The War Heist

by Ralph Dennis

  “You insulted me a few times, but I considered …”

  “No, blast it, did I talk about secret matters?”

  It seemed the proper reaction to assure Withers that he hadn’t talked out of line. The train arrived. A relieved and relaxed Major Robert Withers, formerly of the Horseguards, boarded one of the day coaches.

  As the train pulled away from the station, Withers comforted himself with the thought that if he had revealed too much to his American friend he could thank his lucky stars that Tom Renssler had been drunk and didn’t remember.

  Officers’ Row smelled of garbage cans and diapers and neglect. One of the married officers who’d graduated from the University of Virginia called the long streets of wood-frame houses the Slave Quarters.

  The houses were painted a flat, dull white once each summer. A detail of enlisted men mowed the lawns every week or two. A narrow border of earth was left bare on both sides of the front steps, for gardening if the tenants wanted flowers. Only the older military wives worked in their yards. For the younger wives, uncertain about the length of their stay at Fort Belwin and depressed by their living quarters, it hardly seemed worth the trouble. Lila Whitman didn’t garden. She didn’t do much cleaning or dusting, either.

  Johnny came home and looked through the house before he pushed the back door open and found his wife sunning herself on the back steps. It was 4:45, and the sun slanted directly on her. She was wearing her one-piece swimsuit, the white one that was almost transparent. Head back, eyes closed, and legs wide apart, she faced the back doors of the officer housing on Pershing Street.

  He stood on the step above her for a time. At an angle, to his left, he thought he saw a curtain move at a rear window. It was at the Clifford house, the bathroom window. That old goat, Colonel Clifford, was doing his afternoon sightseeing.

  “You’re better than a strip show,” he said. “Or a blue movie.”

  Lila’s lips hardly moved. “Him across the way? It makes his life bearable.”

  He stepped around her and planted his feet in the grass and turned. “It’s too bad he’s not filling in my fitness report. I think he’d want to keep your floor show in town.”

  “What’s for supper, honey?”

  “Nothing. Chilled nothing for appetizers, stewed nothing for the main course, and frozen nothing for dessert.”

  “That’s witty.” He sucked in a long breath through his teeth. “There’s got to be something. I invited Tom by for supper at seven.”

  “We were going out tonight.” Out meant to the Club or to one of the roadhouses outside of town for a steak sandwich and a few drinks.

  “Maybe tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll go to that seafood place up the coast.”

  Promises. She choked back a rush of harsh words. It wouldn’t do to have another quarrel outside. As it was, the neighbors knew more about their personal business than they had any right to. That she had been a New York show girl, that they fought about money all the time, and that Johnny was waiting out his Class-B status.

  “You sent out the invitation,” she said. “You cook the supper.” She smiled sweetly, and her tone of voice had sugarcoating on it. She pranced up the steps and into the house. In the kitchen, next to the dining table, she hesitated to see if he was following her. He wasn’t. She stomped down the hall to the bedroom. The image of the kitchen remained in her mind’s eye. The table still littered with the breakfast dishes, the sink stoppered and piled high with plates and pots and pans. Damn him anyway.

  She sat on the edge of the bed and kicked off her shoes. She heard the back door slam. He’d followed her inside after all. She stood and put her back to the open bedroom door. She eased the straps from her shoulders and peeled the bathing suit down to her waist. She knew he was behind her, in the open doorway. She pretended she didn’t know. The swimsuit fell to her ankles. She pulled one foot free and kicked the suit across the room.

  Even before the suit landed she turned to the dresser and picked up her hairbrush. She stroked her hair, counting, and by the time she’d reached fifty she could hear the crackle of static.

  At seventy-five she lowered the brush. She turned to the doorway. She knew how she looked. As she whirled she prepared the surprised laugh she’d give when she discovered him staring at her.

  The doorway was empty. A few seconds later, as if to answer the unspoken question, she heard the rattle of dishes in the kitchen. He was cleaning up.

