by Bob Mayer
“Bullshit.” But she said it with uncertainty. Her voice firmed up. “There’s more to it than that. More that’s my fault.”
“The company swap in the 2/503rd? Because Charlie company commander was the guy you dated and didn’t want Ted in his unit? Shit, Toni, Ted talked me into going with him to the 173rd. He wanted to be in the paratroopers; the best Infantry. I didn’t care. I just said sure. I don’t think Ted knew that guy was there. He never mentioned it. Just more bad luck. And it could have been Charlie Company on the ridge that day as easily as Alpha, in which case the swap would have saved his life. Trust me. I’ve pondered it a lot over the years and there’s no answer.”
“You’ve known about that?” Toni asked. “All this time?”
“Yeah,” Kane said. “So as someone once told me, get off your weepy wagon.”
Morticia came up and put coffee and orange juice in front of Toni. “Anything to eat, darling?”
Toni was staring at Kane, but she shook her head. “No, thanks.”
Morticia slid away.
“What are you going to do with the Westway info?” Toni asked. “Your pictures of the maps?”
“What you asked me to do,” Kane said. “Nothing. Delgado is dead and I’m done with it. Are you?”
“I’m working my way out.”
“Work faster,” Kane said.
Toni nodded. “I am. I’ve already rented office space for my new firm.”
Kane raised an eyebrow. “No shit?”
“No shit.”
“Tell you father yet?”
She grimaced. “That won’t be fun.”
“But as necessary as a new office.”
“Yeah. I’ll do it.”
“Good.”
“Thanks,” Toni said.
“For what? Deep-sixing the pictures?”
“For telling me about Ted.”
Kane reached across the table and took her hand. “That’s what friends do.”
Toni smiled and for a moment the worry fell from her face. “Yeah, Will. It is.” She squeezed his hand.
Kane let go and she slid out of the booth. “I’ll see you later? I want to show you the new digs when I’ve got the office set up.”
“Sure.”
Kane impressed her face from that momentary smile into his memory. He watched as she walked to the door.
Morticia slapped him on the back, a little too hard. “Sending ‘em away smiling, Kane. You’re getting better.”
“Right.”
Morticia moved on to serve a new table.
Kane grabbed his map case and went into the kitchen where Thao worked the stove and studied his textbook.
“Dai-Yu.”
“Sergeant.” Kane pulled a thick, legal size manila envelope out of the map case. “You should have this.”
Thao didn’t make a move to accept the envelope. “What is it?”
“Papers for the diner. Some other information.”
“Why should I have it?” Thao asked as he put a plate onto the counter.
“Prairie Fire,” Kane said.
Thao turned from the stove and book and gave Kane his full attention. “What are we going to do?”
“There’s no we,” Kane said. “I have to take care of something this evening.”
“I hear you five by five, Dai Yu,” Thao said. “What are we going to do?”
“Already told you. This is mine.”
“Do you remember Cambodia?” Thao asked.
“I’ve never forgotten it,” Kane said.
Thao glanced at the counter and lowered his voice. “Countersign?”
“We’ll never forget that. Or the other missions. That’s why you’re not involved now.” Kane placed the envelope on the counter next to Thao’s medical book, took a step to the cook, put his hands on Thao’s shoulders and leaned down, touching his forehead to the top of the shorter man’s head. “This is personal, my old friend,” he whispered.
Thao reached up and gripped the back of Kane’s neck. His voice was low. “You helped me bury my wife. You lay with me a night on the grave as I asked. Van Van were very mad with you for that and slowing us down. You promised you would place my ashes with my wife when it is my time. And if your time is before mine, I will do as promised and place you with your son. I will hold you to that promise, Dai Yu.” He let go of Kane.
Kane lifted his head and stepped back.
Thao held up his wrist with the bracelet on it and put it next to Kane’s, tapping them lightly together.
Kane nodded. Then walked away. As he exited onto Gansevoort and the door shut behind him, he dropped into a squat and put a tremoring hand to his eyes. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
Then he stood up straight and his hand was steady and his eyes were clear.
CIVIC CENTER, MANHATTAN
Kane sensed Mrs. Ruiz’s glare as he stepped off the elevator. He gave her a little wave and a smile. “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition,” he called out.
She folded her arms over her chest.
Kane marched in the opposite direction. Thomas Marcelle’s secretary didn’t have a chance to protest as Kane brushed past and opened the door. He invaded the inner sanctum of the firm’s head, shutting the door.
“Mister Marcelle,” Kane said.
Thomas Marcelle was reading a file, narrow glasses perched on his nose. He looked up, frowned.
The door opened behind Kane.
“You can’t just come in here!” the secretary protested.
“But I did,” Kane said.
“What do you want?” Marcelle demanded.
“I want you to get a message to Sean Damon,” Kane said.
“Get Toni and Frank.” Marcelle dismissed the secretary then focused on Kane. “Why don’t you talk to him yourself?”
“I think he’ll take it seriously coming from you,” Kane said. “He barely knows I exist, although he was looking for something with my name on it recently.”
