I lean over and crank down the window, almost losing control and the wind is blowing in my face. I yell, “Hey, douchebag,” and he just ignores me.
I pull closer to him and start running him to the curb—now he starts honking and he slows down ’cause he has no choice. Then I see him take a sideways glance at me.
He’s starting to shit in his pants.
We finally come to a halt and I jump out of the car, running around the front towards him. Now he looks like a chickenshit. He’s got a pencil neck. He throws it in reverse and slams a parked car before he speeds away, smashing a couple garbage cans in the process.
I do a loud, “Yee-haa,” and yell full-out, “That’s right a-wipe.”
I slide back in my car, feeling pumped, and decide to go over Stevie’s.
When I get to Stevie’s, I see that Michele’s car is parked out front and I wonder what the fuck is going on.
I make my way around to the side door that leads to the basement where Stevie’s room is and I let myself in. My head is really hot now and I feel like I got a wicked headache. My heart is racing like never before and my body feels like it’s tingling.
When I get to the bottom of the stairs, I see the two of them sitting on the bed and Stevie’s hugging Michele. What are they, like long-time lovers? They both see me and turn and jump and Michele starts right in saying, really fast, “We were just talking,” and, “I needed somebody to talk to.”
Stevie is saying, “Hey, man, what’s up?” And, “It’s not how it looks.” And he’s got that stupid smirk on his face.
It was the smirk that really did it for me.
And the switch goes off.
The switch has a loud bang and I swear, this time, I can actually hear the sound like a sonic boom. Boom Sheeeesh.
The rest is a blur.
Later, Michele tells people how she never saw a person pick someone up by the neck with one hand, only in cartoons. And she never, ever, saw a look like the one I had in my eyes.
She flew out of the room screaming and got help. Nobody saw what happened next, not even me, ’cause I don’t remember anything, just the click and then the white flash.
All they know is that when the police came in, I was sobbing and had Stevie’s dead body draped across my lap.
They say I was mumbling something to him and rocking him like a baby.
Green Gables
Dana King
Harvey Hastert’s story is about a woman. Call her what you want: a dame, a broad, a skirt, a tomato, a babe. Just not a frail. This one was definitely not a frail.
Harvey made a mint selling equipment that fell off the backs of Patton’s trucks driving across France and Germany, earning ten times his military pay on the black market by January of ’46. Any normal crook would have sold his sister to a Tijuana impresario to stay in Germany. Harvey only saw homesick soldiers tired of occupation duty, agitating for a ticket on the next boat stateside. And if someone else wanted it, Harvey had to have it.
That’s how he got his extra Luger. The first one was mint: Harvey took it off a dead SS officer when he stole the guy’s Iron Cross. He was showing it off to Luther Brumm when he noticed little Shep Hickey nosing around a couple of dead Krauts. Shep was from Kentucky—such a ’billy, he showed up at the induction station in his bare feet. His daddy told him the Army will give you boots, boy, leave your’n here. Kid so shy he even stammered on words that started with S. Harvey went to check out what interested Shep and saw the other Luger still in one Kraut’s hand. The gun was in Harvey’s pocket ten seconds later, Shep sniffing around like a kid with his candy stolen.
So Harvey’s nature called him home, just because everyone else wanted to go. Got him involved in one of those demobilization riots the Army doesn’t talk about, American soldiers in the streets all over the world, wanting to go home. California wasn’t even home enough for some of them; they rioted there too.
Harvey lucked out at his court-martial. He’d been so busy stealing stuff he didn’t realize he had enough points to go home if he’d kept his mouth shut. The Army had plenty to do without providing three hots and a cot for a malcontent they were going to ship out anyway. They traded his stripes for a general discharge and called it even.
Harvey started going to the Green Gables Ballroom in West Mifflin a month after he got back. No pressure to look for a job, he could live a couple years off what he brought back if he didn’t spread it around too much. Kept wearing the uniform, general discharge be damned. Made him look like he was fresh off the boat. The girls liked that and Harvey was tired of paying for it. Every fräulein he knew was on the make for something: cigarettes, food, even chocolate. Harvey screwed a girl in Stuttgart once for a can of Heinz ketchup and a Hershey’s bar he’d stolen out of a POW’s Red Cross package.
