Glory Boys

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Glory Boys Page 21

by Harry Bingham


  And the incident had taught him something. That luck and unluck can be hard to tell apart. That from time to time, disaster is the closest possible thing to victory.

  And perhaps it was like that now.

  The more Willard thought about it, the more he felt that, far from implying danger, Powell’s Mafia-style communication implied something else – maybe something good.

  Here was the first point. Whatever it was that had sent Arthur Martin to the grave and Charlie Hughes to jail, the secret reached all the way to Ted Powell.

  Here was the second point. Powell had no compunction about murder. If Powell wanted to have Willard murdered, he’d do so without a second thought.

  And that led to the good part. Powell didn’t want Willard dead. What’s more, his gift of the files suggested he didn’t even care if Willard succeeded in busting Powell Lambert’s secret. He might care a lot about what Willard did with that information, but the information itself was not forbidden.

  So Willard acted.

  First he went back to the grim state penitentiary where Charlie Hughes was held. Hughes was thinner now. His jaunty carelessness had been replaced by something older, unhappier, more broken.

  ‘Oh, Will-o! Hey there. Gosh, thanks.’

  Willard shoved a cake across the steel table. Willard hadn’t really thought about what to bring and the prison guards had had a merry time probing the cake with a screwdriver to check there was nothing concealed within. They’d only stopped once the entire cake had been mashed to a pulp. There was nothing left now but a mass of broken crumbs and browning marzipan.

  Willard tried beginning with the usual small talk. Only what the hell do you talk about with a convict? How’s the food? Worse than shit. How’s the view? Kinda samey. How’s the company? Great. Varied. Fun. A little bit violent, to be sure. A wee bit inclined to see the little guy with the glasses as the one to pick on, the one it’s fun to punch hard in the stomach for no reason – but, hey, it’s new. You live and learn. Hughes tried to grin, but looked as if he was about to cry.

  Willard cut things short.

  ‘Listen, Charlie, I came to ask you something.’

  ‘Sure, Will-o. Anything.’

  ‘That day outside the library, when I broke things up between you and McVeigh, I assumed that he was threatening you. Intimidating you.’

  Hughes put his hand to his face, as though remembering the past was difficult for him. ‘No, not Leo. It was sort of funny that. We laughed about it afterwards.’

  ‘But somebody was threatening you. You already had a hint of … of all of this.’

  ‘Not Leo. He was … he was protective. He tried to warn you. He thought maybe you took it the wrong way. He can be kind of… I don’t know … heavy with things.’

  He can look like a thick-as-shit footballing ape, thought Willard, without quite saying so.

  ‘Then who? I need to know, Charlie.’

  Again that gesture. That hand to the face. That look as though the past was a distant country, half forgotten.

  Hughes shook his head. ‘I can’t say. I’m out of it now. I’m sorry.’

  But Willard had enough. There were two camps in the trade finance group. There was the Ronson-Claverty axis. And there had been the McVeigh-Hughes axis. If McVeigh wasn’t connected with the violence done to Arthur Martin and Charlie Hughes, then Ronson almost certainly was. Willard felt like laughing at his own stupidity.

  ‘Just one last thing, Charlie. The twentieth floor. A part of it is closed off. Do you know why?’

  ‘The twentieth floor?’ The little man’s eyes expanded as though he was having trouble remembering a world more extensive than a few square yards of concrete, a few square feet of bars. ‘The twentieth floor?’

  ‘Yes. It probably doesn’t matter. Ted Powell told me it contained lifting machinery to drive the elevators. Only it doesn’t. The elevators run all the way to the twenty-fourth and the lifting machinery is operated from the basement. Just a small point, but I went down there to check. I got the maintenance janitor to show me around.’

  ‘You did? Gee. I guess I’d always thought the lifting machinery must be up above. I guess I hadn’t thought about it much. The basement. Really!’

  Hughes’ blank little face plainly had no idea what Willard was talking about. If anything his air of desolate surprise had intensified. Willard concluded that Hughes knew nothing of the twentieth-floor mystery. It was possible that Powell himself had been confused – only Willard doubted it. He doubted that Ted Powell was confused by anything much at all.

  He took his leave from Charlie Hughes and went back to work. He had got into the habit of lingering by Annie’s desk at around the time she was due to distribute her hated manila files. And one day he got lucky. Of Arthur Martin’s four sellers, the largest and busiest was the Canadian company, Northern Furs and Hides. Every few weeks, another shipment of animal pelts came down from the frozen north. However regular the transactions seemed, Arthur Martin had been suspicious and Willard was determined to find out why. He slipped the file from the stack.

  ‘Bits of dead animal,’ he commented. ‘Charming.’

  ‘Which one?’ said Annie, in her businesslike voice. ‘Northern Furs? That’s for Iggy, actually.’

  Willard undid the tape and looked inside the file. ‘Ha! Not just any old dead animal. There’s mink here, Annie. Arctic fox. Ermine. What do you fancy?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly. Anyway, like I say, Iggy –’

  ‘You want your mink from Iggy, not me? I think not. I shall work on this file and, if I possibly can, I shall extract a mink coat for you as my commission.’

