Seriously?

by Duane Lindsay

  Erich studies him for several very long moments, considering his response. The supervisor stares back, himself amused, as if this large man is too stupid to understand the rules here.

  Erich says, “What is your name?”

  Surprised at the tone, the supervisor says, “Bruce... Meersman.”

  “Bruce,” says Erich, nodding. “Meersman.”

  He seems to be testing the name, trying it out. He reaches into his jacket pocket and removes a thin brown wallet. Slowly, he takes out ten dollar bills and begins placing them on the counter. Bruce’s eyes are glued to them.

  “One,” he says, his voice loud in the empty room. “Two... three...” stopping at, “ten.”

  Bruce licks his lips, drags his eyes from the money and gapes at Erich who says, Argentina.”

  “Yes, sir,” says Bruce, scooping up the cash. “What name?”

  “Ricardo Klement.”

  “What address?”

  “14 Garibaldi street. Buenos Aires, Argentina.”

  Bruce takes a pen from a holder on the desk and a thick pad with carbons from a drawer. He’s all efficiency and helpful, leaning on the counter, pen poised.

  “Write ‘Aldo dead. Stop. Group scattered. Stop. Need advice immediately. End.’”

  Bruce has been writing the words on the pad. Finished, he takes out a thick book from some recess, consults pages, marking them with a finger. He writes numbers on the pad and looks up. “Twenty-seven dollars,” he says, marveling at the number. “And thirty-four cents.”

  Erich nods. “When will it get there?”

  “The local office will have it within the hour. They can send a courier out immediately if you wish to pay extra.”

  “I wish it.” He peels more cash from the wallet and tosses it on the counter. “I will come here each morning until I receive a reply.”

  “Yes sir!” says Bruce, exactly as Erich knew he would. People like this Bruce Meersman, he thinks, are all alike. They are bullies when they can be, and groveling toads when they see their master.

  He walks out into the early evening, dim under the raised tracks of the elevated trains, looking for a restaurant that serves alcohol.

  He books a room at a local hotel, sleeps away the headaches and depression and returns the next afternoon to find Bruce Meersman waiting on an elderly man trying vainly to wire money to somebody in Boston.

  When Bruce sees Erich enter, he nods his head and tells the old man, “Go sit down. I’ll deal with you shortly.” The man protests until Bruce raises a fist, shaking it with obvious menace, wearily he shuffles to the bench Erich sat on yesterday.

  Bruce, like a conspirator, waves Erich over, saying, “Your reply arrived just before lunch. I’ve been holding it for you.”

  “Give it to me.” He holds out his hand and waits.

  Bruce says, “Well...” and waits.

  The old man is muttering on the hard seat and time seems to stop as Bruce and Erich watch each other. Finally, Erich lowers his hand and reaches back into his coat, pulling out the brown leather wallet. Carefully he begins placing twenty-dollar bills on the counter, stopping several times before continuing. When the wallet is empty, he shows it to Bruce who nods, smiles, and hands over a yellow telegram. As Erich turns away, the cash disappears.

  Erich goes to the door and reads the small paper.

  “Use S for delivery. Stop. Round up others. Stop. Failure Unacceptable. End.”

  Erich’s shoulders sag. He expected this reply even while hoping for another—any other. He crumples the telegram in his fist and slips it into his coat pocket. He opens the door and looks back. Bruce is watching him with an expression of victory.

  Wearily, Erich leaves.

  Eight-fifty-seven on a Wednesday evening, just three days from what he has always thinks of as ‘the day,’ Erich, in a dark blue navy pea-coat and black watch cap pulled low over his short-cut hair, is huddled beside a reeking garbage can in the alley behind the Western Union store. His hands are in black leather gloves and he’s smoked a dozen cigarettes waiting for the store to close.

  Finally, the wait is over. The rear door opens and a dark form backs out, closes the door tightly, fumbles with the lock. The alley is dark, with lights only at the ends by the street and the shadows are thick here in the middle of the block.

  The shape straightens and Erich steps forward, tossing his cigarette in a puddle of brackish water.

  Bruce Meersman senses movement and whirls around. “You!” he manages as Erich wraps thick fingers around his throat.

