Glory Boys

by Harry Bingham

  ‘So?’

  ‘It’s hijackers. Bandits. Whatever you want to call them. They don’t want to operate in a proper professional way. They’d sooner steal our products instead of purchasing the goods themselves. So one of the services we offer is insurance. Not paper insurance, where you can get your money back. What we offer is real, effective, get-your-goods-there insurance.’

  ‘I’m not sure I follow.’

  Junius Thornton sank back in his seat and Ted Powell took up the conversation. ‘Your father sells armaments, Willard. The best in the world. And we’ve hired men. Former soldiers. Good men. American men. No Italian trash. No Jews. No Irish. No Negroes. No Catholics. Just good, disciplined American men. Very well armed. Very well trained. Insurance that counts.’

  Junius Thornton nodded slowly. ‘We don’t lose much to hijack either.’

  ‘Gosh!’

  Willard was shocked, despite himself. He lived in a world where most of the people he knew were in favour of Prohibition, at the same time as they broke the rules. It was hypocrisy, of course, but it was hypocrisy that Willard could live with. But his father and Powell were talking about something in a league of its own. A private army. Soldiers armed and trained to kill. Willard was stunned by the sheer scale of the Firm’s lawbreaking.

  ‘If people didn’t try to steal our goods, we wouldn’t need to protect them,’ said Powell. ‘And we’re building a reputation. It’s not often now that hijackers try to bust in on our consignments. They try it once, they’re not likely to try a second time.’

  ‘The twentieth floor,’ said Willard. ‘The part that’s closed off. You told me it was lift machinery. I knew it wasn’t.’

  Powell nodded. ‘Our insurance arm is headquartered there. It likes its secrecy.’

  ‘The men that followed me? They were insurance agents?’

  ‘Yes. We needed to keep an eye on you, Willard. We didn’t want you doing anything stupid, and if you got into trouble, we wanted someone there to go and fish you out.’

  ‘The way you fished out Arthur Martin?’

  ‘Arthur Martin was on his way to an appointment with a federal enforcement officer when we intercepted him. We only learned about it at the last possible moment. We had little choice in the way we handled that matter. Our instinct is to avoid violence.’

  ‘Right. Little Charlie Hughes just wound up with a bootlegging felony charge. What’s a year in jail to a guy like him?’

  ‘Mr Hughes was a friend of Martin’s. Not as brave and not as stupid. But all the same, he began saying things he shouldn’t have said to people he shouldn’t have said them to. Our men spoke to him, came to an arrangement. He won’t be a problem.’

  Willard’s brain was working all the time these days, click-click-click, making connections, figuring things out. ‘You threatened him, didn’t you? Not just him. His sisters. You told him if he blabbed to anyone, it would be his sisters who ended up wrapped around a tree.’

  Powell shrugged. ‘I’m not aware of the details.’

  Willard shook his head with amazement. ‘You know, I thought Leo McVeigh was one of the guys I had to be careful of. I thought he was threatening me. He wasn’t. He was trying to warn me. It was Larry Ronson who –’

  ‘Larry Ronson is a very good man,’ said Powell. ‘He kept an eye on you for us. He was very helpful. McVeigh is an idiot, but at least he has the sense not to speak to anyone about his idiocy. He understands what the consequences would be. We allow him to work only on legitimate transactions. He is a good worker, I understand.’

  Willard rubbed his face with his hands. That day, he had busted a smuggling operation in a shithole called Ruxion, he had almost killed himself hauling an over-loaded aircraft into the sky, and now he was being let into the most valuable secret in America. He felt a wave of tiredness so strong, he was almost ready to fall asleep at table.

  ‘We won’t keep you long, son,’ said his father with rare gentleness. ‘But first, if I may, a question.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘When you leaned down to the car, you said “Good evening, Father”. It was too dark for you to see me. Nobody told you about my involvement. How did you know?’

  ‘Oh, lots of things.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Powell said we when he should have said I. But that wasn’t it. It was Heaven’s Beloved. The more I learned about Powell, the more I knew he would never have financed a deal like that. The deal wasn’t … the movie wasn’t… Hell, it was a turkey. Everyone knew it except me. It was you who suggested I approach Powell. It was you who wanted me to quit the movies and get involved in something serious. It had to be you in that car. Had to be.’

