“Is he going to be all right?”
“Well, it’s all relative—”
“But he’ll live?”
“I suppose so. If he were going to die, he’d have done it by now.”
“What about his memory, Doc?” Terry asked.
“His brain’s been bounced all over the south forty. That can throw a man’s memory out the window. Chances are he won’t ever remember what happened to him tonight. He’s lucky he’s not dead … or maybe he’s not so lucky, time will tell.”
Lew said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“We don’t know how badly everything’s scrambled up in there. But let’s just say his brain has been rearranged, so we’ll have to see. He might start trying to drink coffee through his ear and take a crap out of his belly button. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
He took down a lot of information from Terry while Lew sat on a straight-backed chair and stared out the window onto Seventh Avenue. Then Terry dropped Lew at home and said he was heading up to Heliotrope to give Max the bad news.
The doctor was right.
When you’re used to breathing, a broken nose and a chest full of cracked ribs louses up your whole routine. Cassidy felt like he was drowning and the four o’clock cold was making him shiver, which rattled his ribs, which made him want to forfeit the game, run up the old white flag, and go home. And then he thought about Bennie and how the front of his forehead had collapsed and he felt like a bastard, until he remembered how his nose and ribs had gotten into their present shape and then he figured Bennie just got run down by the odds. He’d picked on the wrong guy, which was bound to catch up with you sooner or later when you spent enough time beating the shit out of people.
It was hard work carrying the two suitcases and not breathing. The ribs were screaming for mercy. Each step with the suitcases seemed to be sliding his arms out of the shoulder sockets. He put them down at the corner and looked down the empty street. The cream-colored Chrysler was parked near the corner of Fifth Avenue and Washington Square. He gritted his teeth, hoisted them once again, and set off on the last leg of the journey across the park.
He put them down again, fished in his pocket for the keys he’d filched from Bennie’s mackintosh, and opened the trunk. It was very neat in the trunk. Carefully he stacked the two suitcases, closed the lid, yanked it to make sure it was locked.
Slowly he hobbled home across the park. He’d had to use both hands on the cases so he didn’t have his stick and it wasn’t so good without it. He threw the keys into a flower bed well off the path. Max was bound to have another set of keys.
In the morning he’d call Max, tell him where he’d seen the car parked. Max would send somebody to pick up the car.
And Max would have a couple of suitcases full of counterfeit-counterfeit gas stamps.
The rest was up to Harry Madrid.
After the call to Max and the commiseration about what had befallen Bennie, he went to the team doctor who’d put his nose back together a few times in the past. He packed the nose and whistled “Pretty Red Wing” while he was doing it. “Lew,” he said, “when are you gonna grow up?”
“You should see the other guy.”
“Juvenile, Lew.” When he finished with the nose he played a xylophone concerto on the ribs, said the doc the night before had done a good job. “You look just like the guy in The Mummy.” He kept chuckling at Cassidy’s agony and trying to whistle at the same time. Then Cassidy went to the dentist, who pulled two teeth and got the smelling salts when he mentioned how much the bridge would cost.
Cassidy heard nothing more about the trunk full of faked evidence. Nothing from Harry Madrid and no word from Max’s camp, which had the whole Bennie crisis to deal with.
Everything was quiet on the Luciano front and no one was pressing Cassidy to come up with anything on Terry. But maybe Luciano had been at work behind the scenes, as he’d promised Dewey.
Because Tom Dewey climbed down off the wedding cake and made his run for the state house. He was swept in with a landslide plurality of 600,000 votes. He’d done it without prosecuting Max Bauman. But the word around town was that the Outfit had busted a gut getting out the vote for him.
Luciano had done his part.
Now it was Dewey’s move.
That pretty much took care of 1942.
