David Robbins - [World War II 04]

by Liberation Road (v1. 0) (epub)

  Joe Amos gathered some strength.

  ‘Tell Major Clay.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Tell...tell my mama. Danville.’

  ‘Joe Amos.’

  The boy went silent, mustering his last reserves. He shut his eyes and shook his head in a small tremor. Joe Amos felt some new pain. Ben couldn’t tell if it was in his waning body or his spirit.

  The boy opened his eyes and his mouth. Tears glistened in his eyes, blood on his tongue.

  ‘Geneviève,’ he muttered. ‘You tell Geneviève.’

  Ben did not know who Geneviève was, and he did not figure he would find out. He nodded.

  ‘Joe Amos, listen to me.’

  ‘Okay, Chap. Okay.’

  The driver lifted a hand to cover Ben’s on his chest. ‘Chap, say something.’ The shivering grew worse. The hammering of his heart pounded in Ben’s lap.

  He wanted Ben to pray for him.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said, as though telling Ben where to start.

  Ben spoke quickly. ‘Joe Amos. The man you were going to sell your gas to. The American pilot in Paris. What was his name?’

  ‘What? I...I...white something. White Dog.’

  ‘Where is he in Paris? Did your friend say? Where were you going to take the gas?’

  The boy’s mouth worked but he did not speak. Ben saw him baffled on the footbridge between life and death, between asking for comfort in his passage and giving over his last seconds to one more chore, for this chaplain, and not knowing why. Ben willed the boy to live those few seconds for him. Save me one more time, Joe Amos Biggs. I know my duty to you as a rabbi and I cast it aside, for this. For my life. For my own boy.

  Ben shook the dying driver.

  ‘Where is White Dog in Paris?’

  The boy coughed. His back arched. His face skewed. Ben could not wait for the pain to pass. He rammed his words into the boy’s agony.

  ‘Where is he? Joe Amos?’

  The driver stayed rigid for terrible moments, then released into Ben’s lap. His jaw and spine slacked. The engine of his heart eased. His black eyes stayed on Ben.

  ‘Joe Amos. Please. Tell me. I think it’s my son.’

  The boy made no reaction. Ben feared he had slipped too far.

  Then Joe Amos Biggs smiled. Ben saw, in that moment the boy had become sure of something, a truth, a guarantee. His hand relaxed over Ben’s, to let him go, and to be on his own way.

  He whispered, ‘Montparnasse.’ With one more heave, he added, ‘Rue...Stanislas.’

  These were the boy’s last words, an address. He did not die for several minutes. Ben cradled him in his lap at the bottom of the foxhole, he laid his hands to the boy’s chest, to ride the rise and fall of his idling breaths. Ben did not pray for Joe Amos. Again, he gave only what he had, and he knew God was no longer among his presents. Ben told him when a company of infantry from the 90th and three Shermans arrived to rescue the remaining doughs and his fellow Red Ballers. When this was said, the boy died.

  Later, when the Tough Ombres walked the battle area, they found Ben in the hole, beneath the body. Joe Amos Biggs was lifted away and laid in the back of a Jimmy. Ben struggled to his feet, very bloody.

  ~ * ~

  D+100

  September 14

  Ben woke before sunup.

  His fifteen stitches itched but did not ache. His bandage did not seep. By the light of a lantern at the end of the ward he put on the fresh uniform that had been brought for him and laid across a chair at the foot of his bed. The fit was fine; the nurse who’d fetched it for him had said her husband was exactly his size. She had transferred all his rank and chaplain’s insignia to the new outfit. He did not remove any of the markings, they would have use yet. He pulled Phineas’s Colt from the bedside table and checked the clip for the four rounds. They were there. He stuffed the pistol into his waistband. From a medical can he gathered a clean bandage, tape, and a roll of gauze and dropped them in his new pack. He slipped on crisp socks but carried his boots, which had been cleaned. His Red Cross helmet remained the same filthy thing he’d worn into the hospital.

  He tiptoed out of his ward, avoiding the night nurse. When he was in another hallway, he put on the boots and walked for the front door. Anyone noticing him saw a chaplain leaving the hospital and had no reason to stop him.

  Ben flagged a ride. Traffic ran thick in Fontainebleau even in the early morning. The city on the Seine was a major crossroads and a depot for Third Army. It held several headquarters and was on the return route of the Red Ball Express. Bonaparte’s last palace was here, too. When Napoleon departed Fontainebleau in 1814 he went into exile.

  Ben rode east to the sprawling depot near the river. He thanked the driver, who was headed for breakfast and a cot, then walked to the motor pool. Before he’d gone fifty feet into the depot he found himself pressing against walls of crates and sliding sideways along lines of parked vehicles to avoid the crush of activity. Trucks roared in and out of the depot in immense echelons. The pace of exchange was feverish. Empty was traded for full, loads were lifted and shifted by hand or crane, engines and shouts rang as loud and urgent as a battleground. After a week in a hospital bed, Ben’s strength still wavered. Several times men, white and colored both, yelled at him to look out, he had wandered straight into their paths. Ben winced at truck horns and at the clout of loads dropped, unable to separate the clash of battlefields from this depot.

