TWO O’CLOCK, EASTERN WARTIME

by John Dunning

  “That is bad news. Maybe we can talk you out of it.”

  “No. This is the right thing for me now, and the right time. But I am sorry for the short notice.”

  “In radio we thrive on short notice.”

  Another moment passed. Becky looked up from the desk and said, “So what’ll you do? . . . if you don’t mind my asking.”

  “I’m not sure yet. I may just go somewhere quiet.”

  “Not New York, then.”

  “I think that’s safe to say. Not New York.”

  “Well, it’s our loss. Ours and New York’s.” Becky smiled and dared ask the big question. “What about Jordan?”

  “He plans to stay here.”

  Becky couldn’t hide the relief in her face.

  “I guess radio’s in his blood,” Holly said.

  She heard voices in the hall and a moment later Kidd came in. She broke the news quickly and he accepted it with regret, with that same stoic distance he always had. Now it feels final, she thought as she walked out.

  At home she gathered her things. A few clothes, not much else. She thought of her car, abandoned in the woods, but it didn’t matter.

  At the very end, a note for Jack.

  Sweetheart,

  This afternoon the newspaper called. I told him the truth. What happened with Griffin was between him and me, you had nothing to do withit, you don’t know anything about it, you were only there because youwere looking for me, and you have no idea why Griffin would do what hesays he did.

  I’ll meet you Saturday in New York. Four o’clock outside the oldapartment house—you know where. We’ll see what happens then.

  Much love

  Then she was out of there, walking north into town. She looked back once, at the house and the beach and the sea, and had a brief heartache. Like her old house in Sadler, it was now part of the past. It had not been a good place but like all places some good things had happened in it. She had a one-hour wait, then she was on a bus heading north.

  • • •

  She got to town just before dark. Luck was with her—there was a café on West Fifty-sixth Street where she could sit at a window and watch the house. It was a brownstone tenement, three stories and a street level, with steps in front and another going down on the side. A sign in the window said ROOMS BY THE WEEK OR MONTH. It was a transient’s paradise, most likely a dead end.

  She was suddenly weak from hunger, and she realized that she hadn’t eaten in two days. She ordered dinner and ate it slowly, then sat over coffee and watched the house.

  She thought about Dulaney constantly. Flirted with the notion that fate had chosen their meeting place, on the street outside his old apartment house. A replay of sorts, perhaps one final chance to get it right.

  Lights were on throughout the house and she could see occasional shadows moving past the windows. A movement on the street caught her eye as four men came up from Ninth Avenue. They turned into the house, skipped up the steps, and went inside. A few minutes later another man came from the opposite direction. A strapping fellow with a thick black beard, who also turned in and went up the steps.

  The café was closing. She paid her bill and stood on the sidewalk looking up at the sign in the window. “I’m looking for an apartment,” she said softly, and it sounded good, and she crossed the street and went up the steps into a hallway.

  She looked at the names on the mailboxes. Quinn. Shaughnessy. Herlihy. Riordan. All Irish. She looked at Riordan and thought, There he is, but the box said Annie Riordan, Manager, apartment 1.

  She thought of everything Irish she had ever heard and on the spot she devised a name for herself. Then she knocked on the door and a moment later stood facing a gray-haired woman in her late fifties.

  “Hi, are you Annie Riordan?”

  “That’s me, Annie Riordan.”

  “I was wondering about an apartment.”

  “Come in a minute, I’m on the phone.”

  She stepped into the room. The woman retreated into a hallway and picked up a telephone. Holly came closer. There was a bulletin board on the far wall filled with thumbtacked clippings, and a moment later she was near enough to read the articles and make out their dates. Some were yellowing, years old; others as recent as last month.

  July 1937: KING GEORGE ESCAPES I.R.A. BLAST. Someone had written on it, “And we’ll get the bloody bastard next time.” November 1939: I.R.A. BOMBS HIT PICCADILLY. One long piece at the bottom seemed to say it all. August 1939: ON THE EVE OF ANOTHER WORLD CONFLICT, THE I.R.A. RENEWS ITS CONTINUING STATE OF WAR WITH ENGLAND.