Bennie was in and out of the hospital all fall and they put a plate in his head and he wore a white turban of bandages up through Thanksgiving. He lost a lot of weight as well as the memory of that one very bad night. The tricks his memory played could be cruel. He never knew when there’d suddenly be a hole and he couldn’t finish a sentence because something would be gone. Sometimes he couldn’t finish the sentence because he didn’t have any idea how it had begun. But some of the time he was okay. By the end of the year he discovered he could remember all the Christmas carols he had ever known. Bennie smiled at that and sang “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” to his heart’s content.
The week before Christmas, with snow drifting softly down on Washington Square, Cassidy went to his mailbox and found a Christmas card. On the front there was a reproduction of a painting by Cézanne. Inside it read: Cézanne’s Greetings. Beneath that in a girlish hand: Get it? Cindy.
It was the only word he’d had from her since the night they’d made love.
Terry threw a New Year’s Eve party.
It seemed a very long time since the previous April when he and Cassidy, roommates recovering from their various injuries and wounds, had given that other party. This time Cassidy arrived early and made himself at home while Terry dressed. It was like watching a slide show, sitting at Terry’s bar, staring into the mirror but seeing the reflections of that other party when Markie had arrived out of the rain to show off his prized Necronomicon and Cindy Squires had bent to Max’s wishes and sung some songs and Harry Madrid and Lew had stood together drinking champagne and being tough with each other and Charley Drew had played the piano and they had ended the evening sitting around the dying fire while Max had told them about his son going down with his ship. He was deep in memories of that night’s party when the new one began with a trickle of guests.
Cindy was bound to come with Max. Waiting for her to appear was like standing at the five and waiting for the kickoff to come down. He remembered asking her if she wanted to go into the bedroom to see the movie his father was showing, remembered her response, her misunderstanding of the kind of movie it was. Then she had sung “The Nearness of You” and he had realized she was filling his mind the way only Karin ever had …
She was still on his mind as the room filled up and Charley Drew began tickling the ivories and the chatter got going. Bryce Huntoon was one of several men in uniform. He surveyed the party, came across the sunken living room, and settled in at the bar beside Cassidy. He was spiffy as ever, like a recruiting poster. They talked about the war news, mainly about the speech the British foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, had made to the House of Commons shortly before Christmas. “It’s about time,” Huntoon said. Eden was the first official to address the subject of the Nazis’ extermination of the Jews. A great many people had known about it for a long time but now it had gone public and the shock waves were beginning to be felt. “This isn’t just another European war,” Huntoon said, “like all the other wars Europe has staggered through. This is wrong, this is satanic. Mankind at its very worst.” He looked at Cassidy sheepishly. “Didn’t mean to make a speech, Lew. But, blast it, this thing has got my blood up! Max had it right all along, what’s been going on over there.”
“Evil,” Cassidy said. “People are going to have to get used to the idea that there is such a thing as Evil. Pure and unadulterated Evil that is its own reason for being. If you accept it as a given, it’s a very simple concept, really, isn’t it?”
“Say, Lew, that’s mighty well put. I’ll have to tell Max what you just said. I’m impressed.”
“Sounds like you see quite a bit of Max these days.�
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“Oh, here and there. He’s been a big help to us. He really is a very public-spirited gentleman. It’s funny, the way some people think of him as a gangster. A fine gent, really.”
“Relax, Bryce. He is a gangster. Face facts.” Huntoon frowned at this.
“Well, you’ll never hear anyone say that to me,” Huntoon said, jutting his Dick Tracy jaw.
“Well, I just did.”
“I mean anyone else.”
“Stout fellow,” Cassidy said. “There he is now.”
Max Bauman had just come in with Bennie the Brute beside him. For an instant Cassidy’s eyes played a trick and Bennie looked the same as always but then he took Max’s coat and he moved slowly, almost let the black coat with the fur collar slip from his grasp. Cindy Squires was wearing sable. She looked pale and delicate, bare shoulders, a black dress with some kind of little spangles that made her shimmer. Cassidy couldn’t look away. Then he realized that Bryce Huntoon had left his side, made his way across the crowded room. Cindy smiled her cat’s smile at Huntoon and he shook hands with Max and they moved away together with Bennie following. He was shambling, shuffling, and Cassidy went in search of another drink. To see her, not to be able to go to her, to see Bennie and know how he’d gotten that way—it all left a bitter sinking in his belly.
