Blame the Dead

by Ed Ruggero

  Lindner looked at Harkins, perhaps anticipating the next question.

  “And yet you and Stephenson made at least one trip together into Palermo, to a bordello.” Harkins took off his helmet, held it in the crook of his arm as he wiped his forehead with the other sleeve.

  “Captain Stephenson told me some of the women had urinary tract infections, and he wanted to know if I could help them.”

  “But he was there as a client,” Harkins said. “You don’t strike me as a man who visits brothels.”

  Lindner stopped walking, kept his hands behind his back as he turned slightly to face Harkins. “Loyt-nant,” he said, using the German pronunciation before correcting himself. “Excuse me. Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, Herr Doktor?”

  “Colonel Boone and I are not friends, as you suggest. We are something closer to colleagues. Peers, when it comes to medical questions, I suppose, and he has treated me with respect. But I am still a prisoner of war, and subject to his decisions as the local commander. I have remained here at the hospital because I am useful. I have no doubt that I will be shipped out with the other prisoners when this hospital moves forward, if not before.”

  “And Stephenson?” Harkins asked. “Was he a friend?”

  “I doubt if Captain Stephenson had any real friends,” Lindner said. Harkins thought about the dead man’s tent, where he bunked alone.

  “I am sorry, I know it is not polite to speak of the ill and dead.”

  “It’s not polite to speak ill of the dead,” Harkins corrected him. “But let’s not worry about Stephenson’s delicate feelings. What did you think of him?”

  Lindner looked to his right. A few feet away, a POW left the sleeping tent, wearing a T-shirt, a towel draped over his arm like a waiter in a fancy restaurant.

  “I thought he was deeply insecure. Manipulative. Selfish. Not above using people to satisfy his own base needs.”

  “He was a fucking pig,” Harkins said.

  Lindner studied Harkins for a moment. Harkins doubted the good doctor ever used the word “fuck.”

  “You a Nazi, Doctor?”

  Finally, Lindner seemed caught off guard. “What?” came out “Vat?” He blinked a few times, used both hands to pull on his lab coat.

  “Are you a member of the National Socialist Party? Is that required of someone of your rank? Your stature?”

  Lindner regained his composure. “I am not a Nazi. As I’m sure you can imagine, there will be very few Germans you encounter, especially German prisoners, who would admit such a thing if it were true, so I would not be surprised if you don’t believe me.”

  “You’re right, I’m sure,” Harkins said.

  “I have other patients to see, Lieutenant, so if that is all.”

  “Oh, Doctor, we’re finished when I say we’re finished. You’re still a prisoner, remember?”

  Lindner tilted his head agreeably, put his hands behind his back again. “As you wish,” he said.

  “Why did you stay behind when the rest of your people pulled out?”

  “There were hundreds of wounded who were too badly injured to move. I volunteered, as did a number of the orderlies you see working here. We knew the Allies would take care of our wounded and that we would be able to help with that care.”

  “But if you’re such a big-shot surgeon, why would they leave you behind? Why not some wet-behind-the-ears doc just out of medical training?”

  “Wet ears?” Lindner said, the W sliding toward a V sound. Harkins was starting to think the slip-ups were a tell.

  “Wet behind the ears. It means someone new to a field, inexperienced.”

  “I see. Strange expression.”

  “Well?”

  Lindner looked into Harkins’ eyes. “I have no idea,” Lindner said. “Maybe it was important that it be a volunteer. Maybe the younger doctors were afraid.”

  Harkins had already decided not to ask Lindner if he was treating a senior American officer. If Colianno was able to deliver, there’d be a tail on Lindner this morning, and he didn’t want the German to be suspicious.

  “Was Stephenson blackmailing Colonel Boone?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Stephenson was getting away with a lot of shit. Boone should have stopped him, maybe even court-martialed him. But Boone didn’t. He let Stephenson go on. I’m wondering if Stephenson knew something about Boone that Boone had to keep quiet.”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Lindner said, “anything” coming out a little like “any-sing.” The doctor’s perfect English slipped when he was under pressure. Or lying.

