Glory Boys

by Harry Bingham

  But Willard’s mammoth hours on Wall Street left Rosalind with plenty of time. And she had calls to place, trips to make.

  Today, for instance. She’d just come back from the New Hampshire porcelain factory. The place had looked like a sweet little ceramics manufacturer, as sweet and bright as its candy-soft advertising. But the business was also the seller in one of Arthur Martin’s deals. It was nine-thirty in the evening. Willard had just got home, exhausted and low. They kissed cheek to cheek. Rosalind had martinis already mixed and offered him a glass.

  He shook his head. ‘Sorry, no. D’you mind? I thought I’d shower first. Then eat:’

  She looked at his briefcase. ‘I’m growing to hate that thing. Do you have…?’

  ‘Yes. More tonight. Another hour or two, if the papers are OK.’

  Rosalind said nothing, but put her hand to his face, to the soft area beneath his eyes where the skin was puffy and dark. ‘If I can help…’

  He showered. Hot for two minutes, as hot as he could stand. Then cold, half a minute under the full stream. He jumped out gasping and shivered on the bed holding a towel. The door to the living room was open a few inches and Rosalind spoke to him from outside.

  ‘Do you want to hear about my trip? New England Porcelain, Inc.’

  ‘Oh yes? That was today was it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And – I found a pottery factory.’

  Willard rubbed his legs with a towel. He was getting no exercise now. He wasn’t exactly out of shape. He’d always been blessed with the kind of body that looked good no matter how little he attended to it. All the same, sitting on his butt all day long was no help. Willard wondered if his calves were getting thinner, and decided they were. Outside the door, Rosalind shifted her weight. Willard realised some further question was expected.

  ‘A pottery factory, huh? Bona fide, you think?’

  ‘Think? They offer tours for visitors. They whizz you around a couple of kilns, show you the plates and things being made. It’s all surprisingly smelly. The dyes and glazes, that sort of thing. I hadn’t realised. Then you wind up in the factory shop where a greasy little salesman tries to sell you some kitchenware you don’t want. Succeeds, actually, in my case. I spent forty dollars.’

  ‘Get anything nice?’

  ‘You’re eating off it tonight.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  In his better days, one of Willard’s greatest gifts had been charm. It wasn’t just that he was good-looking. Looks could get you to first base, but if the rest of the package was missing, no looks in the world would get you further. But Willard had been charming. He could make women laugh. His own laugh, insincere but easy, made everyone around him feel like they were being funny too. But that had been then. A tired man isn’t charming, or if he is, it’s something that flickers on and off like power in a thunderstorm. He rubbed his legs again and tried another question.

  ‘So we strike out again, I guess?’

  ‘Well… It was a big site and I only toured a piece of it. Maybe there was a room somewhere where red anarchists were plotting to blow up the President, but if so, I didn’t see it.’

  ‘Still, they make pottery. That’s the point.’

  So far, every time they’d attempted to test Arthur Martin’s files or any of the sister files they’d collected, things seemed to check out. They’d found porcelain companies which made porcelain. They’d found engineering companies which engineered things. They’d found paint companies which asked you how many gallons you wanted. Willard lay back on the bed, completely naked except for the towel. He stared at the ceiling, tired and defeated.

  A moment passed, then another.

  Rosalind was silent. So was Willard.

  Then he began to lever himself up, when he stopped dead. Rosalind had come into the room and was standing, staring down at him. They looked at each other in silence.

  Willard was very conscious of his nudity – his private parts were covered, even if only just – but something in the way Rosalind looked at him made him say and do nothing.

  ‘Maybe it’s too much,’ she said at last.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘This. All of it. Everything. There’s a limit to how much one person can manage.’

  Willard managed a smile. ‘I’m not one person, though, am I? I’ve got you.’

  ‘You could quit.’

  ‘The loan, Ros, the loan.’

  ‘Your father? If you explained everything?’

  ‘You don’t know my father. He wouldn’t help.’

  ‘You haven’t asked.’

  ‘He wouldn’t help. I won’t ask.’ Willard spoke sharply.

