Kiss Me Once

by Thomas Gifford

  Terry kept on top of it, kept the lid in place, and Harry Madrid told Bert Reagan you had to hand it to the son of a bitch. When Terry shut something down, it stayed shut. Reagan said he figured Terry had a damn fine reason, the way it looked to him.

  While the Bean mess sizzled along, Terry would sometimes look across his gin and tonic at Cassidy, when the night was hot and sticky and the sirens cried like banshees in the night and people got fed up with the heat and started bashing each other for the sport of it, and say, “Thank God for DiMaggio.”

  The radio was always on that summer, all over town, and you couldn’t avoid hearing about Joe DiMaggio. The Yankee Clipper, they called him. The rest of the American League couldn’t seem to get him out. He kept hitting. Thirty straight games, forty, fifty … He wound up hitting in fifty-six straight. By the time Jim Bagby of the Indians finally stopped him, Derek Boyce and Sylvester Aubrey Bean were out of the papers. Terry said he wasn’t absolutely sure Boyce had done it but it sure as hell looked that way and if he hadn’t he’d certainly done something worse, one time or another. Or was going to. The way he looked at it, the great city had coughed up one of its ugly little perversities, belched, and gone back to business as usual. After Bagby stopped him, DiMag went right back to hitting and the Yanks continued their stately march and the world was all right again.

  The story was long gone from the papers when one of his fellow cons beat Derek Boyce to death.

  The truth was, nobody cared about him anymore.

  Nobody but Mark Herrin, who had loved Derek Boyce with all his heart. It took him awhile to get his nerve up but when he did he knew just the fellow he wanted to kill.

  Terry had been right, of course. Somebody had been watching him, somebody had been after him. And on the night of December 8, 1941, with the whole world undertaking to shoot the works everywhere, a guy with a gun had come after Terry Leary.

  But Mark Herrin hadn’t been the only one watching Terry.

  It was the other ones that mattered in the long run.

  Herrin was just a detail.

  Later on the doctors decided the risk wasn’t worth it. They left the bullet Terry was carrying near his spine. The X rays showed it snuggled right up against the vertebrae, too close to dig it out, particularly since it wasn’t bothering him. Yet. The lung was emptied of blood, reinflated, stitched up, and aside from a hellish big scar, Terry was going to be all right once his strength came back.

  The first time they let Cassidy wheel down the hall to see him, Terry looked about as lively as a plucked chicken. He grinned weakly and flapped a hand. “Never turn your back on ’em, Lew. Fuckers’ll shoot you every time.” He coughed and closed his eyes.

  It was tough for him to talk and easy for him to sleep, so Cassidy just sat quietly listening to the low voices of the radio while the afternoon lost its grip on the light. He sat through Terry and the Pirates and Hop Harrigan and Captain Midnight and he had the nurse bring his dinner tray to Terry’s room. Then he listened to Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons or maybe it was David Harding, Counterspy, he couldn’t be sure because he was thinking hard about Terry and Harry Madrid and Bert Reagan, trying to decode that conversation he’d heard from the other side of the ether. He wasn’t going to bring it up to any of them. Better to just wait for it to surface again, like a treacherous log floating beneath the smooth waters. All Cassidy had to do was to be ready for it. He knew it was down there. He and Terry had always faced things together and if anybody was looking for a piece of Terry Leary he was going to have to work his way through all of Lew Cassidy first.

  He dozed intermittently in the chair by the window with winter howling outside. He thought about Cindy Squires and Max Bauman and wondered why they couldn’t get their stories straight about who sent the flowers and then his mind turned to Karin, who had become something like a dream in the two years since he’d seen her. Two years. Yet he longed for her more now than ever, never went an hour without thinking of her, wishing he knew what she was doing at a given moment. All the fantasies of her suddenly getting word to him that she was coming back had been thoroughly dashed by the entry of the United States into the war. Now, like so many other things you kept hearing about, the gulf between them wouldn’t be bridged until the war ended. He was stuck, as he was, for the duration.