  Harkins smiled at Lindner, but said nothing more.

  “May I go to my patients now?”

  “Sure, sure,” Harkins said. Friendly now. “I appreciate your time this morning.”

  Lindner brought his heels together. Prisoners didn’t rate salutes from Americans, so Lindner nodded and turned to go.

  “Oh, one more thing, Doc,” Harkins said. Lindner faced him again. “Who do you think killed Stephenson? And why?”

  “I do not know, Lieutenant,” the doctor said, smiling, his accent perfect again. “But I am sure you won’t rest until you find out.”

  Lindner turned back to the ward tent, the tails of his lab coat trailing behind.

  “You’re goddamn right about that,” Harkins said under his breath.

  27

  4 August 1943

  0700 hours

  Colonel Walter Boone’s morning had started out well enough. He and Lindner had put in an appearance at the municipal hospital in Palermo, made sure plenty of people saw them there together. Then the two men rehearsed the story Lindner was to tell when that beat cop, Harkins, started asking questions. Lindner had repeated the alibi back flawlessly—he was a smart guy—and Boone felt a little less vulnerable. His orderly brought him the news about Donnelly being assaulted, and it was just a few minutes later he heard the scuttlebutt about Harkins showing up at Wilkins’ tent, making some sort of threat.

  Perfect.

  Harkins obviously figured Wilkins had assaulted Donnelly. The two men had had words that previous day, and Harkins, applying the kind of bovine, simplistic thinking that Boone thought drove most police officers, had naturally assumed that Wilkins had lashed out. Apparently, the cop thought everyone lived by the same gutter-justice code, the tit-for-tat exchange of threats and violence. The more attention Harkins paid to Wilkins, the better for Boone.

  But the colonel still had something eating at him like an ulcer: Ronan’s comment that Stephenson felt safe doing whatever he wanted because he had something on Boone.

  Was the little tart clever enough to make that up? Was she bluffing?

  He stood in the door of his sleeping tent, absentmindedly buttoning his shirt and staring out across the compound.

  What was the name of that philosopher? The “somebody’s razor” guy.

  Two soldiers walked by. “Morning, sir.”

  Boone nodded at them, turned back into his tent.

  The simplest explanation is the most likely, or something like that.

  He drew a deep breath, his heart suddenly fluttering, as if he’d had too much caffeine.

  I have to assume Ronan knows something. All the nurses talk to one another. What else do they have to do except gossip?

  There was a knock on the post by the door flap. “Colonel Boone?”

  He turned to see Captain Palmer, the head nurse, standing with her fatigue cap in her hand, worrying the brim. She reminded him of a little bird; she never stopped her nervous movement, the fidgeting.

  “Yes?”

  “We have a situation with Nurse Ronan.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “She seems to be missing. AWOL, I mean.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  Boone had never heard of a lieutenant going AWOL, much less a nurse, an American woman who was now, possibly, somewhere in a foreign city.

  “Ar
e you goddamn sure?”

  “The other nurses said she packed her gear about oh three hundred this morning; all her uniforms, bedding, everything. Her cot is empty. Told a couple of people that she’d be gone for a few days, but they shouldn’t worry about her.”

  “Was anyone with her?”

  “I’m not sure, Colonel.”

  Maybe the assault on Donnelly had scared her. Whatever the hell was going on, Boone figured that Harkins was involved, and that mouthy paratrooper he’d picked up as a driver. They were all lining up against him now. Donnelly too.

  “Where the hell could she have gone?”

  “I don’t know, sir. But First Sergeant Drake is going to look for her.”

  Drake.

  The first sergeant had dragged his feet getting the transfer paperwork ready, Boone now saw. Drake, usually a model of efficiency, had given him some bullshit story about the clerk having to retype the orders.

  Harkins had gotten to him, too.

  “Where is Drake now?”

  “Headed to the motor pool, I believe,” Palmer said.

  “Where’s Donnelly?”