  ‘You know, that’s not the only way out.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You could…’

  ‘Could what?’

  ‘You know … declare yourself bankrupt.’

  That word raised Willard’s anger like a storm cloud. In his social circle, a man could get by with leprosy more easily than with bankruptcy. He’d be an outcast. A nobody. ‘Never.’ His anger forced the word out like a fat little bullet.

  Then Rosalind did something unexpected. She was wearing an evening dress in soft blue. Her hair was combed and bobbed and gleaming gold in the lamplight. She kicked her shoes off and bent down, close to Willard, holding his knees. Her touch was so sudden, so unexpected, that Willard’s member stirred under the towel. He twitched the towel back into position, excited.

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  Something in the atomsphere of the room guided Willard’s answer. If his anger had had its way, the answer would have been something short, rude, unkind, petulant. But that wasn’t how he answered. Instead he said simply, ‘We’ve got a job to do. We’re not finished. Think of Arthur Martin. Think of Charlie Hughes.’

  ‘Oh.’

  There was another moment of stillness. Willard’s erection stirred again and he began to sit to hide it better. But Rosalind stopped him. She put her hand to his chest and pushed him softly back down. He was lying flat, breathing fast.

  For one moment longer, Rosalind stood, some decision taking shape in the shadows of her face. Then she bent down and lifted the towel. Willard’s erection, not that small to begin with, jumped out like a minor lighthouse. His penis was good-sized. He liked her looking at it.

  Rosalind hesitated for a moment longer, then put her hands to her dress. She slid off her dress, her slip, her stockings, her pearls, her panties. Her body was cream and gold, with nipples as dark as raspberries. Willard began to sit up again, ready to lead her down into his arms, but once again she motioned him back.

  He lay down. Climbing onto the bed, she squatted over him, lowering herself slowly onto him. Aside from a little ‘Ah!’ as he entered her, both he and she were silent. She began to move, but slowly. Willard hadn’t made love for longer than he liked to remember and tiredness and lack of practice made him ready to burst almost straight away.

  But she didn’t let him. Each time she rode him almost to climax, she stopped. She let the feeling dwindle until Willard, still lying, was ready for more. Her own face looked quiet, introspective, except that her lips never quite closed, her eyes were only half-open. She let Willard touch her wherever he wanted, but after a while his hands came to rest on her hips.

  For a while longer, they moved together. Willard had never been in this position. He’d always been the master in bed, the one on top, the one in charge. This position felt new but just right. He let Rosalind have things her way until it was time to take control. Then, with his hands on her hips, he began to move her himself. He rocked her up and down, until she understood his intention and let herself be rocked.

  Her head, which had been tilting down, began to arch backwards, exposing the long lines of her throat. Her panting came faster. Her outbreaths had a low moan, then not so low, then not low at all.

  They climaxed together: Willard in one, long, starburst of colour; Rosalind in a long, dim, greenish-gold heave of
pleasure. And from that moment, it was all different.

  Before: something had been missing. Not just sex, but something more than sex.

  And after? Well, it was different. The gap that had existed between them either vanished or (what was just as good) seemed to have vanished. Rosalind accepted Willard’s charm for what it was. She laughed at his jokes. She nestled into his caresses. She began to look at Willard the way he expected a girl to look at him: trusting, fond, adoring, his.

  44

  Atlanta, Georgia.

  A rainstorm had just passed through and the air shone clean and brilliant. Gibson Hennessey, the storekeeper from Independence, walked quickly downtown from the station. He’d come by train, but a Southern Express locomotive had derailed just north of Macon and Hennessey was running late. He walked fast. His old black suit had too many shiny patches. Elbows, knees, seat and shoulders shone in the sun. The cuffs of his shirt were fluffy and soft.

  The Southern Pride Restaurant was a pompous affair with big arched windows overlooking the burning sidewalk. Hennessey entered. Just inside, a girl sat at an over-sized mahogany hat-check kiosk. The girl was blonde-haired and blue-eyed, and taller than Hennessey when she stood. A painted board just behind her right ear said ‘HAT CHECK – ZARAH HARRISON’ in big capital letters, as though the fact was too important to be ignored.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ said the girl, in an accent which placed her birthplace closer to Cork, Ireland, than to Atlanta, Georgia.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ said Hennessey.

