James Benn - Evil for evil

"He's a very nasty man."

"I'm sure he forced the arrangement on you. But then Brennan comes along, assigned to kitchen detail. I don't know how, but he sees that things don't add up. Maybe he compares a bill of lading from a delivery with the invoice or the receipt, it really doesn't matter. I bet he went straight to you."

"I told Jenkins it had to stop. I did!"

"But he said no. He told you he'd take care of Brennan."

"I didn't want that to happen."

"No, it would draw too much attention. So you move Brennan out of the kitchen, which suited him just fine. I'm sure you said you'd implicate him if he said anything. Then you started pulling paperwork, getting rid of any evidence. That's what was on your desk the other day. That's why you were so upset."

"How did you know?"

"Heck has been pawing through Lasner's communications, you knew that. It didn't make any sense that it was part of his investigation into the BAR theft. He had to be looking into something more long- term. I knew Brennan had been nervous about seeing Jenkins's delivery trucks on the base, and then I remembered he'd been working in the kitchens when he first got here. I figured Jenkins had threatened him, and that you and Brennan were each holding the threat of talking over each other's heads. Then, when the BAR raid came along, you figured it was the perfect opportunity to take Brennan down for a crime he had no part of."

"But I'm not arresting him; there isn't going to be a court-martial."

"Right. Because he's got something on you. Something he probably showed you this morning." I leaned to look into the wastepaper basket by his desk. A thin layer of ash lay at the bottom. "Which you burned. What are they? A stack of invoices and receipts that don't match?"

"Yes," said Thornton, as he held his head in his hands. His voice cracked with emotion. "He had receipts from the deliveries at the mess hall, matched up with invoices I signed off on. It's enough to put me away."

"What does Brennan want?"

"That's just the thing," he said, looking up to me as if I might have the answer. "He said all he wants is to be left alone. But Jenkins won't leave him alone as long as he has that evidence. I tried to reason with him, to give him money, but he won't listen."

"Why was he so cheery when he left here?"

"I told him I'd work on a transfer for him, back to his old outfit."

"In Italy?"

"Yes. They're still on the line, attacking along the Volturno River, someplace I never heard of. Can you believe it? He wants to go back to that."

"Yeah, hard to believe a guy would want to go back into combat rather than associate himself with you."

"Hey, if Brennan had just kept his mouth shut, everything would have been fine. But no, he had to go and screw things up. If Jenkins does anything to him, it won't be on my head, I'll tell you that."

"Where's the money?" I asked.

"What money?"

"Don't even try-"

"Listen, Boyle, if you've got some evidence against me, go ahead and take it to Heck. Come to think of it, why isn't he here? If you've broken this big case, why aren't the MPs taking me away in irons?" Thornton was finally adding it up. He was right. All I had was a story. If he'd gotten rid of all the evidence, except for what Brennan had squirreled away, then I'd have a hard time making it stick.

"How come you lied to me about wanting a combat command?"

"I do."

"Ordnance officer at Corps HQ is not exactly in the line of fire."

"Get the hell out, Boyle."

"OK," I said, thinking over my options. I should just walk away, forget about Thornton, and get on with the investigation. "Mind if I take this?" I pointed to the whiskey.

"If it gets you out of here, then with my compliments. No reason you can't share in the wealth. Maybe you're not as dumb as you look after all."

"Could be," I said, lifting the case. "We'll see."

I stopped at the communications center, gave Lasner a bottle of Bushmills, and said I needed to use a telephone in private. He put the bottle in his desk drawer, me in a small office down the hall, and shut the door without asking a question. I put in a call to Captain Hiram Heck, and held the receiver away from my ear until he calmed down enough to listen. I managed to get a few words in, got a grunt in return that I interpreted as agreement, and winced as he slammed the phone down, his way of saying goodbye.

It was about sixty miles to Brownlow House in Lurgan, according to the directions Lasner gave me. I could tell I'd gone up a notch in his estimation of me as a rookie second lieutenant when he took the time to walk me out to the jeep, going over the route he'd marked on a map to lead me to Corps Headquarters.

"In the center of Newcastle you'll see a sign for Castlewellan Road. Take that; it goes to a town of the same name. You'll cross the Dublin Road in Castlewellan, then take the Ballyward Road to the village of Ballyward," he said, pointing out the towns. The next one was Katesbridge.

"Let me guess. Then I take the Katesbridge Road?"

"Yeah, but you have to watch out. They also name the roads from the other direction, so this same roadway becomes the Castlewellan Road again, once you get to Banbridge. Then you're almost there. After Banbridge, take the Lurgan Road."

"To Lurgan."

"Right. In the town center there are signs for Corps HQ. Brownlow House is a huge place, a manor house, I'd guess you call it. Hard to miss anyway; it's the biggest thing in town."

"OK, thanks, Sarge," I said as I took down the canvas top to the jeep. I saw him glance in the back at the case of whiskey.

"You have a whole case of Bushmills," he said, a slight petulant tone creeping into his voice. I guess one bottle seemed like a lot when he thought that was all I had to give.

"Less one, Sarge. Sorry, I need these. I'm not even keeping any for myself."

"Well, OK, Lieutenant, if you say so. I haven't seen that much quality hooch in one place since I've been here. Good liquor doesn't seem to make its way down the chain of command."

"Ain't that the way of the world?" I waved as I drove off, glad that Lasner seemed cheered by the thought that he had one more bottle than I'd end up with. He was right about all the good stuff going to the higher ranks, and I was too low on the rank scale to disagree with him. Lieutenants were a dime a dozen and didn't get much of a cut; the valuables went up to captains, majors, colonels, and generals. Stuff like scotch, whiskey, fleece-lined leather coats meant for bomber crews, penicillin, these things all flowed in a supply line from the States to bases all over the world on their way to the front. At each stop, the freight got lighter and guys like Heck sported jump boots and other gear they needed to make themselves feel like they were real soldiers.

Booze was one thing, especially here when we were practically in the backyard of the Bushmills distillery. But cold-weather gear, cigarettes, morphine, I'd seen it all pilfered at rear-area supply depots, and it made me sick. I had no desire to hack another foxhole out of the hardpacked Italian ground, but if I did, I'd want to be warm once I climbed into it. If I was wounded, I didn't want to run out of morphine syrettes because a quartermaster had a habit or a connection in Belfast, London, or Algiers who was offering top dollar.

Everyone's a thief, I told myself, enjoying the sun on my face as I drove through the pines, down the hill to Newcastle. From the cop on the beat who takes an apple from the greengrocer to the government that takes a cut out of your paycheck. It's simply a matter of how much harm you cause when you take what isn't yours. I didn't know where the line was, the place where the harm was serious, but I knew enough to stay on the side of it that let me sleep at night.