kind of a badge of honor for a lot of wrestlers. Unless
you treat it right away, drain the fluid, it’s not going away.
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Chester Malloy doesn’t have cauliflower ear in this new
photo. But look who does in the earlier one.”
I stared intently at the military shot, and clear as day
was the left ear of Rex Malloy. It was deformed, puffy,
just like the ear in the later shot.
“This means that the person in this recent photo wasn’t
Chester Malloy,” Jack said, “but his brother Rex. My
guess is Rex was a wrestler before joining the army, and
he had the bad ear when this photo was taken.”
“And notice something else?” I said.
“And look at Rex’s hair in this photo,” Jack replied.
“It’s not blond.”
“That’d be a fine shade of black,” I said. “And it’s
straight, not wavy at all.”
“That means that it wasn’t Chester Malloy who kidnapped Paulina,” Jack said. “It was Rex, all dolled up to
look like his brother.”
“So if that’s Rex Malloy in the picture, and it was Rex
who took Paulina, where is Chester Malloy?”
“That’s the million-dollar question, sport.”
“So we’re back to this again,” I said.
“Until further notice,” Jack replied. “So Rex Malloy
grew out his hair, dyed it blond, gave himself a nice perm
and is now going by his brother’s name.”
“Come on, who doesn’t do that?”
“I have a brother. Name is Roy. Man’s got a head
balder than an eight ball and smells worse than Oscar the
Grouch. If I ever dressed like him, you’d have permission
to throw me off the nearest suspension bridge.”
“That would make sense. Paulina told me the man
who kidnapped her insinuated that he’d lost someone.
Maybe he was referring to his brother,” I said. “It looks
like he’s purposefully dressing just like his brother
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Chester. And if the guy in Paulina’s photo isn’t Chester,
but Rex, why call himself Chester? Why not make up
some other completely random alias?”
“Some sort of psychotic tribute perhaps,” Jack said.
“Now look at the rest of this squad. Eleven men and
women. The Department of Justice should have records
on the rest of them. We need to know where the rest of
this squad is, and get any more information about Malloy
that we can. Maybe somebody who knew him can explain
why a Green Beret seems to be armpit deep in some new
drug epidemic.”
“Noriega was a massive drug trafficker,” I said. “If this
Bravo squad was flown in to help depose Noriega, they
obviously had some part to play in the Panama drug war.”
“Maybe,” Jack said. “But the question remains. Whose
side were they on?”
We split up the list, Jack taking five names and myself
taking six. Our job was to track down the remaining
members of Rex Malloy’s Detachment Bravo team and
contact them to find out whatever information we could
about the Malloy family.
The DOJ had every member of the squad on file, but
to my surprise only three of my six were still alive.
And one of those was not Chester Malloy.
The surviving members on my list were Rex Malloy,
Eve Ramos and Frank Loughlin. There were no records
of employment or housing for either Ramos or Loughlin,
and according to the DOJ, Frank Loughlin was serving
twenty years for the murder of a homeless man on the
streets of Atlanta.
Researching the newspaper records, I discovered
Loughlin had pled insanity, his lawyer making the case
that Loughlin still suffered from post-traumatic stress
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disorder from his time in the military, and that his client
was better served under psychiatric supervision than
under our federal prison system.
Loughlin had been returning home from a movie when
a homeless man approached him on the street. After
asking for change and being denied, the man placed his
hand on Loughlin’s shoulder. The ex-Special Forces
agent then threw the man to the ground and pressed his
boot against the man’s neck until his larynx was crushed
under the force.
Police testified that when they arrived on the scene,
Loughlin was sitting on the curb by the body, crying.
Nevertheless, the judge disagreed that Frank was missing his marbles, and now the man who once fought for the
United States was rotting in one of its very own jail cells.
Not the kind of irony that brings a smile to your face.
Seeing as how Frank Loughlin couldn’t be involved in
this unless he somehow gained the ability to walk through
walls, cross state borders and look like one of his former
squad mates (a possibility considering the amount of
drastic plastic surgery you see in New York), I went to
find Jack to see if he had any more luck.
I found him at his desk, on the phone, writing on a
notepad.
He didn’t pay me any attention, just kept nodding as
though the person on the other line could be persuaded
by his nonverbal approval. I took that moment to glance
around Jack’s desk.
