night to find no less than twenty-five hundred dollars in
charges racked up. Ironically they were not at jewelry or
electronic stores, the bastion of people looking to make a
quick splurge with a stolen card, but rather from places like
Home Depot and Ace Hardware. A sign that whoever had
taken her bag was way behind on their home renovations.
A small thing perhaps, but I considered it a sign of the
times. For years, after the mayor and cops had cleaned
the city up, New York was known as one of the safest big
cities in the world. Like any city, of course you needed a
modicum of common sense, the knowledge that despite
this change if you wandered into the wrong neighborhood
at the wrong time you were playing Russian roulette.
But now, New York didn’t feel quite as safe. There was
a constant tension, a thickness in the air, that something
combustible could ignite at any moment. There were too
many people out of work, too many people unable to afford
their homes, too many businesses hanging on for dear life.
And when a city is being stretched like a piece of taffy,
just the slightest bit of tension will cause it to snap.
The Columbia University department of history was
located in a building called Fayerweather Hall. It looked
like a building transported from Victorian England,
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redbrick and laced with intricate scrollwork. It felt as out
of place in Manhattan as I did several years ago.
We entered the building and the receptionist, a middleaged woman whose nameplate read Carolyn, directed us
to William Hollinsworth’s office on the first floor. The
door to William Hollinsworth’s office was wide open. I
entered first, Jack following me.
Hollinsworth was about forty years old, with a severe
crew cut and intense green eyes. His hair was specked with
gray, and he wore a pair of square-rimmed reading glasses
that sat on the tip of his nose. He wore a well-cut gray suit
jacket that did little to hide the taut frame underneath.
I’d met many athletes, cops and military personnel
over the years, and they fell into one of two categories.
Either they continued their fitness routines to a T after
leaving their vocation, or let themselves go entirely. Bill
Hollinsworth clearly had not let his post-military career
become a detriment to his fitness.
“Professor Hollinsworth?” I said.
He stood up, removed his glasses.
Hollinsworth was not a tall man, maybe five-ten or
eleven, but he stood up straight as an arrow and held his
shoulders back like he was expecting a salute.
“You must be Parker,” he said. Jack had followed behind
me, and peeked his head out. “And Jack O’Donnell.”
“It’s a pleasure, sir.” Jack extended his hand. Hollinsworth took it, shook it, then motioned for us to sit down.
Jack took his seat, and I noticed him rubbing his hand
and grimacing.
I closed the door to the professor’s office, took a seat
as well, and glanced around the room.
The former Special Forces officer kept his office as
clean and free from excess debris as he kept his body. The
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275
bookshelves were all neatly aligned, every paper neatly
arranged. Even his in-and out-boxes, which were full,
somehow managed to be perfect examples of immaculate
care. There were no picture frames, no trinkets, no souvenirs, posters, awards or plaques. Nothing that led you to
believe that William Hollinsworth had anything in his life
but his work.
If the sign of a sick mind was a clean desk, then
William Hollinsworth was Hannibal Lecter.
The professor sat back down, folded his hands and
crossed his legs.
“Mr. Parker. Mr. O’Donnell. What can I do for you,
sirs?”
“Professor Hollinsworth,” I said.
“Bill,” he said with a smile. “I ask my students to call
me Professor Hollinsworth, so unless you’ve just applied
here to be an undergraduate I don’t expect the same formalities from you, Mr. Parker.”
“All right then, Bill, as we told your secretary, we’re
here from the New York Gazette. ”
for you?”
“Twenty years ago, you were a member of a Special
Forces unit in Panama. Is that correct?”
Hollinsworth shifted in his chair. He clearly wasn’t expecting this line of questioning.
“That’s right,” he said. “I was there for a little over a year.”
“You were with Operational Detachment Bravo, along
with ten other men and women. Correct?”
“That’s correct,” he said, a hint of agitation dipping
into his voice. “Did you just come here to confirm things
we both already know?”
“Sorry to waste your time,” I said, “but Mr. O’Don-276
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nell and I did some background research on you and your
squad before we came here. But we both know that what
you read in the newspapers and what you experience in
actual life can differ greatly.”
“That’s true. Fair enough.”
“According to military records, you and three other
members of your squad were attacked by members of
Manuel Noriega’s military deployment, the PDF, on
January sixth, nineteen-ninety. Is that right?”
Hollinsworth’s eyes narrowed. He was no longer shifting but staring straight at me. I couldn’t tell if he was
angry that I was dredging up old memories, glad that his
near-death experience was still a topic of discussion, or
furious to the point where he might rip my head off with
his bare hands.