  CHAPTER SIX

  All day Thursday there’d been no word from Colonel Haggard. That evening, because MacTaggart told himself that he couldn’t spend twelve hours a day in bed with Peggy, he took her to Piccadilly Circus for a night on the town. He liked cowboy films, and Gene Autry and Jane Withers were in Shooting High at one of the theaters. The queue, when they got there, was blocks long. It looked like every soldier and sailor in London liked cowboy films as well. “Another night,” he told her, and he walked beside her through the crush and press until he found a place where he could buy them supper.

  On the underground headed back to Shepherd’s Bush, a pair of drunk sailors across the aisle had their stare at Peggy; one of them said something to the other in a whisper. The sailors had their eyes on MacTaggart to see how he’d react. MacTaggart looked straight at them and blew his nose.

  Words wouldn’t light the gas or cook the stew.

  Above ground, on the walk to the rooming house, Peggy took his arm like a lady and matched him stride for stride. Her face close to him, she said, “You miss not being in uniform, Mackie?”

  “Not me, girl.” He broke stride. “I’ve had my war. I don’t know what a man has to do to deserve more than a single war in a lifetime.”

  “Oh, don’t lie to me.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “I saw how you looked at the uniforms,” she said.

  “I was figuring how many board feet of timber it would take to bury them.”

  She wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not. “How many, Mackie?”

  “I stopped counting at a million,” he said.

  And then he saw her stricken face. He’d been joking, still angry with the sailors in the underground, and he realized that it hadn’t been a joke after all.

  “What’s wrong, Peggy?”

  “I’ve got brothers. One in the Navy and one in the Army.”

  He held her in a dark doorway until she was calm again. He cursed himself for being a hundred kinds of fool.

  And then on Friday the colonel showed up at his closet-office.

  The colonel said, “I hope you’ve got your sea legs.”

  “It’s not my legs worry me,” MacTaggart said. “It’s my stomach. I get a sick stomach just looking at photographs of ships.”

  “The decision’s been made. It’s on.”

  “How long?”

  “You’ll have ten days to put your affairs in order.”

  “No,” MacTaggart said. “How long will I be at sea?”

  “Eight days.”

  MacTaggart closed his eyes and thought of eight days of twenty-four hours, with each hour having sixty minutes in it, and all of them packed and crammed with seasickness. It wasn’t a pretty thought.

  The truth, he knew, when he’d allow himself to face it, was that he was becoming fond of that Peggy-girl. Once you got used to that driving passion of hers to get married, that fear she had of being an old maid, there wasn’t much better company anywhere. Out of bed as well as in it.

  Fool man that he was, he’d talked himself into eight full days of agony when, now, he wasn’t sure he wanted to leave London at all.

  What Johnny Whitman served for supper was half a brown-sugar-baked ham. After he finished cleaning the kitchen, he had a look in the pantry. Nothing there worth serving anybody. He made a phone call and drove across the base and parked behind the BOQ mess hall. Anything was possible if you knew the right people. Johnny knew the right people and the dishonest ones as well. A certain mess sergeant named Bachman owed him a favor th
at he had been collecting for the last year or so. One night when Johnny had the duty he happened upon Bachman on his rounds. It had been after midnight, and Bachman had been loading twenty steaks into his car. Johnny hadn’t reported it. If he had, it would have put Bachman in front of a military court. It would have meant at least the loss of one stripe and perhaps some time in the post stockade. Bachman still had his stripes and Johnny had a friend in the mess kitchen.

  There was, however, half a ham less for the Saturday night supper at BOQ. Bachman had a full day to figure some way to cut down on the portions.

  It was a warm night.

  After supper at the table in the kitchen, Johnny broke the seal on the fifth of bourbon that was Tom’s contribution to the evening. Earlier in the day, when he’d asked him to supper, he’d said Tom could bring a girl if he wanted to. “One of the Simpson sisters, if you like.” Instead, Tom had offered the bottle and said that this was his date.

  “I knew you had taste,” Johnny had said.

  He mixed drinks while Tom carried three chairs into the backyard and placed them on a patch of lawn beyond the steps. It was cooler in the yard. A damp wind blew from the east, from the direction of the coast.

