But on one crucial point, Willard hesitated.
That point was Rockwell. Willard knew that he should have his old commander killed. The Independence storekeeper, the focal point of the town’s resistance, had sent a distress signal to the airman. The airman had responded by faking an engine fire and getting out of Marion. Presumably he’d used his time away to make contact with Hennessey. That and what more besides? The truth was, that in the world Willard now moved in, the facts he knew were easily sufficient for him to issue the necessary orders.
But he hesitated.
He tried to persuade himself that he was concerned about the security of goods coming into Marion. If he had Rockwell killed, he’d have to kill the girl and the mechanic too. That would leave the Marion import route hopelessly exposed to a determined effort by the Coastguard. And on top of that, Willard could argue that it was important to find out precisely what Rockwell had been up to; that there was no proof, after all, that Rockwell had got anywhere at all, or that, if he had, any problem was remotely imminent. But in the end, all those arguments amounted to excuses, not reasons. In his heart, Willard knew he could hardly bear to have Rockwell murdered.
But he didn’t hesitate for long. Just as he was seeking to persuade himself to issue the necessary order, he got a phone call from Marion. It was Bob Mason calling to say that the Hamilton girl had just quit.
‘She quit? Just like that?’
‘Uh-huh. I guess she figured she wasn’t getting anywhere with Rockwell. The guy always seemed kind of stony towards her.’
‘You know where she’s gone?’
‘Off home, I guess. She said something about wanting to take a holiday in Europe, but I guess she’ll want to go visit her folks first.’
Willard got off the phone, with his hand shaking. The Lundmark kid was dead. The storekeeper had fled to Atlanta. And now the Hamilton girl had quit. Did that mean that Rockwell’s plans were beginning to fall apart? Or beginning to come to fruition? He didn’t know and couldn’t guess. But he realised this much: that there was no way he could have Rockwell murdered if the flier had already been beaten into surrender. And if the flier hadn’t yet given up, then presumably somewhere amongst the federal enforcement agencies there were people who knew what Rockwell was hoping to achieve…
Willard thought things through, then strolled along to Powell’s office and requested a meeting. He got it at once. He began by telling Powell what he’d done to improve the security at Marion. The banker listened, goggle-eyed.
‘You did what?’
‘It was time we tightened up. Marion’s gotten to be too important to us.’
‘There something we ought to be scared of?’
‘No, at least nothing specific,’ said Willard, lying easily. ‘We discovered that there was a kid in town doing maintenance work for us, whose father we’d killed a little while back. We dealt with that issue, but it seemed like a good opportunity to get more serious all round.’
Powell laughed softly.
‘What’s funny?’
‘What’s funny? You are, Will, you are. You’ve grown up, you know. The guy who made that movie – what was the title?’
‘Heaven’s Beloved.’
‘Right. That was one hell of a lousy movie. It stunk like a coffin full of dead cats. But you ain’t that guy any more. You know who you’ve become?’
‘No.’
‘Your father’s son. And that’s a compliment. Shit, your own safe full of gasoline and dynamite. Ha! Any case, I guess you weren’t calling round just to cheer me up. What can I do for you?’
‘It’s just… I don’t know. It’s just in case there has been any leak out of Marion, we ought to know about it. I don’t know if we have any way of checking what the feds might be thinking, but if we did, then I reckon it’d be worth finding out.’
Powell chuckled. ‘Maybe. Maybe we do.’
‘You’ll take care of it?’
‘Sure.’
‘Good … good.’ Willard breathed out in relief. His moral problem seemed suddenly simpler. If Rockwell hadn’t spoken to the feds, then Willard could simply replace him with a clear conscience. If Rockwell was transmitting sensitive information to places he shouldn’t, then he’d have to take his chances. Willard stood up to go. ‘Thanks, Powell.’
Willard was about to leave, when the banker raised a hand.