  “Nurse Donnelly is scrubbing in for surgery this morning.”

  “Did you ask her where Ronan is?”

  “Yes, sir. She said she doesn’t know.”

  I’ll bet, Boone thought.

  He looked at Palmer, who was still twirling her fatigue cap, folding the edges, pulling them open. She had never connected with her nurses; none of them seemed to like her. She stayed clear of the hard, dirty work the nurses did on the ward, changing bandages or helping wounded men move position so they didn’t get bedsores.

  “Who’s on the ward right now?”

  “Doctor Trennely was on last night,” Palmer said.

  “Tell him he has to stay on duty. Tell him I’ve been called away.”

  “Sir, we haven’t received any new nurses. We’re terribly shorthanded. Are we expecting any more to come in? Replacements?”

  It was her whining that pushed him over the edge.

  “Do I look like the fucking personnel desk to you? Nurse staffing is your responsibility. If you’re shorthanded, you might have to do some actual goddamn nurse’s work for a change. I suggest you scrub in, Captain.”

  Palmer looked like she was about to cry, which made Boone’s blood boil.

  “Jesus!” he said. “Get out of my sight before you start blubbering.”

  Boone went back into his sleeping quarters, opened his footlocker, and found his pistol, wrapped in an oily T-shirt. He jammed a magazine into place and pulled back the slide, chambering a round. He slid the weapon into its holster, then buckled the belt around his waist. It was unusual for a doctor to wear a sidearm, but once he was outside the gate no one would think anything of it.

  With his helmet tucked under his arm he hurried to the motor pool, where he grabbed a corporal. The man wore mechanic’s overalls and a grease-stained fatigue cap.

  “Was First Sergeant Drake just here?” Boone asked. The corporal looked a bit startled, and Boone figured it was because the colonel never visited the motor pool, even though it was part of his command. Drake had asked him to at least put in an appearance from time to time, had stressed that the drivers and mechanics wanted to see he cared about them.

  “I’m a surgeon,” Boone had told him. “Not an oil monkey.”

  Drake never asked again.

  “What did he say?” Boone asked the corporal.

  “He wanted to know if one of our guys drove some nurses into the city this morning.”

  “Smart man,” Boone said to himself. Unlike Harkins, who had his own jeep and driver, the nurses had to rely on motor pool vehicles and drivers to get anywhere. “And did they?”

  “Yes, sir. One of our guys took Nurse Donnelly into the city. They were both back within an hour, hour and a half.”

  “Where is this man? I want to talk to him.”

  “Well, that’ll be a bit of a problem, Colonel, you see—”

  “Don’t give me that shit, Corporal,” Boone said. Two soldiers who’d been heading toward them stopped and headed in the opposite direction.

  “No, sir. I mean, yes, sir. It’s just that the first sergeant took that same driver—his name’s Gallegos—he had that same driver take him back into Palermo. He wanted to see where Nurse Donnelly had gone.”

  Boone smiled. “How long ago did they leave?”

  “Couple of minutes, sir. You could probably catch up if you need to.”

  Just then another jeep pulled up, the driver apparently wanting to talk to the corporal. The driver saluted Boone.

  “Out of the jeep,” Boone said.

  “Sir?” the man said.

  Boone turned to the corporal. “I’m taking this jeep.”

  “You heard the colonel,” the corporal said to the startled driver. “Un-ass that jeep.”

  The GI scrambled out, and Boone swung into the driver’s seat and, without another word, took off in the direction of Palermo, a rooster tail of dust behind him.

  28

  4 August 1943

  0900 hours

  The army staff car was not subtle. A big Dodge painted olive drab, white stars stenciled on the doors, nearly twice as long as a jeep. When it stopped outside the gate, the driver jumped out and used a rag to wipe some of the road dust from the windshield. The rest of the car looked like a powdered confection.

  Oberstleutnant Matthias Lindner waited, as instructed, in the registration tent near the entrance to the hospital compound. When he saw the general’s aide exit the front passenger door, he walked outside.