Marcelle put the folder down and removed the glasses. “I tolerated Toni hiring you, Kane. Barely. A charity case. And because of Ted. But I’m done with you. Get out. You’re fired.”
“You’re saying all the wrong things,” Kane said. He half turned as the door opened and Frank entered, the same bodyguard who’d been with Toni at Studio 54.
“Get him out of here,” Marcelle ordered.
Kane smiled and spread his hands slightly. “I don’t want to leave yet, Frank.”
Frank, a simple but not a stupid man, hesitated.
“At gun point if necessary,” Marcelle added.
Kane looked over at Marcelle. “It’s my limited understanding of the law that if a man shoots someone who pulls a gun on them, it’s considered self-defense. Don’t you have a client who just got away with that?” He focused back at the guard. “I’ll be leaving in a few moments, Frank. After I finish telling Mister Marcelle some things he really wants to hear. Why don’t you wait outside? I promise I won’t do a thing to Mister Marcelle. Physically, at least.”
Frank was on the horns of a dilemma but the door opened and Toni walked in. She took in the situation and put a hand on Frank’s shoulder. “Wait in the hall, please.”
Frank took the out.
“What’s going on, Will?” Toni asked.
Kane pulled off the backpack. Reached in and pulled out a film case. “I visited Damon’s shit hole last night.” He waggled the case at Thomas Marcelle. “You can tell Damon he’s missing several of his collection.”
Toni had gone pale, at least as pale as her olive skin could manage. She walked to the wet bar and poured herself a drink.
Kane approached Marcelle’s desk. “Do I have your attention?”
Marcelle was staring at the film case as if Kane had brought the plague into the office. “Yes.”
“Do you know about the place where he keeps these?” Kane asked.
Marcelle shook his head. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Not sure I believe you,” Kane sai
d. “It wasn’t on your map in the board room so I’ll allow you slack on that.”
“How did you—“ Marcelle sputtered.
Kane cut him off. “I hope for everyone’s sake you have no idea what was going on there. Because if you do, you’re damned.” He returned the tape into the backpack with the others. “To get these back, tell Damon I want five hundred thousand dollars. Cash, nothing bigger than a fifty. I know he has it because he’s been skimming those Noraid jars all over the country and we Irish tend to be fucking cheap. It will fit in a single duffle bag.”
“You’re crazy,” Marcelle said.
Toni took her drink and slumped into a chair at the small conference table.
“Probably,” Kane said. “You don’t have to fire me. I quit.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Marcelle said.
“I know what I’m doing,” Kane said. “I haven’t been up to speed on what everyone else has been doing. And I’m still probably a few steps behind. That’s why I want out of this.” He glanced at Toni. “That was your suggestion, wasn’t it? For me to get out?”
Toni took a deep swallow of her drink and nodded. “Yes. But not like this. Damon will—“
Kane cut her off. “You going to let Damon know?” he asked Marcelle. “Tell him I’ll bring the films to the same place I got them from. Tonight. Seven PM, sharp. Him alone. Nobody else. Not his Unholy Trinity. Tell him I have insurance if he double-crosses me.”
“What insurance?” Marcelle demanded.
“It wouldn’t be very good insurance if I told you, would it? Let me put it this way. I know more about what he’s up to than these films. What both of you are up to. And there’s solid evidence. Half-a-million is chump change compared to that, isn’t it?”
Marcelle stood, face flushed. “Get the hell out of here.”
“Something else,” Kane said to the Marcelle patriarch. “Your daughter is done here. She’s opening her own firm.”
Toni stood and her mouth opened as if she was about to protest, but she said nothing.
“Bullshit,” Thomas Marcelle said.
Kane turned and faced Toni, waiting.
Toni addressed her father. “No. It’s not. I’m done here, too.”
Thomas Marcelle was hanging at a loss for a response perhaps for the first time in his life. Except for when Damon confronted him to make a deal years ago.
Kane graced Toni with a smile. “Ted would be proud of you.” He went to the footlocker. Spun the combination and opened it. He removed Ted’s medals and the CIB. Placed them on the table next to Toni’s drink. “I think you should have these. Not your father. That’s what Ted would have wanted.”
Then he removed Ted’s sabre from the wall.
“You don’t deserve this,” he said to Thomas Marcelle. He handed it to Toni. “For your new office. Use it to cut off the dick of the next asshole who whips it out.”
He left.
Wednesday Afternoon, 13 July 1977
BAYCHESTER, THE BRONX
A battered metal garbage can held domain in the street along the curb in front of the garbageman’s house. It was a small, one-story house on Bruner Avenue in the northeast Bronx. Kane paused the Jeep. Three tiny bedrooms, one bath, a kitchen, a living room and a screened in front porch. There was a gravel driveway to a separate garage his father had built over the course of a year on his few days off. Despite the driveway and the garage, the can marked the possible parking spot for Kane’s father who felt that patch of curb was his, whether he used it or not. Kane’s mother had never driven a car, never mind owned one. Kane noted the new air conditioner sticking out of the side of the house where the master bedroom was located adjacent to the kitchen.