  And as Willard took the file, he heard Powell’s words again, stronger than ever before. ‘You have your chance, Thornton, you have it now.’

  54

  Abe lost height, until he was skimming just fifty feet over the ocean waves. He throttled down, so his speed was cruising only five or ten miles an hour above stalling speed. The men on the bridge of the ship, the Cuban-flagged SS Carmen, were gathered in a tight knot, watching the fly-by.

  Abe frowned a little. He needed to communicate directly with the ship’s captain. The cluster of men on the bridge made it impossible to tell who was who. But never mind. This was a new procedure; new ships, new lookout system, new codes. They’d learn. Abe unfastened a paddle from its position tied down to the cockpit wall. The paddle was about the size of a tennis racket and had two sides, one green, one red. Abe showed the green side to the group on the bridge, code for All Clear. There was jostling on the bridge, some clapping, some waving, a couple of raised thumbs. They were meant to show an answering signal, a white flag indicating message received, but never mind; things would improve.

  Abe flew back to the coast, his DH plane, Havana Sue, easily outstripping the slow booze-laden freighter. Abe had already checked out the Okefenokee river, its twisting channels, the sandbanks and the mangroves. The river was clear of the Coastguard; so was the sea beyond; so was the coast north and south for forty miles. But Abe stayed alert. He continued to fly guard as the freighter chugged towards the shore, twisted up the sluggish green Okefenokee, then moored alongside Marion’s dirty concrete quay. A dockside crane sprang into action. Pallet-loads of booze began to sway up from the hold.

  Up above, Abe let Sue laze around on the thermal updrafts, spiralling like a bird of prey. He loved his new aircraft, which was a pilot’s dream, the perfect combination of strength and responsiveness. Even now, as he worked, part of his mind was singing like a bird, with the de Havilland’s thumping music providing orchestra and chorus.

  But another part of his mind – the more active part – was engaged in an altogether different activity: one that Bob Mason didn’t know about and wouldn’t have liked much if he had.

  Beneath the fuselage was a movable panel about five inches square, stamped OIL VENT DO NOT OBSTRUCT. But the panel wasn’t a vent and it had nothing to do with oil. The door of the panel was opened via a lever in the cockpit. Behi
nd the little door was a lens. Behind the lens was a Kodak camera. The first shot on each roll of film was always the same: the front page of the local newspaper. Every other shot was taken by Abe in flight over Marion. He photographed the freighter, the booze, the quayside, the loading of the booze into the railcars.

  The first item on Bosse’s list of requests for evidence had been the simplest: ‘Evidence of alcohol importation activity; dates; quantities, types of liquor; method of importation.’

  When each roll of film was finished, Abe extracted it from the camera, wrapped it in cotton wadding and dropped it in Hennessey’s backyard. When Hennessey made his next trip into Brunswick, a man from Bosse’s outfit was there to collect it. Each film could therefore be reliably dated to a short period in between the date of the newspaper headline in the first photo and the film’s arrival in Brunswick. The dating method was rigorous enough for use in a court of law.

  Over in Washington, Bosse was beginning to build quite a collection: day by day, freighter by freighter, flight by flight.

  55

  Willard was annoyed.

  ‘Look at this,’ he complained, laying a new black leather glove on the black fur trim of his brand-new winter overcoat.

  ‘What? It looks all right to me,’ said Rosalind.

  ‘Well, all right maybe, but not good. I mean the fur on the coat isn’t properly black, is it? It looked black enough in the shop, but really, when you put it together as an outfit…?

  ‘I think it looks nice.’

  ‘Well, yes, on its own but, you see, you have to think of the overall effect.’

  Willard was in Rosalind’s dressing room. In the hall downstairs, his suitcase was packed and ready. In his coat pocket, Willard had train tickets booked all the way through to Montreal. His plan was a bold one – frighteningly bold, in Rosalind’s opinion. He was travelling to Canada in order to intercept one of the suspect shipments of furs and hides. Arthur Martin had lost his life investigating the paper trail of one such transaction. Willard was proposing to investigate the shipment itself, all alone, hundreds of miles from the nearest help.

  As Willard continued to fuss, Rosalind was quietly astonished. In two days’ time, her lover might be fighting for his life, might be dead or dying, and all he cared about was his stupid coat collar.

  ‘Aren’t you scared?’

  ‘Scared?’ Willard had his collar pulled down so he could scrutinise it better and for a moment didn’t understand her question. Then he did. He patted the collar back into place and said, ‘Well, I guess. The trick is not to worry too much. Fellows who did that in the war never managed for long. It runs the nerves ragged, you know. Besides, I don’t mean to upset things. I certainly don’t mean to end up wrapped around a maple tree.’

  Something in Rosalind’s face flickered. Perhaps this was true courage that she was seeing. Perhaps courage didn’t look the way people expected.

  ‘Have you got everything?’

  Willard nodded. ‘Money. Passport. Clothes.’ He paused. Stowed carefully in a silk bag between the shirts in his suitcase, he had packed his old army-issue revolver and half a dozen clips of ammunition. ‘Gun.’