  Junius Thornton smiled. He said nothing, but there was pleasure and satisfaction in his face.

  ‘Which brings me to my question for you, Father.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Why didn’t you just tell me? Instead of scaring me halfway to hell, you could have just come and said, “We have a business proposition for you”. What would have been so hard about that?’

  ‘You’d have said yes.’

  ‘So? Isn’t that what you wanted?’

  ‘Yes. Yes and no. Mostly no.’ Junius Thornton leaned across the table. ‘Occasionally, son, you’ve had things a little easy. Maybe my fault, or maybe just the way the world is nowadays. You flunked Princeton. OK, maybe you could have turned things around, but it wasn’t going the way it should have done. Then you did well in the war, certainly. But afterwards, you strolled into a job in the movies and flunked it. You tried making a movie of your own. That flopped. You’ve never known hard work, not what I’d call hard work, anyway.’

  Powell nodded. ‘Don’t blame me, Will. I’d have done things the regular way. Your father said we needed to push you. He wanted to see how you’d react. Would you fight? Would you work hard? Would you figure things out? Would you persist?’

  ‘And that’s why I ended up with the lousiest files? The one with the biggest workload?’

  ‘But that’s not the point now, son,’ interrupted Junius Thornton. ‘The point is that you succeeded. You did as well as I’d hoped. Better. We were proud of you. Son, I was proud of you. I hope that one day, you will lead Powell Lambert to even greater things.’

  The old man’s eyes misted. Willard felt an answering lump in his own throat, a glow of pride.

  Powell stayed quiet for a moment, letting father and son regain their composure. Then, in a soft voice, he added, ‘And one other thing. This business of ours can get a little rough. Every now and then, we find we’ve hired a precious little altar-boy like Arthur Martin. That doesn’t help us. We need to keep the Firm secure. We didn’t know how you’d feel about the rough stuff and we decided it was better you knew about it first, so you could make your decision in full knowledge of the facts.’

  ‘Like how Arthur Martin was murdered? How Charlie Hughes was framed? How you protect your booze with a small army of mercenaries?’

  ‘Yes, precisely.’ Powell was totally unmoved by Willard’s sharpness. ‘You needed to know all that. This is a dirty industry, Willard. What it needs is organisation.’

  Junius Thornton nodded heavily. He took the Muscadet from its bucket of ice and poured more into his glass, then Willard’s. Like any rich man, Junius Thornton bought only the best of anything. The best clothes. The best wines. The best furnishings. The best properties. He bought them, then acted as though he’d forgotten them. He swigged his wine like spring water. He bought two-thousand-dollar suits, then had a way of wearing them so they looked like twenty-dollar ones on the shoulders of a speakeasy bouncer. He drained his glass and shoved it away.

  ‘That’s it, that’s it in a nutshell. This is a dirty industry, my boy, and it needs organisation. It needs good men to do it. Clever men. Strong men. Men like you.’

  He finished speaking. The room was suddenly very quiet. Willard felt as though a million eyes were watching him.

  ‘Well?’ said his father. ‘It’s time to decide
. Are you in? Or are you out?’

  66

  The door opened sharply and caught little Brad Lundmark on the behind. He fell sprawling onto the tangle of wires he’d been on his hands and knees trying to sort out.

  ‘Whoops!’ Mamie, a pale-faced, straggle-haired, ennervated twenty-three-year-old, looked at the sprawling boy and giggled. ‘Sorry.’

  Brad Lundmark straightened up and dusted off. ‘That’s OK.’

  His answer wasn’t entirely accurate. As he’d fallen forward, he’d caught his palm on a thumb tack and blood was spurting from the wound.

  ‘Oh, you’re bleeding,’ said the girl, in a rising voice, halfway towards accusation.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Come on. If I knock you over, I guess I ought to patch you up,’ said Mamie, still with a giggle trembling at the back of her throat.

