by Ed Ruggero
Harkins wondered if this was the pep talk Palmer gave arriving nurses.
“Okay,” he said. “Anything else you want to share with me, ma’am?”
It came out a bit more dismissively than he intended. Palmer noticed, narrowed her eyes. She was not a big woman, but she suddenly reminded Harkins of a couple of the nuns he’d had in school. He’d had a knack for getting on their nerves, too.
“I just want you to know what you’re dealing with here,” Palmer said. “And don’t ever forget that our primary mission is to care for patients. The quicker you can find the murderer and let us get back to our jobs, the better for everyone. Especially those wounded boys who arrive every day.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You should come to me with any questions,” she said. “In fact, I’d like you to keep me informed whenever you talk to any of my nurses.”
“I’ll do my best, ma’am.” Another lie. There was no way he was including her.
He saluted, and Palmer snapped her hand to the brim of her fatigue cap. When she was gone, Thomas sidled up. “That’s the head nurse, right?”
“The very one,” Harkins said.
“So how’re things shaping up?” Thomas asked.
“Great. Really great. I got a dead doc who was probably shot by somebody he worked with. There are at least a handful of nurses who, if they didn’t kill him, are at least glad he’s dead. I got into a pissing contest with the hospital first sergeant. The deputy provost is a pencil-pushing lawyer who threw up when he saw the body and then practically ran away after telling me that I’m the investigating officer. Me, the army’s favorite traffic cop. We got docs who play grab-ass with the nurses, which isn’t at all surprising. Also not surprising is that any nurse who complains is labeled a troublemaker, and it looks like the head nurse is one hundred percent on board with that.
“Oh, and one more thing, I got a driver who can’t drive. I think that’s about it.”
“That’s a helluva mess, all right,” Thomas said as he climbed into the passenger side of their jeep. “And it’s only ten in the morning.”
“Oh, yeah,” Harkins said. “Still plenty of time for things to get worse.”
3
2 August 1943
1100 hours
Startled out of a deep sleep, the first thing Harkins did was pull his pistol.
“Whoa, whoa! Don’t shoot!”
In the seconds it took Harkins to swim up to consciousness, he thought he heard his brother Patrick.
“It’s me, gunslinger.”
Sure enough, Patrick came into slow focus, then held out his hand, pulled Harkins up from the ground and the tiny sliver of shade he’d managed to find beside his jeep.
“Damn, I’m glad to see you,” Harkins said. His big brother pulled him into a clinch, squeezed his shoulders.
Patrick, a Catholic priest, was a chaplain with the Eighty-Second Airborne Division and one of the three thousand or so American paratroopers who had jumped into Sicily during the early-morning hours just before Allied landing craft hit the beaches on D-Day.
“Geez, you’ve lost a lot of weight,” Harkins said. His brother had been a big man since he was fifteen, with upper arms as thick as some men’s legs. They’d both been amateur boxers, Patrick with more wins. When Patrick got an opposing boxer in a clinch, he could squeeze the breath and fight right out of him.
“You’re not looking so great yourself,” Patrick said, poking Harkins in the chest.
“Fortunately, there ain’t too many mirrors out here,” Harkins said. “So as far as I know, I’m still the good-looking brother.”
Harkins had not seen his brother since a short leave they had together at their parents’ home in September of 1942, nearly eleven months earlier. Harkins had already been training in the States for seven months by then, and had shipped out for North Africa in October, landing in Casablanca just a few days behind the first waves of American troops. Harkins and his platoon of MPs spent the next eight months guarding German POWs and shepherding traffic behind the front as the Allies battled the Afrika Korps. He’d nearly died of boredom.
“Why are you here?” Harkins asked, lifting his hand to indicate the hospital.
Harkins had practically dragged Thomas—who was still very sick—back to the nurses, who put the driver on a cot and stuck another needle in his arm. Harkins had stashed his jeep on the edge of the compound to get some sleep before resuming the—make that his—investigation.
