by Bill Mesce
Harry turned to Grassi. “Before you get yourself any further into a lather, have you asked yourself why Ryan didn’t just quash this thing?”
Grassi’s mouth opened but, as was often the case, he had done so without considering what he’d actually say. His mouth closed.
“Let’s not take these memos at face value,” Harry said. “Assume there’s a conversation behind them. You can bet your GI shirt a flat-out dismissal was high on DiGarre’s Christmas list, and you can also bet Ryan would’ve given his eyeteeth to give him one. But there’s too much evidence on the table. My sense from DiGarre is there’s a lot of parties interested in this case. Maybe that interest runs to SHAEF, maybe Whitehall, maybe further. People want to know what went wrong when the 351st got pasted last week, what’s gone wrong with it this week, and what’s somebody going to do about it. DiGarre’s no dummy, trust me, but he may have painted himself into a corner here. He precipitated when he sacked Halverson. Now he’s got no fall guy; he’s the one on the spot now. He can’t just turn the investigation off. Think about it: Halverson starts the investigation, DiGarre cans Halverson, then calls it off? That’s a sequence that screams that the general’s got something to hide. We can claim he squelched the investigation to cover his own butt, and that’s how it’ll look. DiGarre’s got to let this go to trial and hope for an acquittal. He’s got no choice; that’s the only thing that permanently puts all questions to rest. If we lose, any complaints we make get written off as plain old sour grapes.”
“If we lose?” Grassi mocked. “If I was the general I wouldn’t sweat that too much.”
“I don’t think we’re played out yet,” Harry said.
“You still think that discipline argument has a chance?” Ricks asked him.
“It’s not quite the blasphemy of murder and mayhem DiGarre’s expecting us to present.”
Grassi, as most fervent men are, was reluctant to give up his fervor. “What about Markham and Anderson?”
“What about them?” Harry asked casually.
“We still don’t have access, not unless you want to take the captain’s advice and spend the next three weeks sitting on our duffs up at Elsworth trying to catch them.”
“To hell with Markham and Anderson,” Harry said. “Unless one of them confesses, which I’m sure you’ll agree is unlikely, all you’ll get from a trip up there is more b.s. All we really need to do over the next few weeks is show the flag up there, and that’s primarily for Anderson’s benefit. Right now, I’ll bet that little cracker’s thinking he’s clear of this. We need to let J.J. know we haven’t forgotten him. Let him sweat a bit over the next couple of weeks. That’s a long time to sweat.”
Harry fell silent. Then he said, “They’re desperate. This was just the first round. It was a good one for them, but all Ryan could do was provide DiGarre with some breathing space to try to figure a next move. As long as they’re providing that kind of time, let’s use it to our advantage.
“Pete, in the beginning you were worried we were moving too fast. Now we’ve got the time to go back over our evidence carefully, time to go back to our witnesses and talk to them again, a proper follow-up, now that we know what we’re dealing with. Maybe Van Damm and those whiz kids of his have come up with something new for us. They can’t close the door all the way on us fellas, so let’s see if we can’t push it back open a bit.”
“As long as we have this kind of time, maybe we can take a little breather ourselves,” Grassi said with a yawn. “The way we’ve been going, everything’s starting to run together in my head.”
“I’m surprised to hear myself admit it,” Ricks said, “but I agree with Armando. If I might make a prudent suggestion — ”
“Do you ever do anything but?” Grassi jibed.
Ricks ignored him. “ — a little time off might not be a bad idea. Tired men make mistakes. Say we resume tomorrow after Sunday services?”
Grassi smiled mockingly. If he worshiped at all on Sunday mornings it was from his bunk.
Harry stood. “It has been a bear of a week. Why don’t we make it Monday morning?”
“No argument there!” Grassi trumpeted.
Ricks turned to Grassi, feigning a look of being impressed. “No argument? What a welcome change of pace!”
“Hey, Boss, hear that?” Grassi hooted. “The captain made a funny!”
Harry allowed himself a small chuckle.