‘Just a minute, Will. We got a rule round here. Any breach of security, any hint of a breach, we get our insurance guys involved. Just to look things over, a sort of double check.’
Willard went cold.
‘I don’t think…’ he began, but Powell wasn’t listening.
‘Like I say, it’s a rule. Have you even met Roeder yet? You’ll like him. Everyone does. How does tomorrow look?’
Tomorrow looked rotten. Willard’s day was filled with meetings, appointments, phone calls, work. But Powell didn’t really mean his question. His question was a nice way of giving an order.
‘Tomorrow,’ said Willard, feeling a rim of ice gathering at the pit of his belly, ‘tomorrow looks fine.’
98
The new girl seemed OK.
She wore her brown hair very short but, unlike some of the other girls, she didn’t use any kind of make-up, and her clothes – flat brown shoes, dark skirt, dark jacket, white blouse, no jewellery – were not of the husband-catching variety. Her skin, which was very tanned, suggested some kind of farm girl, but her small hands and slim figure suggested the exact opposite. But Mr Rogers, the Deputy Manager at the Savings Bank of Northern Florida in Jacksonville, didn’t, in the end, mind about the girl’s origins. All that mattered was that she was reliable, competent, hard-working and settled.
‘Goodnight, Mr Rogers,’ she said, reaching for her hat.
‘Goodnight, Sarah,’ he told her, rocking back on his heels with his thumbs tucked into the side buckles on his waistcoat. ‘Same time, same place tomorrow. Huh? Ha, ha, ha!’
The girl settled her hat on her head, gave her boss a shy half-smile and walked out into the night. She turned down the block and walked for two hundred paces without stopping or looking back. Then she stopped, put her foot on a fire hydrant, and began to retie a shoelace. Not tie, but retie. The shoelace hadn’t come undone. It hadn’t been loose. She retied it anyway.
And as she did so, she swept her gaze back the way she’d come. There were a handful of people out, but nobody gave her a second look. After finishing with her shoe, she remained watching for a moment, then retraced her steps. Nobody paid her any special attention. Nobody altered their course. Nobody looked at her too long or too little.
She walked another half-mile, then entered a café, bought a cup of coffee, spun it out. When she emerged, there were only a couple of people outside, neither of them ones who’d been there fifteen minutes before. She ducked down a side alley, ran hard to the end, ducked behind some garbage cans and waited. Nobody followed. She was in the clear.
Less cautiously now, Pen moved through the gathering darkness to the waterfront. The beach shone with the new white hotels which the Florida land-boom had thrown up in their scores. Bright lights and big cars gleamed between palm trees and hibiscus bushes.
Pen ignored the hotels and headed down the beach, out of town, towards the sprawling encampment known as Tin Can Field. The tin-canners were northerners who came south for winter, cars loaded with a full winter’s worth of canned goods. Now, in towards the end of February, the place was beginning to empty as people began to head off to their northern spring. A few tin huts, that housed latrines and water pipes, rattled in the thin sea breeze. Those people choosing to stay on into March hung around battered jalopies and threadbare canvas tents.
And Abe. There was Abe.
The airman uncurled himself from the ground underneath a knobbly old palm tree, stubbed out a cigarette, and came smiling over to Pen. They reached each other in the twilight, put their arms around each other and kissed long and passionately. Abe didn’t need to be in the
air again until daybreak. Pen – in her capacity as Sarah Torrance the bank teller – didn’t need to be at work until eight forty-five. They had all night together.
I brought a tent,’ said Abe, when his mouth eventually became free. ‘I don’t know why, it seemed safer than a hotel.’
‘I agree.’
‘Should be OK for one night’s sleep, anyhow.’
‘Who said anything about sleeping?’
It was dark enough now, that the sea was one big mass of dark grey. The sky was violet at the edges, deepening to midnight blue above. Holding hands, they walked to Abe’s encampment. He had brought a rudimentary canvas tent, a couple of sleeping rolls and blankets, a Primus stove, a paraffin lamp, food and water. He also had a bottle of French red wine, a grand cru, one of the best of the prewar vintages. Abe indicated it with a smile.
