Blame the Dead

by Ed Ruggero

  “He was running in this direction, right? Toward that shelter right there.”

  “Looks like it, I guess,” Colianno said.

  Harkins turned. “So where was he coming from?”

  Together they retraced what Harkins thought might have been Stephenson’s last steps, back to a T-shaped intersection of two narrow passageways. Directly in front of them was a medium tent with its sidewalls staked down to keep the dust to a minimum. They looked inside, saw clean linens wrapped in heavy brown paper, piled on wooden duckboards.

  Harkins turned right. In that direction were two more supply tents, sides staked to the ground, then a large sleeping tent for the hospital’s NCOs.

  Harkins led them back to the T intersection, figuring that Stephenson had to have come from one of the arms of this T. They walked about fifteen yards, canvas walls on either side of them formed by the sides of surgery tents 1 and 2, which were always closed against the dust and flies.

  “He could have come out of one of these,” Colianno said of the surgery tents.

  “He would have to crawl underneath,” Harkins said. “Why do that when he could use the front entrance? They’re both staked down, too.”

  Harkins studied the bottom of the tent to see if there were any obvious gaps. When he looked up, he saw Alice Haus come out of the next tent.

  “Hey,” he said. “Alice.”

  She stopped. “Lose something?”

  “What’s that tent you just came out of?”

  “It’s the back side of the nurses’ tent. Somebody cut a giant slit back here on one of those hot nights, and now we use it as a door. We pull it shut, because if First Sergeant Drake sees it he’ll have a heart attack and will make us buy Uncle Sam a new tent.”

  Harkins walked to where she was standing. The makeshift door was hidden; someone had figured out how to make it stay shut with a quick pull by looping a tie-down cord over one of the tent stakes.

  “All the nurses live here?”

  “About half, I’d say.”

  “Kathleen?”

  “No.”

  “Moira Ronan?”

  “Yeah, this is her tent. Why do you ask?”

  “Any doctors’ tents around here?”

  “No, they’re on the other side of the compound,” she said, pointing north. “I gotta run, OK?”

  “Sure, thanks.”

  When Haus was gone, Colianno asked, “You think he was coming from the nurses’ tent?”

  “Don’t know. If he was in there, maybe someone saw him.”

  “But he could have been coming from anywhere. You can get to this spot from anywhere in the compound.”

  “You’re right. But he sure had a thing for nurses, so this just looks fishy to me.”

  Harkins looked at one of the photos in his hand, a close-up of the exit wound, Stephenson’s exploded head. He wondered how Stephenson became the kind of man someone wanted to murder. Did that kind of thing happen in stages? Small steps? Did he know what he had become? Was there a split second when he felt the muzzle of the pistol at his head and realized his sins had caught up with him?

  Harkins put the photo back in the envelope, looked around once more. “Let’s go see if we can find Doctor Wilkins.”

  * * *

  The doctors lived three men to a pyramidal tent, which gave them each about twice the space that the nurses had in their one giant tent filled with cots, and three times as much as the enlisted men.

  “Rank hath its privileges,” Colianno said as they rolled up. They could see inside three of the tents in a row of five. Apparently the doctors’ tents were not subject to inspection, as the nurses’ tents were, since there was laundry hanging from every guy wire and post within sight. Inside, books, magazines, and letters were scattered about, along with uniform items and the occasional piece of furniture liberated from an Italian home.

  Harkins and Colianno walked down the row, reading hand-lettered signs the docs had used to name their castles. Shangri-La, Hoochy-Cootchy Hut, The Nite Club.

  “Those are some stupid friggin’ names,” Colianno said.

  A mail orderly came out of one of the tents.

  “Where’s Captain Wilkins?” Harkins asked.

  “With a couple of the other docs, playing cards down there.” He pointed to a tent fly that had been erected above a small fountain. As Harkins and Colianno approached, they saw that four men were playing cards on a piece of wooden packing crate propped over the center of the circular base. All four had their shoes off, their feet in the bubbling water.