  The girl gestured at the book like Hennessey should know what to do next. He didn’t. The girl had a plate of cheese – no biscuits, no butter, just cheese – beside her. Hennessey found himself staring at it because he didn’t know what he was supposed to do or say. She twitched the plate away with an elbow, but managed to look longingly at it at the same time, as though she’d rather be eating cheese than talking to Hennessey.

  ‘Your name, please? You have a reservation?’

  ‘My name’s Hennessey. I don’t exactly have a reservation, though the person I’m meeting might do.’

  ‘Their name?’ Zarah Harrison persisted patiently.

  ‘You don’t have anyone in there calling themselves Aunt Polly, do you? This is going to sound a little strange, but the party I’m meeting may be a man.’

  The girl looked at him like he was a freak, but a freak within her job description.

  ‘You’ll find your aunt at the corner table inside.’ She made a face, as though to indicate that whatever Hennessey might be up to was OK with her, as long as she had no further part in it.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Your hat.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Your hat. You can leave it with me.’

  ‘That’s OK, I don’t mind…’ Hennessey tailed off. The girl took names and collected hats. That was her job and she had a signboard to prove it. He took off his hat and handed it over.

  Abe watched the storekeeper enter the restaurant.

  ‘Hey, Hen,’ said the airman.

  ‘Hey, Captain. Real nice to see you again. Unexpected, but nice.’

  Abe nodded. ‘You want to eat?’

  ‘Uh, I’m fine really.’

  ‘You’re going to need to eat. I’ve been here a while and I’ve had all the food I can get down.’

  ‘Yeah, sorry. Train was late.’

  ‘I know.’

  A waiter came over and Hennessey ordered. The waiter left.

  ‘Well?’ It was the storekeeper who spoke.

  ‘I’m in.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I’m in, Hen. They’ve taken me in.’

  ‘They? You mean…?’

  Abe nodded. ‘I’m flying booze for them. I’m about to start guarding their shipping fleet against the Coastguard. They’re buying me a plane. A big one. A twenty-thousand-dollar one. They trust me. I’m in.’

  He spoke clearly, but there was a flicker in his face. He’d never been sure about doing as Hennessey had asked, but this was his most decisive step yet. Not even his two and a half days in a Miami police cell had the significance of what he was doing now. The storekeeper heard the words, but he read the flicker too. He leaned in for confirmation.

  ‘You’re in and you’re on our side?’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t want to promise anything earlier, because I didn’t know if I’d even get this far. Not only that, it was better if you and everyone in Independence forgot about me, or at least thought I was a bum.’

  ‘Brad Lundmark told me about the booze. I didn’t know what to think.’

  ‘That I was a liquor smuggler. How come you didn’t think that?’

  ‘I couldn’t see it, Captain. I just couldn’t see it.’

  ‘Yeah … good old Brad. Nobody else has quite the same thirst for getting a place tidy.’

  Hennessey stared at the airman. Even now, ten days on, Abe’s face bore the marks of his beating in the police cells. His cheeks and forehead had mostly healed, but they were still puckered in small white and red scars and his upper lip was still decorated in tints of black, purple and yellow.

  ‘You say they trust you. What did it take to get them to do that?’

  ‘It was harder than I thought. I started out flying booze for them, but that was it. I saw no distance into the organisation and as far as I could see they intended to keep things that way. So then I started telling the Coastguard where they could pick up some boats, and things changed. They got their police friends to kick me around a bit, to see if I’d squeal. I didn’t. And that was that. They needed me. They’d tested me. They decided to trust me.’

  Hennessey whistled softly out, but kept quiet as a waiter brought him crab-cakes and a plateful of fried potatoes.

  ‘You couldn’t have been sure the police were in their pay.’

  ‘No, not sure.’

  ‘It was Brad Lundmark who persuaded us to come to you. He was right. We were lucky.’

