Kiss Me Once

by Thomas Gifford

  Cookson had begun reciting some kind of ominous-sounding chant. Max Bauman shook his head. Harry Madrid looked on as if it were feeding time at the zoo. A buff-colored envelope was working its way out of Cookson’s pocket and his boyfriend pushed it back in.

  Charley Drew’s fingers began stroking the keys, and Cindy Squires sang “Fools Rush In,” her blue eyes anchored someplace where she was all by herself. The emotions only barely hinted at in her voice were somehow palpable, reaching across the room toward Cassidy, lapping at him. She sang “The Nearness of You.”

  It’s not the pale moon that excites me

  That thrills and delights me

  Oh no, it’s just the nearness of you.

  She was so delicate, so fragile, but her hips were broad and female and strong, her sturdy legs planted wide apart when she sang. She hardly moved a muscle while she sang. No histrionics, no flailing arms, no fluttering hands. It was all in her voice. She didn’t really have much range. She was no songbird, no liltin’ Martha Tilton. But her reading of the lyrics was impeccable. Cassidy wondered where she’d come from, how she’d learned to do what she did, submerging her own personality in the song, transforming the song and herself into some new, third thing. She sang “I’ll Remember April” and Cassidy couldn’t watch anymore.

  He wanted her.

  She was the first woman he’d wanted, deep in his gut, since Karin, and the realization hit him with a truckload of sudden guilt and sorrow and longing. Since Karin had gone, there hadn’t been anyone. Oh, some quickies on road trips, but nothing real. Now he needed to hold someone and be held and it couldn’t be Karin and he wanted it to be Cindy Squires …

  He stood just inside the doorway of the darkened room. Seven or eight people were sprawled on Terry’s bed or sitting on the floor while the projector’s light beam poked through the filter of cigarette smoke. He sipped the Scotch and water and held the cold glass against his forehead. The rain drummed on the window. Robert Montgomery was caught in a wonderful fantasy of life and death, love and the power of memory. He was dead by accident, a mistake, and had been allowed to come back as someone else and met the girl he’d once loved in that other life. She was a stranger, but, still, there was a spark of something … as if he’d known her, or someone very like her, once before …

  He stood in the dark trying to get Cindy Squires’s face and voice and scent out of his mind, failing. She was out of bounds. She was Max Bauman’s girl. That made her more dangerous than Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose put together. And how many ways could you betray a man? You could betray him to the will of Harry Madrid, spy on him, rat on him … and you could betray him with his girlfriend. Lots of guys had doubtless done both.

  But not to Max Bauman. Not guys who lived to tell the story. It was a dangerous fucking game is what it was.

  And Cindy Squires brought with her, like the perfume, a fill-the-room-with-danger quality. There was something about her that made him want to put on the old armor and mount his steed and charge on it, something about her, like theme music, that made him want her even while he knew there were people who wouldn’t survive, whose blood would overflow the scuppers. Maybe he just didn’t care. The world was dripping with blood, why should he be immune? He closed his eyes and there she was, the sapphire eyes, the way she raked the sharp nails so near her eye … the way her body had quaked against him when she cried …

  Then he heard two men talking behind him, out of sight in the hallway.

  “So tell me, Harry, what’s bothering our Terry? He’s not himself, not atall, not atall.” It was Father Paddy, Terry’s uncle.

  “Can’t say as I know what you’re talking about, Padre.” That was Harry Madrid, all right. Cassidy got a whiff of the cherry tobacco. He must have been lighting up the little pipe.

  “He’s mighty worried, our Terry,” Father Paddy said.

  “Somebody just put a couple slugs in him,” Harry allowed. “Makes a fella kinda peaked, I reckon, don’t you?”

  “It’s not just that. He kept saying people had it in for him long before his misfortune. Well, I thought it’d stop—y’know, thinking it was this Herrin who’d had it in for him, but no, he’s still worried. Not that he lets on to the world in general. But, hellfire, I’m the lad’s old uncle Paddy, not much he keeps from me …”

  “But he never says who, that it? You’d tell me, wouldn’t you, Padre? If Terry said anything at all, you’d let me know … a man gets shot, sometimes he gets funny ideas afterward, don’t make no sense, I’ve seen it happen before.” Harry Madrid was puffing, the scent turned the corner, seeped into the bedroom. “There might be something I could do about it. You know what I mean, Padre?”