  She led the way. Brad followed. In the Brunswick garage, he’d picked up plenty of mechanical knowledge, mechanical and electrical. Marion was always short of handymen. Brad’s services were cheap and he had eagerly, albeit at Hennessey’s instigation, insinuated himself into Marion with surprising ease.

  The boy recognised Mamie as one of two girls who handled most of the paperwork in Marion. Both girls lived in Marion, either married to one of Mason’s goons or at least living with one. But though there were plenty of couples in Marion, there were almost no kids. Babies, yes, but once the youngsters were old enough to run around, Mason moved the families on and out. Aside from the handful of babes in diapers, Brad Lundmark was either the youngest, or certainly the youngest-looking, human in Marion. Even in girls like Mamie, there was something about his big eyes and freckled cheeks that brought out the maternal.

  She took him into her office where the second girl, Suky, sat behind a huge iron typewriter swatting feebly at a bug.

  ‘Hey, Sukes. Look what I managed to do,’ said Mamie, taking Brad’s still-spouting hand and holding it up.

  ‘Ooh!’ Suky made a face.

  ‘He was fixing something and I knocked him over,’ said Mamie, speaking as though he weren’t there, or was deaf, or Chinese, or very stupid.

  ‘Ooh,’ said Suky again, grimacing at the blood. ‘And he’s …? You have a name?’

  ‘Brad.’

  ‘Brad?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Oh. And you live in town, Brad? I haven’t seen you around.’

  ‘Kind of. I sort of came to fix things. There’s been a lot to do so I ended up staying around.’

  ‘I’ll get some tissues.’

  Suky dug around in her bag and handed him some tissues, then cut him a slice from an iced lemon cake by her desk. Brad pressed a tissue to his hand and began to eat.

  And, though he didn’t show it, his heart had begun to race. He was in Mamie and Suky’s office. There were papers strewn around. A metal filing cabinet had one drawer flopped open like a pregnant heifer. On the table in front of Suky, a sheet of paper was covered with figures ruled into two neat columns down the right-hand margin. If these weren’t accounts, they sure as hell looked a lot like ’em. If this wasn’t the place to find the company payroll, then it sure as hell looked like a good place to start.

  Brad ate slow, thought furious.

  Mamie and Suky watched him for a while, as though he were a trick animal. The fly that had been annoying Suky before buzzed around her again. She swatted at it feebly, as though actually connecting with it would have been unladylike. Brad’s gaze travelled to the screen window.

  ‘You want me to fix that for you?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘The screen there. It’s torn. If I patched it, you wouldn’t get the bugs, ma’am.’

  ‘Ma’am! You hear that?’ Suky and Mamie tittered at each other, before Suky turned back to the kid. ‘You think you can mend it?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘If you want.’

  The two girls looked at each other. ‘That’d be great, Brad. Like payment for the cake, huh?’

  ‘It’s good cake, ma’am, thanks.’

  He fetched his tools and dropped his bag with a crash.

  ‘Ooh, Brad! Did you have to do that?’

  ‘Sorry, ma’am, it’s going to get worse than that. I’m going to need to hammer some.’

  ‘Oh.’

  The two girls looked at each other. It was a strict rule, strictly enforced, that they weren’t allowed to leave the room empty unless papers had been cleared away and the office locked. On the other hand, Mamie was prone to headaches and Suky didn’t want to sit right next to the hammering. Besides, how much of a threat could a little wide-eyed kid be, a little chap hardly old enough to be out of school? Suky bent down and spoke slowly.

  ‘Brad?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am?’

  ‘How long do you think you’ll be?’

  ‘Not long. Maybe five minutes.’

  ‘And you have to hammer, do you? Mamie here gets the headache terrible bad.’

  ‘I can’t fix it without hammering. Sorry.’

  The two girls looked at each other again. Then Mamie said, ‘How old did you say you were?’

  Brad hadn’t said anything about his age but, silently deducting two years from his real age, said, ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘Fourteen!’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘And listen Brad, now this is very important, do you have any idea of what goes on in Marion?’

  ‘What goes on?’

  ‘Right. What all this is about?’

  ‘I guess… Some kind of business, is it? I don’t see no farming, ma’am.’