*
But Harry did not heed his own advice. He did not put the case away but sat in his quarters poking through his notes and files. He considered going down to the canteen for something to eat, or maybe even a stroll to The Old Eagle, but standing at his window he saw Ryan down in the yard crossing the cobbles for the gates, and decided instead to have the canteen bring food up.
After dining in his quarters he slid open one of his escritoire drawers and drew out a framed photograph of Cynthia and the children. In the photo all three were standing in a park against a field of blossoming cherry trees. Evidently they had come straight from church, Cynthia wearing a dark suit with a matching ribbon in her hair, and the boys flanking her with forced smiles as they chafed in their miniature suits. In the black-and-white photo, the slender streaks of gray in her hair had disappeared. He had made a practice of not displaying the photo as the other married men did, keeping it something private. Leaving the photo out, he drew a sheet of V-mail paper from the escritoire and began to write:
Cyn —
I miss you.
Nothing else came. He thought of crumpling it up, but then thought the better of it, signed it, and sealed the fragile little message in an envelope. He called for an orderly and had the envelope placed with the outgoing post.
The fine day began to come to a premature close late in the afternoon as a fresh rank of storm clouds pushed in over the city. With the early dusk, Harry tuned the wireless to soft music, sat at his lamp table, drew on his reading spectacles, and turned to The Dain Curse, which he had set down five nights before. As he tried to pick up the thread of the story, struggling to recall what he’d already read, those five nights began to feel like an eon.
When he awoke, the book had toppled to the floor, the sky was black, and the breeze through the open window was damp with rain. Distant thunder rumbled like far-off artillery, and lightning presented a short-lived frieze of rooftops and cloudscapes framed by Harry’s window. He was surprised that no one on the night watch had called to him to draw his blackout curtains or douse his lamplight. Perhaps in the rain such precautions were academic. He glanced at his watch but it had wound down, stilled just before midnight. He guessed it to be quite late since there was no music from the wireless, only a low hum broken by a crackle of static sparked by the flashes of lightning. He picked up his volume of Hammett, set it down on the lamp table and his spectacles alongside. He sat a moment, rubbing his tired eyes, then switched off the lamp.
At first he thought the rattle came from his fumbling for the lamp chain, but then he realized it came from elsewhere in the room: the door. The noise stopped and he sat still in his chair. Someone passing in the hall? Or, he thought only half facetiously, ghosts. But ghosts did not leave shadows and, in the dim light under his door, Harry could see a shadow.
It was too dark to see but Harry heard the doorknob turning, first one way, then another. Another thing ghosts did not do was fumble for keys, and now Harry heard them jangling as they stabbed at the lock.
He stood, telling himself there was no reason to be afraid, this was obviously a simple mistake on someone’s part, nothing more. But his heart accelerated, beating a little harder, sounding a little louder in his ears.
Now he heard the sounds of someone trying to force the key into the lock.
Harry turned off the wireless, thinking this might help inform the keyholder that the room was already occupied. The scratching at the lock didn’t stop.
“Yes?” Harry called out, his voice tight and high enough to embarrass him.
The noises s
topped.
Curious now, Harry took a few steps toward the door, his hand reaching for the glass knob. As his fingers touched it, the knob jumped in his hand as something akin to a cannonball pounded the other side of the door. Harry jumped back. Bang! It came again, the door shuddering, and then again.
His mind was oddly clear. He was terrified, yet another part of his brain was scientifically analytical about what was being used on the door. What could the intruder have found in the hall to use? A chair? Yet still another part of his mind declared that only a complete loon would calmly stand by investing his time in such pointless observations.
He went to the window and tried calling across the courtyard to the gate MP’s, but his voice was lost in the storm. He went to his telephone and dialed the orderly room. He held a hand over his heart, but it didn’t deaden the pounding in his ears and he could barely hear the answering voice in the receiver.
“This is Major Voss in — ” He blinked. Now, wasn’t that funny? He couldn’t remember his room number.
“Yes, Major?”
They’d know the number, he told himself. Of course. “There’s someone trying to break into my room.” He strained to keep his voice even.
“Now?”
“Yes, they’re in the hall right now. Could you send someone up as soon as possible?”