  Bruce struggles, punching and kicking as Erich squeezes. When the struggles die down, so does Bruce.

  Monk says, “What about the Nazis?”

  He’s at the table in his kitchen, coffee cup full and mostly forgotten, cigarette butts filling the red metal ash tray, breakfast dishes scattered about.

  “What about them?” asks Lou. He’s at Monk’s place for a second breakfast because Cassidy insisted he come up after his first to, ‘See if he’s all right.’ Lou never had any thought that he might not be but the lure of more toast brought him up the stairs to where Monk was doing his stare-at-the-wall routine.

  “What?” Monk comes back to the present with a start. He hadn’t really noticed that Lou was there. He sips his coffee, winces when he tastes cold and puts the cup down. It sloshes in the saucer which, he realizes, is probably why Cassidy insists they use saucers.

  “You said, ‘What about the Nazis?’ I said, ‘What?’ You said, ‘What?’ and now we’re all caught up. You got more coffee?”

  “I...” Monk’s not yet fully engaged, but he goes over the conversation and realizes he hasn’t been clear. “Yes, to the coffee, if you go downstairs and get some, come back and put on the percolator. As for the Nazis, I meant, what does Erich want with all those losers?”

  “He likes crowds?”

  “Yeah, no. I don’t think that’s it. I’ve been thinking about this, trying to figure what he’s up to.”

  “I thought we covered that. He’s going to try to kill the Ben guy.”

  “Ben-Gurian. David Ben-Gurian. Yes, he is going to try that. But it’s not all of it.”

  “No?” Lou sits down to listen, having decided that making coffee is too much effort.

  “No. He has these... these... foot soldiers, if you will, for a reason. I just can’t figure out what that reason could be.”

  “How about you don’t need to.”

  “But I do. It’s important.”

  “Sure,” agrees Lou, which is pretty much what he always does. It never seems to be worth it to have an argument. Better to listen, agree, and do what you’d do anyway. Saves steps, he reasons. “But maybe this time we do it different.”

  “Like how?”

  “By... what’s the word? When you just do something to see if it works?”

  “Empirical evidence?” says Monk. “You mean, don’t try to second-guess these people, we just... what?”

  “Go get one and ask,” says Lou. Seems obvious, but he knows Monk usually doesn’t go for obvious very often. “Remember? I got a list of them.”

  “But you tried that before. With negative results, if I recall.”

  “This is true. But I figure, these guys aren’t exactly survivalists. They probably all live with their moms and should be going home by now. I say me and Cassidy take the drive around, collar one or two and bring ‘em back here to discuss things.”

  Monk stares at Lou for a moment and says softly, “Brilliant. So elementary. Why didn’t I think of it?”

  “’Cause it’s easy?” says Lou, thinking maybe Monk will get the sarcasm. “Too easy for a big brain like yours, you can’t see it because you’re too busy, being you?”

  Monk takes a moment to consider. “Yeah, that’s probably it.

  Leaving Lou to wonder, the whole drive, if Monk was screwing with him.

  “He was screwing with me, right? He really didn’t just insult me, did he?”

  “Let it go, Lou. I’m sure
he didn’t mean nothing.” They’re in the Bel Air, heading west to LaGrange on 56th. Lou’s missed most of the lights on the yellow, mostly because he’s so busy grousing about Monk that he doesn’t speed up. Cars behind him are honking as he slowly drifts to a stop at Pulaski.

  “Maybe you want to speed up a little, Hon?” Cassidy suggests. She figures she’ll enjoy the ride once Lou gets over whatever this is. She considers her listening to him as a down payment on making him listen when she talks about Monk and Bonnie.

  She says, getting it in as he shifts into first and drifts—sloooowly—through the intersection while the car behind him honks, waves a finger and roars his Chrysler around them, “Why are we going to LaGrange first?”

  Lou grins. “I made a plan. I put the addresses in order this time, instead of just going top to bottom. Like the delivery guys do it. They got a list of stuff to deliver, they plan their day so they do the farthest out and work back to home base.” He looks so pleased with himself that Cassidy can’t help smiling at him. She leans across the wide seat and lightly kisses his ear.

