Glory Boys

by Harry Bingham

  Squeezing his fear and self-pity to one side, he flung the door open. Outside stood a woman dressed in a black coat, black hat and a broad scarlet sash with Temperance Army embroidered on it in white. Seeing Willard, Rosalind grinned, pulled off her hat and let her dark gold hair tumble down.

  ‘Temperance Army,’ she said huskily. ‘We have reports of some terrible sinning taking place at this address.’

  Willard felt angry and relieved at the same time, but was careful to let only the relief show. ‘Gosh, it’s you. Come right on in. I believe some sinning was just about to commence.’ He led her in, to a jug of iced martini. ‘Well? How d’you get on?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said, removing her sash and coat. ‘The first problem was how to spend time in the neighbourhood without looking out of place. I thought about borrowing one of my maid’s dresses, but then what was I meant to be doing hanging around an intersection on the Lower East Side all day? Then it came to me. If I was going to be out of place, I might as well be really out of place. So I signed up with the Temperance Army and told them I wanted to bring in sinners. I’ve been there for two days, ringing my bell and shouting myself hoarse. Nobody took a second look at me. A few folks felt sorry for me and took some of my leaflets, bless them.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Not a rabbi in sight. Not even Jews, really, certainly not the religious types. I’d bet my life that there’s no Jewish religious organisation anywhere close.’

  Willard nodded slowly. ‘But Powell Lambert finances everything they need. Holy books, vestments, furnishings for the synagogues. Everything. Twenty-nine thousand dollars’ worth of materials in the last year alone.’

  ‘All to that address?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A mistake maybe?’

  ‘No. It’s not just a single bit of paper, you see. There’s insurance, transportation, certification, billing, all kinds of things. It’s an amazingly complex business, this trade finance game.’

  ‘Yes, I see.’ Rosalind sipped her martini thoughtfully. She had an odd way of doing it: lowering her mouth to the glass before tipping it, like a churchgoer at communion.

  ‘Storage?’ asked Willard suddenly.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Storage? Was there any place to store goods if they did arrive? A warehouse or something?’

  ‘Not a warehouse, but there was a garage at the back. Big double doors, always locked. I couldn’t get in or see in.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Willard swigged his martini and put it down. In the past, he’d never thought of himself as an intelligent man. Beyond a certain point, in fact, Willard thought of intelligence as a social failing: like not being able to hold drink or being no good at sport. But times had changed. Willard was facing a new kind of enemy and only thinking could help. He frowned. ‘It’s a shame we aren’t able to see the documents that Arthur Martin collected.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But, you know, if I had been Arthur, worried that somebody was going to start cutting up rough, I’m not sure I’d have left anything important just laying around. Especially not here.’

  ‘I agree.’ Something in Rosalind’s tone of voice made Willard look sharply at her.

  ‘You think so too? You thought so that time you came to burglarise me?’

  ‘Yes. Sorry.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say so?’

  ‘This is a whole new game. I’m not sure what the rules are.’

  Willard bit his lip, not happy with Rosalind’s reticence. There were times when she seemed very warm and friendly, other times when he felt almost patronised. ‘Well, I think you might have said something,’ he muttered sulkily. ‘I mean, we’re either in this together or we’re not.’

  ‘Sorry.’ She hung her head, like a repentant child.

  ‘But still, the cupboard…’

  Willard opened the cupboard, which, as before, contained linen in the lower half, movie and war mementoes above. Willard cleared things out, while Rosalind made a pile on the floor.

  ‘You’re the first living breathing war hero I’ve met,’ she said, after a pause. ‘Most of the men I meet either never went to France, or talk a lot about it and it turns out they never got beyond a training camp or five days at the front the week before armistice.’

  ‘I’m not really a hero, though. I know men who were, served under one in fact. Captain Rockwell.’

  ‘Captain Rockwell? As in…?’