Kane drove the Jeep past, searching. Many cars had signs in the windshield, ripped off pieces of cardboard with NO RADIO written in marker. That was a more accurate indicator of crime in the neighborhood than any police statistic. There was finally an opening a block away, where Arnow Avenue dead-ended in a lot covered with rotting furniture, broken TVs and other debris among the weeds and dying trees and bushes.
The Jeep didn’t have a radio, or much else, including a keyed ignition. Kane wrapped a chain around the steering wheel and stretched it to the eyebolt in front of the driver’s seat. Put a heavy lock on it and pocketed the key.
Beyond the makeshift dump, a couple of blocks to the north on the far side of I-95 and bounded by the Hutchinson River Parkway and the river, was Coop City, which boasted of being the largest cooperative housing development in the world. Kane remembered when that area used to be swampland and another informal wasteland that he and other neighborhood kids spent their day in, which even the parents called the Dump, as if formalizing it made it into a playground.
With high hopes, a section of that swampland had been developed in 1960 into Freedomland, an amusement park that was to be New York City’s challenge to Disneyland. Like the city itself, that high-minded goal had fallen far short and the park bankrupted in 1964 while Kane was at West Point. Then construction had begun on Coop City the year he graduated. Two years ago, the ‘cooperative’ had also gone bankrupt due to corruption and malfeasance, another sad tale among many in the city. Failure and despair lay over the area as heavy as the heat wave.
And this was the ‘nice’ part of the Bronx.
Kane was sweating by the time he walked to his childhood home. Four steps went to a level spot where a concrete walk cornered left around the house. Six more steps straight to the front door inside the screened in porch. That door was rarely used from some reason that Kane still didn’t know and had never questioned.
Kane walked along the side of the house to the rear. His sister was on the back stoop, clothes-pinning wet laundry to a rope line that stretched to a pulley screwed into the single tree on the other side of matchbook sized yard, near the fence separating them from their rear neighbor. Kane remembered the tree as being much bigger.
“The prodigal brother returns,” Mary said. “All hail.” She was tall and slight of build, dark hair pulled back. She wore a formless, functional dress. Her face was pale and lacked makeup.
“Dad still hasn’t bought Mom a dryer?”
“The air works,” Mary said.
“Yeah. I see he got himself an air conditioner.”
“For mom.”
“Doesn’t he sleep in the same room?” Kane asked. “Where is mom, by the way?”
“Uncle Nathan took her to the A&P a while ago. They should be back soon.”
“How’s our younger sister?”
“Doing her thing like you do your thing.”
“She still playing the guitar? Doing gigs?”
“I imagine she is.”
“She still drinking?”
“Why do you care?”
“And our brother?”
“Semper Fi like dad always says.” She nodded toward the small dining room. “You can check the wall of honor in there for his latest pictures and awards and what-all.” She looked at him. “You know, you can take your stuff any time you want. I put ‘em in a box for you once dad took ‘em down.”
“Where is he?”
“I think he’s at Camp Lejeune; if he’s not at sea. Or on embassy duty.”
“You don’t know?”
“He’s somewhere,” Mary said. “Sort of like you were somewhere on the planet for almost five years when you disappeared.” Mary pulled open the screen door and led the way into the tiny kitchen. The house was stifling, although a window fan was trying to move air.
“You should open the fridge,” Kane suggested. “Cool things off.”
“Sure, and you should come home more often now that you live in the city.”
Kane noted the door to the master bedroom was closed and he could hear the AC running. “How about opening that? Not like the house is that big. Could cool half the place.”
“Papa Bear wants it shut.”
“Right. But he’ll never know. When’s he get home from work? Six?
Seven?”
“You’ve been gone too long. He’ll know.”
“Right.”
“What’s up, Willy?”
Kane opened the fridge. Pretty bare, which explained the A&P trip. Some Black Label. “Dad still buys the cheapest beer, eh?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Mary said. “I don’t drink it.”
“Right.” Kane checked the coffee pot. It was unplugged and cleaned, ready for the next morning brewing to start their father’s day. He grabbed a glass and ran some tap water. “Can I use some ice cubes?”
“Only if you replace them,” his sister said.
He reached for the freezer handle but Mary beat him to it.
“Mom still got that vodka in there?” Kane asked.
“Screw you.” Mary cracked the tray and dropped a handful into the glass. Then she poured water into the empty slots and put it back in the freezer.
“How’s it been going?” Kane asked as he sat at the small table with three chairs.
Before she could answer or he could take a sip, Nathan’s car crunched up the short driveway. Kane glanced out, then back at his sister and spoke quickly. “Have you heard from Taryn at all? Anything?”
Mary was surprised. “No. Why?”
“Do you know how I can contact her? It’s important.”
“No,” she said with ‘end the conversation’ emphasis. “Mom needs help with the bags.”
Kane stared at his sister for a moment, then went out to help unload the groceries.