  “Colonel,” the aide said. Courteous, not friendly.

  “Lieutenant,” Lindner responded. The aide opened the rear door and Lindner climbed in. It had to be over one hundred degrees in the car, but rolling down the windows on these dirt roads was an invitation to be suffocated by the dust. Instead, Lindner thought of a cool place and pressed a handkerchief to his nose.

  “Lot of traffic this morning,” the aide said. “It’s going to take us a little longer to get there.”

  The aide’s name was Cohen, a pleasant young man from Boston. A Jew. Lindner wondered if his patient had chosen a Jew to fetch him just to get under his skin. Lindner actually didn’t mind. Cohen was well-read, spoke passable German—better than the gutter German Stephenson had been so proud of—and had studied philosophy at Columbia before the war.

  Lindner had never gone in for the Jew-baiting that swept the Third Reich in the years before this war. His father said that the National Socialists were using the Jews as scapegoats, as the “Other,” in order to give ignorant Germans something to focus on while Hitler consolidated power.

  “Classic demagoguery,” his father had said. “And the sausage eaters don’t even know they’re being sucked in.” “Sausage eater” being the elder Herr Lindner’s catchall name for mindless followers, whatever their social status.

  Lindner had gone along with the times, of course, laughing at the coarse jokes, applauding lazily when some party hack talked to the staff about cleansing the hospital of dirty Jewish doctors. He had looked the other way as colleagues were tossed out of their positions, had held his tongue, had offered no one a hand. He’d needed his job, of course. Had a family to support. Sometimes, though, when he woke in the middle of the night, a sour taste of shame rose up in his throat.

  “Doctor.”

  Cohen had turned around in the front seat, was facing Lindner, who had been daydreaming.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you live with the other POWs, or with the American doctors? At the hospital, I mean.”

  Lindner looked out the window, which was nearly opaque with dust. “With the prisoners.”

  Cohen and the driver exchanged looks, and Lindner was surprised to realize that Cohen did not like him. He worked hard, especially with the Americans, to be friendly.

  The driver, whose name Lindner did not know and did not care to learn, spoke. “They’re going to stic
k you on one of those troopships, Doc. Ship you back to the States. I hear they got German POWs doing all kinds of work, building army bases and such. Draining swamps. Sweat your balls off in Texas or Louisiana or some other hellhole. Should be lots of sick Krauts for you to take care of.”

  The man clearly found the picture amusing. Lindner did not respond.

  “That’s if your ship don’t get sunk by one of your own U-boats.” The driver laughed, slapped the steering wheel with a meaty hand. “Wouldn’t that beat all? Come all this way and get done in by your own side.”

  “That’s enough,” Cohen said to the driver.

  They dropped down to the coast road, the Via Messina Marine, which the Americans had marked with wooden signs saying OCEAN DRIVE. They turned left, away from the waterfront, into the heart of the old city. The American brass, like the Germans before them, always took the best properties for their headquarters.

  To the right of the car, the Chiesa Santa Maria Maddalena, ancient, thick walled. On the left rose the grand Palazzo dei Normanni, begun in the ninth century and named for the Norman nobles who battled the Saracens for control of the island. Palermo had been a city and a trading port for over a thousand years: the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, then the northern Europeans. Each civilization had left traces in the place names and architecture, and then had passed to ash and dust.

  Twenty-five hundred kilometers to the north, Hitler had promised his people a Thousand-Year Reich. Lindner doubted it would last another five.

  He shifted from the right to the left side of the car to look out the other window, to see what this city might tell him about thousand-year empires.

  So much beauty here, Lindner thought. And on his visits to the city, Stephenson had wanted only wine and women.

  South of the palace and bordering the Parco d’Orléans, there was a three-story office building that had been taken over by the Americans. Inside, Lindner’s patient waited.

  Cohen got out when the car pulled to the curb, and opened Lindner’s door. The aide wore a pistol, as he always did, and Lindner wondered if Cohen would shoot him if necessary. Probably. Maybe even happily.