Nightmare Alley

by Len Levinson

  He’d been awfully nice when they’d been together in the car. It was hard to believe he was the same man who’d told that horrid Lieutenant Utsler that she was an easy fuck. There was something sexy about Lieutenant Breckenridge, too, although he wasn’t a particularly handsome man. He was powerfully built and much taller than she, and that had turned her on a little. She was a tall woman herself, and she seldom met men who were much taller than she was. She thought it would be exciting to make love with a man that much taller and with such huge muscles but she’d have to wait until another came along, because she despised Lieutenant Breckenridge, whom she considered the lowest of the low.

  The lampshade filtered the light that illuminated her curvaceous body, and her legs were shapely and smooth, with none of the dimples and flab some women have on their thighs. Her ass was perfectly round and didn’t hang the way some women’s asses hang. Her boobs pointed up and out instead of lying flat on her stomach like two deflated balloons. She admired her figure in the mirror and hoped someday a man would come along who would be worthy of it.

  She finished with her hair and laid the brush on the dresser. Strapping her watch on her wrist, she saw that it was eleven o’clock in the evening. She clicked off the light and climbed into the top bunk, because she had to be on her ward at six o’clock in the morning and wanted to be well rested, unlike her roommate, who stayed out all night with men and showed up on the ward the next day looking worse than soldiers who’d been wounded in combat.

  Nurse Latham didn’t cover herself with a sheet, because it was warm in the room. She lay on the bunk in the darkened room and the warm night breeze blew in through the windows, wafting over her supple body. She thought of Lieutenant Breckenridge lying at the bottom of the cliff, and a faint smile came to her lips. I’ll bet that son of a bitch never lies to a woman again, she thought.

  Frankie La Barbara and Morris Shilansky came to an intersection, and Frankie La Barbara stopped and looked around.

  “Whatsa matter?” asked Shilansky.

  “I wanna see if anybody’s following us.”

  “Nobody’s following us.”

  “How the fuck would you know?”

  “Because I can see.”

  “You’re drunk out of your mind, you cocksucker. Follow me.”

  Frankie turned right onto a narrow street paved with cobblestones. A street lamp shone on two sailors walking toward them in a crooked line. One sailor wore his hat low over his eyes; the other sailor had lost his hat somewhere along the line. They mumbled as they stumbled past Frankie and Morris Shilansky, and straight ahead, glowing in the fog, was a red light in front of a three-story wooden building in need of a paint job.

  “That’s the place,” Frankie said.

  “I never been here before,” Shilansky replied, looking around. “What’s the name of the joint?”

  “The Buckingham. It’s not a bad whorehouse, as whorehouses go. The madam is an old friend of mine from New York.”

  They climbed the steps to the front door of the house. Frankie La Barbara looked to his left and right on the street, then pressed the doorbell. A small window was cut into the door, and two eyes heavily made up with mascara and false eyelashes appeared. The eyes widened, and then the door opened, revealing an attractive woman in her thirties, with black hair and sultry Latin features, wearing a low-cut red cocktail dress.

  “Well, look who’s here,” she said with a big smile full of teeth stained pale yellow by too much coffee and too many cigarettes.

  Frankie glanced around furtively. “I don’t want nobody to see me. Can I talk to you alone?”

  The smile vanished from her face, because she knew something was wrong. “Come with me.”

  They entered the vestibule, where a big Chinese bouncer stood behind the door, his hand on the switchblade knife in his pocket. The woman led Frankie and Shilansky down a corridor where lamps hung from the ceiling, filtering light through beaded shades. The woman opened a door, walked down another corridor, passed through two more doorways; finally they entered a kitchen where two whores sat at the table, drinking coffee and eating doughnuts.

  “Get lost,” the woman in the red dress said.

  The two whores picked up their coffee and doughnuts, scrutinized Frankie and Shilansky, and departed via another door.

  “Have a seat,” the lady in red said. “Who’s your friend, Frankie?”

  “His name’s Morris Shilansky, and he’s from Boston.”

  “I been in Boston once,” she said. “It’s a real nice town.”