“That’s right.”
“One man was killed that day. Chester Malloy.” Hollinsworth nodded slowly, as his eyes softened.
“Were you close with Major Malloy?” Jack said suddenly. I turned to face him, but he was looking at Hollinsworth.
“I was,” the man said. “Our whole unit, Bravo, we
trained together, fought together. I would have died for
any one of them. And I wish I had been able to. But…”
Then Hollinsworth trailed off.
“But what?” Jack said.
“I have no problem giving my life for my country, or
for one of my countrymen. But that day, we shouldn’t
have been in a position for anyone to lose their life.”
“Why not?” Jack said.
“We knew not to mess around with the PDF,” Hollinsworth said. “A few weeks earlier, Second Lieutenant
Robert Paz was coming out of a restaurant in Panama
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City. He came across a PDF squad. He was alone. Now,
any smart man or woman would have had the common
sense to know when the right time is to fight, and that was
most certainly the wrong time. We never got an official
number, but civilian reports said that Lieutenant Paz was
outnumbered at least eight to one.”
“He decided to fight,” I said.
“Not fight,” Hollinsworth sa
id. “See, Paz was a member of a special unit nicknamed the ‘Hard Chargers.’
Their job was to actively provoke the PDF, to incite them
either to violence against American troops or Panamanian
civilians.”
“Why would they do that?” I asked.
“Because until then, we had no reason to go after
Noriega. Nothing official, anyway. Lots of innuendo, and
we knew for certain he was trafficking in enough drugs
to fill the Grand Canyon fifty times over. But you can’t
overthrow every dictator that’s dabbling in illegal goods.
If that was the case we’d be at war with half the known
world. No, we needed something more tangible. Something we could sell to citizens back home.”
“That’s where Paz came in.”
Hollinsworth nodded slowly.
“It wasn’t supposed to go like that, though. Hard
Chargers were never supposed to travel alone. Paz just
happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and
they recognized him.”
“So they killed him,” I said.
“Not immediately. Paz quickly realized that things
were going to get out of hand, so he tried to run. But
because the PDF had set up a legitimate roadblock, they
felt they were justified in killing him. That’s the way
Noriega spun it. Have you heard of Franz Ferdinand?”
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“Of course,” Jack said. “His assassination in Sarajevo
was the primary catalyst for World War I.”
“That’s right. Well, Robert Paz was our Archduke Ferdinand. Until December sixteenth, nineteen eighty-nine,
no members of the United States military had been killed
by Panamanian forces. When Lieutenant Paz was killed,
suddenly we had all the cause in the world. And on
December twentieth, the floodgates opened. We went
into Panama with a vengeance, and we took Noriega out
of power and that bastard has been rotting in prison ever
since.”
“So how does this all play into Chester Malloy getting killed?”
Hollinsworth said, “Why are you so interested in this?
All of this happened almost twenty years ago and suddenly you want to know about it? I’m not buying it. What
else are you looking for, Mr. Parker?”
I looked at Jack. He said to Hollinsworth, “We finish
our interview, you can start interviewing us.”
He pursed his lips, said, “Fair enough.”
38
Morgan couldn’t believe how fast his heart was pounding. Even when he used to snort a few lines at a club then
dance until his blood felt like lava, he couldn’t remember
ever feeling quite like this. Those nights when he was
high, there was always a sense of floating above the
world, that the Morgan who was doing those things, saying those things, would wake up the next morning a different person.
The world didn’t really count when you were out of
it. Everything you did could be explained. This, though,
there was no explaining it. No justifying it. If he accepted
what was being proposed right now, he would wake up
tomorrow the same Morgan Isaacs, remembering every
detail and never be able to wash it away.
Which is, perhaps, to his great surprise, the reason he
didn’t feel the slightest hesitation.
The gun was heavier than he expected it to be. You
always saw movies where guys swung guns around like
they were made of tissue paper, aiming them sideways
and backward and doing cool tricks. Not this gun, though.
He held it in his hand, and it felt just fine.
“This is a Glock 36, .45 caliber handgun,” Chester
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said. He was looking at Morgan with dead seriousness in
his face. Chester had been nice to him during the short
time he’d known the man. A good conversationalist, even
jokey at times, but right now Morgan got the feeling that
if he even cracked a smile Chester would throw him out
of the car.