  In the twilight of half-sleep he thought of her, remembering the first time he’d ever taken her clothing off, all of it, remembering how she was almost holding her breath, remembering how her stomach jerked each time she gulped some air. When she was naked he’d turned her over and spread her legs, massaged the backs of her thighs, felt the long skater’s muscles, the power. She was making soft, cooing, whimpering sounds, German words he didn’t understand. When he sank his fingers into her hips, trying to spread them, she resisted with the strength which amazed and excited him. Then she relaxed, as if to let him know she could have stopped him but consciously chose not to, her whole body trembling as the breath eased out of her. He kissed her ear and the soft cheek. Her breath was warm and moist. The pillowcase was damp where she’d clenched it between her teeth while he’d touched her, deeper and deeper. Slowly he slid down the length of her back, kissing the smooth rises of her spine, kept kissing her all the way down, spreading her hips, kept kissing, tasted the silky black down between her hips, hearing her accented English … Don’t stop, please don’t stop …

  For two years he’d never stopped thinking about her. A lot of the time it was as if he’d seen her yesterday. He’d always heard that people forgot the faces of loved ones after a while and maybe that was true for most people. But not for him. He could still close his eyes and see her compact diamond-shaped face with the wide cheekbones, the wide diamond eyes, the short-cropped dark hair that lay sleek and close to her head when she flew across the ice, intent, ramming a hole in the air, all the world closed out but for the blades and the cold smooth ice spitting from beneath her and the fluid control of her body …

  And he could hear her voice, thickly German at first and then growing its own American inflections, he could hear it curling around the words … Don’t stop, please don’t stop …

  He hadn’t forgotten a thing. Not any of it. He never would.

  Sometimes he wondered if maybe he was going slightly crazy. Sometimes he thought it might be easier if she were dead, if he knew he’d never see her again.

  But that was crazy. He was going to see her again, no matter how long it took. He was going to hold her, look into the eyes that had swallowed him, like a secret, forever.

  One day, about a week before Christmas, with snow falling and collecting on his windowsill where pigeons left tiny tracks, he heard a woman’s voice speak his name. He was dozing, floating through soft clouds the way you do in the hospital, and an angel was circling overhead. An angel actually recognized him. “Mr. Cassidy,” she said, and he smiled by way of acknowledgment. The angel was growing insistent. He felt her tugging at his pajama sleeve. “Lewis … Lewis,” she whispered. “Wake up for me.”

  He opened his eyes and looked into her face, the eyes like jewels, the soft down on her cheek. “Oh, God,” he said, “don’t hit me.”

  A tiny giggle escaped her cat’s mouth.

  “I won’t hit you if you wake up. You were smiling. Sweet dreams?”

  “Angel. An angel was talking to me. Knew my name.”

  “I didn’t bring candy or flowers …”

  He couldn’t stop smiling at her. “Did you see Terry?”

  “I will before I go … Bennie has a cold. I told him I’d do his hospital rounds today.” She looked away as if she’d been caught in an indiscretion. “Max said it was all right, my coming—”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “Don’t mock me. What Max thinks is important …”

  “Goes without saying.”

  “I did bring you something …”

  “Is it a secret or what?”

  “Dickens, actually. People in hospital should always read Dickens.�
��

  “You remembered, Miss Squires. Will you read to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pull up a chair, Miss Squires.” He watched her throw the mink across the foot of the bed. She was wearing a heavy cardigan with leather buttons and a navy skirt with kick pleats. She slid a chair next to the bed, sat down, opened a thick volume.

  “ ‘The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby,’ ” she read, “ ‘by Charles Dickens. Chapter One.’ Stop fidgeting, get settled like a good boy. ‘There once lived, in a sequestered part of the country of Devonshire, one Mr. Godfrey Nickleby: a worthy gentleman …’ ”

  She read to him all afternoon, until it was dark beyond the window. He watched her from beneath nearly closed lids. He reached out and took a chocolate from a box sent by Marquardt Cookson. Cindy leaned forward in midsentence, mouth open, and he popped a buttercream between her lips. One of his fingertips brushed her lower lip.

  Christmas came and went like a rumor. They were still in the hospital, and Christmas, the first of the war, wasn’t like it used to be. He’d been without Karin for three Christmases. He’d damn near forgotten what they used to be like.