  “You been everywhere,” Frankie said. “That’s your problem.”

  She smiled at Shilansky. “My name’s Rita,” she said, “and I don’t pay any attention to what that son of a bitch says"—she indicated Frankie with a motion of her chin—"because if I did, I would’ve killed myself long ago.”

  “Hi, Rita,” Shilansky said.

  “Want some coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  “Me too,” Frankie said.

  “I knew you wanted some, Frankie. You want everything that’s not nailed down.”

  “Why the fuck not?”

  She sashayed to the stove and touched her fingers to the pot of coffee sitting on one of the unlit burners. “This is still hot,” she said, taking two mugs down from the cupboard. “What’s going on, Frankie?”

  “Me and Shilansky just went AWOL.”

  “Yeah?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Why the fuck not?”

  “You’re a real pistol, Frankie. When the MPs catch you, they’ll hang you from the highest pole they can find.”

  “The MPs ain’t gonna find me.”

  She picked up the two mugs of coffee and carried them toward the table. “Why won’t they?”

  “Because you’re gonna hide us, Rita.”

  “I am?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What if I don’t?”

  “I’ll break your fucking legs.”

  She sat down and sighed. “So that’s the way it is, huh?”

  “That’s the way it is, sweetheart.”

  “You know I can have one of my bouncers break your fucking head right now, don’t you?”

  Frankie reached underneath his shirt and pulled out an Army-issue Colt .45 that he’d stolen from the Headquarters Company armorer. “Where are they?”

  “Put the heat away, will you?”

  “I think I’ll put it right here on the table, here, where I can get to it fast.”

  He dropped it onto the table and reached for his mug of coffee, taking a swig. She looked at his Colt .45 and knew he’d use it. Frankie was a tough hoodlum from Little Italy in New York City. He’d been in the Mob, and his father and all his uncles still were. Rita had worked for one of his uncles. That’s how she’d got her start “in the life.” If you didn’t play ball with people like Frankie, they killed you if you were lucky, or made you suffer for a long time if you weren’t.

  Rita smiled her most cordial smile. “Frankie,” she said, “my home is your home. Whataya need?”

  “A room for me and Shilansky, here. Three squares a day. A little pussy now and then. And nobody knows we’re here.”

  “Come off it, Frankie,” she replied. “Everybody already knows you’re here.”

  “I mean nobody on the outside.”

  “I suppose you want all this for nothing?”

  “Whataya mean, for nothing? Frankie La Barbara don’t want nothing for nothing. Frankie La Barbara always pays his way.” He reached into his pocket and took out his big fat roll of bills. “I got fifteen hundred bananas here. That oughtta cover everything.”

  “For how long?”

  “About a month.”

  “And then what?”

  “Shilansky and I leave.”

  “Shilansky and you leave for where?”

  “That’s for me to know and for you to find out.”

  “If that’s the way you w
ant it, that’s the way it’ll be.”

  “That’s the way I want it.”

  “I can get in trouble for this, you know.”

  “That’s your problem.”

  There’s not much I can do about this, she thought, looking into Frankie’s eyes and seeing the raw desperation. I'll just have to play along and hope for the best.

  “You wanna see your room now?” she asked “Or do you wanna finish your coffee first?”

  “We wanna finish the coffee first.”

  “What’re you gonna pay me, or shouldn’t I ask?”

  “Twenty dollars a day room and board for the both of us.”

  “What about the female companionship?”

  “We’ll pay the going rates, as always.”

  She thought that wasn’t such a bad deal financially, but if the MPs caught Frankie and his drunken friend, she’d probably wind up in the clink for aiding and abetting fugitives, although she could always say she didn’t know they were fugitives.

  “I got some work to do,” she said. “Call me when you need me.”

  “Okay,” Frankie replied. “You got any food in that refrigerator?”

  “Help yourself.”

  She stood and walked toward the doorway, then paused and looked back. “Put that gun away before somebody sees it and gets nervous.”

  “Right,” Frankie said, picking up the Colt .45 and jamming it into his belt, covering it with his shirt.

