USA Noir Noir

by Johnny Temple

  He stopped then. Maybe it was because he saw my expression at the mention of his uncle, the judge. Or maybe it was because the cops were herding us away, or because a blonde in Maglie’s group gave a glance in his direction.

  “Join us,” he said. “We’re going to Fontana’s.”

  I was going to say no. And probably I should have. But the girl in the red cardigan was a member of their group.

  * * *

  For twenty years, my father had run the Italian-language paper, Il Carnevale. He had offices down at Columbus, and all the Italian culturatti used to stop by when they came through the city. Enrico Caruso. The great Marconi. Even Vittorio Mussolini, the aviator.

  My father had been a public man. Fridays, to the opera. Saturdays, to Cavelli’s Books—to stand on the sidewalk and listen to Il Duce’s radio address. On Tuesdays, he visited the Salesian school. The young boys dressed in the uniforms of the Faciso Giovanile, and my father gave them lectures on the beauty of the Italian language.

  I signed up in December, ’41.

  A few weeks later my father’s office was raided. His paper was shut down. Hearings were held. My father and a dozen others were sent to a detention camp in Montana. My mother did not put this news in her letters. Sometime in ’43 the case was reviewed and my father was released, provided he did not take up residence in a state contiguous to the Pacific Ocean. When I came home, with my wounds and my letters of com­mendation, my stateside commander suggested it might a good idea, all things considered, if I too stayed away from the waterfront.

  But none of this is worth mentioning. Anyway, I am an old man now and there are times I don’t know what day it is, what year. Or maybe I just don’t care. I look up at the televi­sion, and that man in the nice suit, he could be Mussolini. He could be Stalin. He could be Missouri Harry, with his show-me smile and his atomic bomb. This hospital, there are a million old men like me, a million stories. They wave their hands. They tell how they hit it big, played their cards, made all the right decisions. If they made a mistake, it wasn’t their fault; it was that asshole down the block. Myself, I say nothing. I smell their shit. Some people get punished. Some of us, we get away with murder.

  * * *

  “You on leave?”

  Anne had black hair and gray eyes and one of those big smiles that drew you in. There was something a bit off about her face, a skewed symmetry—a nose flat at the bridge, thin lips, a smile that was wide and crooked. The way she looked at you, she was brash and demure at the same time. A sales­man’s daughter, maybe. She regarded me with her head tilted, looking up. Amused, wry. Something irrepressible in her eyes. Or almost irrepressible.

  “No, no,” I said. “I’ve been out of the service for a while now.”

  She glanced at my hand, checking for the ring. I wasn’t wearing one—but she was. It was on the engagement finger, which she tucked away when she saw me looking. What this meant, exactly, I didn’t know. Some of the girls wore engage­ment rings the whole time their fiancés were overseas, then dumped the guy the instant he strolled off the boat. Anne didn’t look like that type, but you never knew.

  As for me, like I said, I wasn’t wearing any kind of ring—in spite of Julia Fusco, back in Reno. We weren’t married, but . . .

  “I grew up here.”

  “In The Beach?”

  “Yes.”

  She smiled at that—like she had known the answer, just looking.

  “And you?”

  “I’ve been out East for a while,” she said. “But I grew up here, too.”

  “But not in The Beach?” I asked, though I knew the answer, the same way she had known about me.

  “No, no. Dolores Heights.”

  The area out there in the Mission was mostly Irish those days, though there were still some German families up in the Heights. Entrepreneurs. Jews. Here before the Italians, before the Irish. Back when the ships still came around the horn.

  “Where did you serve?”

  I averted my eyes, and she didn’t pursue it. Maybe because I had that melancholy look that says don’t ask any more. I glanced at a guy dancing in front of the juke with his girlfriend, and I thought of my gun and had another one of my ugly moments. I took a drink because that helped some­times. It helped me push the thoughts away. The place was loud and raucous. Maglie and his blonde were sitting across from me, chatting it up, but I couldn’t hear a word. One of the other girls said something, and Anne laughed. I laughed too, just for the hell of it.

