Mortal Allies (21 page)

“How long have you been there?”

“Twenty-two long, disgruntling years.”

“Yes, well,” I said, having heard enough of his problems, “we each must serve our country in our own way.”

“Don’t patronize me, Drummond. I was a major when you were in diapers.”

“Very likely true,” I admitted, now fully understanding exactly why the folks who ran West Point did not want Gilderstone to be on the same planet with a journalist. Aside from whatever he might say that contradicted the party line about Whitehall, he was a whiny, bitchy, disillusioned old man. If it were me, I too would order him to hide in the attic while I strutted some gung-ho hard-cock with a Ranger tab in front of the press.

I decided to cut to the chase. “So, Ed, what can you tell me about Tommy Whitehall?”

“Thomas? What can I say about Thomas? Simply that he’s one of the most remarkable young men I ever met. Brilliant, poised, an extraordinary scholar, a great athlete. I tried to get him to go for a Rhodes Scholarship. Were you aware of that?”

“Really? A Rhodes? I had no idea. What happened?”

“Damned fool flatly refused,” Gilderstone moaned. “A crying shame, too. The boy stood a good chance.”

“No kidding? Why didn’t he do it?”

“He said that even if he could get it, he didn’t want to waste two more years at Oxford, feathering his résumé. That’s how he put it. Can you imagine?”

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“He was in a hurry to get to the field with troops.”

“So what’s wrong with that?”

“The poor boy was brainwashed by all the gung-ho propaganda they pump into these impressionable young cadets up here. Troop officers are a dime a dozen. You’re a lawyer; you know that. Thomas had so much more to offer. He was a vessel filled with so many remarkable talents. He could’ve come back here to teach.”

One of the things you learn to do as a lawyer is listen real closely. It wasn’t only
what
Gilderstone was saying, it was
how
he was saying it, like an ugly duckling describing a swan. There was a reason Ernie Walters had pointed me toward Gilderstone. That reason was beginning to grow legs, and hair, and warts.

Thinking I was being slick, I said, “So you were pretty fond of the kid, eh, Ed?”

For a very long time, Gilderstone did not answer. And I knew, after the first few seconds, that I’d underestimated him.

When he did speak, he erupted. “Drummond, there was nothing between us. Not a damn thing!”

“But Ed, who ever said there was?”

“I’ve already warned you, Drummond, don’t patronize me. Is this why you called me? How’d you get my name? Did Thomas give it to you? Is this one of those witch hunts? What? They’re promising leniency if he gives up some more gays in uniform? Is that what this is about?”

“Gilderstone, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass if you and Whitehall boffed each other in the commandant’s bed. I’m just trying to figure him out. That’s all. I’m trying to keep Whitehall out of the electric chair.”

There was another long pause. Then, still sounding grouchy as hell, he insisted, “I never slept with him. Never!”

“I told you, Gilderstone, I don’t give a damn.”

“Then what is this about?”

“Information. Anything you say is confidential. That’s on the record.”

“Nothing will be attributed?”

“Not if you don’t want it to, no.”

“Well, I don’t. Don’t think me stingy, Drummond, but I’m not coming out of the closet for Whitehall. You need to agree to protect me.”

It was damned hard to disguise my disgust. This contemptible old codger was sitting back in the nice comfortable little nest he’d built for himself at West Point, refusing to lift a finger for “the finest young man I ever met.” I guess that’s what happens to a guy who spends a lifetime hiding in shadows. Pretty soon he’s got no more character than the shadow he’s hiding behind.

Anyway, I simply said, “You got it.”

“All right. Tell me what you want to know.”

“To start with, did you know he was gay?”

“I suppose so, yes.”

“You suppose so? You mean you never talked about it?”

“No, never. We . . . well, we gravitated toward each other, like two tourists in an alien land.”

“Then how’d you know he was gay?”

“A sixth sense, I suppose. No, that’s not completely true. You see, Drummond, when you’re a gay soldier, you learn to act in a certain way, and you learn to detect the same act in others. I just looked at Thomas in class, around his peers. I knew.”

“But you never talked about it? Never discussed it?”

“No, never. We both knew, though. Right off the bat, as they say.”

“So you weren’t his lover?”

“I already told you that. Why would I go near him? Do you have any idea what they’d do if they caught me?”

“Did he have a lover while he was there?”

