The Second Saladin

He even paused by the cactus to fetch his pistol.

“What happened?” asked Oscar. “Mother of Jesus, it sounded like a war.”

“Mother of Jesus, it was a war,” Ramirez said, thinking of the tall one, for he suddenly realized he’d seen a kind of soldier.

2

Bill Speight pulled the Chevette to the side of the road, puzzled by what he saw. He must have lost track of the numbers a while back — some of these little houses out in the western Chicago suburbs were set so far back from the street you couldn’t read the figures. He reached for and opened his briefcase and sifted through the papers.

Come on, come on, old fool, he told himself, and at last located the address. Yes, it was 1104 Old Elm Road. Could he have gotten off the expressway at the wrong town? But no, he’d seen the exit — he’d been careful, very careful so far. He was in the right place.

A Roman Catholic church? He searched his memory, yet he could unearth no remembrance of Paul Chardy that touched on any issue of religion. Had Chardy gone strange — the brave ones had more than a little craziness in them anyway — and joined the priesthood? Another priesthood. As if Special Operations wasn’t religious order enough. Yet he could not imagine that famous temper hidden beneath a priest’s habit, nor could he see a large- boned, impatient, athletic man like Chardy, a man of Chardy’s peculiar gifts, listening in a dark booth to pimply teenagers telling tales on themselves.

But he looked at the church and saw it was one of those modern things, more roof and glass than building. A spindly cross way up top stood out against the bright blue spring sky; otherwise the place could have been some new convention center. Speight’s watery blue eyes tracked back to the sign and confronted it squarely: OUR LADY OF THE RESURRECTION ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH AND SCHOOL, the letters white and blocky, slotted onto a black background, and beneath them the legend: LEARN TO FORGIVE YOURSELF. Speight winced at the advice. Could he? Could Paul?

But the school part made some sense. He could imagine Chardy among children, not among nuns and priests. For Chardy had still a little of the athlete’s boyishness, the gift for exhilaration which would captivate children. That was his best half, his mother’s half; but what about the other side, his father’s side, the Hungarian side, which was moody and sullen and turbulent?

At that moment a class of kids came spilling out from behind the church onto an adjacent blacktopped playground. So much energy; they made Speight feel his age. The panorama was raucous and vast and not a little violent, and the one bearded old geezer in a raincoat, who was supposedly in command, stood so meekly off to one side that Speight feared for him.

It was nearly noon. What lay ahead filled him with melancholy and unease; he wasn’t sure he could bring it off. Sighing heavily, he pulled the car into the church’s parking lot and found a place to park, marked VISITOR — he searched for it at some length, not wanting to break any rules — and began a long trudge to the buildings, his briefcase heavy in his hand.

His walk would take him through the playground, where balls sailed and bounced and kids hung like monkeys off the apparatus. All the boys wore scrawny ties, he saw — now that’s not a bad idea; his own kids dressed like tramps — and the girls kilts. But the imposed formality didn’t cut any ice with the little brutes. They still fought and shoved and screamed at each other, and at one point the supervisor had to bound over to break up a bad scuffle. Kids. Speight shook his head, but he wasn’t really paying much attention.

He was worried about Chardy. You don’t just go crashing back into somebody’s life after seven years — or was it now eight? — and take up where you left off. And it was true that at the end, at the hearings, Bill hadn’t done Paul much good. He’d just told the truth, and the truth hadn’t helped Chardy at all, and maybe even now Chardy would hold it against him. Chardy had a famous temper; Chardy had once slugged a Head of Station.

Bill stopped in the middle of the playground. He felt a little queasy. He wished he had a Gelusil. The church building loomed above him; he was surrounded by children. He had to go to the bathroom suddenly. Maybe he could find a john and get settled down, get himself composed.

But then, maybe the best thing would be to get it over with. Get it over with fast. He’d come this far, quite a way.

He reached into his pocket, pulled out a Binaca canister, and squirted a blast of the mouthwash into his mouth. Its cool sweetness pepped him up considerably, burying that sour taste that had collected in his throat.

I’ll just do it.

He turned as a basketball glanced off his knee and a horde of little jerks roared by in pursuit.

“Hey, excuse me.” He hailed the old duffer, who was bent in conference with two sniffling children. “Is there an office around here? Where would I find an office?”

“Are you sure you’re looking for the office, Bill?” asked Paul Chardy, rising.

It was the coat, cloaking the man’s size. And it was the beard, surprisingly shot with gray, masking the dark half-Irish face, blurring that pugnacious chin. And the hair, longish, almost over the ears, where Paul’s had always been short, after the military fashion, like Bill’s own. And it was also the playground full of kids, the bright sun, the bouncing, sailing balls, the noise, the church: it was all so different. The last time Bill had seen Paul had been at an arms dump on the border. Chardy wore baggy khaki pants then, and an embroidered coat and a black-and-white turban and sunglasses and had magazine bandoliers crisscrossed on his chest like some kind of bandit and had been almost mahogany from the sun. He’d carried a Soviet assault rifle, the AK-47, and had a couple of rocket-propelled grenades in their launchers slung over his back, and a belt full of Russian F-l grenades.

“I–I didn’t recognize you, Paul. The beard — you look so different.”

“Old Bill, Jesus. I saw you getting out of the car. They still make you rent cheap little Chevys, huh? How are you?” He took Bill’s hand and shook it. “You’re looking good, Bill.”

“You’re lying, Paul. I’m looking old, which is what I am. You’re getting some gray yourself.”

“It’s these kids. I look a hundred. These damned kids, they took my youth.” He laughed, and clapped Bill on the back.

“Paul, we had some trouble finding you.”

“You were supposed to. That was the point.”

“Well, anyway. It’s some old business. Have you got a minute?”

Chardy looked at his watch, a big Rolex. He still had it. All the Special Operations people wore them.

“This is my most open period. They work you pretty hard in these joints. I’m off around five. Can it wait?”

“Ah.” It couldn’t. Get to it, they’d told Speight. Don’t give him time to think about it, to nurse his furies. Plunge in.

I know, Speight had answered bitterly. I’m not a kid at this game either, you know; thinking, you bastards.

“Well,” Speight started, feeling outpositioned in his first move, “it’s only that—”

But Chardy darted off — he still had that old quickness — shouting, “Hey, hey, Mahoney, Mahoney,” and leapt into some sort of ruckus, pulling apart two squalling, clawing boys. He shook the big one hard, once, and spoke to him in an earnest, deadly voice. Speight imagined Chardy speaking to him like that.

Chardy came back. “That little prick thinks he’s tough. He likes to hit people,” he said. “His father’s a cop.”

“Paul, I never would have imagined this kind of a life for you,” said Speight, stalling.

“At the parochial schools,” Chardy said, looking at him squarely with those dark eyes, “you don’t need a degree in education. You just need to be willing to work like a horse for peanuts. A big-deal sports background helps. What about you, Bill? Still playing cowboy?”

“They put me in a different section. Over in Central Reference.”

“Siberia.”