He’d been back for such a short amount of time, and
since then he’d done nothing to make his desk more personal, nothing to show that a human being actually
worked, breathed and dwelled there.
I wasn’t the most sensitive guy in the world and I had
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no need to plaster my workspace with pictures of every
living relative, every birthday party and a child from
every conceivable camera angle, but you could walk by
my desk and know that somebody took the time to make
it more habitable.
There was a photo of Amanda and me taken a few
years ago at a concert at Jones Beach. I had a clipping of
the first article I ever published in the Gazette, and the
first piece I ever published in the Bend Bulletin from
back in the day when I was cutting my teeth.
Those articles were steps to me. Chapters in a life and
career. I wasn’t sure what the next clipping would be. I
supposed I would only know when, well, I knew.
Finally Jack hung up the phone and turned to me.
“Whaddaya got?”
“Very little,” I said. “Three of my six are still alive.
One of them is in prison, one has no records of pretty
much anything, and Rex Malloy hasn’t been heard from
in almost fifteen years. The kicker, though, is that Chester
Malloy is dead.”
“I had a feeling,” Jack said.
“Turns out the older brother was killed in action in
Panama. He was in a transport vehicle with his brother Rex,
Eve Ramos and William Hollinsworth when they made a
wrong turn and ended up on a street not far from Noriega’s
headquarters. They were approached by members of the
PDF who tried to detain them, but when the squad resisted
they opened fire. As far as I can tell Chester Malloy was
the only casualty, but according to news reports, all four
members of the team were seriously injured.”
Jack stroked his beard, thinking. Either that or he was
ignoring me. But since I doubted that, he just continued
to stroke his beard.
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“That give you good luck?” I asked.
“Been doing this my whole adult life. So depending
on your perspective, probably not.”
“What did you find out?”
“Well, not as much as you, but between the two of us
I think we know exactly where to go.”
“What did you find?”
“Of my five squad members, four are dead. The only
living Bravo Detachment member is Bill Hollinsworth.
Hollinsworth was deployed as a Special Reconnaissance
officer. His job was to gather intelligence on the enemy
and their tactics.”
“This is the guy who was in the car with the Malloys
when they came under fire.”
“Exactly right. And get this. Hollinsworth is a professor of American history, post–World War II at Columbia.”
“What you learn in war you teach to future generations,” I said.
“If he was in Panama, he probably knows Rex Malloy.
I called over there. Hollinsworth has office hours today
until six.”
“We should meet with him right away,” I said.
“No worries, Henry. I already called the history department and they said he never leaves until six on the dot. And
apparently he’s not the easiest guy to get along with, because
the lady who answered the phone seemed rather shocked
that we wanted to meet with him. She said students steer
clear of Hollinsworth like you do from matching clothes.”
“Or you from denture cream,” I said.
“Go screw yourself,” Jack said. “Come on, let’s see
why this guy’s friend is poisoning our city.”
36
As soon as Morgan Isaacs got off the subway to head
home, his cell phone rang. He didn’t recognize the
number, but picked it up anyway, figuring after all the
money he and Theo made that day everything in his life
was taking a turn for the better.
He couldn’t believe how well this new drug, these
small black rocks called the Darkness, were selling. It
seemed every customer had either bought recently and
needed a refill, or heard about it from a friend and wanted
a go. It thrilled Morgan to no end that he was carrying a
product that was so desired. It made him feel powerful
again, for the first time since everything was snatched
from him so unfairly.
To Morgan, he wouldn’t trade that feeling away for
anything. And he would do anything to make sure it
never left him.
The sun was beginning to descend, and the Manhattan
skyline looked a gorgeous dark blue in the evening sky.
For months, Morgan wondered how long he would be
able to look at that view, if his lack of employment would
force him to relocate, take some job outside the city where
he’d be a nobody, a nothing, working for a company that
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the Wall Street Journal barely knew existed, a company
whose CEO wore a cowboy hat rather than a three-piece
suit. Where the offices were decorated with shag carpeting and the secretaries were all fifty and overweight.
That was a world Morgan refused to live in.
So he took in the crisp air, and remembered why he
fell in love with this city in the first place. And he thanked
his benefactors for giving him the chance to stay.
“Hello?” he said.
“Morgan, it’s Chester.”
“Oh, hey, what’s up?”
“Just wanted to let you know I talked to Leonard, and
he told me you and Goggins cleared almost twenty grand
today. That’s quite a haul.”