  ‘The Glory Boys. Yes.’ Willard pulled the original Times article from the pile in front of Rosalind and spread it out. The main photo was of Rockwell himself, but there was a subsidiary photo showing every pilot in the squadron, including a very young Willard. He looked at the photo with mixed emotions. The Glory Boys. He had taken intense pride in being one of that select band, but now, alongside the pride, there was something else, some impulse of honesty that struggled to come out. ‘We were a very good unit, perhaps even the best. But we others didn’t have what Rockwell had. He was … unique. It took a special sort of thing to fight that well and we didn’t have it. I didn’t. I fought well. But that’s all. I wasn’t a hero.’

  Rosalind stared at him. She had a captured German flying helmet in her hands, which she held as one might hold an injured bird. ‘That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you talk like that. Normally, you try to sound modest, but you look as if you’d die if anyone took you seriously.’

  ‘Yes, well, of course it isn’t everybody that shoots down five of the enemy’s aircraft. It isn’t as though I didn’t see action.’ Willard spoke quickly, covering up his earlier moment of truthfulness, not sure why he’d said it. He folded the article again, then emptied the cupboard at double speed until it was bare. ‘There!’

  ‘Now what?’

  Willard didn’t know. He hadn’t had a plan, just an impulse. He tapped at the back of the cupboard, pulled at the architrave, jiggled the shelves, ran his hand over every surface. He found nothing. ‘It was this cupboard? You’re sure?’

  ‘The built-in cupboard left of the door. It must be.’

  Willard jiggled at the shelves again: nothing. Behind him, Rosalind stirred. The movement probably meant nothing. Maybe her legs were cramping. But Willard was feeling sensitive. He didn’t like the occasional impression that Rosalind was less than entirely awed by him.

  ‘Hold on.’

  He left the apartment and ran downstairs to the janitor’s store cupboard in the basement, where he found a box of tools. He took the tools and went back up.

  Using hammer and screwdriver, he began tapping at the back and sides of the cupboard. To left and right, he hit brickwork right away. At the back of the cupboard, the screwdriver tip bounced instantly off solid board, which had been covered with lining paper, then painted. Willard pulled his head out, banged it, swore and rubbed it. As he did so, he caught sight of something: a dog-eared scrap of lining paper in the top left-hand corner. The other corner had the same thing.

  ‘Ha!’

  Beneath the dog-eared paper on both sides, was a screw-head, painted white, hardly visible. Willard unscrewed them both, looked further down, found two more, and unscrewed those too. As the last screw eased from its hole, the entire cupboard back began to come away from the wall. Sheets of newspaper had been used to plug the gap between the board and the wall. And gummed to the back of the board was a flat canvas pouch, bulging with documents.

  40

  Out to sea, a typhoon smashed its way northwards. Huge waves thundered on the beach. Coconut palms tugged and screamed in the wind. Poll was snug inside, but even so her timbers rocked and groaned in the eddying draughts.

  The cops used the wind.

  The noise allowed them to drive up to the hangar and enter without Abe hearing a thing. The first he knew of anything was a flashlight in his face, a gun at his temple, and the tearing metallic snap of handcuffs slamming into position. Once he was cuffed, the cops put the electric light on. One cop strolled idly down Abe’s workbenches, sweeping all the tools, parts, cas
tings, and models to the floor with repeated sweeps of his arm. ‘Whoops. Damn. Woah – it happened again.’ Another cop looked at Poll and gave her a kick on her tail cone that ripped right through her fabric shell. Over in the corner, under the broken bulb, a third cop pulled the sheet off the boxes of booze. ‘Hey Captain, this ain’t legal, is it?’

  They hauled Abe downtown.

  They searched him, photographed him, threw him into a tiny windowless cell, which contained an iron bed, no mattress and a can that seeped water and urine across the concrete floor. He had no food or water. He was permitted one phone call, which he made to a lawyer whose name he picked out of the phone book. The phone rang eight times without answer. ‘That’s tough shit,’ said the cop. ‘That’s your call over.’

  At one in the morning, he was hauled into another room, this one containing a metal desk and two chairs. Abe stood, while two cops lounged in the chairs and interrogated him.

