“We don’t need much room. He sleeps with me.”
“Listen, honey,” Shirley patted me on the arm, “your personal life is none of my business. Any friend of yours is welcome in my house.” A few moments passed before I could stop laughing long enough to explain that Mick was my dog, after which Shirley had a conniption, which started me up again. Nothing had changed; it was just like the old days.
We finally settled down. “Kate, I’ve got to get to work or Blades’ll fire me. You planning to eat here?”
“No, not tonight. G.P. invited me for supper at his house. I just dropped by to say hi.”
Shirley pulled her white apron to one side and reached into the pocket of her skirt. “Here’s the key to my back door, let yourself in. I’m living in the old Martin place on Amanda Street. I get off at eleven and I’ll see you there. That is, if you’re still awake.”
“How about food? Can I stop at a grocery and pick up some supplies?”
“I stopped by the Red Owl before work, got everything we need. It’ll be your turn next week.” With that Shirley ran off, disappearing into the kitchen behind the bar.
As I weaved my way through the maze of tables toward the door, I heard a booming guffaw that transcended the laughter from the rest of the bar crowd. Blades Larue stood behind the bar, holding court with a half dozen customers busy downing draught beers and trading jokes. Blades hadn’t changed either.
He was a barrel-chested man with a penchant for bawdy stories and fist fights with customers who drank too much and got out of hand. I would have guessed Blades to be in his early fifties, but he looked like he could still skate with the best in the NHL. The only noticeable changes from his playing days were strands of white crowding into his jet-black hair, and a mustache grown to cover scars over his upper lip where more than one hockey puck, and a few fists, had left their marks. When it came to bar fights, though, Blades had a reputation for giving far better than he got.
As I passed the bar a couple of male heads swung my way, always a nice ego boost. One of the group, a tall thin man in a bright red shirt, was delivering the punch line of a joke that got the whole group going again, with Blades’ laugh once more booming above the rest.
I would have stopped to tell a few myself, but Mick was waiting patiently in the car.
17
Mick deserved a treat.
He had stayed cooped up in my car for almost two days without uttering so much as a bark or whimper. I stopped at the IGA on the way to Shirley’s and picked up a pound of hamburger to mix with his dry dog food. It cost forty-three cents and seven of the sixty-four red ration stamps I was allotted for meat each week, but he was worth it.
Like every other U.S. citizen, I was issued two books of food ration stamps every month. The blue ones were for canned goods like vegetables and soups. You used the red stamps for meat, fish and dairy products. The number of stamps you surrendered for each item often varied from month to month depending on the supply.
Believe me, it could get very confusing.
While Mick was eating, I unpacked my suitcases and put the clothes in the large dresser in the spare bedroom Shirley had reserved for me. She was a great hostess; I could tell by the fresh smell of the sheets and pillowcases that she had made up the bed that morning. Fortunately I was quick, because when I put the last of my blouses in the drawer and turned around, there was Mick waiting with those pleading eyes.
I was due at G.P.’s for dinner in ten minutes, but I couldn’t just run out on woman’s best friend. I let Mick out the back door into Shirley’s large fenced-in backyard and took a seat on her wooden porch. I watched him run around, stopping here and there to sniff at something. Mick has only three legs, but gets around as well as most dogs with all four.
Two years ago I had gotten a phone call from my friend Jim Schiro, a veterinarian who volunteers his services at the local animal shelter near my home. A young German Shepherd had been hit by a car, his right rear leg shattered. The dog’s owners had brought him to the shelter to be put to sleep. Jim was confident the leg could be successfully amputated and the dog would live, surviving on three appendages, but the owners balked at having a three-legged pet.
Dr. Schiro knew of my penchant for taking in animals that no one else seemed to care about. Did I want this dog?
Of course I did. I took Mick home after the operation and we’ve been pals ever since. Since the start of the war, it has become much more popular to refer to dogs of Mick’s breed as Alsatians rather than German Shepherds. While the name change has become popular in some circles, Mick seems oblivious to the distinction.