  She left the kitchen and Frankie sipped his coffee. Everything was going okay. He looked at Shilansky. “See?” he asked. “I toldja it’d be easy.”

  “So far, so good,” Shilansky replied, “but tell me one thing, Frankie: Where are we going when we leave here?”

  “I ain’t figured out that part yet,” Frankie replied, reaching for his package of cigarettes. “But I will. We gotta take this one step at a time, understand?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “You worry too much. We ain’t going to New Guinea no matter what happens, so cheer the fuck up, willya?”

  “I’m trying to,” Shilansky said.

  FOUR . . .

  It was quarter to six in the morning, and a glimmer of dawn was on the horizon. All the lights in the barracks were ablaze, and the voices of men could be heard as Lieutenant Breckenridge limped over the sidewalk toward the orderly room.

  He wasn’t limping badly, like a cripple, but his normally smooth gait had a discernible stutter whenever his left leg came down. He wore clean starched fatigues and the brim of his cap low over his eyes, a large, muscular man with his pants bloused around the tops of his combat boots.

  The first formation and roll call were at six o’clock, and chow was six-fifteen. Lieutenant Breckenridge hadn’t thought he’d make the first formation, but he’d done it. He approached the orderly room, a small wooden building painted yellow, and climbed the three steps, opening the door and going inside.

  “What happened to you?” asked Gerald Kurkin, the first sergeant of Headquarters Company.

  “Had a little accident in a car,” Lieutenant Breckenridge replied.

  Kurkin had thinning light-brown hair and lumpy features. He lifted a piece of correspondence off his desk, while next to him Pfc. Lawrence Nagle, the Headquarters Company clerk, banged on his typewriter. Lieutenant Breckenridge found a chair and sat down, taking out a cigarette and lighting it up.

  He still was sleepy, because he hadn’t got to bed until two o’clock in the morning, after he’d filled out his report at the provost marshal’s office and been treated at the post hospital.

  He’d told the MPs he’d been hitchhiking and had been picked up by a drunk who subsequently drove off the road and hit a tree. Lieutenant Breckenridge said the car and driver were gone when he woke up. He tried to make it back to the post and was picked up by the MPs.

  The MPs were suspicious of his story, but what could they do? No crime had been committed, so they drove him to the hospital, where he was patched up and sent home.

  Now it was another day. Somewhere on his medical records it would state that he’d been found battered and cut on a lonely country road one night, but no one would pay any special attention to it. It was all over except for the healing of cuts and bruises. He tried not to think about Nurse Latham, because when he remembered her his cuts and bruises felt worse.

  He puffed his cigarette as other young lieutenants showed up at the orderly room. Sergeants passed through, and then Captain Irwin Spode, the CO, arrived.

  “Atten-hut!” shouted Sergeant Kurkin.

  Everyone leaped to his feet and stood at attention.

  “As you were,” said Captain Spode, walking toward his office and opening the door.

  Lieutenant Breckenridge sat down and looked at his watch. It was five minutes before the first formation. The door to the orderly room opened and Sergeant Cameron walked inside and looked around, finally letting his eyes come to rest on Lieutenant Breckenridge.

  He walked toward Lieutenant Breckenridge and bent low, murmuring: “Sir, can I speak with you alone for a moment?”

  Something in Sergeant Cameron’s voice said it was urgent. “Of course, Sergeant,” Lieutenant Breckenridge said. “Let’s go outside.”

  He arose and followed Sergeant Cameron to the door. Together they stepped out into the pale dawn light.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Lieutenant Breckenridge.

  “Let’s go someplace where nobody can hear us.”

  They walked to the side of the orderly room. Opposite them was the big open parade ground surrounded by the barracks of the regiment. Smoke curled into the sky from the chimneys of mess halls.

  “Sir,” said Sergeant Cameron, his eyes darting about nervously, “six men from the recon platoon weren’t in their bunks this morning. Should I count them as AWOL, or what?”

  “What six?”