Morgan smiled. He was well aware of how much
money they were bringing in, but he’d learned one thing
in business and that was never to brag to your boss about
how well you were doing. At the end of the month, when
all the receipts were tallied up, you’d get all the praise you
needed. Braggarts were so nineties.
So to hear this from Chester during his first week of
work, to Morgan that was all the praise he’d need for a
month.
“I know you haven’t received a paycheck yet,” Chester
said, “but you deserve a bonus.”
Morgan’s jaw dropped. He stopped walking and
leaned up against a mailbox. Then he had to move when
a man asked him to move so he could deposit a letter.
“I…I don’t know what to say… Thanks, I guess.”
“You’ve earned it,” Chester said. “But you will need
to do one thing for me.”
“Anything.”
“I’m glad to hear that. And if you do this for me, you’ll
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get a hundred grand on the spot. I’ll need you to sign one
piece of paper, for tax purposes, but you’ll have six figures
to play with by the time you’re hungry for dinner tonight.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“Yes, I’m kidding you. In fact, we never want to see
you again. Goodbye, Morgan.”
“Wait! I was kidding, too!”
“I know, stupid. Be on the corner of Thirteenth and
Avenue A in half an hour.”
“I’ll be there.”
“One more thing, Morgan.”
“What’s up?”
“Do you like the suit you’re wearing?”
“I guess so. It was one of the first ones I bought when
I got my job in banking.”
“Too bad. Because you’re never going to wear it again
after today.”
37
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Jack said. He was staring out the
window of our cab as we sped uptown to meet William
Hollinsworth.
Rather than responding, I studied Jack’s face. For
some reason it made me think about his clean desk, how
for some reason there was something holding him back
from returning fully to a normal life.
We’d never had a chance to have a real talk about
Paulina’s article and what it had done to him, and it was
probably for the better. When a man’s reputation, and
maybe his soul, is nearly destroyed, the last thing he
wants to do is revisit it. But it was clear that Jack hadn’t
quite gotten past it, that he was still between two worlds.
The wistful look on his face confirmed my thoughts.
It was not the look of a face simply admiring the beauty
of a city, but the look of a man who wasn’t sure if he’d
ever see these sights again.
Sixth Avenue was crowded, full of taxis, livery cabs
and black company cars carrying executives and bluecollar workers alike home from a long day’s work. Traffic
in
the city had actually gotten better over the last few
months, but it was a wolf wrapped in sheep’s clothing.
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The decrease in traffic was primarily due to a cutback
in both taxis and hired car services, but also a massive
drop in truck deliveries that ordinarily clogged up New
York’s arteries during the early morning. With so many
stores and restaurants closing due to massive revenue
drops, there was natural belt tightening in the quantity and
frequency of transports it took to ship in new supplies.
Nevertheless, traveling through the city during the
seemingly endless rush hour times was still a harrowing
proposition, and the fact that it took forty-five minutes
rather than an hour to go from midtown to upper Manhattan was a small victory at best.
We eked past taxis crawling slower than they needed
to, trying to squeeze out a few extra pennies from their
charges. Businessmen who would normally be glued to
their BlackBerries in the backseat, blissfully unaware of
this common practice, now stared at the rising fare ready
to berate the driver for taking his sweet time.
Prior to leaving, I left Curt Sheffield a message filling
him in on where we were headed. He needed to know
what was going on. Like Paulina said, I didn’t know who
to trust, but I wanted to leave a trail just in case. I could
trust Curt to follow it if something bad happened.
We merged onto Central Park West, and several minutes later arrived at the Columbia campus. Jack paid the
driver and tucked the receipt into his wallet. We got out,
checking our pockets to make sure all our belongings had
arrived with us.
A few months back, I’d forgotten my wallet in a taxi,
and was dismayed to think I’d have to spend the whole
day in line at the DMV while explaining the situation to
my credit card companies and, worst of all, Wallace
Langston, who would need to order me a new corporate
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card. Yet just half an hour after realizing the gaffe, I
received an e-mail from a Mr. Alex Kolodej, the kindly
driver who’d found my wallet in the backseat of his cab,
put two and two together between my driver’s license and
business card, and even drove by my office to drop the
wallet off.
He refused any sort of reward, and drove off with the
plain smile of a Good Samaritan.
Amanda, on the other hand, had forgotten her purse at
a bar just a few weeks ago, and returned home later that
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