  Tom, even after the heavy meal, felt as uncomfortable as he had all week. Major Griggs hadn’t reached D Company that day, Friday, either with his audit. Tom had a grace period of at least forty-eight hours. Perhaps longer. He knew if he could find the time, a few hours for some intense thought, he could come up with a way of replacing the five hundred-plus dollars. A loan if he could. But not from Johnny Whitman. Johnny didn’t have two one-dollar bills to rub together.

  He’d never been fooled by Johnny’s surface game. It was pose and nothing else. Maybe Tom had never had the wealth, either, but he’d been allowed his slow and careful look at it. And he’d lived, until he entered West Point, on the crumbs from that side of the table.

  A cool breeze blew across the dark yard. Above them, the wind skimmed the clouds away and revealed the evening sprinkle of stars. Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight … I need $532.27.

  Might as well offer a prayer while he was at it. For all the good it would do.

  It was a bad night for the Whitmans. Tom could see that. There was a stiffness between them, a lack of ease. It was, he was sure, another quarrel about money. Tom felt like groaning. It was one of those evenings when money was on everybody’s mind.

  The after-dinner talk was strained. Lila was bored and angry, and she didn’t bother to hide it. Johnny was grim and edgy. He was drinking like he wanted to see the bottom of the bourbon bottle.

  It was going to be a long hour, Tom figured. For minimum politeness, he would have to stay at least that long before he could say his good-night and leave. In desperation he searched around for something to talk about, a way to interest one or both of the Whitmans. Otherwise, it was going to be a long, long night.

  “I poured Withers on the train north yesterday.”

  “The Englishman? I thought he was nice.” Lila smiled.

  Johnny laughed. “You take him on a tour of the countryside, Tom?”

  “Some of it.”

  “Old Mill Road?” Old Mill Road was where the Simpson farm was located.

  “Only because he insisted,” Tom said.

  Lila was puzzled. “What’s on Old Mill Road?”

  “One of the historic battlefields,” Tom said.

  “Oh.”

  Johnny laughed. He collected the glasses and carried them into the kitchen. He mixed drinks and returned. As he handed Tom his drink he said, “What was Withers doing down here anyway?”

  “Checking on me.”

  “No. What’s he doing in the States?”

  “Something hush-hush I think.”

  Tom knew he shouldn’t talk about it. But what the hell? What harm would it do? After another drink, pressed by both Lila and Tom, he told them what Withers had revealed to him in the Simpson kitchen.

  At the end of it, Johnny Whitman put back his head and roared in a voice that could be heard the length of the Row, “I don’t goddammit believe it. I just don’t.”

  When Tom opened the bathroom door he saw Johnny waiting in the hall. He released the light cord and left the overhead bulb burning. “It’s yours.”

  Johnny blocked the hallway with his spread arms. “You know, I’ve been thinking about it. I think we could do it.”

  The bourbon bottle was empty, stuffed upside down in the trash can. Tom had drunk his fair share of it. He closed his eyes and shook his head. The fuzz wouldn’t go away. “Do what?”

  “We could rob that train.”

  “You and me and Jesse James?”

  “Huh?” Johnny blinked at him.

  “On second thought, you and Jesse do it.” Tom pushed Johnny’s arm aside and stepped around him. He reached the kitchen before he realized that Johnny had followed him. The dining table was cleared. The dishes soaked in the sink.

  “Say it’s a tactical exercise, Tom.”

  “It’s one they don’t teach at the War College.”

  “Look here.” Johnny reached across the kitchen table and picked up the salt and pepper shakers. “Watch this.”

  “Forget it.” Tom looked toward the screen door. The hour was up. He could say his good-night to Lila and leave.

  Johnny held the salt shaker toward him. “This is Halifax, Nova Scotia.” He placed the shaker on the table surface. “Right here.”

  “I’ve got to leave, Johnny.”

  “You’ve got a minute.” He waved the pepper shaker at Tom and then placed it about two feet from the salt. “This is Montreal.”