“No. I’m nearly certain of it. West Point is . . . well, it’s the holy temple of the Army. Whatever traditions or taboos you find in the Army, magnify them tenfold at this place. Thomas was remarkably self-disciplined. He was determined to make it through, too. He wasn’t going to take unnecessary risks.”

I decided to keep fishing. “What made him so damned determined?”

“What makes anybody determined? A deprived upbringing. Exacting parents. Virulent sibling rivalries. Overheated genes, maybe.”

“Which of those was it with him?”

“How the hell should I know? I told you, he’s very reserved. Mysterious even,” he said, only now, instead of sounding bitter, he seemed wistful. “I never met his family, and he certainly never talked about them. They never even visited, to the best of my knowledge. Maybe that’s a clue in itself.”

“Okay. Now, do you think he could’ve slung a belt around the throat of his lover and strangled him?” I asked, deliberately putting a hard edge on it.

He didn’t even hesitate. “Yes.”

“Over what? Jealousy? Spite? Rage?”

“Nothing so tawdry, I assure you. As I said, he’s exquisitely disciplined.”

“Then what?”

Instead of answering, he asked, “Drummond, have you ever been in combat? Ever killed a man?”

Actually, before I became a lawyer, I’d spent five years as an infantry officer. In fact, I spent those five years in what the Army euphemistically calls a black unit, which means a unit so spectacularly clandestine its very existence is classified top-secret. The name of my particular unit was the “outfit,” which was shorthand for the 116th Reconnaissance Squadron. But what we did had very little to do with reconnaissance, and a lot to do with counter-terrorism during peacetime, and some fairly grisly, very hazardous things in wartime.

Gilderstone had no business knowing that, of course. I’d been in combat, though. Twice, in fact — in Panama and later in the Gulf. And I’d participated in a few interesting operations in between.

All I said was, “Yes,” and left it at that.

“Me, too,” he said. “A tour in Vietnam, a very long time ago. Until then, I’d never thought I could kill anyone. I thought I was above such primal savagery. I was too educated, too cultivated, too self-realized. Even when I got there, I thought I’d spend my tour with my M16 cradled in my arms, ordering others to kill. Of course it didn’t turn out that way.”

“No? How did it turn out?”

Instead of answering, he said, “Tell me about the first time you killed a man.”

I didn’t like this game, but since I was trying to coax him to trade confidences, I didn’t see that I had any choice but to play along.

“Okay, Ed. An open-and-shut thing. I had to get my team into a facility, and there was this guard, and he was in the way, so I killed him.”

“How?”

“That’s a stupid question, Ed. I killed him. End of story.”

“What weapon did you use?”

“A knife.”

“Did you sneak up from behind him?”

“Yes, Ed, I snuck up behind him.”

“Did you slap your hand over his mouth to keep him from yelling out?”

“That’s right.”

“Where’d you cut him?”

“What do you mean, where’d I cut him?” I asked, becoming exasperated by his ghoulish curiosity.

“Did you slice his throat open? Did you plunge the blade into his stomach? Into his heart? Into his back?”

“I put it in the lower part of his stomach. Okay?”

“And then you yanked it up?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why’d you choose that particular killing thrust?”

“It’s quick. It’s foolproof.”

“How so?”

“Because the stomach’s soft tissue, Ed. Because there’s no bones or ribs in the way. Because a strong upward thrust rips up a lot of vital organs, and tears open at least two major arteries.”

“Was that a deliberate choice on your part?”

I said, “Ed, I’m getting tired of this.”

“Was it?” he persisted.

“All right, yes. Why?”

“What were you thinking while he was dying?”

“I don’t know,” I lied, very irritated.

“Yes, you do know. What were you thinking?”

Now sounding grouchy myself, I said, “Look, Ed, I just want to know what would make Whitehall kill a guy. Drop the game.”

He said, “You’re standing just outside the facility. You’ve got one hand over his mouth, and with your other arm you’re holding him erect. Your bodies are so close you can feel his heart racing. You can smell the gases escaping from his bowels. Your two heads are so near you can hear his last dying breaths, his muffled groans of pain. It’s a very intimate moment. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking the same thing I’m thinking about you. I just wished the stubborn bastard would get it over with. I needed to get my team into the facility, so he just needed to hurry up and die.”

