Devil's Corner (41 page)

"I didn't know you cared," Bale joked, liquor on his breath. He permitted Vicki to lead him out of the dining room and into the bar, which was still empty, and they stopped near the front door. Bale wavered slightly, clearly the result of rum and Coke. His brown eyes looked shiny, his skin greasy, and his white cutaway collar was uncharacteristically unbuttoned, with his silk tie hanging.

"Reheema Bristow was just shot by David Montgomery. She killed him."

"I don't understand." Bale blinked slowly, the effects of alcohol or bad acting.

"You're not that drunk, Chief. You know who David Montgomery is. You handed him the deal of the century. You forged Dan's and Strauss's names on the agreement to make it look kosher. And I can't believe this, even as I say it, but you sent Montgomery to kill Reheema. To finish the job he started with her mother."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Bale's gaze shifted nervously to the dining room, but he didn't seem outraged or even confused, which confirmed Vicki's worst suspicions.

"You were in Shayla Jackson's house a month ago. I have an eyewitness. It was late at night, in her living room, you and a white guy."

Bale's face fell abruptly, his forehead creased. He met Vicki's eye and his lips parted slightly; for the first time since Vicki had known him, he wasn't controlling the situation.

"Tell me what's going on, right now, Chief. The truth, or I'm taking you to the commissioner this minute."

"Hold on, it's not what you think, Vick. Come with me, I'll explain everything." Bale took her arm and, before she knew it, he was tugging her outside the restaurant and under the tiny roof over the entrance. Snow fell softly, and the back street was deserted, all the shops closed. Vicki worried for a minute that she wasn't safe, but the entire law enforcement community was on the other side of the door. Bale touched her arm gently. "Relax, Vick, it isn't what it looks like. Calm down."

"I can't calm down. Reheema was
shot
, Chief. Did you—"

"Okay, let me explain." Bale's expression was soft, his brown eyes urgent in the yellowish lights over the restaurant entrance. "I'm trusting you to keep this to yourself. It can all blow over, it's almost blown over already."

"What is? What are you saying?"

"Project Clean Sweep, remember? Strauss's push to get guns off the street. Started last year, before you came. Big success. I had a lotta pressure on me to get convictions. Pressure from Strauss, pressure from the media." Bale stepped closer, lowering his voice needlessly, and Vicki smelled the rum that was undoubtedly loosening his tongue. "You know the reports the gun dealers make, of the multiple purchasers. I took a little shortcut, paid some folks to say they knew the people on the reports and that they resold the guns. Reheema was on the list."

"You
paid
Jackson to frame Reheema?"

"Yeah," Bale admitted, his voice low.

"
Chief
." It was all Vicki could say.

"Oh come on, get real. You know they resold the guns. Why else they buying eight or nine semiautomatic weapons? Glock, Taurus, Ruger, Smith and Wesson? We knew they did it. We just couldn't prove it without the witness."

"Reheema didn't do it. She didn't—"

"She's the only one, and you know it. With the rest, it was going through the motions."

"The motions are
due process
." Vicki felt sickened and angry. "And where'd you get the money for this?"

"Don't ask too many questions, Vick. Take it from me, it's the government, there's money around."

"How many people did you do this to?"

"Let it lie, Vick, they're in prison now, and I'm about to get the big job. Play ball and it'll go away. It was a one-shot deal, I won't do it again." Bale's tone turned almost plaintive, as if the tables were turned, and Vicki were the chief and he the AUSA. "I learned my lesson, believe me, I did. This thing got way outta control."

Vicki couldn't believe her ears. "Chief, did you really send Montgomery to kill Reheema?"

"Look, I had to. I was exposed, with Bristow. She's got an attitude problem, that one, I heard from the way she mouthed off at the detention hearing. When Jackson got killed and the case against Bristow fell apart, I knew she wouldn't shut up."

"Chief, that's conspiracy to murder!"

"It wasn't all my fault.
You
got into it and you wouldn't let it go! This whole thing woulda gone away if you—"

"Murder doesn't go away!" Vicki interrupted, incredulous. "Montgomery murdered Reheema's mother! He tried to murder her! You can't get away with that!"

"Don't think of it that way, Vick. Just let it go. Montgomery's dead and gone, so I have no exposure. Let it go, and I'll take care of you."

"
Let it go
?" Vicki repeated, horrified.

Suddenly, the wooden door opened, and Angelo's bartender came out in a black knit cap and a Flyers jacket. He nodded to them both and walked up the street in the storm. Bale gestured her away from the entrance, and Vicki followed him to the next little overhang that covered the entrance of a low-rent jewelry store. The lights were off inside the store, and in the front window, a blue neon sign glowed, DIAMONDS BOUGHT AND SOLD. Velveteen display stands in the window stood empty, the diamonds gone.

Vicki tried to gather her thoughts, but they wouldn't gather, she was so appalled. "Chief, how can I just let it go? How can
you
?"

"Look, Montgomery was just insurance, in case another one blackmailed me. Everybody in the neighborhood knew him, he kept everyone in line. I swear, I didn't really think I'd have to use him."

"
Another
one?"

Bale ignored the question. "Come on, when I made the deal with Montgomery, I didn't know the case against Reheema would fall apart. I didn't know those kids would kill Jackson and Morty that night. How would I know that Browning didn't pay his bills? Like I say, it just got outta control."

"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."

Vicki didn't reply, but she would never believe that. She could never have predicted where this long road would lead her. Now that she'd reached the end, she didn't want to be here. Not if it cost Reheema her life.

She couldn't stop the mental images of what else was to come. The indictment against Bale. His wife and kids heartbroken. Her office and ATF disgraced. Strauss and Saxon before microphones, reminding the public of the overwhelming majority of hardworking, dedicated AUSAs and agents. Lawsuits by those wrongly imprisoned, costing the federal government millions of dollars. Every penny won would be deserved, and even so, couldn't make anyone whole. And some of those released would surely have been found guilty, if the government had been given the chance to prove its case; now they'd be freed, even well-compensated. So they could buy more guns for resale.