  “Monk’s the dope,” she says, his reward for being... well, him.

  “That’s what I think!” Lou agrees, and surprises her with his own treat. “How about him and Bonnie, huh?”

  Cassidy doesn’t stop talking all the way to LaGrange.

  “This the place?” she says as they pull to the curb in front of a pretty nice old white two-story house, red trim, wide front porch, swing chair on chains near the door. A new black asphalt driveway goes to a single garage out back. A thirty-something skinny guy in tan pants and blue work shirt is pushing a manual lawnmower back and forth across the tiny lawn, trimming grass that doesn’t seem to need it. He stops as they park and takes a red Budweiser ball cap off his thinning brown hair and watches them watching him.

  He gives first. “Help you folks?”

  Lou reads the name on the list, leans across Cassidy and yells through the window. “Weebs? Gerald Weebs?”

  The guy, Gerald, nods twice and replaces the hat. Lou gets out on one side of the Chevy, Cassidy slides out on the lawn side. Lou’s got a hand out that Gerald doesn’t see since he’s watching Cassidy, who smiles at him.

  Lou’s maybe ten feet away when he says, “Wanna talk to you about a meeting last week. A bar you were in...”

  That’s all he manages when Gerald gets a panicked look and bolts for the rear of the house.

  “Aw crap!” says Lou. “I hate it when they run. Cass? Take the car, Will ya?” And he starts off in the direction Gerald went. He figures the guy’s going to vault the back fence, cross the neighbor’s yard and try to hide someplace. He probably grew up here and knows all of them, and he’s taller than Lou and runs faster.

  Lou doesn’t vault the fence so much as manage to get over it, scratching his arm on the chain link as he does, and he’s rounding the corner of the neighbor’s house when he hears the squeal of brakes and a meaty thud.

  He jogs around to the front to see Cassidy bending over Gerald who’s laying in the street cradling his left leg in both arms.

  “Nice,” he says, reaching her.

  “Thanks,” she says back.

  Lou drops to one knee in front of the moaning Gerald. “Son,” he says, shifting into what he thinks is a perfect imitation of Desi Arnez on the I Love Lucy Show they all watch on Monday nights. “You got some ’splainin’ to do.”

  Turns out, once they drag him into the back seat of the car, he really does.

  Gerald Weebs is the only son of Mildred Weebs, owner of the house he’s lived in with her, alone together for all his 37 years since his father, in the waiting area of the hospital, took one look at him and his exhausted wife and drove out of their lives forever, taking the new Hudson with him.

  The forever part could only be surmised as his intention since, after leaving, his first stop was a liquor store near 28th and Diversey where he bought a large bottle of Old Grand-Dad bourbon. He was singing the Fats Waller song of the same name a couple of hours later when he ran a light and slammed into a garbage truck, totaling the Hudson Hornet and providing his wife and new son with a surprisingly generous insurance settlement.

  Mildred used that money to buy the house in LaGrange and raised her son with a firm hand. Gerald never married and it was understood, if not stated, that he never would, remaining in his mother’s clinging embrace forever.

  “The group,” says Gerald, still nursing his bruised knee, glaring at Lou fiercely, just as if he was considering doing something. “The guys... we just get together a couple a times a month. It don’t mean anything.”

  “Gerald,” says Lou patiently. “You all dress up as Nazis.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” Gerald says, a bit sullenly.

  “Everything is wrong with that,” says Cassidy. Gerald looks up from his knee, head low, seeing her watching him from the front seat. “The Nazis are killers. They started the world war. They caused the Holocaust.” This word—holocaust—has recently been being used to describe the Nazi atrocities. It was first used by Elie Wiesel in his book The Night, which Monk had read and admired even before this latest Nazi invasion. Monk could have—certainly would have, if he was here, discussed the subject at great length and Lou, knowing this, is feeling a sense of having dodged a bullet.

  Gerald says, “Never happened.”

  “The Holocaust?” says Cassidy, appalled. “The death camps? They didn’t happen?” Up until a few seconds ago she regarded this man as a sick puppy, deserving of pity, not contempt. The two words, ‘never happened,’ changed that quickly.