  She turned away as the woman came back through the hall. When Annie Riordan spoke she had a soft Irish accent, unremarkably motherly. “So what’s your name, then?”

  “Brigit Kelly.”

  “There’s a good name. But what brings you to me?”

  “Sign in the window. Saw the names on the mailboxes. Thought it might be a good place . . . you know . . . for someone like me.”

  Annie Riordan smiled broadly. “It might be at that. I do have one small room left. It’s a roof and a bed.”

  “I can’t pay much.”

  “Can you work?”

  “Sure.”

  At that moment the door opened and the man with the black beard came into the room. “Well, Mamma, whoot’ve we got here?”

  “Miss Brigit Kelly, Johnny.”

  “Miss Brigit Kelly!” he said as if he’d known her forever. “And what fair wind blew you in here, may I ask?”

  Annie Riordan laughed. “You behave yourself. Brigit, this’s me son, Johnny Riordan.”

  “Hello, Johnny,” she said, smiling up at him.

  “I’m giving her the room, Johnny. She’s willing to work.”

  “Is she now?” He grinned at her: strong, good teeth, flashing through the tangled beard. “The sun must truly be shinin’ on us. Come on, Miss Brigit, I’ll show you the room meself.”

  ( ( ( 6 ) ) )

  SHE was absorbed at once into the culture of the house. Years from now, if she should live so long, she would remember the hot-blooded gregarious nature of these strangers and how instantly the promise of intimacy became a fact. How easily someone of fair skin and the right kind of Celtic name could become one of them. She took the room at five a week plus chores, and the work began almost from that moment.

  She was left alone less than fifteen minutes, then Johnny Riordan was back to flirt and fetch her help with a meeting. The meeting room was the size of two apartments, on the far end of the third floor. It reeked of old smoke and the stale aroma of last night’s traffic, and of a thousand nights before. The furniture was plain and sparse: a long table surrounded by chairs, with more chairs strung out along the walls. The meeting tonight would be crowded: already she could hear raucous laughter through the walls and doors. The meeting room had its own bulletin board with much the same material. I.R.A. KILLS BRITISH CONSTABLE AT BELFAST . . . SIX I.R.A. TEENS WILL FACE THE HANGMAN IN BELFAST MURDER . . . I.R.A. BOMBS EXPLODE IN BIRMINGHAM . . . SIX DEAD IN I.R.A. LAND MINE ATTACK . . .

  It was a clan, she could see that at once. It didn’t matter what their names were, they were all part of the same dark brotherhood, bound by their hatred of England. Her job was to bring up the eats and beer from Annie Riordan’s place two floors down. The old woman did the cooking in her apartment and Holly went up and down the stairs, carrying heavy trays like a waitress in a truckers’ diner. A few of the men were addicted to what they called poor man’s wop food, and she was sent to the pizza house on Ninth Avenue, where she spent a few precious solitary moments in the fresh air on the sidewalk, watching the pizza man toss his dough to the ceiling before coating it and putting it in to cook. She was bone weary but determined to stick it out.

  They were all fund-raisers. Some were from out of town, some from New York, all were involved in the great need of their cause for cash. Skirmish money, she heard it called, and she was amazed at the pile of it on the table, cash and checks in various amounts,
which, near the end of the evening, sometime in the early morning, was put in a big bag and taken away by Johnny Riordan to be stashed in a safe place.

  The night stretched on. She was allowed to sit and did, in a chair by the wall, while they talked politics. The air was so thick with smoke she could barely see them except as blue shapes. They were loud and happy in their fellowship, and many of them spoke to her flirtingly when she passed; some of them touched her and remarked how she brightened up the room. And she smiled, dead on her feet but still going, and she smiled and smiled and backtalked playfully without going too far.

  It ended, mercifully, sometime after one o’clock.

  “Leave this stuff till tomorrow,” Annie Riordan said. “Let’s turn in.”

  Johnny walked her to her room. “Can we sit awhile and talk?”

  She wanted to scream but smiled instead. “Tomorrow. I haven’t been well and I got almost no sleep last night.”

  She was lucky: he was a gentleman, and ten minutes later she was out of her misery, locked in the sleep of her life.

  ( ( ( 7 ) ) )

  BY the time she got up Friday morning the old woman had the mess cleared away. The apartment door was open when she came down and she could hear a radio playing The Breakfast Club somewhere inside. She went in and found Annie washing dishes in the kitchen.

  “Well, look who’s here.”

  “I can’t believe I slept like that. I’m sorry I—”

  “No need to be sorry, darlin’. I could see last night you were dead to the world. I would’ve chased you off to bed except I was in worse shape than you. I just can’t climb those stairs like I once could.”

  She reached up and snapped off the radio. “Sit over there and I’ll give you some breakfast. Are you hungry now?”

  “Oh God, yes!”

  Annie laughed and soon the place was filled with the smell of cooking food. “So, what’re your plans, Brigit? Where do you go from here?”

  “Out to find a job.”

  “Then will you be stickin’ around?”

  “I’d like to. You seem to have something . . .”

  Annie looked at her quizzically.

  “You’ve got something good here,” she said.

  “It’s a sense of purpose, dear. That’s what you feel.”

  “Yes. I guess that’s it exactly.”

  “You can feel it pass from one forsaken soul to another. Some of ’em come from far away, we never see ’em before and may never again, but we try to have room for them when they come.” She forked at some bacon and flipped the pancakes. “Without braggin’ on meself, I could tell you that this house is known from coast to coast. Among the people who matter to us.”

  “Do you have meetings like that often?”

  “Only all the time. There’s always somethin’ goin’ on. I may not know till tonight what tonight will bring.”

  “What a way to live.”

  She said this in an admiring way and Annie Riordan looked at her and smiled. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

  “Have you been doing it long?”

  “Almost twenty-five years. Right from the beginning.”

  “The beginning?”

  “Of the cause, of course. Next year it’ll be twenty-five years I’ve been givin’ shelter to exiles and patriots. People who’ve been wronged by the British. I’ve been collecting money almost that long—not so amazing when you know what I’ve lost. Me husband and me firstborn son. Johnny’s older brother, Daniel. They killed him and the light went out of me life.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s what we accept when we take up arms. My Danny was heart and soul for his country.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He was murdered. They hung him in London after what they called a trial. Did you ever lose anybody like that?”

  “Not exactly that way, no.”

  “It’s not a common man’s way of sayin’ good-bye to the world.”

  Breakfast was ready. Annie poured coffee and sat with her while she ate.

  “Don’t get the wrong idea, Brigit. We’re not a sub-rosa bunch here, if that’s what you’re thinkin’. People in the neighborhood know who we are and what we do. It’s not illegal. Our boys make no bones of where their hearts are but America guarantees ’em that right, doesn’t she?”

  Holly nodded. Annie said, “She’s a grand old gal, America,” and they shared a quiet unfunny laugh.

  “I’m glad you’ll be staying. Johnny’d be heartbroken if you was to leave us so soon.”

  “Johnny doesn’t even know who I am.”

  “He knows enough, that one. I haven’t seen his eyes and ears light up like that since he was just into his manhood.”

  She sipped her coffee. “Have you got a regular fellow, Brigit? . . . a beau, or anything like that?”

  She laughed. “Nothing like that.”

  “Which with your good looks is no small miracle. That goes to show you, love. Miracles still happen.”

  ( ( ( 8 ) ) )

  LATER in her room she could see how it must have been. Our boy arrived from South Africa, she thought, more than twenty years ago. The clampdown on immigration hadn’t come yet and it was relatively easy to get into the country and start a new life. He landed in New York like so many forgotten millions, and everything opened up from there. He was driven by his hatred of England, so he gravitated to Annie Riordan’s boarding house and the Riordans became a kind of surrogate family. This means they know who he is. They may not know everything he’s done but they know him like a brother and son. I am one question away from learning his name, but how do I get it without stepping on their trust?

