Billy Boyle: A World War II Mystery, Vol. 1

by James R Benn

  “So, I guess you’re wondering what that has to do with you.”

  I nodded.

  Harding spoke up. “Frankly, sir, I’ve been wondering that myself.” Uncle Ike lost the smile and looked at him as if he were squinting down the rear sight of a rifle.

  “Major, I am not the type of man to grant a post to a family member as an act of nepotism.”

  Harding looked a little flustered at this rebuke. Since family patronage had been the thing that got me this far in life, I wondered what was wrong with it.

  “William brings something special to us, Major. He is a dedicated police detective, decorated for bravery. Sooner or later, I am going to need someone who can handle potentially delicate investigations. Anytime this many people are brought together in an enterprise, with so much bounty in supplies and multiple chains of command, there are bound to be a few rotten apples.”

  “For the good of the family, they need to be removed, quietly.” I surprised myself with this, but I knew exactly what he meant.

  “Exactly, William! We need to be sure the top officers running this war are as pure as Caesar’s wife. If any of them get into the black market or something worse, the publicity could lead to divisions within our ranks. It would only help the Germans.”

  “So my job is to hush things up?”

  Ike raised his eyebrows and glanced at Harding. “Well, no, William,” Ike said, crushing out his cigarette in a glass ashtray mounded with ashes and butts. “Things will have to be handled discreetly, but when the need arises, we will deal with anyone who violates the military code of justice or the laws of Great Britain. No one’s going to get away with murder. I just don’t want them tried in the Old Bailey for the world to see, that’s all.”

  “How do I fit in, sir?” Harding leaned forward and I could see he was hoping to be let off the hook.

  “I hope I won’t be utilizing William’s talents full-time. He’ll need some other work to do to keep himself busy and useful. He can act as your aide.” I saw astonishment, followed by resignation, flicker across Harding’s face and vanish, buried under that West Point facade that never seemed to relax.

  “Thank you, General.” With that, I knew Harding could have a second career as a diplomat.

  “You’re heading off to that briefing with the Norwegians on Monday. Take William along and let him get the feel of things, get to know people. OK?”

  Uncle Ike made it seem like a question, as if Harding would be doing him a favor.

  “I’m sure he’ll be a great help, General.”

  Ike nodded and the interview was apparently over. As we got up, he took me by the arm and walked me over to the window. Harding closed the door behind him and it was just Uncle Ike and me in the room. From where we stood, we could see all of Grosvenor Square. Some buildings were bomb damaged; the front of one was gone, revealing couches, beds, and tables in the rooms, like a giant dollhouse. He pointed to an intact structure on the opposite corner.

  “John Adams, our second president, lived right there when he was ambassador to Great Britain. Just over that way a few blocks is Buckingham Palace and beyond that the Houses of Parliament. There are many ties that bind us to the English, William. We will have to rely on these bonds to get us through this war. They must be strengthened. And protected.”

  I had remembered Uncle Ike as a guy always ready with a grin. Now he looked like somebody else. Somebody with a grim job ahead of him. Somebody who needed a trusted hand at his side. I trembled a little, realizing that he thought that was me. I wanted to tell him I was the wrong guy, that I was a fake and a cheater. It was the first time in my life I ever felt ashamed of anything, but what could I say? That the Boyles were all talk and no action? His eyes were on me again, and he spoke in a low voice.

  “William, I want you to know that I picked you for this job for two reasons. First, you’re a trained detective. Second, you’re family, and I’ve always believed in trusting family.”

  He lit another cigarette and drew on it heavily.

  “Can you do this for me, William? And for your country?”

  It must have been the lack of sleep. There was something solitary and lonely about Uncle Ike standing there, looking out over the ruined buildings and John Adams’s ghost, maybe wondering if he could handle it all. I didn’t feel sorry for him. At that moment, I just wanted to help him, more than anything else. If I had been more rested, I would’ve thought to ask what it was I’d get out of it. But I didn’t.

  “Sure, Uncle Ike. You can count on me,” was what I said.