After a couple of minutes he came back with a stick in his mouth and dropped it in front of me. Our game. I picked up the stick and threw it overhand toward the rear of the yard. Mick was off before it left my hand, and back in seconds with the stick clutched in his jaws. The loss of a leg certainly didn’t bother him; why should it bother anyone else?
I threw it again and again, enjoying the game as much as Mick. He had been my closest companion since Ronny’s death, and had been there for me when I needed a friend. He seemed to know something had gone terribly wrong and stood by me.
I had poured myself into my work and it seemed to help lift my spirits somewhat. At the Times, I got myself assigned to the police beat where I busted my butt tracking down stories like the current one that almost got me killed. But my real ambition still lay in becoming a foreign correspondent like Edward R. Murrow or Ernie Pyle. This war would decide the direction the world took for the rest of the century and American GIs were fighting for their lives in places like Guadalcanal, Tangiers and Samar. The real stories were there alright, but they wouldn’t let a dame anywhere near the actual shooting. And you could bet the money you spent on your last war bond that I wasn’t going to travel halfway around the world just to sit in some office interviewing a colonel who hadn’t been within a hundred miles of the action, and didn’t know an M1 from a B24.
So here I was in northern Michigan. Unable to cover the biggest story of the century, and hiding from the little action my investigative reporting in Detroit had stirred up. For the next month at least my world seemed limited to working for a small town daily paper and playing stick with Mick.
Mick apparently realized I had lost interest in our game. Instead of chasing the stick that I threw, he sat there looking up at me with those big brown eyes. At the same time, I heard the telephone ring inside the house.
I was sure it was G.P. wondering where the hell I was.
18
The danger of an attack on the locks had been on my mind since this afternoon and was anxious to get to G.P.’s to find out more.
His house was a white colonial on 14th Avenue, just outside of the Soo’s downtown area and within easy walking distance from Shirley’s place. It was home to me too during my senior year at Soo High.
My uncle had almost lost the place in the thirties when local retailers cut their advertising budgets to the bone and his newspaper hemorrhaged red ink. In typical G.P. fashion, he had joked about changing the paper’s name to the Soo Mourning News.
Now that a wartime economy had turned things around and the paper was flourishing, he could afford a much newer, fancier home. But those lean years had made him cautious.
For me, walking into the house was like donning a favorite old sweater: it felt familiar, warm and comfortable. G.P.’s housekeeper, Mrs. Miller, greeted my appearance at the door with a chipper “Hello” and a warm hug. She was a chubby, round-faced Englishwoman in her late forties who wore a smile as easily as the starched white apron that seemed constantly wrapped around her portly waist. She had served as my uncle’s housekeeper since Aunt Susan died over a decade ago, and had been with G.P. just a few months when I showed up for my senior year. She seemed to understand the problems of a seventeen-year old whose parents were going through a contentious divorce and took me on as a personal project. She treated me almost as if I were a second daughter to her beloved Fe
lice. Mrs. Miller taught me cooking, sewing and other feminine niceties, trying to make a lady out of me. While I suspect she thought she had fallen short in that regard, the skills she taught still serve me well living on my own. I bake a mean roast beef and Yorkshire Pudding.
“How’s Felice?” I asked Mrs. Miller. “Still east with her father?”
“Lord, no,” she answered. “Felice is right here in town. Lives in a flat over on Bingham Street. She’s working at Blades LaRue’s restaurant as a cook. Speaking of which, dinner’s nearly ready. The men are in the den.
”I’ll bring you a cocktail.”
“Scotch and water, please. With a twist of lemon?”
Mrs. Miller ducked back into the kitchen and I started down the hallway toward the den.
19
I found my uncle and Crawford seated in the den; both rose to greet me as I entered the room.