  With dawn rising, needing a chair and water, he found a motor-pool garage. A sergeant behind a desk directed Ben elsewhere. Ben walked off, but the sergeant came to haul him back. The man gave up his seat, set out a canteen, and told Ben to wait right there. Ten minutes later, with dawn filtering through grimy windows, the sergeant rolled a newly painted jeep in front of his desk, headlamps on. He honked the horn, happy with his good deed for a chaplain. Ben jerked, he’d been dozing and almost dove from the chair. The sergeant said, ‘You okay?’ Ben calmed himself, it was just a jeep. He asked to keep the canteen and was given it. He tossed in his pack and drove off for Paris.

  ~ * ~

  Ben had never been in Paris. But once he found Montparnasse, Rue Stanislas was not difficult to find. It was a two-block stretch linking two major avenues, just three hundred yards from the Luxembourg Gardens. A series of Parisians directed him ever closer with hand signs or passing English. The street was a narrow canyon of high, ornate facades with storefronts and garage doors at the bottoms and balconied flats farther up. When he arrived the mid-morning sun had just climbed the tops of the buildings and cast sharp shadows down the cobblestones.

  Ben parked in a shadow, the only vehicle on the cobbles. On the sidewalks, old women lugged fresh loaves and mesh bags of victuals. They wore kerchiefs and coats. Ben looked at their fat ankles. He finished the last of the canteen. The ride in the open and stiff-riding jeep had exhausted him.

  He waited, gazing the length of Rue Stanislas. He unbuttoned his tunic, pulled up his OD undershirt, and glanced at his midriff. The wrapping was clean, the ride from Fontainebleau had not ripped his stitches. He tucked himself neat again.

  Ben was reluctant to get out of the jeep. This street held secrets he did not want to know. If he had a bullhorn he would stay put and call out for Thomas. This is your father. I’ve come for you. Come out, come out.... The boy would step from a shadow of Rue Stanislas into the light, climb into the empty seat, and they would drive away. Ben would need to know nothing of what Thomas had done, why he was here, why he was White Dog and not Thomas Kahn. They could unravel it later, when they were safe, when Ben was strong and they were together.

  Ben tasted hope. He knew the best he could expect was that he would take Thomas back to a court-martial and prison as a deserter. No matter. The boy was young yet, he had hurt no one. He was in the black market. Ben had done far worse in his youth in the name of duty than what Thomas might have done for money. There was time to heal Thomas, too. Ben forgave his son for being alive the way he’d had to forgive him
for being dead. Ben Tapped the letter in his breast pocket, the nurse had been careful to put it there.

  An elder gentleman in a bowler hat approached. Ben raised a hand in greeting. The man smiled in return.

  ‘Pardonnez-moi.’

  ‘Oui?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t speak French. But do you know a man who calls himself White Dog?’

  The man cocked his head.

  ‘Chien Blanc?’

  ‘Yes. Oui.’

  The man waggled a wrinkled finger.

  ‘Non,’ the old man said, ‘non.’ He walked off, shaking his head.

  Ben stood beside the jeep. He asked two younger women walking together. They spoke English and greeted him. One welcomed him to Paris and kissed him on a cheek before he could ask about Chien Blanc. They looked at each other and said they did not know him. An older woman followed. She lifted her cane to make her point. ‘Non!’

  Ben waited and selected a middle-aged man in dirty coveralls. He had a bulbous belly. This told Ben he had eaten during the Occupation. He might know White Dog the black marketeer.

  ‘Chien Blanc?’ The man stopped and scratched his chin. He wore two rings on that hand. ‘Why do you want him?’

  ‘I want to sell him this jeep.’

  ‘But you are a rabbi, yes? You do not do this.’

  ‘This is a disguise. I have been shot. Look.’

  Ben opened a few buttons to show his gauze wrap. He lifted the hem of his coat to display the butt of the .45.

  ‘I know Chien Blanc,’ Ben insisted. ‘He said to meet him here on Rue Stanislas but I do not know which building.’

  The man nodded, impressed. ‘A rabbi. That is clever.’

  ‘No one suspects.’

  ‘Give me something,’ the man said.

  ‘I have nothing.’

  ‘The gun.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The pack.’

  ‘Take it.’

  The man hefted the bag and peered inside. He dumped the gauze and bandage on the floorboard.

  ‘Keep those, Rabbi. Number three ten, if he is there.’

  ‘Merci.’

  ‘Monsieur, I would not take the pistol.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Chien Blanc, he has been good to the people of Montparnasse. He has kept many from starving. Yes? He was on the barricades. Many think him a hero. But I know him, too.’

  The man used the bejeweled hand to pull back the hair above an ear. He tilted his head to show Ben a new scar.

  ‘He gave me this.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I am saying if you find you need that pistol, you will also find it is not enough.’

  The man shouldered the backpack.

  ‘Please do not tell Chien Blanc you spoke with me.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘I hope you sell for a good price. Bonne chance, Rabbi.’