  I took another drink.

  Fontana’s had changed. It had used to be only Italians came here, and you didn’t see a woman without her family. But that wasn’t true anymore. Or at least it wasn’t true this night. The place had a fevered air, like there was something people were trying to catch on to. Or maybe it was just the jailbreak.

  Maglie came over to my side and put his arm around my shoulders once again. He had always been like this. One drink and he was all sentimental.

  “People don’t know it,” he said. “Even round the neigh­borhood, they don’t know it. But Jojo here, he did more than his share. Out there in the Pacific.”

  “People don’t want to hear about this,” I said. There was an edge in my voice, maybe a little more than there should have been.

  “No,” said Maglie. “But they should know.”

  I knew what Maglie was doing. Trying to make it up to me in some way. Letting me know that whatever happened to my father, in that hearing, it wasn’t his idea. And to prove it, I could play the hero in front of this girl from The Heights with her cardigan and her pearls and that ring on her finger.

  I turned to Anne.

  “You?” I asked. “Where were you during the war?”

  She gave me a little bit of her story then. About how she had been studying back East when the war broke out. Halfway through the war, she’d graduated and gotten a job with the VA, in a hospital, on the administrative side. But now that job was done—they’d given it to a returning soldier— and she was back home.

  The jukebox was still playing.

  “You want to dance?”

  She was a little bit taller than me, but I didn’t mind this. Sinatra was crooning on the juke. I wanted to hold her closer, but I feared she’d feel the gun in my pocket. Then I decided I didn’t care.

  I glanced at the ring on her finger, and she saw me looking.

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  “Berlin.”

  I didn’t say anything. Frank went on crooning. Some of my father’s friends, I remembered them talking about the Berlin of the old days. About the cabarets and the big­mouthed blondes with husky voices who made the bulge in their pants grow like Pinocchio’s nose.

  “He, my fiancé—he’s a lieutenant,” she said. “And there’s the reconstruction. He thought it was important, not just to win the war. Not just to defeat them. But to build it back.”

  “He’s an idealist.”

  “Yes.”

  I wondered how come she had fallen for him. I wondered if she had known him long. Or if it had been one of those things where you meet somebody and you can’t escape. You fall in a whirlwind.

  * * *

  At that moment, inside Alcatraz, Bernie Coy and five other convicts were pinned down in the cellblock. None of us in the bar knew that yet, or even knew their names. If you wanted to know what was going on inside Alcatraz, the best you could do was climb up a rooftop and listen to the radio—but it was too far to see, and the radio was filtered by the mil­itary. Anyway, prison officials weren’t talking. They were too busy to talk. Later, though, it came out how Bernie Coy was the brains. He knew the guards’ routines. He’d managed to crow apart the bars and lead a handful of prisoners into the gun room. He and his buddies had clubbed the guards, taken their keys, and headed down the hall to the main yard; but the last door in the long line of doors would not open. The keys were not on the ring. They had all the ammunition in the world, but they could not get past that door. Now they were pinne
d down, cornered by the fire on one side and the guards on the other. So they fought, the way men in a foxhole fight. Our boys in Normandy. The Japanese in those bloody caves. The floodlights swept the shore and the tracer bullets lit the sky, and they fought the way desperate men fight, creeping forward on their bellies.

  Sinatra was winding it up now, and I pulled Anne a little closer. Then I noticed a man watching us. He was sitting at the same table as Maglie and the rest. He was still watching when Anne and I walked back.

  He put his arm around Anne, and they seemed to know each other better than I would like.

  “This is Davey,” Anne said.

  “Mike’s best friend,” he said.

  I didn’t get it at first, and then I did. Mike was Anne’s fiancé, and Davey was keeping his eye out.

  Davey had blue eyes and yellow hair. When he spoke, first thing, I thought he was a Brit, but I was wrong.

  “London?” I asked.

  “No, California,” he smiled. “Palo Alto. Educated abroad.”