  CHAPTER ▪ THREE

  AS I LEFT UNCLE Ike’s office I asked a passing PFC where I could find Second Officer Daphne Seaton. He pointed toward a hallway and told me to go one flight down. The stairway emptied into one large room with about a dozen desks and countless file cabinets. Maps covered any spare wall space, and the paint job was a fresh coat of army green, with some brown trim for flair. I saw Harding standing next to one of the desks, talking with Daphne. He looked up, crooked his thumb in my direction, and without another word walked away in the opposite direction. I threaded my way between desks and a sea of uniforms, American, British, army, navy, all busy moving lots of paperwork around, the walls echoing with a constant murmur of low voices and the shuffling of files. A telephone rang and I had to dodge an RAF officer as he ran to grab it. I put on my best smile as I approached Daphne’s desk.

  “Do you have time to show me around, Second Officer Seaton?” I asked.

  “Please call me Miss Seaton if that’s easier for you; saves time all around.”

  Harding must have said something to her because I actually felt the temperature rise above freezing. I guess he told her that Ike had asked for me, and what he had in mind. I mentally thanked him for the boost and tried to act modest, but it was a new experience for me, especially around a pretty woman.

  “Well, Miss Seaton, the first place I’d like to see is the mess hall, and a pot of coffee, maybe some doughnuts.” Once a cop. . . .

  She finally smiled, and that did me a world of good. I always felt better when I could get someone to smile, especially when they were inclined otherwise. If someone’s smiling—a genuine smile, not a leer or the phony grin of a two-bit grifter—then you can be pretty sure they’re not going to cause any trouble. And trouble wasn’t what I was after.

  Daphne led me down to the mess hall, which took up most of the basement. There were long trestle tables, three in a row, and a few small round tables, probably reserved for Uncle Ike and the rest of the brass. Steam tables fronted the kitchen area, and the smell of cafeteria cooking, the clanging of pots, and the clacking of stacked plates all somehow made me feel at home. It was familiar. First thing I went for was the coffee urn. I grabbed a heavy mug and topped it off with joe that carried a faint whiff of eggshells. We picked a spot on one of the tables that wasn’t too crowded and sat across from each other. It was about lunchtime, but the place wasn’t exactly packed. Some people were just drinking coffee, or tea if they were Brits, while others ate breakfast or a lunch of sandwiches and some sort of stew. Daphne caught me eyeing the room.

  “People pretty much work around the clock here. You can always find somebody looking for breakfast at the oddest times,” she said.

  “You mean this place doesn’t run regular office hours?” I dropped two sugar cubes in the dark coffee and swirled the spoon around, not taking my eyes off her.

  “Not anymore we don’t, not since General Eisenhower arrived, and thank goodness for that. It used to be a nine-to-five headquarters, with just a skeleton staff on weekends. It was as if the Americans—excuse me, I mean the previous general—didn’t take the war very seriously.”

  “Ike does?” I blew on the coffee, watching her over the rim of the cup. She was animated, excited, explaining how things were to the new kid.

  “Yes! Staff here works seven days a week, and long days are the rule rather than the exception. Every section is staffed twenty-four hours a day. General Eise
nhower knows this war can’t be won on bankers’ hours.”

  “How long have you been here?” I drank the coffee, bitter and sweet.

  “I joined the Women’s Royal Naval Service—they call us WRENs—in 1940. My father was in the navy, so it seemed a good choice. I started at Portsmouth Naval Base, went through women’s officer training, and then went back to Portsmouth to do the same thing I had done before I was made second officer. File papers and make tea. I kept asking for assignments with a bit more purpose. I think all I really did was irritate my superior officers.”

  “I knew we had a lot in common,” I said.

  She ignored that opening. “As soon as the first American mission set up in Grosvenor Square, I was posted here. That was five months ago, and there really wasn’t much to do before General Eisenhower arrived. Now, things are different.”

  “You’re making coffee as well as tea?”

  That got a bit of a smile. “I’ve been taken off coffee duty, thank goodness,” Daphne said. “I always managed to make it too weak or burn it or something.”

  “Pretty smart move on your part.”

  She raised her eyebrows and tapped her fingernails on the table, a bit surprised. “You may be able to make yourself useful, Lieutenant Boyle,” Daphne said. “No one else ever suspected.”