“Thanks for coming, Kate,” G.P. said. As he walked over to give me a hug, I could smell his favorite Old Spice aftershave. “I apologize for not being more cordial this afternoon. You caught us rather by surprise.”
“I should be apologizing, G.P. I’m the one who sneaked up on you.”
“Good evening, Miss Brennan.” I turned to greet Jack Crawford and shake his hand, again impressed by its size and the firm feeling of his grip.
My uncle motioned to a sofa across the coffee table from the chairs that he and Crawford had been using and we all sat down.
“Kate,” he began, “it would be impossible to overemphasize the importance of keeping what you heard this afternoon to yourself.”
As if to underscore how difficult secrecy could be, Mrs. Miller popped around the corner holding a glass of Scotch and water and halting conversation for the moment.
I thanked her, took a sip and set the glass on a table coaster as she left the room.
“You can count on me to keep a secret, G.P.. But what about the people planning to attend the dedication? If there’s real danger of an attack, shouldn’t they be warned?”
“Yes, and they will be when the time comes.”
“Why all the secrecy until then?”
G.P.’s brow furrowed. “Kate, how much do you know about Enigma?”
“Just that it’s the German code no one’s been able to break.”
G.P. looked at Crawford, then back at me. “If my hunch is right, the Brits have somehow cracked the code.”
“That would be great news,” I said. “It would put us a step ahead of the Krauts with everything they tried.”
“That’s right,” G.P. said. “But it would be tremendously important not to let them know we’d cracked their code. If they did, they’d change the code and we’d lose the advantage.”
Crawford nodded. “That’s why I’d hate to be in Churchill’s shoes.”
That seemed a strange thing to say. “Why is that?” I asked.
Crawford took a drink from his glass before he answered. “The German Luftwaffe is raining bombs on English towns. If the Brits have cracked the code, they know perfectly well when and where the raids are coming.”
“Jack’s right,” said G.P.. “If you’re Churchill and you know where they’re coming, evacuating the towns would tell the Krauts you’ve broken their code.”
“I’m sure it haunts him every night,” said Crawford.
“But what good is the breaking the code if you can’t use the information?” I asked.
“If the Brits broke the code,” Crawford said, “and it’s a big if … the information they gather would be used on every battle front the Allies are involved in.”
“That’s right,” said G.P.. “Details in areas like troop strength, weaponry and strategy would be priceless.”
I was stunned and started to speak, but G.P. held a finger over his lips for silence. Mrs. Miller was coming down the hall again.
“Dinner’s ready,” she said, peeking around the corner.
I had lost my appetite.
20
I left G.P.’s house soon after supper. All the driving I’d done over the past two days had wrung me out and my body craved sleep. There was a full moon, which made the walk in the darkness of the night’s blackout drill much easier.
I didn’t see Shirley that evening, and saw little of her the entire weekend. She spent both days working at Blades’ restaurant.
Time went quickly as I settled into my new surroundings. The room Shirley had assigned to me was twenty by twenty or so, big enough for a double bed, a chest of drawers with an attached mirror and a comfortable chair. The closet had more than enough space for my clothes. My two empty suitcases went up into the attic.
I walked the four blocks downtown on Saturday, enjoying the sunny day and checking out shops and restaurants to see if things had changed much since my senior year at Soo High. And since the Army had moved in a little over a year ago.I noticed a number of familiar faces, and stopped for short conversations.
There’s something special about a small town. People you don’t even know smile and say hello as you pass on the sidewalk. I had forgotten how much I missed that openness living in a big city. There were plenty of new buildings but the main difference was in the population. Soldiers seemed to be everywhere: on the sidewalks of Ashmun and Portage Avenue, shopping at Montgomery Ward and J.C. Penny’s and crowding into the American Ice Cream Parlor next to the Soo Theatre. Their presence gave me a bit more confidence that a Nazi attack could very well wreak more havoc on the Germans than on the locks.