“On the — ”
Lightning flared, very close this time, and instead of a dull rumble, the thunder came as a sharp, startling crack! that rattled the windowpanes. The phone went dead. Harry set the receiver down. He turned to the door.
The pounding had continued but a new noise had been added: a cracking and splintering of wood. In the next flash of lightning Harry could see the door beginning to buckle down the middle. He found himself stepping backward until he was against the wall farthest from the door.
New sounds: footsteps. Then scuffling. Then silence.
A knock. “Major Voss?”
It took Harry a few seconds to find his voice. “Yes?”
“Corporal Yelavich, Major. Military Police.”
Harry suddenly realized he was panting.
In the hall, beams of electric torches flashed about. In the swaths of light Harry could make out three MPs: the corporal at the door and two others standing over a figure slumped on the floor. Harry recognized him as the captain from Oklahoma he’d found sitting in his damp bathrobe in the orderly room the night of the air raid. The captain smelled heavily of whiskey and was mumbling drunkenly into his collar. Nearby, Harry could see a fire extinguisher on the floor, its bottom rim dented and scuffed.
“You all right, Major?” The MP corporal looked concerned.
Harry could feel the sheet of sweat across his forehead. “Sure. Fine. What happened to the — ”
The lights flickered and resumed their liverish glow
“Ah, here they come,” the corporal said. “Musta been the storm. You sure you’re OK, Major? He give you a scare, sir?”
Harry shrugged.
The corporal pointed to the captain. “Captain Bowman,” and the corporal made some bottle-tipping motions. “Overdid it a bit, know what I mean? It happens. He’s got the room right below yours. Got himself a little confused is all. We can haul ’im down to the Provost if you wanna press charges.”
“No, no, that won’t be necessary. Just get him to bed.”
“By tomorrow, he may not even ‘member he did this. I’ll see he knows, make sure he apologizes.”
“No need.”
“I’ll have someone come up about the door in the morning.”
“All right. Thanks, Corporal.”
“Have a good night, Major.”
“Right. Thanks.”
It was hours before Harry fell asleep. Though he didn’t remember his dreams, they must have been nightmares; he was drenched with sweat when he awoke the next morning.
*
As a rule, Harry had not attended Sunday services since coming overseas earlier that year. In part, this was because of the difficulty of finding a practicing Russian Orthodox congregation in central London. But there was another more important reason. He had, on occasion, sat in a variety of churches, even attended a service at Westminster. But church service had reminded him of worship at home, his wife on one side, his older boy to the other, and his youngest son on his lap. The memory offered more heartache than solace.
This Sunday, he enjoyed breakfast at his window, drinking in the rain-burnished morning along with his somewhat less savory plate of Spam and powdered eggs, then tended to his morning toilet, pulled on a fresh uniform, and attended services at a small Anglican chapel a few blocks from the Annex. Heartache or no, it was still a touch of home and this day he found himself sorely needing it, for he had lost Joe Ryan.
Harry could never forgive Ryan’s conduct over those last few days, but neither could he forget a lifelong friendship. They’d grown up together, and Ryan had been just about Harry’s only friend since he’d come into the service, and particularly during their time in London. Though caustic and condescending, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, and self-seeking, Ryan had always been his guardian, getting him into the Army, helping him to his majority, feeding him choice cases including, ironically enough, this last one. To Harry, who had never been farther than a few hours’ drive from his home, Ryan’s companionship throughout these months overseas, and that bit of home he represented, had kept him from going half-mad with homesickness.
Now, Ryan was gone, aligned against Harry with what was beginning to seem like the entire rank of Allied military chiefs.
Harry had had, until then, little responsibility for the welfare of others. The only impact his actions normally had was on whatever defendant was sitting across from him. But now he had to consider more far-reaching impacts. Ryan had, all along, told him what the professional consequences of the affair could mean. Harry’s concern had always been less what they could mean for himself than what they could mean for Cynthia and his sons.