  “Aye, and you’re a fine fella, Harry Madrid.” They had begun moving off down the hallway. “I’ll let you know if I hear him leaving hints behind him. I appreciate your concern, Harry. I’ll be lighting a candle for you.”

  Harry chuckled. “Much obliged, I’m sure.” And then they were gone.

  When the movie was over, Cassidy went back to the living room. Bryce Huntoon was standing at the bar talking to Cindy Squires. He was one of those guys burning up the tracks between New York and Washington. They seemed to have all the answers, leaping upon them like hounds gathered around a medieval dining table snapping up scraps. Gossip was the valuable currency of the day and everybody had a source somewhere. He wondered if Cindy Squires was impressed with Huntoon and his uniform and his connections. He hoped not. He was already feeling jealous and the poor bastard was just talking to her. But he was also a ladies’ man …

  Later on people started to leave. The party was over. It was past midnight. Terry and Cassidy were patting people on the back, standing by the door. Terry’s face was pale and drawn. Lew figured his back was giving him trouble.

  Paul Cassidy, with the screenwriters and the publicist and a couple of girls in tow, stopped to tell his son he was hoping to get into film production for the army. It would mean he’d be going overseas. Maybe North Africa where Rommel’s Panzer Korps was working the desert like they owned it. He was excited at the prospect.

  Charley Drew kept playing the late-night tunes and then almost everyone was gone. Cassidy made a last drink, leaned on the bar with his back to the mirror, looking out over the room. Cindy Squires slowly circled the place snapping off most of the lamps until it was restful and dim. The piano went on softly. The rain streamed down the French windows overlooking Park Avenue in the fog below. Bennie the Brute leaned back in a deep chair, crossed his long legs, tugged at his bow tie until it was dangling down his shirtfront. Cassidy casually touched the smudge of lipstick on his own shirt. Max Bauman’s face had collapsed. He looked old suddenly, staring at the rain. Cindy Squires sat down on the floor, her legs underneath her, leaned her head back against the couch, and closed her eyes. Her rounded thighs were tight against the black dress and her belly was imperceptibly rounded. Cassidy watched her and sipped his drink and tried to figure out what he should do, how he was going to go about it. There was Rocco coming up from Florida, there was Max up against Dewey and Luciano and Harry Madrid. There was Lew Cassidy with a wife he couldn’t get to … and unable to take his eyes off Cindy Squires … who was scared and wanted to believe he was as trustworthy as Terry said.

  In the stillness, with the piano tinkling forlornly, Charley Drew hunched over the keys, exploring a world of his own, Max Bauman began to talk.

  “Well, it’s quite an old world, isn’t it, folks? Nice party, Terry, Lew. Very nice.” He looked around at their faces and put his hands up, squeezed his temples. “I got a call today, I haven’t told anyone about it yet. Not even Bennie, Cindy here. From a navy friend of my son Irvie’s. Another officer. Quite a story he had to tell. Irvie … quite a boy, my Irvie. Lotsa guts, you said that, Lew. Guts.”

  Cassidy nodded but Max didn’t see him. He wasn’t looking at anybody. He sat on the couch, his hands clenched on his knees.

  “Communications officer. Ship got torpedoed in the bow …
Irvie was down in the communications office with a buddy of his when they got hit … hell of a mess, according to this fella. Fire. Ship started to heel over … see, thing was, they couldn’t get out, Irvie and his pal. So they started playing poker. Poker! Can you believe that? Cool under fire. You know how this fella knew? I’ll tell ya. He was on the flight deck and they could talk to Irvie and his buddy down below … all the time they were trapped in the communications office they were talking to the guys on the flight deck. Guts, Lewis … Guts! There wasn’t any way to get them out, see, they all knew it, they weren’t going to make it … the ship kept heeling, the water coming in, the pressure building on the bulkheads, the air getting thin, hard to breathe … and Irvie and his buddy just kept playing poker … they knew they weren’t getting out but they didn’t panic, they kept on talking to the guys topside … then it was time to say good-bye … Irvie was the last one to talk, he said tell my dad I’m not afraid, I know what’s going on, it’s time for us to sign off now, tell Dad I love him, tell him I’m going out ten bucks to the good … and then there wasn’t anymore talk … ten bucks to the good, that’s quite a boy, my son Irvie …”

  Tears were welling up in the creases of Max Bauman’s face, spilling over, but he wasn’t making a sound.