If G.P. and Crawford had been correct about the possibility of a raid, hopefully they were just as right about the chances of repelling it.
I stopped at a newsstand outside the Ojibway Hotel and picked up a copy of the Soo Morning News. The front page was heavy with news of the Allies chasing the Nazis across northern Africa. The sports section reported the woes of the Detroit Tigers who, with their best player Hank Greenberg in the Army Air Force, seemed resigned to going through the motions in a season of mediocrity.
But those stories had come off the wire services. I wanted to read the local news, the work of the News staff. There was plenty of it, and from the stories I read, my uncle’s paper still held its own among small town dailies. The reporting for the most part was excellent.
I spent most of the next day kind of lazing around the house. Shirley arrived home that evening just after ten to find me in the bedroom. I had been listening to a broadcast of Fred Allen’s Texaco Star Theatre that featured Brooklyn Dodger player/manager Leo Durocher. Hearing Durocher talk about the Dodgers’ current success made me feel even worse about the Tigers’ doubleheader loss earlier in the day.
The sun had gone down and a floor lamp beside the chair and a lamp on the table beside my bed provided the light. Mick lay on the floor at the foot of the bed, his head resting on his paws. Shirley had brought a six-pack of Pfeiffer’s home from Blade’s place and popped open a beer for each of us. I sat cross-legged on the bed; Shirley lay across the overstuffed chair, legs dangling over the side, foot pumping to the strains of the Andrews Sisters’ Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B.
It was as if we were teenagers again.
21
Shirley told me she had heard about Ronny, and expressed condolences, saving me the pain of going through a story I had already told far too many times.
Soon, we were talking about the “good old days:” boyfriends, girlfriends and our teachers at Soo High. The conversation flowed easily and I was beginning to relax. I started to light up a Rameses, an off-brand of cigarette, when I noticed Shirley taking a pack of Old Gold from her shirt pocket.
“Where did you get those?” I asked. “All I can seem to find are Rameses or Pacayunes.”
Shirley’s forehead squeezed into a frown. “Jeeeze. You might as well try smoking a rope.”
“Where did you find Old Gold?”
“At the Red Owl.”
“All I saw there were Rameses.”
“You’ve got to ask Jack Casey for ‘stoopies�
��,” Shirley said.
“Stoopies?”
“With the good brands so scarce, they stock cigarettes like Chesterfields and Old Golds under the counter. They save them for regular customers. You’ve got to know how to ask for them.” Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy ended and Glenn Miller and his band were playing That Old Black Magic. Shirley’s foot continued to keep time.
She shook a couple of cigarettes out of her pack and, sitting up, offered me one along with a light. I took a deep drag, thankful for a decent smoke.
I also took a pull from my bottle of Pfeiffer’s. The evening was exactly what I needed after what I had been through back in Detroit; maybe Miles had been right about my getting away.
Shirley leaned back across the padded arm of the chair and blew a stream of smoke that nearly reached the ceiling. “Tell me something,” she said, looking at me with a grin, “Do they ever call you Scoop Brennan downstate at the Times?”
Scoop was the nickname I’d picked up working on the Soo High newspaper.
“Not a chance,” I laughed. “No one knows about that, and I’m sure not going to tell anyone. What about you? I don’t remember you having any nicknames in high school.”
“I didn’t. But I had a doozey when I was young.”
“What was it?”
“I’m not saying.”
“Come on.”
“Promise me you won’t laugh.”
“Promise.”
“After my parents died, I lived with my uncle and aunt in Negaunee.” Shirley paused to take a sip of Pfeiffer’s and a drag from her cigarette. “I was about seven, I guess; I’d have these terrible nightmares. I’d wake up at night and climb in bed with them. It earned me the wonderful nickname of ... Snuggles.”
“Snuggles,” I laughed.
“You promised you wouldn’t do that.”
“Sorry. I just can’t picture you as a Snuggles.”
Dead Lock Page 4