The skirts loved medals. The court-martial killed his chance for a Good Conduct, but Harvey still had a unit decoration and an ARCOM he got for moving more diesel farther and faster than any other supply sergeant. The medal was a bonus; Harvey made five hundred bucks profit on the champagne and scotch he had stashed in the trucks. The Bronze Star he filched when its rightful owner stepped on a mine was gravy.
Harvey went to the Green Gables two or three nights a week. He didn’t mind spending money on the girls and he had a lot more of it than most GIs coming home. Harvey was cooling, considering his options. The end of the war freed up a lot of money. Schmucks were climbing over each other to work for it. Harvey only had to find a way to pick up what fell through their fingers.
The first time he saw her was a Thursday night, May 9th. Good-looking, not a knockout. Nice figure, brunette hair cut in a bob. Every time her dance partner twirled her, the polka-dot dress showed more thigh than the Hayes Office would let you see in a movie.
She didn’t lack for partners. A dance or two with one guy, then one with another. She doled out slow dances like water in Death Valley, never ignoring anyone so much he’d lose interest.
There were ten girls as pretty in the Green Gables every night. This one had more. Call it charisma, an indefinable something that attracted men even if they knew it was a bad idea. Her sugar drew them like bees. Harvey had to have her.
He moved like smoke through her admirers, not waiting his turn, not quite cutting the line. When he got his dance, he saw she wasn’t as tall as he’d thought, and her nose was bigger. She still wore that aura like perfume.
Her name was Stella Postelwaithe. “Like Stella Dallas,” she told Harvey.
“Who?”
“You know. Like in the movie. Barbara Stanwyck?” Harvey heard of Barbara Stanwyck. He didn’t know Stella Dallas from Stella D’oro. Stella Postelwaithe sounded like some stuck-up society dame, which this one definitely was not. Hers wasn’t the kind of class money bought. Stella wore it like the polka-dot dress: a nice introduction, but the real attraction was the possibility of seeing her without it.
Just two dances that first night. Stella made a pout when the second ended. “I have to go,” she said. “I come here every Thursday night.” She leaned in and pecked Harvey’s cheek like he was her brother. Not quite like a brother. Second cousin, maybe.
She left with an older guy, a heavyset stiff in an expensive suit who looked like he might be a gimp. Hard to say for all Harvey saw of him. Her leaving with him made Harvey want Stella even more.
He made appearances Saturday night and the next Tuesday. He took a girl home on Tuesday and thought of Stella. Spent all day Wednesday and Thursday thinking about Thursday night.
He got to the Green Gables earlier than usual with no desire to be part of her entourage. Once Harvey knew what he wanted, knew what the others wanted, he knew how to get it. Too fast and she’d see it coming and string him along. He’d play Stella Postelwaithe like the prize fish in the pond. Which she was.
They met at the Green Gables six weeks running. Each time they danced more, and each time she left with the fat guy. He seemed fatter every time Harvey watched Stella leave with him.
Definitely a gimp. Must be loaded too. Just walked in and Stella would finish that dance and beg off for the night.
Harvey asked about him on the fourth Thursday. Stella put him off. He pressed a little the next time and a little more the week after that. Each time she put him off with less enthusiasm.
The seventh Thursday was June 20th. Harvey remembered because it was his old man’s birthday. When Harvey asked her to dance she took him by the arm and said, “Let’s get out of here.”
He took her to a joint a few blocks away, a nice place where the booze wouldn’t break him. Harvey drank highballs; Stella favored gimlets. After the usual banter, Harvey pushed ahead with the sixty-four-dollar question.
“Do we have to talk about him?” Stella said. “This is so nice.”
“We have to sooner or later,” Harvey said. “It took me six weeks to get you all alone and you still have to be back to meet him at ten thirty. You married, or what?”