  “Gentlemen,” Harkins said as he approached. Two of the men looked up.

  “I’m Lieutenant Harkins, military police. I’d like to ask you a few questions about Captain Stephenson.”

  “I’m out,” one man said to his partners, folding his hand.

  Another doc, this one with an almost comically large mustache, a caricature of Pancho Villa, said, “Coward! You’re going to have to stay in at least one hand so I can take the rest of your money.”

  They’d been drinking, that much was clear. Maybe they don’t go on duty until this evening, Harkins thought. Then, But what if casualties start coming in quickly?

  One way for Harkins to gauge his own degree of exhaustion was to see how quickly he got pissed off at some asshole. He already hated these guys.

  Harkins nodded at Colianno, who retrieved Stephenson’s musette bag from the jeep. When Harkins had it in hand, he called the poker players again.

  “Gentlemen, I said I’d like to have your attention for a few moments.”

  “He’s not doing anything,” Mustache said, pointing at the man who’d folded. “He can talk to you.”

  Harkins walked up to the card game and swung the canvas bag, clearing the table of cards and chips, which scattered to the ground and into the fountain.

  “What the hell?”

  “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

  “I told you who I am and what I’m doing here. Now I’d like a little goddamn cooperation, if you don’t mind. I’m tired and hot and, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m the only one here wearing a pistol. I haven’t shot anyone in days, but that could change.”

  “All right, tough guy,” Mustache said. “What do you want to know?”

  “Are you Wilkins?”

  “No, that’s me. And it’s Captain Wilkins to you.”

  Wilkins had been sitting with his back toward Harkins. Another big man, like Stephenson. Hairline creeping down toward thick eyebrows, a dark beard that gave him a menacing look. He wore a sleeveless olive drab T-shirt, and Harkins could see a Saint Christopher’s medal nested in a mat of dark hair on his chest.

  “All I’ve been hearing about Captain Stephenson is that people didn’t like him,” Harkins said, pulling out his notebook.

  “That’s because he drank too much and thought with his dick,” Mustache said. “And that’s Souther, S-O-U-T-H-E-R.”

  “Sounds like you’re spending all your time talking to the nurses,” Wilkins said.

  The other men laughed, and Souther said, “Yeah, talking.”

  “You got another story?” Harkins asked. “That’s what I’m here for.”

  “Look,” Wilkins said, “Stephenson was a pain in the ass. But a lot of that stuff, the nurses bring that on themselves.”

  “How’s that?”

  “By saying no all the time,” Souther said. Another round of laughs.

  Harkins’ patience was gone. He would have to separate these men to get anything useful out of them. Get them when they were sober.

  “Any of you seen this before?” Harkins asked, pulling the gold paten from the musette bag.

  “Yeah, Stephenson tried to use it to settle a debt the other night.” This from one of the men who had not spoken yet.

  “Tried?”

  The speaker, narrow shouldered and sweating even more than the others, said, “I recognized it. He got that from a church somewhere, so I said he couldn’t use it.”

 
; “One thing to steal wine,” Souther said. “Or furniture. But you can’t show up here with stuff you stole from a church, bombed out or not.”

  “Any of you ever see anything else he had, or anyone had, like this? Gold? From a church?” Harkins asked.

  No response. So Harkins continued, “Does Colonel Boone gamble?”

  “Some,” Souther said. “Not much good at it.”

  “He owe anyone here money? Colonel Boone, that is.”

  Two of the men looked down at the table. After a pause, Souther said, “Nah, we’re all pretty even up these days.”

  “OK, so we’re all friends here,” Harkins said. “Let’s go back to the nurses. Captain Wilkins? You play grab-ass with the nurses, too?”

  Wilkins looked at him, trying to give Harkins the cold stare. Another big man used to intimidating people without even trying.

  “I get paid to stitch wounded boys back together,” Wilkins said. “Not to be a choir boy.”

  “Look,” Souther said. “Some of these nurses get around, like—what was her name?”

  “Whitman,” one of the men said.