  ‘He’s a good kid.’

  ‘Do you know what you hope to accomplish? One man against an outfit the size of Marion?’

  ‘No, but they think I’m on their side. That makes them vulnerable. And it’s like combat. It’s all a question of positioning. Positioning and aim. We hold fire until we find their weak spot. Then we hit it. Always the same thing in the same order. Prepare. Observe. Manoeuvre. Destroy.’

  ‘And their weak spot?’

  Abe grinned. ‘They’re criminals. They’re operating one giant criminal conspiracy. That’s against the law, Hen.’

  Hennessey sounded disappointed. ‘They’ve bought the cops, Captain. County and state. Federal enforcement is the same. Just as bad or worse. The Coastguard seems to be clean, though they have their rotten crews of course. But however many boats they intercept, there are always more coming. And the Coastguard have no jurisdiction inland.’

  ‘OK. What d’you say we use a law enforcement organisation which is totally untouched by their money? A federal organisation which is one hundred per cent clean. Which has the resources and the competence and the will to root out and destroy every element of the conspiracy?’

  Hen shook his head. ‘It doesn’t exist. We’ve tried. We’ve done everything, we –’

  Abe interrupted him by slipping a newspaper clipping across the table. ‘While I was making up my mind whether to help, one of the main difficulties I saw was how we could ever win if the law was rotten. Then I saw this. I’ve checked it out, Hen. From what I can make out, this thing looks like it’ll go all the way.’

  The storekeeper read the clipping, then read it again. As he read, he smiled. The smile grew wider and wider, bigger and bigger, until it broke out into a deep contented chuckle.

  ‘It’s a crazy idea, Captain. But beautiful-crazy not dumb-crazy.’

  Abe took the clipping and tore it into pieces.

  ‘Needs must when the devil rides,’ he said, ‘according to my grandma anyway.’

  ‘You don’t set yourself easy targets
do you, Captain?’

  ‘I don’t think it was me who set this one, Hen,’ Abe reminded him.

  ‘D’you know what happens next?’

  ‘Not really. But I do know I’m going to be airborne a lot. Not only that, but even with the new plane and all, I don’t think they trust me absolutely. I’m not exactly their regular type of hoodlum. I’m making money now, but I don’t throw it around. I don’t drink much. I don’t gamble. I don’t go with girls. At least…’

  ‘Yes?’ The storekeeper raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I don’t go with girls unless they’re very pretty and have nice long wings.’ Abe made his habitual joke, but it sounded, even to him, more forced than usual. He remembered a female flier, a bunch of roses, and the way he’d chosen to slice their pretty pink heads off. The ghosts of loneliness hung around that thought too.

  ‘You need someone on the ground, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You think Brad…?’

  ‘Heck, he’s kind of connected in to Independence. If it wasn’t for his pa and all…’

  ‘He worships you, Captain. You’d have loyalty.’

  ‘He’s too close to Independence, Hen, sorry.’

  ‘OK, you got any ideas?’

  ‘Yeah, a couple.’

  ‘Go ahead. Shoot.’

  ‘I’m going to need a mechanic. So far, I’ve been looking after Poll and flying at the same time. If I’m airborne more, and I’m flying a bigger, more complex plane, I’m gonna need help. I figure the grease monkey may as well be a guy we can both of us trust.’

  ‘You want me to find you an airplane mechanic?’ Hennessey’s voice rose in alarm.

  ‘No, a regular auto mechanic is fine. I’ll teach him what he needs to know. Just make sure he’s up to the job where engines are concerned.’

  ‘I know a couple of people, maybe. I’ll check them out.’

  ‘OK. I’m going to advertise in Jacksonville. Whoever you get, make sure they answer the ad.’

  ‘You want me to let you know who I’m sending?’

  Abe shook his head. ‘Before Poll, I had a Thomas Morse airplane, called Sweet Jemima. She wasn’t so sweet, actually, an ornery little miss who tried to kill me a couple of times. I usually called her Jemmy. Whoever you send, just make sure they mention their Aunt Jemmy.’