  Dr. Christensen told him what had happened to his right leg. The doctor showed him X rays and drew little diagrams on a scratch pad with a thick, marbled Autopoint pencil. It wasn’t just that he was done playing football. He was going to have a limp and the doctor didn’t know for how long. Six months, a year, forever, there was just no telling. And in the meantime he’d need a cane. It made him feel very mortal. He’d never undergone any kind of physical weakness. At six four, two twenty-five, he’d always chosen to run through things rather than around them. And now he needed a cane. The doctor told him to cheer up, it could be a lot worse. He could be out in the Pacific defending Wake Island or Corregidor. As usual the doctor had a point.

  They got through New Year’s Eve. A few of the nurses and doctors who were stuck with holiday duty brought champagne and caviar to Terry’s room and they listened to the dance bands on the radio from the hotels around town. At midnight Guy Lombardo struck up “Auld Lang Syne” and they kissed the nurses and toasted the New Year of 1942. The war was going badly but what could you expect at the beginning, after a sneak attack? They toasted victory and one of the doctors swore that the Japs would be through by the time the snow had melted in Central Park. Hell, the Germans were already freezing to death in the Russian winter. The doctor said he’d heard the German soldiers were eating their own dead to survive. A nurse made a face and said enough already and Cassidy reminded them that war was hell.

  Bennie the Brute came by early in January to take them home. Terry insisted that Cassidy recuperate with him at his place on Park Avenue. “Taken together,” he said, “we make almost one normal adult male. If somebody else comes around wanting to shoot me, you could throw yourself in front of me, a human shield to take the fire. Or fight ’em off with your cane—”

  “Or I could just go out there and wear ’em down.”

  “But I’m serious, Lew. I don’t like the idea of being alone. They’re still out there, waiting for me. I know it but I don’t think they know I know—I just don’t know who they are. But they’re sure as hell gonna think twice if they gotta deal with you, even with the bum wheel.” He was still weak and pale.

  Cassidy said, “Damn right,” grinning, trying to sound more confident than he really was. He wasn’t sure he could fight off a crippled newsie, let alone Harry Madrid and Bert Reagan. But, then, why look for trouble? Madrid and Reagan were old friends of Terry’s, weren’t they? And they hadn’t made a false move. The fact was Cassidy and Terry had gotten Christmas cards from both of them. Wise men on the road to Bethlehem, following a star.

  So Bennie hauled them away in Max Bauman’s huge Chrysler and got them settled at Terry’s place, which looked like something from a George Raft picture, not like a cop’s humble abode. Which made it a nice place to spend the winter, however the hell Terry managed it. Payoffs, investments from the rich ladies he dated, whatever.

  Most of the time they were alone. A couple of Cassidy’s teammates straggled by to sponge a drink, and a cop or two stopped in to tell Terry how life was going without him in homicide. Marquardt Cookson and his little man brought delicacies to eat, drink, and occasionally some nose candy. Bennie checked every few days to see if they were in need of anything. A few times Cindy Squires came with him, talked to them nervously and made lunch and smoked too much and left, looking neither relieved to be going nor happy she’d come. Cassidy found her puzzling, enigmatic, quite beyond his reach, and he wondered why. But he made a real effort not to wonder very hard. One day, after he’d finished The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, a messenger brought Bleak House. No letter, no note. Nothing.

  Paul Cassidy called frequently to check on their recovery and to report on his own work organizing movie star War Bond Drives. Everybody was involved in the war effort. Anyway, that was the way it seemed to the two 4-Fs watching the world go by down below on Park Avenue. The day they’d gotten out of the hospital Carole Lombard, whom Paul Cassidy had known since the days when she was married to William Powell, raised two million dollars at a bond rally in Indianapolis. Late that night she’d gotten on a plane. The plane disappeared near Las Vegas. A search began in the nearby mountains, in the deep snow and the thick forests. Her husband flew up from Los Angeles to join the hunt. By then she was married to Clark Gable. After looking for fourteen hours they found the wreckage of the plane. Carole Lombard was dead. Paul Cassidy called her Hollywood’s first fallen hero, which was like him. He’d never made a picture with her but he’d liked her, always said she could make him laugh no matter how shitty he felt. Everybody was getting into the war.