‘Present from Mason.’
‘Does he know he’s given it?’
‘Not exactly,’ admitted Abe, who’d stolen it, ‘but he’d have been glad to, that’s the point.’
But they ignored the wine and everything else. They crept inside the tent, closed the flap, and faced each other beneath the cramped canvas walls. They held each other, kissed, then began to undress. He began with her jacket, then the buttons of her shirt. She did the same with his. But it was too slow. They began to tear their own clothes off, then before they were done, they simply fell upon each other. Pen’s tongue burned like something on fire. Abe’s hands were simultaneously strong and soft, urgent and understanding.
They made love.
It wasn’t their first time, but it somehow felt like it. Abe was inside her for around twenty minutes. He climaxed once. She climaxed again and again, softening her cries until the final minutes, when she moaned like an airplane wing locked into a full-throttle dive. When they finished, they didn’t pull apart. They just held each other, listening to the wind.
After forty minutes, something changed. She felt it in the muscles of his body and the curve of his back, and she prompted him.
‘Don’t you want to know how Sarah Torrance is getting on with her new job?’
‘Yes. Yes, I do.’
‘Very well, I think. They handle all Marion’s business. All bank transfers come in by telegraph. I’ve got myself a desk close to the telegraph machine itself. None of the other girls like it. They think it leaks electricity.’
‘Excellent.’
‘It doesn’t leak electricity, does it?’
‘No.’
‘I don’t want to move too fast, but I’m sure I’ll be able to take copies of the bank transfers as they come in.’
‘Excellent.’
‘And they’ve got records. Every transfer of money that’s ever passed through the bank. Domestic and foreign. Going back years.’
‘Excellent. Excellent.’
‘And I know where the records are kept. They’re in a locked cupboard in the office of Mr Rogers, the deputy manager. As far as I know, he’s the only one with a key.’
‘Does he ever put his keys down?’
‘Not that I’ve seen.’
‘Is there any way to force the lock?’
‘Maybe, but I’m not the best lock-forcer in the world.’
Abe thought of Pen’s near-total mechanical incompetence and was forced to agree with a grin. All Pen could see of his response was the white glow of his teeth. She kissed him softly.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll find something.’
99
‘You’ve met Roeder, of course,’ said Powell, knowing that Willard had done no such thing.
Except that in a way, Willard had.
Dorcan Roeder was a short man, with the heavily muscled upper body of a man who worked hard in the gym. His face was ugly but powerful; the face of a man with no doubts as to his own importance. It had been Roeder outside Powell’s office on the afternoon when Powell had given Willard the forty archive files; Roeder who had positioned himself there just to see him.
‘Dorcan heads our insurance arm,’ added Powell, blandly.
The two men shook hands. Willard found himself wondering how many men had been killed by the hand he’d just shaken; how many men in their last seconds on earth had seen that very hand striking down, gathered to punch, squeezing a trigger. It was a loathsome thought, one that made Willard want to wipe his palm. They sat down.
From the start, the meeting ran away from Willard. He could tell from the first moment. The way Powell sat beside Roeder. The way the two men hardly looked at each other. The way the air seemed to be thick with an understanding that had nothing to do with Willard.
‘You’ve cleaned Marion,’ said Roeder.
‘Yes.’ Willard explained briefly and clearly what he’d done.
‘Why?’
‘Two reasons. First, a general one. Marion started out as just another supply route. It made a little money through booze. A little through smuggling. A little through gambling. The situation has changed completely. We needed to update security arrangements. That’s what I’ve done.’
‘And the specific reason?’
‘The specific reason is very minor.’ Willard had rehearsed this conversation a thousand times in his head. He fought to hold his voice steady, his body relaxed. He spoke about Lundmark, about finding out they’d already killed the boy’s father. He said nothing about scaring Hennessey, nothing about the red sheets, nothing about his certainty that Rockwell was out to destroy them.