  “Yeah,” Souther continued. “Whitman got around, and a couple of other nurses have had happy relations with some of the docs. And it’s not just the docs getting action, is what I hear.”

  More drunken giggles.

  “So it goes on, you know. It’s up to us to figure out which ones are game and which ones aren’t.”

  “So how do you figure it out? Grab ’em first and see if they complain?”

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Souther said. “Who are you, the goddamn pope? We’re out here working our asses off, we deserve a little break now and then.”

  Wilkins was still giving him the hard-guy stare, something he’d cribbed from an Edward G. Robinson movie.

  “I’ll come back around when you guys aren’t in your cups,” Harkins said, turning to the jeep.

  “Speaking of a little break,” Wilkins said to his back, “that Kathleen Donnelly is a nice piece of ass, if you like them skinny Irish wenches.”

  Harkins spun around and took two fast steps toward Wilkins, who tried—too late—to get out of his chair. Harkins hit him with a right-left-right combination, not holding back, but launching his full body weight onto the bigger man. Then he grabbed Wilkins’s windpipe with his left hand, pressing his thumb against the man’s Adam’s apple, smashing the doctor’s face with his right fist.

  Colianno pulled him off after a few seconds. Wilkins did not get up, but Souther bent over him, then looked at Harkins and said, “I’ll get the military police after you, you sonofabitch!”

  Harkins yanked his pistol from its holster, pointed it at Souther, then at the prone Wilkins, back at Souther until the doc put his hands up.

  “I’m the fucking military police!”

  The docs didn’t move for the few seconds it took Harkins to get control of his breathing. Colianno stood beside him, waiting.

  “Let’s go,” Harkins said. He turned his back to the doctors, but he did not holster his weapon, just walked away holding it beside his leg.

  “Pretty smooth back there, Lieutenant,” Colianno said. He did not look at Harkins, but kept his eyes straight ahead as the two men walked away side by side.

  Harkins thought Colianno might have been smiling when he said, “Learn that in MP school, did you?”

  19

  3 August 1943

  1600 hours

  Harkins and Colianno were waiting when Ronan came out of the surgical tent. The lower parts of her trousers, the part not covered by a surgical gown, were blood-spattered. Red creases marked the sides of her face where the strings of the surgical mask had been tied. She rolled her shoulders, trying to work out the knots from a few hours of standing with her arms held above a patient on the operating table. She walked beside another nurse and, as far as Harkins could tell, they talked about putting some guy’s jaw back together. When she saw Harkins, she stopped.

  “What the hell do you want?” she said.

  “I wonder if I could have your help for a few minutes,” Harkins said.

  Ronan looked at Harkins, then at Colianno, then back. “I just got finished assisting in a five-hour surgery,” she said. “I’m not up for any more of your bullshit.”

  “Look,” Harkins said. “I’m sorry about what happened earlier. I didn’t know Boone was going to do that. This will only take a few minutes, and we’ll take you back to your tent.”

  Ronan sighed, said good-bye to the other nurse, then climbed into the jeep. They drove the short distance to the murder scene. When Colianno parked, the three of them got out and Harkins walked to the spot where the body had been found. Harkins thought Colianno whispered something to Ronan, but he couldn’t be sure. The nurse looked tense; Harkins wondered if she’d take another swing at him.

  “So where were you when the air raid started?”

  Ronan looked around, back toward the T intersection of dirt paths that led, Harkins had found this morning, to the nurses’ tent.

  “Coming back from the latrine.”

  “Heading from the latrine to where?”

  “To my tent. I’d just gotten off a night shift and wanted to get some sleep.”

  “So you hadn’t reached your tent yet and, what? Was there an air-raid siren, or did you hear the ack-ack first?”

  “I don’t remember,” she said. “Is that important?”

  “I don’t think there was a siren, Lieutenant,” Colianno offered. He stepped closer to Ronan, so the two of them were side by side, facing Harkins. “Those quad fifties opened up, one of them, at least. Then the others joined in.”