  It snowed outside but it didn’t matter to them. They’d watch the snow drifting down in waving curtains between them and the real world, if you could call Park Avenue the real world. They’d hobble around and build a fire and turn on the new Capehart Panamuse radio and sink into their chairs like two old farts at their club. Cassidy read all the newspapers, started putting colored pins into war maps. Terry played records, as if he were trying to blot out the war. Cassidy would read William Shirer’s Berlin Diary and Terry would play records like “Bewitched” from the John O’Hara show Pal Joey and they’d both smoke Max Bauman’s giant Havanas.

  “ ‘You’d be so nice to come home to,’ ” the girl sang, “ ‘you’d be so nice by the fire,’ ” and sometimes the songs would hit Cassidy a little too close to home, a little too close to Karin. Or maybe it would be the war news from Europe. And he’d grab his cane and get a fresh bottle from the bar and drink it in his room until he couldn’t think about her or anything else anymore and he’d wake up with the cold gray dawn, stiff and fully clothed and hung over. Some dawns he woke in a panic, his chest tight with the fear that he’d never see her again, that he’d never watch her brush the shiny cap of hair, never feel the touch of her lips, never hear the throaty, bawdy laugh. He kept thinking: We’re on the same planet, the same sun shines on both of us … but he couldn’t get to her, there was a war between them and now he couldn’t even fight the goddamn war. He took to praying, for the first time since he was a child, and he only knew one prayer.

  Now I lay me down to sleep

  I pray the Lord my soul to keep

  If I should die before I wake

  I pray the Lord my soul to take.

  God bless Dad and Terry …

  And, Oh God, bless Karin

  and keep her safe, please …

  One night in early February somebody blew up the great French liner Normandie at its berth on West 48th in the Hudson. Right away everybody figured it was the work of saboteurs. The pictures in the papers showed it keeled over on its side smoking. A great prehistoric creature hounded to its death, steaming in the spray of the hoses as it lay half submerged. Twenty-four hours after it went up, the hoses still played across the smoldering ruin.

  It wasn’t long after that that H
arry Madrid and Bert Reagan came by to see Cassidy. It was a snowy morning and Bennie had taken Terry to the hospital for another X ray of his back. Cassidy was standing at the living room window staring out into the blowing snow when the car pulled up far below. He saw both of them get out. Even from that height you couldn’t miss them.

  Cassidy smiled to himself. It was about time.

  Chapter Four

  HARRY MADRID STOOD IN THE doorway in a heavy black overcoat that reached almost to his ankles. The broad shoulders were sprinkled with snow. He looked like he had a dandruff problem. He was smiling broadly, his eyes lost in the pouches of gray flesh, a pipe that was too small for the size of him stuck in the corner of his mouth. His hat was pulled down too far, pushing his ears out. Bert Reagan stood behind him sucking on a toothpick. His overcoat was plaid, like a horse blanket. They came in and stomped snow onto the carpet.

  “Howya feelin’, Lew?” Harry Madrid looked around, cataloguing the opulence of Terry’s sunken living room and the blond bar with the slatted mirror fanning out behind it, and his face didn’t give away a thing.

  “I’m all right.” Cassidy waved his cane in the air, shrugged. He still couldn’t walk properly without it. “You guys selling tickets to the Policemen’s Ball? I’m not dancing much these days and Terry just left for an X ray.”

  “You don’t say?” Madrid shook his head. He wasn’t surprised. He probed his bristly ear with a forefinger the size of a cucumber.

  “Real sorry to miss him,” Reagan said. He looked out the long row of windows. The apartment buildings across Park were disappearing behind the snow. “Some view.” He leaned toward the glass, looking downtown. He munched on the toothpick like a dog worrying a favorite bone.

  “But the fact is we came for you,” Madrid said. “Let’s take a ride. Get you outa this place. Not good to be cooped up. Good for you to get out, put some color in those cheeks.” The skin on his own face, once you got away from the eyes, was drawn so tight he looked like he’d swollen through the collar of his shirt. His cheeks were red from the cold but the closer you got to those eyes the less life you could find.