They were driving uptown, passing by the glistening
Time Warner Center, the natural beauty of Central Park
on the right as they drove up Central Park West. Morgan
never spent a whole lot of time in the Park, or in any
sort of nature. When he wasn’t behind a desk, he was
at home with a beer or at a club throwing back martinis
like they were iced tea. At first the idea of traveling all
over the city to hawk his wares worried him. What if
he didn’t like it? What if he couldn’t take all the time
on the subway, didn’t want to deal with the asshole
who often paid with crinkled twenties and smelled like
dirty socks?
But when that money started rolling in, when he saw
the smile on Chester’s face, Morgan knew he could hack
it, and hack it quite easily.
“You sure you can do this?” Chester said. His eyes
betrayed no sympathy; he was simply making sure that
Morgan was up to the task.
“Yes,” he said emphatically. “I am.”
“Well, all right then. Once we pull up to the building,
the office is number A17. You’re going to walk straight
past the receptionist. If she gives you a hard time, just tell
her you’re going to the bathroom. Her name is Carolyn.
Don’t look at her, just walk right past and say, ‘Just going
to the bathroom, Carolyn, thanks.’”
“Got it.”
“Once you enter the hallway past her desk, make a
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quick left, and it’s the third office on your right. You
know who your target is.”
“I do. Why…”
“No whys,” Chester said. “Once it’s done, you run as
fast as you can back here. The car will be idling in front
of the entrance. The door will be open. You just climb in,
hand me the gun, and we’re gone. The gun will be disposed of before the police arrive on the scene. And we
want you to wear this,” he said.
Chester handed Morgan a baseball cap, underneath
which and sewn in to the cap was a blond wig. Morgan
put it on his head, and Chester adjusted it so that none of
Morgan’s black hair could be seen.
“Anything to throw them off a little bit. Carolyn will
be the only witness, and she’s an old lady. They’ll be
looking for a young blond guy wearing a baseball cap.”
“Okay.”
“We’ll drop you off near the subway after we ditch the
car. Call your girlfriend. Have her come over, get her good
and drunk and screw the shit out of her. She’ll be another
layer of protection, so to speak. Then wake up tomorrow,
come to work and act like this never happened.”
Chester handed Morgan a folded piece of paper. The
young man opened it. It was a money order for $50,000,
made out to him.
“Just in case anyone asks, you’ve been doing some
contracting work on the side,” he said with a grin. “You’ll
get the second half once it’s done. And Morgan?”
“Yeah?”
“Make sure nobody asks.”
Morgan nodded, then folded the slip back up and
slipped it into the inside of his coat pocket. It felt good
to have it there, and it would feel even better tomorrow
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when he deposited a hundred thousand dollars into his
bank account.
Those debts, the ones that had nearly crippled him for
so long, would be wiped clean by the end of the month.
“You ready?” Chester said.
“Ready?” Morgan said with a smile. “I’m bored. Let’s
do this.”
39
“Go on,” I said.
“Our troops invaded Panama because of Paz’s death,
but because he ran from a PDF blockade the Panamanian
government claimed they did nothing wrong. So folks
back home in the States began to feel the same way, especially when more people started dying on both sides
of the conflict. Two weeks after Paz’s death, a marine
unit was supposed to infiltrate a Noriega drug lab, but
instead they found themselves trapped in an alleyway
where they were ambushed by the PDF. They all managed to get out alive, but there were some on our side that
wondered if they were given the wrong directions on
purpose.”
I said, “That they were led into a trap in the hopes
they’d be killed to strengthen the cause for the invasion.”
“Exactly,” Hollinsworth said. “Nobody knew for sure.”
“That day in January,” Jack said, “when your squad
was attacked…the same thing happened, didn’t it?”
I could see Hollinsworth struggling to remain passive,
remain calm, but there was something behind those eyes that
he was unable to hide. It wasn’t grief or sadness; it was rage.
“I know we were set up,” Hollinsworth said. “We were
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scheduled to join up with a Ranger regiment. I was given
directions, instructions on when and where we’d meet. But
by the time we got there, it was just us and the armed guard.
By the time the survivors got back to the base, Chester was
dead. And the Rangers had no idea what the hell I was
talking about. The military discharged me a month after
that, and I went back to school to get my master’s degree.
I never saw anyone else from our squad again.”
“So Chester Malloy was killed that day,” Jack said,
“but Rex Malloy and Eve Ramos lived.”
“Rex, Chester and Eve were close,” Hollinsworth continued. “The whole squad was like a family, but those
three were the tightest. When Chester died, it hit Rex and