  “Look, we’ve been drinking. It’s late. Tomorrow …”

  “Hear me out.” Johnny cupped one hand around the salt shaker and one around the pepper. “Halifax and Montreal. What’s between them?”

  “I don’t know.” He also told himself that he didn’t care.

  Johnny poured a tablespoon of salt into one hand. He spread a thick trickle that led from one shaker to the other. “Tracks. The tracks of the Canadian National Railway.”

  “Okay, Johnny.” He decided that he couldn’t get away by putting the idea down as nonsense. He’d hear Johnny out and leave and hope that he didn’t remember much of it when he was sober. “Tell me about it.”

  “Now you’re talking.”

  “But we’re discussing a tactical problem. That and nothing else.”

  “That ain’t the problem. This is the solution.” Johnny pulled back a chair and sat down. He looked across the table at Tom. “There are three parts to it, the way I see it. Part one. It’s got to be shipped from London or wherever. Trucks or trains, that doesn’t matter because there’s no way we could get to England to do anything about it. So we strike out part one. Part two. It’s loaded on a ship or on ships. Armed and escorted, you can bet on that. I can’t see any way you’re going to rob a British ship at sea. So we forget part two. That leaves part three.” Johnny touched the salt-shaker cap. “The stuff’s unloaded at Halifax. It’s put on a train for Montreal and points west. That is where it’s vulnerable. It’s locked in.” He traced a route through the thread of salt. “The tracks. The train’s got to stay on the tracks. It’s not like an army on the march. Cut off, ambushed, it moves to the north or to the south or back to the east. You can’t do that with a train. It runs from Halifax to Montreal. Period.”

  They heard Lila’s footsteps on the back stairs. She entered and stood in the doorway. “I thought you’d left, Tom.”

  “I’m trying to.”

  Johnny said, “I’m not done yet.”

  “Some other time.”

  Lila edged past Tom. She looked down at the table top. “What’s this?”

  “The Canadian National Railway tracks,” Johnny Whitman said.

  “It looks like a mess to me.” Lila reached for a damp cloth on the sink counter.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Tom avoided Johnny Whitman all day Saturday. There were
two messages in his box at BOQ when he returned from lunch. He didn’t call the Whitman quarters as the notes asked that he do. He picked up his bathing suit and a towel and drove to Officers’ Beach. Two hours later, when he entered his room, he found a note under his door. He wadded the message and tossed it in the trash without reading it.

  He spent Saturday night at the Simpson farm. He didn’t drive back to the base until late Sunday afternoon. He had a sense, a feeling, that Johnny Whitman wasn’t going to give up that absurd idea until he’d sweated all that alcohol out of him. That might take another day.

  He hadn’t wanted to return to the base at all. Betsy Simpson was cooking fried chicken for supper, and Emma, who did most of the baking, was shelling pecans for a pie. What forced him back to the base was the appointment he’d made earlier in the week for a few games of handball. He’d tried to reach Lieutenant Mellows by phone and couldn’t. No one had seen him at BOQ since the night before.

  Mellows wasn’t at the gym when he arrived. There was always the chance that he’d been trying to reach Tom to cancel the games. That would be in the pattern of his luck. The crappy luck he’d had the last week or so. Tom dressed in his sweat clothes and went to the court he’d reserved. He batted the ball around for a few minutes and was thinking of giving up on Mellows, when he heard the dry cough from the spectators’ catwalk high above the court.

  Johnny leaned on the railing and grinned at him. “Hello, good buddy. How are you?”

  “Stood up. You want a quick game?”

  “Not today. Today my mind’s on other matters.”

  “Too bad.” Tom slapped the ball against the corner and caught it backhanded when it fired back at him. “I’ve got time for one game before I’m due back in town.”

  “Not today.”

  Tom left the court. He flipped the light switch outside. He undressed in the locker room and took a quick shower. When he returned to the locker room he found Johnny Whitman there. He was seated on a bench near Tom’s locker, legs crossed, head back, smoking a cigarette. “Most people would be curious why I’m leaving messages under rocks and …”