The Darkness - Jason Pinter [92]
left side. Only the left side of his body and face were
visible. What was visible, though, was that shock of wavy
blond hair.
"Holy crap," Jack said. "Look at this."
He pointed to the photo of Chester Malloy in the army
photograph.
"That's not the same guy as in this photo," Jack said.
"Look at his ear."
"I don't see it," I said. "What, is there an old earring
hole or something?"
"Didn't you ever wrestle?" Jack said.
"Uh, no. I watched a little WWF when I was growing up."
"That's as close to real wrestling as Harvey Hillerman's hair plugs are to the real deal. No, look closely at
Chester Malloy's ear in the earlier photo, and then
compare it to the ear in this new one."
I did, and while I couldn't be sure, it looked like the ear
in the recent shot was slightly puffy, slightly deformed.
"That's called cauliflower ear," Jack said. "Wrestlers
get it all the time. It's when fluid collects in the ear, causing
the cartilage to die and harden. The result ain't pretty, but
it's kind of a badge of honor for a lot of wrestlers. Unless
you treat it right away, drain the fluid, it's not going away.
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Chester Malloy doesn't have cauliflower ear in this new
photo. But look who does in the earlier one."
I stared intently at the military shot, and clear as day
was the left ear of Rex Malloy. It was deformed, puffy,
just like the ear in the later shot.
"This means that the person in this recent photo wasn't
Chester Malloy," Jack said, "but his brother Rex. My
guess is Rex was a wrestler before joining the army, and
he had the bad ear when this photo was taken."
"And notice something else?" I said.
"And look at Rex's hair in this photo," Jack replied.
"It's not blond."
"That'd be a fine shade of black," I said. "And it's
straight, not wavy at all."
"That means that it wasn't Chester Malloy who kidnapped Paulina," Jack said. "It was Rex, all dolled up to
look like his brother."
"So if that's Rex Malloy in the picture, and it was Rex
who took Paulina, where is Chester Malloy?"
"That's the million-dollar question, sport."
"So we're back to this again," I said.
"Until further notice," Jack replied. "So Rex Malloy
grew out his hair, dyed it blond, gave himself a nice perm
and is now going by his brother's name."
"Come on, who doesn't do that?"
"I have a brother. Name is Roy. Man's got a head
balder than an eight ball and smells worse than Oscar the
Grouch. If I ever dressed like him, you'd have permission
to throw me off the nearest suspension bridge."
"That would make sense. Paulina told me the man
who kidnapped her insinuated that he'd lost someone.
Maybe he was referring to his brother," I said. "It looks
like he's purposefully dressing just like his brother
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Chester. And if the guy in Paulina's photo isn't Chester,
but Rex, why call himself Chester? Why not make up
some other completely random alias?"
"Some sort of psychotic tribute perhaps," Jack said.
"Now look at the rest of this squad. Eleven men and
women. The Department of Justice should have records
on the rest of them. We need to know where the rest of
this squad is, and get any more information about Malloy
that we can. Maybe somebody who knew him can explain
why a Green Beret seems to be armpit deep in some new
drug epidemic."
"Noriega was a massive drug trafficker," I said. "If this
Bravo squad was flown in to help depose Noriega, they
obviously had some part to play in the Panama drug war."
"Maybe," Jack said. "But the question remains. Whose
side were they on?"
We split up the list, Jack taking five names and myself
taking six. Our job was to track down the remaining
members of Rex Malloy's Detachment Bravo team and
contact them to find out whatever information we could
about the Malloy family.
The DOJ had every member of the squad on file, but
to my surprise only three of my six were still alive.
And one of those was not Chester Malloy.
The surviving members on my list were Rex Malloy,
Eve Ramos and Frank Loughlin. There were no records
of employment or housing