There was also Ricks and Grassi. Harry’s decision could very well blot their ledgers as well. Ricks had stepped back from sharing that responsibility with him, and Grassi, with his nearly sociopathic lack of empathy for the situation of others, could never be a true sharer.
And there was my contribution. A friendly hand extended from a cordial stranger had turned out to be the hand of a spy, a peeper.
All in all, Harry had never felt so woefully, vulnerably far from home.
He tried to chase the feeling away all that long, empty day with a trip to the cinema, with strolls in the park, with closeting himself in his quarters poring over the case information for the hundredth and hundred-and-first times. But as surely as the ghosts of Rosewood Court reasserted themselves in the shadows of the waning day, back came that haunting heartache, that emptiness, and with it...doubt.
There was no chorus of support for him, Ricks, and Grassi; no concession from any quarter that there was any merit to their arguments. As he had in those early-morning hours when he had first detected the discordant notes in Markham’s confession, Harry wondered, Is it just me? He wondered if that’s how madmen thought.
All of which was why dusk found him stretched out on his bed, his head bobbing to the music from the wireless, a half-empty bottle of Black & White on his night-stand, a glass of same sloshing in his hand. He closed his eyes and reached through a liquory haze for the memory of a place near a lodge on Lake Hopatcong in the New Jersey woodlands where he and Cynthia had sometimes gone. On the wireless was a tune from those days, Bunny Berrigan tooting his way through “I Can’t Get Started.”
Harry reached for the Black & White and freshened his drink. He took a sip, chased it with a drink from the water glass on the nightstand, then lay back on his bed until the liquor stopped churning in his stomach.
It wasn’t true, he mused, no, no, no, that one could forget with booze. In fact, it was stirring up old memories — along with his treacherous stomach — and bringing them up quite clearly. He could
smell the old varnished wood smell of his desk in third grade, the arid smell of chalk dust, the stale scent of Miss Friedlander’s five-and-dime perfume as she stood at the head of the class and had them recite “I’m a Little Teapot.” That was some teacher, that Miss Friedlander, Harry reflected. Sweater girl. Knockers like footballs.
The name of that place in the Jersey woods came back to him now: “Freddy ‘Hi Ya!’ Watha’s Wahoo Palace.” A place worth forgetting, perhaps, with its faded paper streamers and insect-filled Chinese lanterns, but worth recalling — especially now — for the balm of the lake licking at the beams of the dance floor that extended over the water, a whipped-cream moonglade floating on the waves. Across the lake they could hear the discordant mesh of ballroom orchestras from the first-class hotels along the lakeshore, the places visited by the likes of the Rockefellers and celebrities like stripper Sally Rand: the Bon Air, the Mt. Arlington, the Alamac and its gardens Cynthia naively likened to those of a French palace, the Westerley looking like a fairyland castle sprawling down one of the lakeshore hills to the water.
But Freddy’s and its adequate but spirited band was palace enough for Cynthia and Harry They swayed on the dance floor, over the lake, until the band went home, then drifted back to their room at the Sunnyside (a bit more within their means than the likes of the Westerley) to tumble together like bobby-soxers in a cinema balcony. Another drink of Black & White and he could recall the cold, mossy smell of the lake, the mustiness of the warped boards of the dance floor, Cynthia’s scent of Ivory soap and talcum and rosewater, and the vaguely erotic air of summer perspiration.
Another drink and his head was spinning. He swung his feet to the floor, trying to anchor himself, closing his eyes until the shadows twirling about him ceased moving. He opened his eyes to the darkness, to the ghosts fluttering the open curtain, to the dull, grinning glow of the wireless dials.
Open on the bed next to him was a letter that had come with the day’s post. A photograph had been enclosed showing a stretch of Branch Brook Park not far from their four-room walk-up. In the background Harry could see furrows and support sticks for tomato plants and people working the ground with hoes and rakes. In the foreground stood Cynthia in smudged coveralls and dirty gardening gloves. Her hair was tied up in a kerchief. Harry thought of Rosie the Riveter posters. The boys flanked her, Ricky sporting an exaggerated Bugs Bunny grin and Jerry — always the shy one — trying to slip behind his mother. The letter read:
