The Count of the Sahara
Page 31
To those of us who knew him, it wasn’t a big surprise he was the worse for drink when they found him a few days ago, aged 58, on a train bound for Paris. According to Keedick, who still represented him stateside, he was about to begin an American lecture tour on his experiences as a Resistance fighter against the Nazis. Whether his experiences with la Resistance were more factual than his claims of finding King Solomon’s Mines, is now known only to the Lost Gods he always talked about.
I remember many a night in New York listening to the Count’s amazing tales, believing half of them, and probably giving him too much credit at that. Like most of New York, I hadn’t thought about him in years, but I’m sorry to see him go. The world is a duller place.
SEEN AROUND TOWN
In other news, who was that blond starlet hanging on the arm of…
The Count was dead. I hadn’t thought of him—really thought of him—in years, so I don’t know why the idea he was gone seemed so ridiculous.
“You okay?” Maury asked.
“Yeah, fine. Huh.”
“You said he was kind of an odd duck.” Maury knew the story, or at least the bones of it. Since no living person was actually born in Los Angeles, the “how did you come to California?” story was part of the ritual when you met folks here. Byron de Prorok was part of my story.
“That he was.”
I was spared any more discussion by the ringing phone. Apparently one of the plywood gyroscopes had fallen off the wall, nearly decapitating Mickey Shaughnessy. The rest of my day was spent stretching canvas over studs and double toe-nailing props in place so it didn’t happen again. Just another day at the office.
I mentioned the Count’s passing to Maureen when I got home. It was no big deal, just one of those, “hey, remember that guy I told you about, well he died,” stories people tell when you get to our age. She made the appropriate tut-tutting noises and that was that until we shut the house down for the night.
I still hadn’t gotten used to things being this quiet. Both boys were out of the house now. Gerry was still at boot camp, and Michael had his own apartment over on Las Palmas. I’d gotten Mikey a job over at Columbia, and he’d managed not to screw it up yet. Time would tell. Maureen always said I was too hard on him. She didn’t know what hard was, but she was probably right. She usually was.
I went out to the garage and pulled the string over my workbench, squinting against the glare of the bulb, then pulled an old box off the shelf. After rummaging around a bit, I finally found what I was looking for, an old grey cloth bag. “Hey, Babe, come here for a minute,” I shouted out to her.
“What’s that?” She leaned into me and looked over my shoulder, rubbing my arm in the playful way married people have if they’re lucky.
“I had this with me when I got to L.A.…” I opened the string wide and pulled out some wire, some loose glass beads, and then a longer package. Wrapped in two pages of the L.A. Examiner from March of 1926 was a broken pasteboard sword. Two blue beads rattled around loose inside the wrapping. I caught them and pressed them back into place. Not that they’d hold. They never had.
“That’s what you had with you? Quite a haul.”
“That and about sixty-five bucks in my pocket.”
She squeezed my waist and sweetly kissed my neck. “Mr. Money Bags, that’s why I married you.” She always said that, although there wasn’t enough money in the world to make that a fair bargain. I got the much better deal.
I wasn’t much of a drinker, so she was surprised when I suggested a night cap.
“Really? What do you want?”
I knew what I wanted. “Do we have any rye?”
“You don’t even like rye. I think we have that bottle Maury and Sheila brought over two Christmases ago, want me to get that?”
She dropped some rocks in a couple of glasses while I found the Wild Turkey. Templeton Rye no longer existed now that booze was legal, it would have to do.
We clinked glasses, and I offered a quiet, “To the Count,” and we each took a sip in silence. I could feel it burn and thought rye wasn’t a drink for sunny climates. For the first time in years I sort of missed the snow. Almost.
I laughed at the way her face crinkled as she swallowed, but she was a sport, like always. Curling her long legs under her on the sofa she leaned her head on my shoulder while I stroked her long, curly hair. After a few minutes of that she asked, “So who was this guy?”
“Oh, he was a piece of work,” I began. Then I told her about my six week career as a projection technician, and getting on the train for Los Angeles, and then about the column in the paper.
“Was he really with the Resistance?” she asked me.
I finished my drink and put it down a little too hard on the glass coffee table. Then I laid my head back against the sofa cushion. “Probably not, but I wouldn’t put anything past him.”
Acknowledgements
My fascination with Byron de Prorok began five years ago when I uncovered several of his books in the Half Price Book Store in Wheaton Illinois. He was the perfect subject for my obsession with people who have all the tools for success and still manage to get in their own way. You get no points for guessing why that’s of interest.
In the back of those books was an autobiographical essay that set me on this path, so I have to thank Michael Tarabulski, who is the only person on the planet who shares my fascination with Byron (although he’s more of an Alonzo Pond guy.) I also have to thank Nicolette Meister, Fred Burwell and the folks at the Logan Museum and Beloit College for allowing the pleasure of rummaging through their archives and taking my research seriously before I did. That goes for the Cedar Rapids and Milwaukee Historical Societies as well.
While I’ve written a lot of non-fiction in my life, this was my first stab at a novel, and I couldn’t have done it without the support of friends and fellow writers. To Teresa Basile, Fiona Stevens, Pat Ryan, the Naperville Writers Group, Ida, Ryno and EJ at the West Suburban Writers Meetup, and my dear Robyn Clarke, thank you.
Thanks to Erik Empson and his team at thebookfolks.com for their hard work bringing my somewhat odd baby into the world.
Finally to The Duchess and Her Serene Highness who have tolerated me while I scratched this itch, all my love and gratitude. To all of you who enjoyed this book, please stop by my website www.WayneTurmel.com and read my blog showcasing other indy and small press writers of historical fiction, learn a bit about me, and hear about upcoming work. There’s another novel on the way.
For more great books like THE COUNT OF THE SAHARA by Wayne Turmel, visit www.thebookfolks.com.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Acknowledgements