“What if I was?”
Harvey gestured to include the whole lounge. “We’re here, aren’t we? This can go either way. It’s up to you.”
Stella looked around the dark bar. “Not here. Is there someplace we could go? Close by?”
“Sure. The Green Gables?” Harvey paused for effect. “Or someplace else?”
Stella didn’t pause at all. “Someplace else.”
So there it was. Harvey knew a flop a few blocks away that didn’t advertise the hourly rates in neon. He paid the check and they took a cab. So Stella wouldn’t be seen.
No one asked any questions of the single man with no luggage taking a room. Harvey let Stella in a side door. They didn’t talk much upstairs, not after the polka-dot dress came off, which was before the light reached every corner of the room. Harvey barely got Stella back to Green Gables in time to meet the gimp. She hadn’t even told him the guy’s name.
They didn’t waste time going to the bar the next week. Harvey brought a hip flask with him and Stella packed a few cosmetics in her purse so she’d look more like a woman flushed from dancing than a cat in heat.
The third week Harvey and Stella were out the side door before the band got all the way through “Come Rain or Come Shine.” They knocked off the flask almost as fast as Stella lost her dress.
When the time came to leave, she sat on the edge of the bed with her stockings half up. Harvey stopped knotting his tie when he saw her just sitting there.
“You know I don’t want to rush you,” he said, “but we have to get a move on.”
“I know.” Stella pulled a stocking over her knee, hooked it to her garter. Then she started to cry. “I hate this.”
“Hate what? We don’t have to come here. It’s just that it’s so close and we don’t have much time.”
“No, the place is all right.” Stella wiped an eye with her wrist. “It’s this part I hate. Going back.”
“Then don’t go. You never said one way or the other, but if this guy’s your husband, you’re not a fanatic about it. Leave him.”
Stella breathed deeply and looked away from Harvey, then back, then away again. “It’s my father.”
“What about your father?”
“My husband.” Stella spit it out like a bad cherry. “He’s a big shot in the little town I’m from. Brookville. Ten years ago my father made some bad crop investments and had to mortgage the farm. Things didn’t turn around and Dad couldn’t pay the note.”
Harvey looped the tie around his neck for a second attempt at the knot. “So? This guy run the bank or something?”
“Or something.” Stella finished fastening the first stocking. “It was a personal loan. If Dad defaults, title goes to ... to ... I don’t even want to say his name. God, I hate him!”
Harvey checked the knot in a mirror over the dresser and slid into his jacket. “He’d do that to his father-in-law?”
“Not so long as Dad is his father-in-law. That’s why I can’t leave him.” Stella stood and gripped Harvey’s arms, rested her head on his chest. “I hate the thought of that slob on top of me, especially after I’ve been with you. It makes me sick to think what he did while you were winning those medals you wore the first time I saw you.”
Harvey grunted something Stella took to mean she should go on.
“His father—he’s dead now, thank God, he was as bad as my husband—got him classified 4-F. We’d see them driving their big cars. Always had plenty of gas. Sugar, butter, whatever everyone else had rationed.”
“There’s nothing you can do?”
“Not while Dad’s still alive. He’d have nowhere to go if David—that’s his name, David Postelwaithe—threw him out. I’d lose everything if I left too, but I wouldn’t need much. A good man. I could be good for the right man.”
Harvey took a second to add things up. He knew there was more here, just not how much. “This sounds pretty dramatic,” he said while Stella finished with her stockings and slid that polka-dot dress over her head. “I mean, Mack Sennett would have you tied to the railroad tracks by now.”
Stella slapped his face. “You don’t believe me? You think it’s funny. I made this up as a joke for you? Go to hell.” She picked up her purse. “I’m going to be late. Let me out, please.”
“Whoa! Slow down.” Harvey almost rubbed his face, redirected the hand to take Stella’s wrist. “I didn’t mean anything by it. You have to admit it’s kind of a screwy story to feed someone all at once. Is there something I can do to help?”