His father arrived shortly thereafter. He was in uniform. When he got to the bar, Cassidy asked him what was going on with the fancy dress.
“Listen, go easy on your poor old father. Our government moves in mysterious ways its wonders to perform. None more mysterious, my son, and less wondrous than turning me—at my age—into Major Cassidy. It’s humiliating. No campaign ribbons. God, I need a drink.” The night’s bartender poured a double Scotch neat.
“What do they have you doing?” His father looked grand. He was in his mid-fifties. His gray wiry hair was cut short and he looked trim, ready to go out and win the war.
“I think I’m in military intelligence and don’t tell me that’s a contradiction in terms. Old joke. For a while I thought I was in the Signal Corps, no, I don’t know why, but later when I said so to one of my many bosses he looked at me like I’d peed on his shoe and set me straight. It’s all academic. I spend most of my time watching German movies. Commercial movies, documentaries, propaganda crap. Looking for keys to the essential Teutonic character. It’s crazy, we already knew they don’t know from funny. So what’s left? How many times can I watch The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Triumph of the Will and The Blue Angel?”
“You never heard about any movie Karin might—”
“No. You think that wasn’t my first priority? But my not finding anything means nothing. I was talking to my boss, a general yet, who used to be a producer who worked for me, I asked him if there was any way I could find out anything about Karin. He said he’d look into it, which is better than saying no. He was actually kind of interested that I had a German connection, so you never know.” He took a slug of Scotch and licked his lips.
“Well,” Cassidy said, “she’s dead.”
“Yeah.” He stared across the room. “Speaking of dead, have you seen Bennie? Wow. A zombie. A head of cabbage. What’s the story?”
“He got rolled. Down in my neighborhood. I tried to break it up and got my nose broken again. But Bennie got it pretty bad.” The lies came so easily.
“Somebody said he’s got a plate in his head.”
“Steel plate. Terry says it picks up the CBS news if you’re standing close to him. You can hear all the war news coming out of Bennie’s head.”
“Convenient. Well, I’m going to circulate, see who all’s here.” He squeezed Cassidy’s shoulder and moved away.
Cassidy turned around and came face-to-face with Cindy and Max.
“Good to see you, Lew,” Max said, pumping his hand. “You don’t come ’round the club much lately. We miss you, kid, don’t we, honey?”
“How are you, Miss Squires?”
“Why, I’m fine, Mr. Cassidy.” There was a mischievous light in her blue eyes. “And we do miss you. Is your absence a critical judgment on my singing?”
Max laughed indulgently.
“Not at all.”
“Then you’ll come back? I hope so.”
“It’s a personal favor,” Max said. “Lemme buy you a dinner, Lew. Bring your girlfriend, everything on the house. I can never thank you enough, what you did for Bennie that night. Really.”
“How is he these days?”
Max tapped a finger to his skull. “Some days there’s just nobody home in there.”
“Did you have a nice Christmas?” Cindy asked.
“Nothing to write home about.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Max had turned away and was talking to Father Paddy, who never missed a party. Cindy caught Cassidy’s eye, and her impersonal smile was gone. Her lips formed a word quietly. Lew.
Bennie came up behind her. Cassidy tried not to look at the triangular dent where his left temple had been. They had built it up when they put the plate in but it didn’t look right. It made his whole head look like something a mad scientist had stapled onto his shoulder as an afterthought.
“Bennie. You’re looking good.”
“Thanks, Lew.” A smile twitched. He’d put some pounds on but they were puffy. “I’m feeling pretty good, too. I have my good days, I have my bad days. Boy, Cindy, you know how Lew here saved my life—”
“Yes, Bennie, you told me all about it.”