  “You never know,” I said, giving her a wink as I got up to get some food. I came back with a full plate of powdered eggs and toast that smelled almost good. We talked more, which means she spoke, I ate like a horse, listened, and learned. She and her sister had both joined up when the war broke out. Daphne chose the Women’s Royal Naval Service and her sister, Diana, went into something called the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, known as the FANYs. I asked her why they had enlisted, and with raised eyebrows, she just said, “One must do one’s duty, mustn’t one?” I just smiled and stuffed some eggs into my mouth.

  Their brother was in North Africa fighting Rommel on the Egyptian frontier. She was worried about him. And she didn’t like being called a WREN, but there was nothing she could do about that either. She didn’t like lollygagging around the cafeteria with a guy on a long-term coffee break any better, and as soon as I finished my plate we were back on the tour. She gave me the layout of the place and introduced me to people I ought to know and whose names I forgot, one after the other.

  Finally she showed me my desk, across the room from her own. It had a pile of books and briefing papers on it that looked like more reading than I did in all of high school. Then she showed her merciful side and told me to go home and sleep. She reminded me that the mess room of the U.S. Army HQ, European Theater of Operations, was the only place I could count on for coffee and “Yank food.” I told her that was fine, since we hadn’t had tea in Boston since we threw it all in the harbor. She looked blankly at me for a moment and then laughed. It was like sunlight hitting the water.

  I thought about that laugh on the walk back to the hotel and forgot to look right instead of left and almost got run over by a London cab. Safely across the street, I decided it felt good to stretch my legs and I wouldn’t be able to sleep now anyway, after all that joe. I walked back to the hotel, just so I could trace my steps back to it, then crossed the street into Hyde Park. It was huge, with wide crushed-stone paths leading in all directions. The green spaces between the paths were filled with gardens, shoots of vegetable plants sprouting up everywhere: a giant Victory Garden. I crossed a bridge spanning a long, narrow pond and found myself on a wide pathway called Rotten Row, for some very old historical reason, I hoped. I followed it and found myself back at Hyde Park Corner, which I had seen from the jeep that morning. I wandered some more and ended up at the back of a crowd stacked up outside a tall wrought-iron fence. It was Buckingham Palace itself, and I caught the tail end of the changing of the guard, gray-coated British troops marching back to their barracks and looking very imperial. I followed them for a while through St. James’s Park, and ended up back at Big Ben and Parliament. I stood there like a tourist back home gawking at the Old North Church, waiting for the bells to ring. It was the half hour, and I let the sounds wash over me, almost feeling the vibrations in my feet. How could people just walk around me, talking to each other, and not stop and listen? I kicked myself mentally for being such a rube in the city and walked along the Thames until I noticed a side road marked Downing Street. Everyone had heard about Number 10 Downing Street, the home of the British prime minister. I turned the corner and all of a sudden there it was, a couple of bobbies and a Royal Marine standing guard. If I’d moved quick enough, I could’ve gone up and knocked. Instead, I turned around and went back the way I had been headed. No sense getting Winston all riled up.

  Getting my bearings in London made me feel less isolated and alone. I had a hard time realizing that I was simply out for a stroll, passing by places I had heard of all my life, that lately had become even more important as symbols of the fight against fascism. I remembered Edward R. Murrow talking about brave Londoners under the Blitz. Now I was one of them. A temporary Londoner, anyway. I couldn’t help getting caught up in all that heroic last-stand stuff, but I wasn’t so sure about the brave part.

  I thought about what Uncle Dan, with a good dose of Irish Republican reality, would have to say about the British Empire and its capital city, London. I walked on, my feet starting to ache and a gritty tiredness creeping up on my eyelids. It was still light out and too early to hit the hay, so I trudged on, wanting to case the layout of the city streets as much as I could.

  I was on Whitehall Street, another famous name symbolizing the British government, a street that Uncle Dan would spit on with joy. Whitehall emptied out into a big square, with a large water fountain in the center and a big, tall column off to the right. Trafalgar Square and the column dedicated to Admiral Nelson. Traffic flowed around the fountain, and young girls, walking arm in arm with guys in uniform from half a dozen countries, craned their necks up and stared. I heard English, French, and other languages I guessed were Polish and Dutch. I heard a Brooklyn accent and a couple of southern drawls, too, but no Boston accents, no one to remind me of home. I put my head down, feeling alone and tired, and turned right, away from the gaiety and this symbol of English world dominance.