  “I’d like to hear what Lieutenant Ronan remembers,” Harkins said.

  “I don’t,” Ronan said, exasperated. “Remember, that is. Not the exact sequence, anyway.”

  “OK,” Harkins said. “Let’s assume it was the ack-ack. That was certainly loud enough for everyone to hear, right? Private Colianno says he didn’t go to any shelter because he figured it would turn out to be a false alarm. Is that what you thought, or did you take it seriously?”

  “No, I took it seriously. We were bombed when we were on the beach, D plus two or three. Scared me plenty.”

  “Yeah, I’m with you,” Harkins said, trying a smile. “Private Colianno thinks the Luftwaffe is finished, at least in this campaign, but hell, I wouldn’t want to get killed by the last Kraut pilot to make it into the air.”

  Ronan stared back at him, expressionless.

  “So you started running right away?” Harkins asked.

  “I guess so, yeah.”

  “Toward the shelter?”

  One corner of Ronan’s mouth twitched. She looked like she wanted to slug him again. Beside her, Colianno shifted his weight from one foot to the other, back again.

  “I ran toward my tent first.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t have my helmet with me,” Ronan said. “We’re not supposed to be out without them, but I didn’t bring mine to surgery that morning. And the shelter doesn’t have overhead cover, so we need them.”

  “I see.”

  “I ran into the tent and back out again, quick as that.”

  “And did you run for this shelter?” Harkins said, pointing with his thumb to the air-raid shelter Stephenson never reached.

  “Yes.”

  “Anyone else running with you? Alongside you? Behind you?”

  “Of course,” she said. What little patience she’d had was exhausted. “There were all kinds of people running every which way. A bunch of them headed for the same shelter as me.”

  “So you didn’t see Stephenson?”

  “No.” Then, “Well, later, after the ‘all clear’ had been given.”

  She pointed at the spot beneath Harkins’ feet. “He was right there. Just like you found him.”

  Harkins said nothing for a long moment, just looked at her with the hint of a smile. Then, “OK,” he said. “Thanks. I appreciate your help.”
r />   “I’ll bet,” Ronan said. She looked at Colianno, then turned and headed down the alley between tents, heels scuffing little clouds of dust. When she was gone, Colianno turned to Harkins.

  “Were you trying to get her to punch you again? See if you could egg her on?”

  Harkins turned and walked to the jeep. “Can’t deny she’s got a temper.”

  “Everyone has a temper if they’re pushed far enough. You, for instance. You went crazy on that doctor. I hadn’t pulled you off, you might’ve killed him.”

  “You may be right,” Harkins said, embarrassed that Colianno had seen that. Not that Wilkins didn’t deserve what he got.

  When he reached the jeep, Harkins leaned over, hands on the vehicle’s sun-beat hood, stretching his back.

  He doubted that his uncle Jimmy, the brawler, entertained any second thoughts about his behavior, unless it was to figure out how he could hand out a more effective beating. Jimmy had created his own black-and-white world, and he liked it there. You had your family and friends, and to hell with everybody else. When his blood was up, Harkins’ uncle was unburdened by reason, uncaring of consequences.

  And for a moment back there by the doctors’ tents, that had been Eddie Harkins, waving his goddamn pistol like a gangster.

  “So?” Colianno stood beside him, clearly wanting Harkins to see that Ronan was not that crazy.

  “If I can’t keep my head when Wilkins makes a smartass remark about Kathleen,” Harkins said, “a completely predictable remark for an asshole like him—how much harder might it be for her to keep her cool? She was the victim of a terrible crime. If that doesn’t make you lose your head, what will?”

  * * *

  Colianno and Harkins grabbed some chow in the mess tent, then Colianno disappeared with the jeep while Harkins typed his notes. When the driver came back, he had a tommy gun slung over his shoulder. Harkins looked, didn’t ask about it.

  “I found the other driver who took Stephenson to Palermo,” Colianno said. “Get this, Stephenson went to that whorehouse with that Kraut doctor, the POW.”