“I guess I have at that. I forget things—Lew found me down in Washington Square, he lives down there—”
“I know, Bennie.”
“Still don’t know what I was doing down there …” His voice trailed away and he stopped talking, looking off at the party.
Max turned back and put Cindy’s bare arm through his and the three of them drifted off. Terry had been listening and shook his head ruefully. “Funny, seeing the big guy like that. It’s like he’s punch-drunk. That was some night, amigo.”
Later on Cindy stood beside Charley Drew at the piano and the party got quiet while she sang a couple songs. She finished with the big new song of the season. Bing Crosby had sung it in a movie and now Cindy was dreaming of a White Christmas, with treetops glistening and the sound of sleigh bells, just like the ones all of them used to know.
It was wartime and a lot of people hadn’t made it home for the holidays and it was late on New Year’s Eve and some of the guests had a faraway look, remembering people they loved and wouldn’t be with and remembering Christmases long ago.
Cindy was standing at his side just before midnight. Bryce Huntoon was looking at her longingly from across the room. She smiled out at the crowd but she was speaking softly to Cassidy.
“I think about you,” she said. “Did you get my card?”
“Sure.”
“I thought it might appeal to a smart guy with a winning smile.”
“It did. But not as much as you do.”
“I know, I know. There’s nothing I can do, Lew. He holds me so tight—and Bennie’s always with me …”
“My tough luck,” he said.
“Mine, too, you know. I keep trying to think of ways to reach you. I’ve wanted you … oh, I should shut up. It’s about midnight. Here they come.”
They were all together in a little group with the party going on all around them. Cindy and Max and Terry and Bennie and Paul Cassidy and Lew. Terry had a bottle of champagne wrapped in a white towel and he filled all the glasses.
“Happy New Year,” Terry said softly. “May 1943 bring us all the good things of life … and may we deserve them.”
“P-p-peace to all men,” Bennie said.
They lifted their glasses and toasted the New Year and somebody across the room began to sing “Auld Lang Syne.”
Max had his arm around Cindy’s shoulder, pulled her close, and she turned to kiss him. Bennie spilled the rest of his champagne, his hand shaking violently. He looked around and mumble
d his apologies. Terry pecked Cindy’s cheek and Bryce Huntoon showed up to kiss her. Cindy came to Cassidy and gave him her sober, serious look while Max watched her. “Mr. Cassidy,” she said, “would you like a New Year’s kiss?”
“Why not?” he said.
She leaned forward and brushed her mouth against his just a fraction of a second longer than was necessary. Then she kissed Bennie, standing on tiptoe to reach him, and he blushed like a schoolboy.
Later Cassidy was standing in a quiet spot and saw Bennie alone, looking out the window at Park Avenue. It didn’t seem like there was all that much left of Bennie. He was a big dumb animal now where once he’d been something else, something whole. All because he’d picked on the wrong guy. He was staring out at the snow falling on Park Avenue in the first hour of 1943. His face was working, a symphony of tics and twitches, but he didn’t seem to be aware of anything, not the tics, not the snow, not the party, nothing. One eye was closed, as if he were winking at his reflection. The thing was, the eye stayed clenched shut.
Cassidy’s last memory of the party was watching Max and Cindy and Bennie leaving. Bryce Huntoon joined them at the door, left with them.
Terry looked at Cassidy and said, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Well, thinking of your happiness as I invariably am”—he winked—“it occurs to me that nobody may be keeping track of Miss Squires anymore. I doubt if Max has another watchdog he trusts like Bennie. Maybe she’s on the loose.”
The thought took Cassidy by surprise. “That’s not what she says,” Cassidy said, wanting her more than he could believe, wanting to relive that one night.
“Maybe she’s just afraid, amigo. I don’t see Bennie as a big problem anymore.”
Cassidy nodded. “Not anymore,” he said.
Once again, tapping his stick in the carpet of snow, he walked all the way home. The sun was shining behind the snowfall by the time he reached Washington Square.
Kiss Me Once Page 22