  She took a shower. Then, back in her room, she ran every conceivable approach to the question through her mind. She was leery of dropping the Paul Kruger name but nothing seemed to get her around it. She thought she could see the whole story now, beginning with Dulaney’s escape from California. An Irishman had been there. An Irishman who had roughed up Kendall, and was with the Schroeder boy when Kendall left the car for Dulaney in the woods. The image in her mind was Johnny Riordan. Maybe not the killer but a bit of muscle when Kendall needed to be kept in line. Just a thug, a mulligan with two faces: tough when he had to be and gentle with her. But she had no illusions about what he’d do to her if she slipped up and he found out her secrets.

  “Johnny,” she whispered aloud. “How much will you tell me before I push it too far and turn you ugly?”

  She had twenty-four hours to find out before Dulaney turned up on the doorstep.

  ( ( ( 9 ) ) )

  THEY had the afternoon free and he wanted to spend it with her. “You can start lookin’ for work on Monday,” he said. “Nobody ever found a good joob at the end of the week.”

  He took her to a tavern he frequented where he could show her off to his Irish cronies. She put up her hair and dressed well and clung to his arm. They sat at a table and drank beer. She drank far less than he wanted her to, for whenever he turned away she poured some back in the pitcher and he drank it himself as the day wore on. He squeezed her arm. “How’s my girl?” he said drunkenly. “Is she havin’ any foon?”

  “Would I be here if I wasn’t?”

  “Are you me girlie, Brigit? Are you goin’ to be me special friend?”

  “How special do you want it, Johnny?”

  “Ah, you silly sweet thing. You know for sure what ‘special’ means.”

  She had never played a whore’s game. Would she do that even to get what she wanted?

  “Yes,” she said. “I do know what it means.”

  “An’ whoot would ye do aboot it?”

  She smiled and leaned across the table and kissed him. He came out of it cross-eyed, his guts on fire, trembling with delight. She kissed him again and felt his legs tense as his toenails dug into shoe leather.

  “Have another drink, Johnny.”

  “If I do ye’ll be gettin’ some help to carry me out of here.”

  Bu
t he did. Drank it down and ordered another pitcher.

  He puckered his lips. “Do that again, love.”

  She kissed him. Let him feel her tongue. Told him he was sweet. A dear, sweet man.

  “Let’s go someplace,” he said.

  “In a while. You’ve still got some beer left.”

  “Oh Jesus. Why’d ye let me order that refill?”

  “Drink it up and we’ll go. You can’t waste it, it’s sinful. My father told me that when I was a little girl.”

  “You’ll have to help me, then. Down th’ hatch.”

  She sipped and he guzzled. They staggered out into the late afternoon sunshine, her arm over his shoulder and her own head suddenly light.

  “Gosh, I’m as tipsy as you are,” she said, hoping it wasn’t true.

  “Ah, look at me, I’ve gone and spiled everything.”

  “Oh shush that. Nothing’s spoiled.”

  “But I’m too sotted to be yoor special friend, you know.”

  “There’s plenty of time.”

  But there was no real time at all. They sat on a bench and his head lolled. There was no easy way to get into it, so she took a deep breath and just said it. “I’m a lucky girl, Johnny. When Paul told us about your mother, that was my lucky day.”

  She wondered if he’d fallen asleep: his eyes had narrowed to slits and his head bobbed slightly. But in time he looked at her and smiled. “Paul, you say?”

  She wondered if she could get it out, but she did. “Paul Kruger.”

  “Ah.” He closed his eyes and looked away. Shook his head and smiled at her again. “You say Paul Kruger told you?”

  “Well, he told my brother and my brother told me. When he found out I was coming to New York.”

  “Ah,” he said again.

  I’ve blown it, she thought. The sooner I get away from them the better.

  But then he seemed okay again; he laughed and his head lolled against her shoulder. “Tell ye what, Brigit, let’s get us on back to the house and see whoot Mamma’s got cookin’ for tonight. Maybe we can finagle a few hours at sooper and I can show you a better time than you’ve had today.”