  Did he admit to using the federal mails to transport alcohol? Did the cases of alcohol found in the hangar belong to him? If not, to whom did they belong and what were they doing there? How long had he been carrying booze? Who bought it? How much did he sell it for? How much money had he been making from the enterprise?

  But aside from confirming his name and residence, Abe answered nothing. At one point, one of the two cops got bored. He got up from his seat, walked around the desk and punched Abe as hard as he could in the stomach.

  The blow was shockingly hard. Abe felt the smashing force of the punch, the sudden lurch of the room around him, a sharp knock where his falling head cracked up against the concrete floor. For a second or two, the pain was so strong, Abe didn’t even quite know which part of him had been hit. It felt like someone had just picked up the wall and hit him with it. His belly contracted in a series of dry, acidic retches that left him gasping for breath. The cop who’d hit him stood over him for a second or two, then strolled back to his original position. Abe stopped retching, hauled himself first to his knees, then his feet, and stood again, facing forward, swaying slightly.

  ‘You wanna talk?’

  Abe shook his head.

  The cop exchanged a pale grin with his colleague, as though he’d just got the answer he wanted. The interrogation continued.

  Abe was kept standing until four in the morning. He was then left alone for forty minutes, until his next interrogation started shortly before five. This time he had a new pair of cops, tougher than the first two. He had a cup of hot coffee thrown in his face. He was punched and kicked. The cops were innovators, artists and athletes combined. They came up with ideas that Abe would never have thought of, like prostrating Abe on the floor, so one of them could stamp hard down on Abe’s ankle, as the second one kicked hard at his knee joint. Abe’s legs swelled so he could hardly stand, but if he didn’t, he was punched and kicked until he did. He wasn’t allowed to sit or lie. He wasn’t allowed to eat or drink.

  After four hours, he was taken back to his cell. Abe fell almost instantly asleep, but his rest lasted only fifteen minutes. At a quarter past nine, the police captain who’d arrested him came into the cell holding two cups of coffee and a packet of cigarettes. Abe took the coffee and a cigarette. His lips were so badly injured that the coffee stung and he had to pull his gashed bottom lip down to make a place to hold the cigarette. The police captain lit up for both of them.

  ‘Looks like they’ve been treating you pretty rough.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘You know, it’s tough being a law officer in this town. The hoodlums mostly own the place. It ain’t making the arrests which is tough, it’s getting anything to stick.’

  ‘I could use some water.’

  ‘Sure, looks like you could.’ The captain opened the cell door and yelled down the hall. ‘Flaherty, you ape, go get some water. And find a cookie or something. We could all use something to eat.’ He closed the door. ‘You know how many speakeasies there are in Miami?’

  Abe shook his head.

  ‘More than two hundred. In a town of forty thousand people. Bootleg whiskey is so easy to get a hold of, you can buy it as cheap now as you could during the war. Almost. Almost as cheap. You bootleggers have got to make your turn, right?’

  Abe said nothing.

  ‘But you know, I could make two arrests a day every day for a year and still get no place. You know why? First, I wouldn’t get convictions. Not here. Not in this town. And even if I did, every day I closed down a speakeasy, there’d be another one back in the same place next day. Same with you guys. Bootleggers are like ants. You can poison ’em one day, but they’ll be back the next day, probably more than ever. You see my problem?’

  Abe nodded.

  There was a knock at the door, a big policeman, one of the pair that had been assigned to kicking the crap out of Abe, arrived with a glass of water and two pecan cookies on a small white plate. Abe drank the water and ate one of the cookies. Everything inside him hurt. Everything outside hurt worse. He wanted to drink, sleep and eat in that order.

  ‘But then again,’ continued the captain, ‘there’s your side of things to look at. It’s real sad, in a way. Hero of the United States and all, running booze like a two-bit bootlegger. If the newspaper folks ever got hold of a story like that, it’d be all over. Not just Florida, I mean all over. The great Captain Rockwell bringing in liquor through the federal mails. That’s sad. Real sad. Me, I’d get a lot of credit. The guy who brought in Captain Rockwell. Imagine the ballyhoo. Can you imagine?’