  He had served with Anne’s fiancé over in Germany. But unlike Mike, he had not re-enlisted. Apparently he was not quite so idealistic.

  “Part of my duties, far as my best friend,” he said, “are to make sure nothing happens to Anne.”

  The Brit laughed then. Or he was still the Brit to me. A big man, with a big laugh, hard to dislike, but I can’t say I cared for him. He joined our group anyway. We ate then and we drank. We had antipasti. We had crabs and shrimp. We had mussels and linguini. Every once in a while someone would come in from the street with news. At the Yacht Harbor now . . . three men in a rowboat . . . the marines are inside, cell-­to-cell, shooting them in their cots. At some point, Ellen Pagione, Fontana’s sister-in-law, came out of the kitchen to make a fuss over me.

  “I had no idea you were back in town.” She pressed her cheek against mine. “This boy is my favorite,” she said. “My goddamn favorite.”

  Part of me liked the attention, I admit, but another part, I knew better. Ellen Pagione had never liked my father. Maybe she didn’t approve of what had happened to him, though, and felt bad. Or maybe she had pointed a finger her­self. Either way, she loved me now. Everyone in North Beach, we loved one another now.

  Anne smiled. Girl that she was, she believed the whole thing.

  A little while later, she leaned toward me. She was a lit­tle in her cups maybe. Her cheeks were flush.

  “I want to take you home.”

  Then she looked away. I wondered if I’d heard correctly. The table was noisy. Then the Brit raised his glass, and every­one was laughing.

  * * *

  After dinner, Johnny Maglie grabbed me at the bar. I was shaking inside, I’m not sure why. Johnny wanted to buy me a beer, and I went along, though I knew I’d had enough. There comes a time, whatever the drink is holding under, it comes back up all of a sudden and there’s nothing you can do. At the moment, I didn’t care. I caught a glimpse of Anne. Some of the others had left, but she was still at the table. So was the Brit.

  “How’s your mom?” It was the same question Johnny had asked before, out on the street, but maybe he’d forgotten.

  “She’s got her dignity,” I said.

  “That’s right. Your mama. She’s always got her head up.” He was a little drunk and a smirk showed on his face.

  I knew what people said about my mother. Or I could guess, anyway. She was a Northern Italian, like my father, from Genoa. Refinement was important to her. We were not wealthy, but this wasn’t the point. My father had only been a newspaperman, but it had been a newspaper of ideas, and the prominenti had respected him. Or so we had thought. My mother had tried for a little while to live in Montana, outside the camp where he was imprisoned, but it had been too remote, too brutal. So she had gone back to North Beach and lived with her sister. Now the war was over, and the restric­tions had been lifted, but my father would not return. He had been disgraced, after all. And the people who could have helped him then—the people to whom he had catered, peo­ple like Judge Molinari, Johnny Maglie’s uncle—they had done nothing for him. Worse than nothing.

  “Are you going to stay in The Beach?” Johnny asked.

  I didn’t answer. My father worked in one of the casinos in Reno now, dealing cards. He lived in a clapboard house with Sal Fusco and Sal’s daughter, Julia. Julia took care of them both.

  About two months ago something had happened between Julia and me. It was the kind of thing that happens sometimes. To be honest, I didn’t feel much toward her other than loyalty.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  I glanced toward Anne. The Brit had slid closer and was going on in that big-chested way of his.

  “I don’t know.”

  But I did know. There was a little roadhouse on the edge of Reno with some slots and card tables. Sal Fusco wanted my father and I to go into business with him. To get the loan, all I had to do was shake hands with Pellicano, the crab fisher­man. But my father, I knew, did not really care about the roadhouse. All he wanted was for my mother to come to Reno.

  * * *

  I had spoken to my mother just hours before.

  “If this is what you want, I will do it,” she said.

  “It’s not for me. It’s for him.”

  “Your father can come back here. The war is over.”

  “He has his pride.”

  “We all have our shame. You get used to it. At least here, I can wear my mink to the opera.”

  “There is no opera anymore.”