  “Corporal Gomez, Pfc. O’Rourke, Pfc. Delane, Pfc. La Barbara, Pfc. Shilansky, and Pfc. Billie Jones.”

  “Shit,” said Lieutenant Breckenridge.

  “I don’t know what to do, sir.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “We gotta do something.” Sergeant Cameron looked at his watch. “First formation is in five minutes.”

  “Those stupid sons of bitches,” Lieutenant Breckenridge said. “They drive me crazy.”

  “Should I report them AWOL or shouldn’t I?”

  “Let me think for a moment.”

  Lieutenant Breckenridge lit another cigarette and puffed it nervously. He knew the men should be reported as AWOL, but he didn’t want that to happen. Then they’d be fugitives, and when they were caught they’d be thrown into the stockade. Maybe he should give them a chance, another twenty-four hours or so. Maybe they all had gotten drunk and couldn’t make it back to the post.

  “Don’t report them AWOL,” Lieutenant Breckenridge said. “We’ll cover for them for twenty-four hours. Maybe they’ll drag their asses back by then.”

  “If you say so, sir.”

  “I didn’t say anything, Sergeant. We never had this conversation. I’m not giving you any orders of any kind about this matter. What you do you’ll do on your own. If anything goes wrong, it’ll be your ass.”

  “It’ll be your ass, too, sir, and they’ll be harder on you than they will be on me, because you’re an officer.”

  “I know that. We’ll both be in trouble, but I’m willing to take the chance.”

  “Me too.”

  “Okay. If the men return, let me know.” Lieutenant Breckenridge took off his cap and ran his fingers through his short brown hair. “I wish I knew where they were. I’d go get the bastards myself.”

  “You might ask Sergeant Butsko, sir. He might have an idea.”

  Lieutenant Breckenridge put his cap back on and lowered the visor over his eyes. “That’s a good idea. I’ll go see him after formation.”

  Breeeeeeeeeeeeeetttttttt! Whistles blew all across the parade ground, and seconds later, men charged out of the doors of their barracks
. They lined up platoon by platoon in their company areas, dressed right and covered down. Sergeants and officers barked orders, and the men tried to steel themselves for the day that lay ahead. Sergeant Cameron took his position in front of the recon platoon, and Lieutenant Breckenridge stood with the other lieutenants beside the orderly room. There were four platoons in Headquarters Company, and in front of all of them stood First Sergeant Gerald Kurkin.

  The company stood at attention stiffly. Captain Spode marched out of the orderly room and proceeded to a position in front of Sergeant Kurkin, who saluted Captain Spode. Captain Spode saluted back. Sergeant Kurkin about-faced and looked at the company.

  “Report!” shouted Sergeant Kurkin.

  “First Platoon all present and accounted for, Sergeant!"

  “Second Platoon all present and accounted for, Sergeant!"

  “Third Platoon all present and accounted for, Sergeant!"

  Now it was Sergeant Cameron’s turn, and without hesitation he raised his stiffened fingers to his right eyebrow and shouted: “Reconnaissance Platoon all present and accounted for, Sergeant!"

  Sergeant Kurkin executed another slick about-face. Captain Spode stood in front of him, also at attention. Sergeant Kurkin saluted and yelled: “Headquarters Company all present and accounted for, sir!"

  Captain Spode returned the salute, while back in formation Lieutenant Breckenridge took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The deed is done, he thought. He wondered why he was sticking his neck out for the men who’d gone AWOL, but deep down he knew the answer. He’d been in combat with them, and he had to help them just as they’d helped him when the bombs were falling and the bullets were flying and the Japs were charging and screaming banzai at the tops of their lungs.

  It was a small white Baptist church with a white steeple and a bell in the belfry. Its doors were locked at that early hour of the morning, and no one was supposed to be inside, but one man, in a garish Hawaiian shirt, knelt in front of the altar, his hands clasped together in prayer, an expression of misery on his face.

  He was Pfc. Billie Jones, the former itinerant preacher from Georgia, who’d snuck into the church the night before, hidden in a closet, and been praying ever since, because he didn’t want to go to New Guinea and die.