“We’ve got a couple of paratroopers here,” Patrick said. “Some injured on the jump, some wounded. I came to visit them, see if they need anything.”
“Saving souls, huh?” Harkins said. “How was the jump?”
“Mostly confusing. We were scattered all over the place. But our guys pulled together in little groups and started making trouble, cutting roads and telephone lines and setting up ambushes, just like they’d been trained. Our colonel says the Germans and Italians never figured out how many of us there were. We had this one guy, a real Texas cowboy, captured the regimental objective by tricking the enemy into surrendering.”
“How’s that?”
“The Italians and Germans were all dug in around this intersection. Concrete pillboxes, minefields, a real strongpoint.”
“Strongpoint, huh? Listen to you, talking like Georgie Patton.”
“You pick up some of the lingo,” Patrick said. “Anyway, this captain has collected about eighty of his guys; no way they can assault, right? Now the navy is trying to shell that intersection with those big darn guns they have, but they’re missing. All the rounds are going long, and the spotter plane that’s supposed to call back to the ship with adjustments has been shot down. Oh, and the army can’t talk to the navy ’cause the radios don’t connect, so this company commander can’t ask the navy to adjust fire.”
Patrick was animated now. He’d been proud to become a paratrooper, with their gaudy silver wings and shiny boots, and he was obviously proud of what they’d accomplished in the invasion.
“So what’d he do?” Harkins asked, humoring him.
“He’s got this trooper who speaks the lingo—the kid’s parents are from Sicily—and he tells the kid to send one of their Italian prisoners down to tell the guys in the pillboxes to give up before he adjusts the navy’s fire and blows them all to smithereens.”
“But I thought he couldn’t do that. Adjust the fire.”
“He couldn’t, but the guys in the pillboxes don’t know that.”
“Wow,” Harkins said. “A ruse.”
“Yep. I heard this captain—his name is Sayre—I heard him tell the story the other night. He sets up the whole thing, talks about watching the prisoner run down the hill. He’s got everybody tuned in, and finally the colonel says, ‘Then what happened?’
“And Sayre—he’s got this great accent—Sayre says, real slow, ‘Well, I reckon that prisoner was an eloquent speaker, ’cause they all just give up.’”
Exhausted as he was, Harkins had to laugh.
“The plan called for almost a thousand guys to do what he did with some fast talking,” Patrick said.
“They should put him on the phone with Hitler,” Harkins said. “Save the rest of us a lot of trouble.”
Harkins noticed that his brother’s uniform blouse had been torn and repaired.
“How’d you do in the jump?”
“Easy,” Patrick said, smiling. “I landed in a huge pile of cow dung.”
“And here I thought you had your first-ever tan.”
“How about you?” Patrick asked. “You fry in North Africa?”
“Close to it.”
“How was it?”
Harkins shrugged. There was too much to say, so he said little. “Well, we learned we could beat them, but it’s going to cost. Worst part was, right after the Krauts surrendered, there were all these rumors that we were going home, that we’d done our part,” Harkins said. “That was really hard on the guys when we found out it wasn’t tr
ue.”
“Ouch,” Patrick said.
“Now I’m just hoping I’m home by 1950 or so.”
“I’ve already heard why you’re here at the hospital,” Patrick said. “Some orderly couldn’t wait to fill me in. It’s all the enlisted guys can talk about, how some doctor nobody liked got himself killed and some poor schlub former Philadelphia beat cop is doing the investigating. Is it true you got in a fight with the hospital first sergeant?”
“Hardly, though we’re not exactly best of friends. And the commander didn’t even speak to me.”
“So you’re off to a great start.”
For a moment, they were kids again, Harkins getting teased by his big brother.
“Don’t give me any shit, all right? I’m not in the mood. And I’ve still got a pistol.”