  “There will be again soon,” she said. “But if this is what you want, I will go to Reno. If this is what my son wants . . .”

  I understood something then. She blamed my father. Someone needed to take blame, and he was the one. And part of me, I understood. Part of me didn’t want to go back to Reno either.

  “It’s what I want,” I said.

  * * *

  Johnny Maglie looked at me with those big eyes of his. He wanted something from me. Like Ellen Pagione wanted. Like my father wanted. Like Julia Fusco. For a minute, I hated them all.

  “I know how you used to talk about going into law,” Johnny said. “Before all this business.”

  “Before all what business?”

  “Before the war . . .” he stammered. “That’s all I meant. I know you wanted to be an attorney.”

  “Everything’s changed.”

  “My uncle—he said he would write a letter for you. Not just any school. Stanford. Columbia. His recommendation, it carries weight.”

  I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel a rush of excitement—that I didn’t sense a door opening and a chance to walk into another life.

  “Is it because he feels guilty?” I asked. “Because of what happened to my father? He was at the hearing, wasn’t he?”

  Johnny looked at me blankly, as if he didn’t understand.

  “I saw Jake yesterday.”

  Jake was Judge Molinari’s boy. He was a sweet-faced kid. His father’s pride and joy. He’d done his tour in Sicily and distinguished himself, from what I heard.

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Getting married.”

  “Good for him.”

  Back at the table, the Brit raised another glass. Beside him, Anne was beautiful. The way the Brit was looking at her, I didn’t guess he was thinking about his buddy overseas.

  * * *

  I was born circa 1921. The records aren’t exact. It doesn’t matter. Like I said, there are times, these days, when I can’t place the current date either. It is 1998, maybe. Or 2008. The nurse who takes care of me—who scoots me up off my ass and empties my bedpan—she was born in Saigon, just before the fall. 1971, I think. French Vietnamese, but the French part doesn’t matter here in the States. Either way, she doesn’t give a fuck about me. Outside the sunlight is white, and I glimpse the airplanes descending. We have a new airport, a new convention center. Every place, these days, has a new convention center. Every place you go, there are airpl
anes descending and signs advertising a casino on the edge of town.

  I close my eyes. The Brit gets up all of a sudden, goes out into the night. I see Anne alone at the table. I see my father dealing cards in Reno. I see Julia Fusco in my father’s kitchen, fingers on her swollen belly.

  My kid. My son.

  A few days ago, for recreation, they wheeled us to the convention center. We could have been anywhere. Chicago. Toronto. I spotted a couple in the hotel bar, and it didn’t take a genius to see what was going on.

  You can try to fuck your way out. You can work the slot. You can run down the long hall but in the end the door is locked and you are on your belly, crawling through smoke.

  No one escapes.

  The nurse comes, rolls me over.

  Go to sleep, she says. Go to fucking sleep.

  * * *

  “I was on Guam.” Anne and I were outside now, just the two of us. The evening was all but over. “The Japanese were on top of the hill. A machine-gun nest.”

  One of the marine choppers was overhead now, working in a widening gyre. The wind had shifted and you could smell the smoke from the prison.

  “Is it hard?”

  “What?”

  “The memories?”

  “Of the war, you mean.”

  “Yes, the war.”

  I didn’t know what to say. “A lot of people on both sides,” I made a vague gesture. “Us or them. Sometimes, the differ­ence, I don’t know.” I felt the confusion inside of me. I saw the dead Japs in their nest. “I don’t know what pulls people through.”

  She looked at me then. She smiled. “Love.”

  “What?”

  She was a little shier now. “Something greater than themselves. A dedication to that. To someone they love. Or to something.”

  “To an idea?”

  “Yes,” she said. “An idea.”

  What she said, it didn’t explain anything, not really, but it was the kind of thing people were saying those days—in the aftermath of all the killing. I felt myself falling for it, just like you fall for the girl in the movie. For a moment, she wasn’t Anne anymore, the girl from The Heights. She was something else, her face sculpted out of light.