  “That’s what Colonel Klaussner says.” Gerald looks up defiantly. “And he was there. He saw it all. Weren’t no death camps, he says, never were. That’s just a Zionist conspiracy, made up by the Jews to take the land away from the Palastins.”

  “Palestinians,” corrects Cassidy, somehow remembering this fact from Rawlins High.

  “Right,” agrees Gerald, thinking, mistakenly, that this shows support. He leans forward in the seat, a convert with an audience, forgetting his knee. “The Colonel says it’s all bullshi... I mean, it’s all a lie. The Germans weren’t doing anything bad until the Jews started the war because they were jealous of Adolph Hitler.” Gerald says the name reverently, like he’s thinking of God or Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio.

  Lou’s sitting in the driver’s seat, staring out the front window like he’s not listening. Cassidy glances over, wondering at this unusual silence. Ignoring the moron in the back, still leaking slogans and garbage all over, she says, “Babe?”

  Lou turns and gives her one of his very rare serious looks. “I fought in Korea They called it a police action, not a war, but it sure felt like a damned war to me. Didn’t fight in the big one. Dad did though, and he was killed in France, storming the beach at Normandy.”

  He turns his head slightly and catches Gerald’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. Gerald’s stopped mouthing his justifications and is listening intently, sensing potential danger in the soft words.

  Lou says, “D-Day. June 6, 1944. The liberation of Europe from the Nazis. Took another eleven months to beat them back to Berlin. Didn’t matter much to me at the time. We won the war but my father was still dead.”

  He stops to light two cigarettes, hands one to Cassidy who’s never heard this story. She’s getting misty-eyes and touches his hand hesitantly, like he’s a stranger sitting in Lou’s usually genial body. The dead tone is his voice makes her skin crawl.

  “Now you,” he says, locking eyes on Gerald, “sit there mouthing all this shit about, ‘it never happened, it was all their fault, we were the good-guys blah-blah.’ Well, let me tell you, you little creep; your Colonel isn’t a colonel. He was a sadistic guard at the same camps he tells you never existed.”

  Gerald, not the brightest bulb, manages to say, “No way! We’re gonna get the Nazi party going in the US so he can show the world they got us all wrong. The Colonel...”

  A harsh growl from Lou.

&n
bsp; “The... the... um, leader,” says Gerald in desperation. “He wouldn’t lie to us. He says the Jews...”

  “Shut up!” yells Lou. He swivels and throws an arm over the seat back. “Listen you little bastard. One more word and you don’t live to say another. Your Colonel killed an old woman who survived him in one of those camps you say didn’t happen. Your Colonel was about to kill my best friend and an innocent woman. Your Colonel,” Lou’s yelling now, “is planning something soon that involves you. So, you’re going to tell me what that is or I’ll beat the holy hell out of you.”

  Lou throws open the door and storms out into the street, leaving Cassidy in the seat watching him go. She turns to the now terrified Gerald in the back and says softly. “I’ve never seen him like this. You’d better talk to me before he comes back.”

  Ten minutes of frantic words later she lets Gerald out of the car. Five more before Lou comes back, gets behind the wheel and starts the engine. He’s calm and even smiles at her, the old Lou returned.

  “Get it?” he asks.

  “I did. They’re going to have a demonstration outside the Ambassador Hotel this Saturday at 10. He says it’s their way of letting the world know the Nazi party is alive and well.”

  “Won’t be for long,” says Lou cheerily.

  He steers them away from the curb and Cassidy touches his sleeve. “Lou? I’m sorry about your father. I didn’t know he was killed in the war.”

  “Pop? Nah, he runs a deli in the Bronx. Moved there when I joined the Army and went to Korea. I don’t talk about him ‘cause he and Mom pretty much never do anything worth talking about. They run the store, they watch TV—Uncle Miltie’s their favorite—go to Florida every Christmas to see Aunt June.”

  Cassidy feels the heat rising in her face. Lou often annoys her, with his never-serious ways, but this one seems way too far, even for him. “He’s didn’t die in the war?”

  “He served in Hawaii as a cook after the japs bombed Pearl. Never even trained with a rifle.” He glances over, misses the storm clouds gathering. “Did you know that? They didn’t have enough guns to train the army. Had to use...”