Patrick looked like their father and was a conciliator like the old man, too; a peacemaker who could talk to anyone. Harkins looked like his mother’s brothers—red hair, wiry limbs, freckles—and occasionally acted like them too. Whenever Harkins got in trouble in school, his father called him Jimmy Junior. Uncle Jimmy, his mother’s youngest brother—and the one with the shortest fuse—thought it a slow week if he didn’t get into a couple of fistfights.
“I also heard your driver is sick,” Patrick said.
“Malaria. I don’t know how he’s been functioning, to tell you the truth.”
“Well, if he’s a patient, I got another man for you. Another driver.”
“You got friends in the military police now?”
“Nobody has friends in the MPs. In fact, don’t tell anyone that you’re my brother, okay?”
“Very funny.”
“I got a paratrooper being discharged today who needs a job. He even speaks Italian. Or Sicilian; I guess they’re different. Anyway, his parents are from Palermo.”
“Doesn’t he already have a job? As a paratrooper, I mean?”
Patrick looked like he was about to answer; instead, he said, “Put your shoes on.”
Harkins dressed, and the two men drove Harkins’ jeep back to the main hospital area, Harkins keeping an eye out for First Sergeant Drake, whom he wanted to avoid.
“He’s in here,” Patrick said, pointing to a tent with a hand-painted sign that said RECORDS.
When Harkins shut the jeep’s engine, they could hear men arguing. Then a crash and what sounded like wood splintering. They stepped into the open door of the tent and a soldier in the shadows shouted, “Ten-shun!”
There were two figures on the dirt floor, rolling on the remains of a smashed wooden field table and a scattering of papers. One man—who was on his back—looked like he’d already absorbed a couple of shots to the face. His lip was bleeding and there was a cut above his eyebrow. The GI on top was holding the other’s throat as he pulled his fist back for another blow. With the command, the two men stopped and scrambled to attention. One of them—short, with dark, wavy hair—wore the distinctive uniform of a paratrooper: calf-high brown boots with the trousers tucked into the top, a long blouse that hung outside his pants. On his left shoulder was the double-A patch of the Eighty-Second Airborne Division, the “All Americans.” Harkins had a bad feeling that this man was to be his project.
“Colianno,” Patrick said. “What’s going on here?”
“Just a misunderstanding, sir.”
“Don’t give me that malarkey,” Patrick said. Then, to the other man, “Who are you?”
“Private First Class Weston, sir. I’m the admit-and-discharge clerk.”
“What happened here, Weston?”
Weston blinked some sweat out of his eyes, then wiped his swelling lip with the back of his hand.
“You’re at attention, Private,” Patrick said. The GI immediately put his hands back down along his sides. Harkins was used to Patrick’s gentle priest-voice. This officer-voice was something new.
Colianno spoke up. “He called me a dirty fucking dago, Captain. Excuse my French.”
“That’s not French and I won’t excuse it, so watch your tongue. Nor will I excuse your getting into a fight over some schoolyard taunt. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Colianno said.
“And you,” Patrick said, turning to the clerk. “Does that seem like a good way to treat your patients? Would you call me a filthy mick?”
Weston, apparently thinking it was a rhetorical question, didn’t answer until Patrick said, “Well?”
The soldier looked up—Patrick was a good four inches taller and, even underweight, clearly not a man to mess with. Plus he was a captain and a chaplain.
“No, sir.”
“Are you finished with his paperwork?”
“Yes, sir,” Weston said.
Patrick turned to Colianno. “Get your gear and meet me outside.”
Harkins and Patrick had just walked out of the tent when Harkins heard the clerk say, “Thought all you dagoes had your own dago priests.”
He was halfway turned around when Patrick put his hand on Harkins’ arm, and a second later they heard a whump, an exhalation, something that might have been a body crumpling. Colianno came out palming a small canvas bag.
Harkins told the young trooper, “Wait here,” then took his brother by the arm and pulled him several yards away. “What the hell are you doing to me?”