  I wandered down a crowded wide street jammed with traffic and pedestrians for a while but took a left into a more interesting little side street, deciding to try to loop around and find my way back to the hotel. Wellington Street—geez, did the English name everything after generals and admirals? Anyway, Wellington Street reminded me a little bit of Boston with its shops and narrow, curved turns. Coming from the direction of the river, the smells and the small streets almost made me nostalgic for my waterfront beat in the North End of Boston. I used to patrol the wharves along Commercial Street, and then turn in on Battery Street to check the shops on Hanover, all the way down to Haymarket and city hall. That was my first assignment as a bluecoat outside of South Boston, and it made me feel like a man of the world.

  I first worked out of Station 12, at the corner of Fourth and K Street in Southie. I could walk to work, and my beat took me along F Street, right past the five-and-ten and Kresge’s, where I used to beg my mom to take me to shop for toys when I was a kid. I’d walk by the big glass windows and practice twirling my baton, like Dad taught me, dreaming of the day I’d be a detective, just like he was. Some days, I didn’t feel that much older than the kid who used to press his face against those store windows and dream of buying one of those six-gun cap pistols with belt and holster, just like Tom Mix. But that was the beginning of the Depression, and those six-guns gathered dust, until one day just before Christmas. They were gone, replaced by a display of matching knickers, mittens, and wool cap. I remember thinking that my folks had to have been the ones who bought them, skipping home through dirty slush, counting the mornings left until Christmas.

  But there was no gunfight at the OK Corral for me that Christmas. I can still remember my heart breaking when my mom proudly gave me my pres
ent, a shoebox wrapped in tissue paper, too small and light to hold a Tom Mix six-shooter. She had knitted me socks, thick wool socks in an argyle pattern, and a set for my brother, same thing but in different colors. His were green and mine were red. Christmas colors. I threw the box down and bit my lip, far too old at ten to cry. Funny thing was, my mom cried. Then I did, too, and finally Danny joined in, just for the hell of it, I guess, since he was too young to know what was going on. Dad sat there, gripping his pipe in his mouth, nearly snapping the stem in his teeth, but not saying anything. Next Christmas, I got a double set of cap pistols, silver with white handles, and the holsters even had those strings so you could tie them down to your legs. Danny got a train set, and I was jealous until I realized he couldn’t have it set up all the time, but I could strap on my six-shooters and blast rolls of caps anytime.

  It was still the Depression, but something had changed in our house. Dad started bringing presents home, and not just for special occasions either. On a regular weekday, he’d show up with a new coat for one of us, or canned hams, or bottles of whiskey, maybe a toaster. Stuff like that could sit on store shelves for months waiting for somebody with cash left over after paying the rent and the coal bill and the grocery tab to come along and take a fancy to it. But at our house, it was more like the stuff took a fancy to us and just started showing up.

  When I finally got a transfer out of Southie, after walking a beat for a couple of years after I graduated from high school, it meant that I could be trusted as a rookie cop, that my desk sergeant, who was my second cousin, thought I could work on my own without a dozen relatives checking up on me every day.

  I loved the waterfront, everything from the smell of salt water, oil, and dead fish to city hall, tipping my hat to Mayor Tobin once in a while and then doing the loop again, watching the ships come and go, thinking about where they were bound. How many ships did I watch steam off that ended up docking in the Thames? I never would’ve thought I’d end up here, too. I made a motion with my hand as if I were twirling my old baton, walking my beat, familiar territory beneath my feet. I wondered about the question Harding had asked me. Would I run into a burning London house to save an unknown English life, or would I stand by, waiting for the bobbies to show up? There was nothing in it for me, but I had a hard time picturing myself on the sidelines. I whistled a jig and went back to pleasanter thoughts, smiling at the memory of carrying fish home on the trolley from the market on Fish Pier. Everyone wanted a patrolman around, and there’d be no end to the cod and mackerel wrapped in newspaper and smelling of brine and ice you’d have pressed on you of a Friday afternoon.