  ~ * ~

  White Dog shot his cuffs and straightened his tie. He laid out a hand and watched the green dollars pile up. He always made Hugo pay him in American money. One, two, three thousand bucks, all in hundreds. He held up his other hand for Hugo to stop while he folded these bills and slipped them into his coat. Then he put the hand out again for Hugo to fill it with three thousand more.

  He stowed this wad in his baggy pants and withdrew the key to the deuce-and-a-half. White Dog made the biggest profit here, selling the trucks to the Voltaire gang for two thousand when he only paid one for them. He angled the key over his head for Hugo like a doggie treat, making the mobster reach up for it. Hugo took the key with no expression. Both men turned to the alley to watch the last of the jerricans handed down from the Jimmy’s bed. A line of twenty cars hunkered on the shaded cobbles. Each driver took ten containers and covered them with blankets in their trunks and backseats. Two big guards in leather jackets blocked the entrances to the alley.

  ‘Let’s go inside,’ White Dog said, laying a hand to Hugo’s back. ‘Talk a little more business.’

  Hugo followed White Dog to the back door of the garage. Four other gangsters who had been unloading the Jimmy clapped their hands, finished with the labor, and fell behind them. The column of cars and the truck pulled out of the alley like a funeral. The two behemoth guards got in cars. Before White Dog entered the garage door, the alley was empty. All that remained were the two rolls in his pockets and the five ugly men he held the door open for.

  Inside, White Dog moved carefully not to brush anything on his white coat. Everything was dusty, the walls held tools unused for years. The ceiling rose high, slung with chains like a dungeon. Hugo and his henchmen took up a semicircle. One of them sat on the fender of a forgotten Citroen, careless about getting his pants dirty.

  ‘Bon,’ said White Dog, rubbing his palms. He switched to English, for him and Hugo alone. ‘Okay, we’ve made a lot of money in the last three weeks. Right?’

  Hugo took in the surroundings. His jowls tightened, showing how little he liked coming into the garage. Hugo was not the night creature White Dog had become, he did not have the same tolerance for grit and dark. Hugo was about power and its many bright rewards. White Dog was driven only by greed, and that was why he considered himself the stronger man.

  ‘Yes,’ the mobster answered. He raised his eyes from the oil-stained concrete.

  ‘I’ve lost track. What, a dozen truckloads so far?’

  ‘Perhaps. Quite a few, Chien Blanc.’

  White Dog grinned. He had bad news.

  ‘This first part has been easy, getting up and running. I’m hooked in with a couple of GIs I can rely on. No problems there. But, here’s the kick in the pants. They’re telling me it’s getting tougher on them to come up with whole truckloads of gas. COM Z is starting to crack down. So much gas is disappearing into Paris that even fucking Patton is stealing it. So.’

  Hugo waited. ‘So?’

  ‘So, it’s getting more risky for them.’ White Dog folded fingertips into his own chest. ‘So, it’s getting more expensive for me. Hey, this was bound to happen. Now I got to raise my prices. You gotta see that, right?’

  Hugo rubbed his forehead. ‘How much?’

  ‘Four-fifty a gallon. Hugo, just hand it off downstream. Sell it for five-fifty. What’s the big deal?’

  ‘I will have to speak with Voltaire about this.’

  ‘Okay, you square it with him. Tell you what. I’ll hold the line on the trucks. Still an even two grand, no price jack there. That’s all I can do.’

  Hugo turned to his four men. In French he told them, ‘Chien Blanc wants to raise his prices.’ The four shifted and cursed. One of them spat and the dab slapped the concrete.

  Hugo faced White Dog.

  The goon resting on the Citroen leaped to his feet. All four of Hugo’s men flashed hands under their jackets. They drew a firing squad of pistols. Hugo, more slowly, pulled a revolver from his hip. Stunned at the weapons, White Dog backed into a workbench, knocking it over. Wrenches spilled on the floor in a tinny clamor. White Dog focused and noted the five guns were not pointed at him but past his head, behind him.

  Someone else was in the room. White Dog grew furious as he turned.

  A soldier stood there, a medic with a Red Cross emblem on his helmet. He was too old to be a medic. He looked familiar, which was impossible.

  White Dog checked the back of his white coat. The bench he’d bumped had imprinted a stripe of grease across the vent.

  ‘Monsieur,’ Hugo said, dead calm, ‘you are in the wrong place. I suggest you go out the way you came in, right now.’

  The medic held his ground. One gun cocked.

  Not a medic. A chaplain. A rabbi.

  No fucking way, thought White Dog.

  ‘I’m looking for White Dog,’ the rabbi said.

  Hugo answered. ‘What is your business with him?’

  ‘I will discuss that with him.’

  ‘Who are you, monsieur?’

  ‘Ben Kahn.’

  White Dog coughed a la
ugh, shocked. ‘You’re his old man.’

  Without moving his revolver from the rabbi, Hugo turned to White Dog. In French he asked, ‘You know this man?’

  ‘Yeah,’ White Dog answered in English, to include Ben Kahn. ‘Yeah, I do. That’s Acier’s father.’

  The rabbi reacted to this. He stepped closer in the room, pulled into the guns aimed at him.

  ‘You’re White Dog?’

  ‘One and only.’