  Charley Drew hadn’t heard the story. He was playing a pretty song, singing softly to himself. “I saw you last night … and got that old feeling …”

  Cassidy set his drink down on what he thought from the corner of his attention was a bar towel. It was instead a buff-colored envelope. The same one he’d seen in Markie Cookson’s pocket. It was thick with no name on it. Cassidy slid it off the countertop and opened the loose flap. Everyone was sitting quietly in the semidarkness, thinking about Irvie Bauman. From the envelope Cassidy slid ten one-thousand-dollar bills. His throat went dry and he took another sip of his drink. He put the currency back into the envelope and replaced it on the counter, set his drink on it. Cookson had casually left ten grand behind. For Terry. Which was a hell of a way to say thanks for a pretty fair party.

  Cindy Squires slowly turned her head until she was looking at Cassidy. Her face was expressionless but her eyes lingered until he returned the stare. Max Bauman reached forward and folded her delicate white hand in his.

  Lucky Luciano said Max was doing the Nazis’ dirty work on the docks. And the Nazis were turning Max’s family in the old country into soap. And Johnny Rocco might be coming north to get his cut of a wartime racket of Max’s. Everybody was after Max and Cassidy wanted his girlfriend and Harry Madrid was standing like grim Fate in the shadows and Terry had ten fresh ones from the fat man …

  But in his mind Cassidy saw a different kind of headline.

  GANGSTER’S KID DIES A HERO

  Chapter Six

  A COUPLE WEEKS LATER BENNIE the Brute arrived with an invitation from Max Bauman. “He said to tell you he’s sorry about burdening you that night with his private grief,” Bennie announced by way of preface. “He said to tell you it was a fine party and he hopes he didn’t put a damper on it. He’d like to have you join him for dinner down on the Jersey shore. Day after tomorrow.”

  Terry nodded and looked at Cassidy. “Sure,” he said, “that’s fine by me.”

  “How’s Max holding up?” Terry asked.

  “He’s having a tough time,” Bennie confided. “It’ll be good for him, taking a little outing. Can’t get his mind off what happened to the boy. Wakes up in the night shouting to the kid. He thinks he’s on the flight deck and he can’t get below to save the boy and he keeps hearing Irvie begging him to help … Frankly it gives me the shakes when I hear him screaming like that.” He shook his head at the thought and so did Cassidy. The idea of Bennie the Brute with the shakes gave you pause. “He’s got something he wants to show you guys. Fireworks, he calls it. But you’ve got to go to Jersey for the full effect. I’ll tell him you’re on, then, both of you?”

  “Anyone else in the party?” Terry was clipping the end of one of the big Havanas.

  Bennie shrugged. “Small party. That’s all I know—”

  “Is Max really bad off?” Cassidy said.

  “It’s a bad time for him, that’s all. It was bad when the missus went back in ’34, too, but at least he had Irvie and the daughter to help him through it. Now there’s no Arlene, the daughter’s married and in Phoenix for her husband’s asthma, and all of a sudden Irvie’s never coming back. It’s a bad time for Mr. Bauman.”

  “Well,” Cassidy said, “he’s got Miss Squires. That must be some consolation.”

  “Tell him we wouldn’t miss his fireworks,” Terry said.

  When Bennie left, Cassidy sat for a long time in the gathering darkness of a murky afternoon thinking of the house overlooking the waters of Oyster Bay. A house fit for Jay Gatz. And Max Bauman waking up screaming for his dead son in the depths of the night. Bennie’s slippered feet echoing and flapping along the hallway, as he hastened to his master’s side. Together they might sit in Max’s library, surrounded by volumes purchased by the running yard and never read, sipping Scotch, waiting for first light. He wondered where Cindy Squires fit into the picture. And he wondered why she hadn’t called him, hadn’t come to him as she had wanted to …

  But the next day Max had developed pleurisy and was laid up. He’d been out patrolling the shoreline with a shotgun in the cold and rain. All over Long Island the citizenry had formed themselves into squads patrolling at night, looking out for German saboteurs coming ashore from U-boats. It was no joke. A few had been caught and no one knew how many had gotten through and lost themselves in the canyons of the city. Max had undertaken his patrol with great enthusiasm and the inclement weather too many nights in a row had brought him low.