  Abe shrugged.

  ‘You’re not very talkative, are you? I’ve seen crabs talk more than you.’ The policeman paused and lit up another cigarette, inhaling deeply a couple of times before resuming. ‘Now what I’d like to do is cut a deal. You tell me who you sell to. You give me names. You help me bust the guys who operate the racket. And that’s it. We don’t make a fuss. We don’t ask you to testify. We don’t tell the newspapers. You either clean up your business here, or you go to another state and do whatever the hell you got to do.’ The policeman leaned intently forward, so his face was only twelve inches from Abe’s. ‘Let’s nail these bastards. There’s no point the little guys taking the fall. Huh? How about it? What d’you say?’

  Abe groaned.

  Not out loud, but to himself. And not because of his bruised and battered body, but because of the captain’s question. He could still quit. He was still free to get out.

  ‘Huh, buddy? What d’you say?’

  ‘I say…’

  Sensing victory, the policeman leaned in again. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I say that you’re a horse’s ass.’

  41

  Trade finance documents.

  The hidden papers were trade finance documents, nothing else. Insurance forms. Delivery receipts. Letters of credit. Transportation acceptances. Correspondence.

  Both Willard and Rosalind had snatched eagerly for the pile, glanced at the first few papers with breathless expectancy – then sank back, baffled and disappointed. They went through the pile slowly and carefully. Nothing. Rosalind put down the last tedious letter with a puff of frustration. She pulled off her shoes and let her stockinged feet dig into the thick cream-coloured carpet.

  ‘I feel rotten saying it, but this seems awfully dull.’

  ‘You know what this is, I suppose? This is trade finance work. The sort of thing I spend my days sorting out. The sort of thing Arthur did too.’

  Rosalind picked up a sheet of paper. ‘Six thousand dollars’ worth of tanned hides. Received by New Orleans Leather Goods, Inc, in good condition, April 27, 1926. That sounds like an awful lot of cow hide, but nothing to get excited about. Nothing that would be worth…’

  ‘… worth losing your life over. No.’

  The documents related to four separate transactions. The first one dealt with a shipment of paint from a paint factory down in St Louis. Another had to do with fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of furs from Canada. The third was the Detroit hides. The final deal related
to five shipments of household ceramics from a New Hampshire pottery manufacturer.

  They sorted the papers into piles, then sat back. Rosalind rocked back on her ankles. She was wearing a grey-green day-dress that did terrific things for her eyes. Out of an absent-minded desire to fiddle with something, she had picked up her scarlet Temperance Army sash and was wearing it across her chest, fiddling with the long tails of the rosette. Without thinking out his move in advance, Willard reached out and stroked her cheek.

  She looked up, surprised. Willard was about to withdraw his hand, when she moved her shoulder up to her cheek, gently trapping his hand. She held it there for a moment, then released it. He smiled. She smiled back, then changed her expression to signify that the moment had ended.

  ‘Well, Sherlock?’

  Willard shook his head, puzzled. ‘These seem like four completely regular trade finance transactions. We do deals like this all the time. This Canadian outfit, Northern Furs, I’ve worked on one of their deals myself. Animal furs. Twelve thousand bucks. East Coast buyer. It was a different delivery address, that’s all.’

  ‘So either my sister’s fiancé went crazy before he died…’

  ‘… or else these things stink and we need to find out why.’

  There was a pause. Neither of them thought that Arthur Martin had been a nut, but nor could they guess why someone had killed him over some tedious trade finance deals. She gazed at him. There was an intelligence and seriousness in her eyes which searched his face for an answer to a question he couldn’t guess.

  ‘Aren’t you scared?’ she said at last.

  ‘Scared? Well, maybe a little.’

  ‘And do you have any ideas? What to do, I mean?’

  ‘Maybe, yes, if you’re still happy to help.’

  She nodded gravely. ‘And you’ll be careful, won’t you? I wouldn’t want…’

  ‘Of course. You too. Lord, I should say we had plenty of reason to tread carefully.’

  ‘And you won’t … you won’t …?’ She trailed off.