Stella smiled, her eyes wet. “You are helping. These little two-hour vacations you give me every Thursday help. You give me something to look forward to for the rest of the week. There’s nothing more you can do. It’s up to me, since Dad had the stroke. I just have to find some way to get Dad out from under.”
They avoided the subject the next Thursday and it hung over them like snow clouds, cold and dismal. Harvey waited until they were almost dressed again before he brought it up.
“How’re things with your old man and the farm?”
“The same.” Stella kept getting dressed while she answered. “They won’t change. The doctor says Dad won’t ever get better. He can take care of himself pretty well, but he can’t work, and he can’t afford to take on any more help. When he dies, the whole farm reverts to ... him.”
“And you.” Stella shot Harvey a look. “As the wife, I mean.”
“I suppose, though I’ll never see the farm again. He’ll sell it before Dad’s cold. Then I’ll have nothing. Not Dad. Not the farm. Just ... him.”
“That’s a bum deal.” Harvey tried to slide it in so smoothly Stella would answer without thinking. “What kind of money are we talking about here?”
“A hundred and forty thousand dollars,” she said, buttoning her dress.
A hundred and forty grand! And that was not the full value of the farm, just what the old man had to borrow. The economy was heating up with so many coming back from the service. So was inflation. Harvey’s German nest egg got smaller every month. A chance to move in on that kind of dough wouldn’t come along again, not for a guy in Harvey’s league.
This was one of those times when you found out who had their boots on. Harvey knew opportunity only knocked once; this was the first time it ever danced with him. He checked her story. There was a Griffin farm in Brookville. Big one. He drove his Packard up there, two-and-a-half hours each way. Read the plats and tax rolls. The place worth at least two hundred and the old man already had the down payment on his final, permanent address. Harvey didn’t push for too much on the mortgage angle. People in small towns don’t share secrets with strangers.
The way Harvey saw it, Stella’s father was the fly in his ointment. Harvey didn’t know if the old man would die in two weeks or two years. When he went, Stella would be as free as she’d ever be. Postelwaithe could do what he wanted. Stella would get over losing the farm when she had no more family there.
Of course, she’d have nothing. Someone like Postelwaithe would have no trouble rigging the divorce.
He could even trump up some evidence to show Stella had been sleeping around, how he was the injured party. The fact that Postelwaithe wouldn’t have to trump anything up never entered Harvey’s mind.
If Harvey wanted Stella and the money—which he did—it was Postelwaithe who had to go. Harvey could hire it done. Frank Amato was thinking of giving him something better to do than making money in fews and twos loan sharking. That meant someone else would know. Frank could move in on him, maybe even rat him out ... Harvey had to do it alone.
He smiled thinking of it. Through North Africa, Sicily, France, and Germany he’d never fired his weapon except on a qualifying range. Didn’t know where it was half the time. Now he was home, safe and sound, planning to kill a man.
He’d do it too.
He almost killed that Jew adjutant in Metz, the one who threatened to write him up for not getting ice cleats forwards quick enough to support Patton’s push to Bastogne. Threatened to send Harvey forwards himself—Harvey busy trying to get a thousand cartons of Luckies into Germany while things were still in flux. Funny, he would’ve used the Luger for that one, had it all planned out, but Captain Greene found something more important and left Harvey to fight the war his own way. Postelwaithe wouldn’t be so easy.
Harvey saw only one downside: he might get caught. Everything else was aces. Stella would be free, with all of Postelwaithe’s money, the farm waiting in the wings for the old man to cash in so Harvey and Stella could cash out. Harvey could play golf all day if he wanted, shoot pool all night, finish up with some Stella. Frank Amato would find a place for someone with Harvey’s initiative if things got boring.
Casing the job was easy. People were used to seeing him around Green Gables, so he came and went as he pleased. Harvey’d excuse himself to use the men’s or catch a smoke, sneak outside to explore the alley beyond the side door where Postelwaithe always came for Stella.
Blood, Guts, & Whiskey Page 14