  Bennie showed up with the news that Max wasn’t coming but the fireworks expedition was still on. It was still dank and clammy, like a bad November, and Cindy Squires was wearing a heavy, belted trench coat and a beret that made her look like a beautiful French Resistance fighter. Or rather, Paul Cassidy’s idea of such a creature in the movies. Paired with Errol Flynn, blowing up bridges and ammo dumps.

  The big Chrysler wore an E sticker on its window, now that rationing was in full effect. An A got you only one stamp, which was worth five gallons of gasoline a week. A B was for commuters. C was for cars used in the line of work by salesmen and such. Es were hard to get. You still had to use stamps but you could get as many as you wanted. They were for emergency vehicles. Reporters had them, tow-truck drivers, cops, politicians with pull. And, apparently, gangsters.

  Terry rode in front with Bennie; Cassidy got in back with Cindy Squires. Bennie kept glancing in the rearview mirror, nervously, as if he didn’t really want to catch Cassidy kissing her but had his responsibilities to his employer to consider. He needn’t have worried. Cassidy and Cindy sat in opposite corners, staring out the windows.

  When Terry turned on the radio, she seemed to pull herself back from her thoughts, started to talk. She told him that Max had told her about Karin’s being trapped in Germany. She wanted to hear all about it and Cassidy told her. She asked him if he had a picture and he slid a snapshot from his wallet. She said, “She’s beautiful. She looks sad, though.”

  “She had a toothache that day. She’s not normally sad.”

  “You must be lonely—”

  “I miss her, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I guess that is what I mean.”

  “In that sense, yes, I’m lonely. I’ve always been a loner but she changed that. It’s good, loving someone.”

  “It must be,” she said.

  They talked about the war. It turned out that her father was English, her mother American, and they were both still in London. “My father is at the Foreign Office and Mummy works in her garden. And arranges the church jumble sales and she’s a fire warden. She kept a very stiff upper lip when the bombing was bad. They sent me over here in ’38 because war was coming and they didn’t want us to be in it. My brother Tony and me. He�
��s fourteen and I’m twenty-two. There’s my sister Gillian, she’s living in the Cotswolds with our aunt, safe enough, I should think. She’s twenty-three. Tony goes to school at a school called Deerfield. My mother’s family is from Boston. We stayed with them for a time. What about you, Lew? Before you played football?”

  “There is no before, not really. I went to Deerfield, too.”

  “Really? What a small world! But you must have been born somewhere—”

  “Los Angeles. My father’s in the movie business. My mother died before I got to college. We lived in New York, too. No brothers or sisters. Football, Terry, Karin.” He shrugged. “The war.”

  They had crossed into Jersey. Looking back across the Hudson it was a shock to see how dark the city looked with the new dim-out laws in effect. The lights of Broadway were already a memory. There was a war on.

  She was looking back across the river, too.

  “I was there,” she said, pointing, “the night the Normandie burned.”

  “You were?” He flashbacked on Luciano, the smells of the disinfectant and the lavish lunch mingling in memory. “Why was that?”

  She moved away from the window and he smelled her, saw her profile in the darkness, forgot the prison and Luciano. Then he saw Bennie’s eyes flickering in the mirror, watching.

  “Max wanted to see it so we drove down to the pier. You know how everybody knows Max, we got close … it was like a peek into Dante’s last circle. The hull was red-hot … red. And all the hoses were spraying it and the water just kept hissing and turning to steam. The fire crackled, it was loud, and this incredible hissing sound, like a million snakes. The fire was so bright in the night and there were all these searchlights trained on the ship … it was like nothing anyone could imagine. There were all these beautiful rainbows—”

  “In the middle of the night?”