‘You shot up somebody else too. A local guy. Ran a store.’
‘Gibson Hennessey, the storekeeper from the town just up the hill from Marion. He was the ringleader of the town’s resistance. We’ve been wanting to lose the guy for a long time now. He’s gone to Atlanta with his family. Mason’s delighted.’
Willard was angry with himself. He’d spoken the last part too quickly. How the hell had Roeder known that they’d shot up Hennessey’s place? Had Mason told him? If so, what else had Mason revealed? Willard flicked a glance at the insurance man, but Roeder’s eyes were empty. Or to be more exact, they were the exact opposite, they were too full. Roeder had pale hazel eyes, but his left-hand iris was clotted with dark purplish-black blots. The clots made him hard to read, made it hard to hold his gaze. Willard looked away.
‘Good,’ said Powell. ‘Sounds like you’ve done well. Always nice to clean things up without making a mess. That’s the trouble with corpses. You just can’t get the cops to stay away.’
That’s what Powell said, but Willard had learned not to listen too much to what he said. Instead, he had a sense, stronger than ever, that the two men had already choreographed this conversation. Powell would come across as the nice guy. He’d get to smile, as his executioner put the boot in.
‘Your fliers,’ said Roeder.
‘Yes?’
‘Who are they?’
‘Captain Abraham Rockwell and, until just recently, a Miss Penelope Hamilton.’
‘Miss Hamilton?’
‘Yes.’
‘Miss?’
‘Yes.’
‘Maintenance personnel?’
‘Just one man. A local mechanic, Arnold Hueffer.’
‘Who’s in charge?’
‘Captain Rockwell.’
‘What are his qualifications?’
‘As a pilot, he’s the best there is. Bar none. As a lookout man, the best. As a leader, also the best. On the maintenance side, the same. He’s an exceptional hire.’
‘Who has been responsible for hiring Hamilton and Hueffer? Rockwell or yourself?’
‘Captain Rockwell.’
‘So the integrity of the operation depends on the integrity of Captain Rockwell?’
‘I guess so. Yes.’
‘Please identify any doubts you may have regarding his suitability.’
‘My only reservation concerns his motivation. I knew Captain Rockwell during the war. He is a man of exceptional calibre. Mason came across him when he was running small amounts of booze over the ocean from Havana.
Mason wanted to recruit him then and there. Rockwell resisted. He had to be pushed. When Mason tested his loyalty, he passed the test, no problem.’
Roeder looked at Willard for a long time, but there was so little of anything in his eyes that it was like being scrutinised by a corpse.
‘I asked you for your doubts. You spent most of your answer telling me why you don’t have any.’
‘I don’t, not many. Any problem I have is to do with his reasons for working for us. Does he really want the money? That’s my issue. He says he wants to build some kind of airplane. With Rockwell that’s probably credible.’
‘You think money isn’t his motivation?’
‘I didn’t say that. I said I wasn’t sure.’
‘If not money, what then? Give me the worst possible case.’
Willard swallowed. The honest answer to Roeder’s question was: I know for a fact that Captain Rockwell is out to destroy us. But he couldn’t say it. Something in him simply refused to come out with it.
‘I don’t have a clear answer to that. I have no reason to distrust him.’
‘You just told me you did. You said his reason for working for us was probably credible. Only probably. That means you suspect his motives. You think maybe he’s working for some other reason. What?’
‘We’ve got men watching him. We’ve got a tap on his phone. We open his mail.’
‘You’re watching him?’
‘Right.’
‘How many men?’
‘As many as necessary. I’ve told Mason to make it a priority.’
‘So you don’t trust him. That’s obvious. Tell me about your other flier. Ex-flier. Hamilton. You said she was a dame?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s usual in the flying world, is it?’
‘No.’
Glory Boys Page 37