“Then you’re a cold killer,” Gilderstone said. “A paid assassin. I wasn’t like that, Drummond. That’s not the way it happened with me. I snapped. I exploded into a rage. I just ran into a bunch of underbrush and started killing indiscriminately, brazenly, wantonly. I still don’t know what triggered it. I started killing everything in sight.”

“That’s nice,” I said. “What’s it got to do with Whitehall?”

“Know what I did afterward?” he asked, doggedly oblivious to my protests and proddings.

“Okay, Ed. What did you do afterward?”

“I looked around at all the people I killed. There were maybe a dozen corpses, I have to tell you. I threw up. Then I shot myself in the foot. Right then and there, I simply pointed my rifle at my shoe and fired three shots.”

Being cute, I said, “That must’ve hurt like hell, Ed.”

“Want to hear the funny part?”

“I didn’t know there was a funny part,” I said. I thoroughly disliked this man.

“I got a Distinguished Service Cross for my valorous actions. And I got a Purple Heart, and a trip home for the wounded foot.”

I don’t often go speechless, but I did. I was dumbfounded.

A Distinguished Service Cross is only a tiny sliver below the Medal of Honor. Edward Gilderstone was a war hero. A thoroughly flawed, conflicted, self-loathing one, but a genuine hero nonetheless. But hero or not, he was the kind of guy who was so puffed up on his own sanitized sense of self-worth that the realization he could be as ordinary, as feral, as murderous as the next guy drove him to self-mutilation. That’s pretty nasty stuff, in my book.

More perplexing than that, though, here was a guy who’d earned his country’s second highest decoration for valor, and he was too chickenshit to help an old student stay out of the electric chair. Some hero.

Thinking I was being sarcastic, I finally said, “Gee, Ed, that must’ve been some rage you flew into.”

Still ignoring me, he replied in a very dry tone, “Thomas Whitehall’s not like you, Drummond. He’s like me. He could snap and kill somebody, but afterward he’d show horrific effects from it. His conscience would eviscerate his whole being. So how does he appear to you? Like a man who’s still coping with himself? Or a man who wants to shoot himself in the foot?”

This was the moment when I decided I’d had enough of Edwin Gilderstone and his bitter, sanctimonious words. I abruptly thanked him and hung up. I poured another cup of coffee and stood looking out the window, trying to piece all this together.

Neither Whitehall’s college roommate nor his college mentor had hesitated or equivocated a bit — yes, Thomas Whitehall could easily kill somebody. That obviously wasn’t what I’d hoped to hear. On the other hand, how good was their judgment?

Ernie Walters had the New Yorker’s gift of gab, which always entails a degree of exaggeration. He wasn’t lying, he was taking forty-five seconds and making it sound like a minute. But he’d lived with Whitehall two years, been his close personal friend for twelve, described him as virtually a brother, yet had never suspected his homosexuality. That’s a fairly gaping miscalculation. A man’s sexual character is an integral part of his larger character, of his earthly essence. Ernie Walters never had a clue.

Gilderstone had known about the homosexuality, but his misjudgments, if anything, went closer to the bone than Walters’s. What I figured was that like lots of older men, Gilderstone saw Whitehall as a younger figure he wanted to transform into a burnished, tidier image of himself. That’s what lay behind all that gibberish about untapped talents and Rhodes Scholarships. He wanted Whitehall to be his shadow, to follow in his footsteps. Maybe because he was gay and would have no children, he wished to sculpt one. He wanted Whitehall to be something more than a typical soldier, fighting and garrisoning his life away. Only Whitehall said no.

One thing I was learning about the world inhabited by military gays was that it could make for some fairly confused bedfellows. I mean, here was Ernie Walters, a thoroughly decent but straight guy who was getting his balls clipped every day because he’d once roomed with a gay. Still, he’d volunteered to step up and trade his career to help Whitehall. Then here was Ed Gilderstone, a gay man himself, who maybe loved Whitehall, who should’ve been sympathetic as hell, a fifty-three-year-old major whose military career was already a shambling wreck, who wasn’t willing to make any effort to help his old student.

Maybe Gilderstone was the scarred product of the old days and the old system. He’d been a teenager in the fifties and served in the Army of the sixties; back in the days when “gay” still meant joyful, and “homosexual” meant ridicule, disgrace, and ostracism. When a man is forced to hide in a closet that long, I guess it can get pretty dark and lonely.