“Look,” Patrick said, “the guy was a good soldier, a very good soldier, right up until the invasion. He was in one of those small groups that operated on its own for about thirty-six hours. They were in some fights, some of the troopers got killed. But ever since we pulled out of the line he’s been in trouble. Fighting, like you just saw.”
“And that’s why you think he and I make a good team?”
“No,” Patrick said. Then, “Well, maybe. He’s got some stuff going on, and I thought maybe you’d understand him. His sergeants tell me he’ll take on anybody, big or small, but he seems especially touchy about the whole ‘dago’ thing.”
“The ‘dago’ thing?”
“The guys are always putting somebody down; it’s just how they talk. Everybody’s a drunken mick or a stupid pollack, or a cheap kike or a dirty dago. Most of them don’t mean anything by it, but Colianno takes it personally.”
“Maybe he doesn’t like that we’re here killing his people,” Harkins said. “His parents’ people.”
“I don’t know,” Patrick said. “His sergeants and his officers tried to talk to him. No dice. Me? I think something happened to him during those first two days that changed him.”
“So what was it? Combat?”
“I’m not sure. I’m looking into it, but I’m having a hard time tracking down the guys who were with that lost patrol, and the ones I have found aren’t keen to talk.”
“So why dump him on me?”
“We’re not taking him along when we go back to North Africa to train for the next operation.”
“So?” Harkins asked.
“He’ll get assigned as a replacement someplace and will wind up in the stockade. Or dead.”
“So why don’t you take him on as a project? Chaplain’s assistant.”
“I argued for that, but I lost. The orders are that he stays behind when we leave Sicily in a few days.”
“So now he’s my problem? I ain’t got enough going on with this murder?”
“I’m asking you as a favor.”
Harkins studied his older brother. “And if I say no?”
“I’ll excommunicate you. Bring back the Inquisition and the rack.”
“I’m screwed here.”
“I’ll slip you those celibacy pills the church makes us take so you’ll never get a hard-on again.”
Harkins smiled. Patrick had made up the “celibacy pills” story when he went into seminary and his younger brother asked him about a life without girls.
“Nice talk from a priest,” Harkins said.
“Eddie, the kid is going to wind up dead if no one takes an interest in him.”
“This is about the old
man, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Dear old Da,” Harkins said, using one of the affectations that lingered from their immigrant grandparents. “The poorest lawyer in Philadelphia. Always taking on the charity cases.”
Now it was Patrick’s turn to smile. “Remember the guy who paid him in bootleg whiskey? Mickey something.”
“The car thief?”
“No, Mickey’s dopey son was a car thief. Mickey was a bootlegger.”
“Oh, that stuff was baaaaad,” Harkins said. “Talk about keeping your dick soft.”
“Nice talk in front of a priest. And you should talk about Da’s influence. He’s probably the reason you care about finding whoever killed some guy that everybody hated.”
“Got no choice there,” Harkins said. “I’m a lawman.”
Patrick gave him a smile that could have meant he agreed, he understood, or he thought his brother was a bullshit artist. Harkins looked over to where Colianno was standing, still waiting, another kid getting pushed around by forces beyond his control, maybe beyond his understanding.
“Sometimes maybe you have to choose justice or the law,” Patrick said.
“That kind of stuff is for judges and priests to decide,” Harkins said. He took off his helmet, mopped his forehead with a kerchief.
“You going to take my guy?” Patrick asked. “I’ll take care of the paperwork putting him on temporary duty with you.”
“Okay. You owe me, then. Gotta say a couple of prayers, a couple of masses, work my name in there.”
Harkins was trying to make a joke—he was the least religious person in the family—but it fell flat. He was sure that Patrick already prayed for him. He wished he still believed it might do some good.
4
2 August 1943
1130 hours
Patrick promised to find Harkins on the hospital grounds in the next day or so to see how Colianno was doing, then the priest and his driver left. Harkins found Colianno where he’d left him, near the registration tent. There was no sign of Weston, who’d apparently had enough.