  It was a perfect answer. The two girls simpered, nodded and twitched finely-plucked eyebrows at each other.

  ‘We’ll be just down the hall, Brad. Mind you come get us as soon as you’re done.’

  ‘Sure thing. You got it.’

  The girls left.

  The bunch of keys to the filing cabinet, door and window all swung from a clumsy hoop pegged up by Mamie’s desk. Brad hammered a bit, then went to the cake. He lifted the strip of icing from the top and pressed the keys, one by one, into the soft sugar. Each key made a clear impression and came away only a little sticky. Brad licked the keys clean, then dropped the precious curl of sugar in his pocket. He hammered a little more for effect, then wired the hole in the screen window tight shut. The whole job had lasted just six and a half minutes.

  67

  The train was an express – in theory.

  In fact, miles from any scheduled stop, it let out a long screech of black steam and clattered slowly to a halt. A grey sea beat dirtily against an empty shoreline. Away from the thin dune grasses, the land was swallowed by a thick growth of trees. The sun was low in the west, making ready for bed. Willard was a man who liked civilisation. He liked big cities. He liked the noise and the lights, the people and the rush. The conductor opened the door of his compartment.

  ‘It’s here, sir.’

  Willard only had one bag with him and not a heavy one even, but the conductor grabbed it before Willard could reach it and made a big show of carrying it to the end of the carriage and the open door. Three steel steps descended to the cinder track. Aside from the train and the railroad itself, there wasn’t a hint of civilisation as far as Willard could see.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You’re sure? This is the right place, I mean? I don’t want to get out here and… Jesus!’

  ‘Yeah. This is right. We stop here plenty.’

  Willard climbed down after the conductor, who handed the bag over, like he’d just done the twelfth labour of Hercules. Willard gave the man a buck. The conductor climbed back on board and raised a grimy hand to the driver. The train moaned once, then heaved into motion.

  Willard felt all alone at the end of the world.

  A sea breeze drifted through the dunes then lost itself in the trees. A quarter of a mile on down the line, a branch line joined the main track. In the meantime, with the train gone, Wil
lard was able to see a dirt track through the woods. He found a thin path down from the cinder embankment and half-climbed, half-slid to the track beneath. A wooden plank stretched across two posts formed a kind of bench, perhaps the only indication that this place had ever been used as a rail-stop. Willard sat down and waited.

  Ten minutes went by. Long minutes. Then the sound of a car. Then a car. It drove up, then stopped. The man inside was bald and smooth-shaven, but strongly hairy on his bare arms and in the cleft of his open shirt. He had an open, leering look which Willard instinctively disliked.

  ‘Thornton?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The man swept the front passenger seat free of some clutter and indicated that Willard should get in. Willard watched the clutter fall to the floor in front of the seat and raised his chin in a mark of disapproval. He threw his bag into the open rear seat and followed it.

  ‘OK,’ he said.

  The man in front raised his eyebrows and half-shook his head. He didn’t say anything out loud, but his look said, ‘Swell-headed son-of-a-New-York-bitch.’ He started the car with a clash of gears, then swung the car around in a dusty circle. On a shelf in front of the driver, a handgun bumped around with a packet of cigarettes and some matches. The journey was a short one – not even twenty minutes – but it felt longer. Once the man said, ‘Ride down OK?’

  Willard said, ‘Yes.’

  Two minutes later, the man wiped his bare head with his hairy arm and said, ‘Warm enough for you?’

  Willard said, ‘Yes.’

  The drive approached its end. The trees gave way. A town opened up amongst the swampy, overgrown land. Despite the back-of-beyond setting, the town was new and glossy: white, modern houses, cars not buggies, telephones and electricity. The car rolled up to a suite of office buildings. A long low warehouse squatted down behind them, like a giant beast at rest. Beyond a Tarmac parking lot, Willard saw a long grassy strip cut out of the scrubby trees. The driver indicated a door.

  ‘In there,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Willard picked up his bag and entered, to find a man advancing in greeting. The man was dressed in shirtsleeves and pale fawn pants. He was middle-aged. He had a face that had taken some punches but given some back, a face with humour, intelligence and bite. He smiled.