  ‘I wish you hadn’t spoken to that friend of yours.’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘That friend of yours from the bank, Larry Ronson.’

  ‘Oh, Larry!’ said Willard dismissively. The other night, the three of them had been taking a late supper together after work. Willard had been drunk and talkative. He’d scared Rosalind with his loose talk. He’d spoken about his upcoming Canadian trip – claiming it was to visit friends. He’d mentioned his travel plans, at least as far as Montreal. He’d even rambled a little about the shipment of furs coming south over the border – a shipment which Larry would have to look after in Willard’s absence. ‘Don’t worry about him.’

  She fell silent, stroking the lines of his face with her fingers.

  ‘You will be careful, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course. To be honest, I need the holiday.’

  She stepped closer. Something liquid moved in her eyes and mouth. Courage wasn’t just a characteristic she admired, it was one she loved. One that aroused her. Willard felt bad for a moment. He hadn’t told Rosalind about his meeting with Powell. He hadn’t told her about the files or the deductions he’d made as a result. It was brave what he was doing, but it wasn’t as brave as she thought. His conscience flared up, then died back again, under control as usual.

  ‘Your train? When do you have to…?’

  Willard looked at his watch, then at the invitation in her eyes. Her hands were on his chest. Her mouth was slightly open, her eyes slightly closed.

  ‘Well, not right away, perhaps, not if you wanted…’

  She wanted.

  And twenty-six minutes later, still buttoning his coat, Willard went bursting downstairs, snatching his bag, running for his train. It would carry him north to Canada. He would come back victorious or come back dead.

  56

  The shower looked good: a huge tin plate with about a million holes nail-punched through it. The shower looked man enough to wash a regiment. Looked, but wasn’t.

  The shower pipe ended about three feet from the shower head, which was dry enough for a gekko to be warming his belly upside down on it. Pen twizzled the faucet over the basin, with the same dry results. She grimaced and shouted down the hall for the boy to bring water.

  There was a delay of about five minutes, then a small boy appeared carrying a huge bowl of tepid water. She thanked him in English and took the bowl. There wasn’t a curtain over the window, so Pen stood in the corner, stripped down to her underwear and washed as well as she could. Since she was now in Havana a fair amount, Pen had bought herself a basic wardrobe and she changed into a light cotton summer dress and a pair of pale pink flat-soled pumps.

  She tipped the water away and carried the bowl back to the hotel kitchen, where she found herself a glass of lemonade and a packet of biscuits. She took her trophies to the bar, a dim prison-like room, mauve-painted, smelling of male bodies and spilled wine, lit by a couple of windows too high to see out of. A wooden ceiling fan stirred the air with an authentic Cuban dislike of doing anything too fast or effectively. Frank Lambaugh was there, Marion’s purchasing agent on the island. So too was Ayling Gann, the freighter captain, plus Raul Jiminez, the Cuban distributor for two of the Jamaican rum distillers.

  ‘Hi.’ Pen came in and sat down.

  The men were drinking rum and shelling pistachios. Glancing at Pen, they nodded hello, but switched their conversation from English to Spanish.

  ‘This evening. Yes, this evening. It’s not my fault if the truck breaks down.’

  ‘It’s your truck.’

  ‘OK. You have the rum this evening.’

  ‘All of it?’

  ‘Yes, eighty cases. As agreed. Eighty.’

  Lambaugh and Jiminez were arguing over a late delivery. Pen had mostly been brought up by the black servants on her father’s plantation, but for six years she’d had a Spanish-speaking nanny from Mexico. She could read, speak and understand Spanish with no more difficulty than she could English – a fact she’d so far kept hidden.

  Lambaugh caught Pen’s eye.

  ‘Sorry, this must be boring for you.’

  ‘That’s OK. Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘I wasn’t worrying, I was just telling you sorry.’ He continued to hold her gaze. ‘I’d like to put you across this table and screw you right here, right now.’

  ‘Mind if I take some nuts?’ said Pen, not letting her expression waver. Ever since Abe had introduced her as his newest recruit, she’d experienced a wave of distrust, which in Lambaugh’s case had thickened to outright hostility. Booze-smuggling appeared to be a men-only sport. Flying certainly was. The idea of a woman flier escorting freighters up the Florida coast seemed to give everyone involved a severe case of woman-hating. It didn’t help that Mason had waved through the purchase of a second DH-4 without so much as
a grumble over cost. Lambaugh pushed the nuts at her.

  ‘Help yourself.’

  From that point on, Pen had felt Lambaugh’s distrust like a belt of high pressure, a problem aggravated by mutual dislike. But she didn’t mind. She was happy. For the first time in her entire life, she had work to do, work that mattered. The feeling was an intensely satisfying one. As a flier. As a woman. Her new role in life filled her with a quiet joy that all the Frank Lambaughs in the world wouldn’t be able to shake.

  And as for the work, she took some photos, of course, but there was nothing illegal about handling booze in Cuba. The photos brought Bosse little or nothing that he could use. But Pen’s ears brought plenty.

  Like today. Lambaugh and Jiminez were talking again. Jiminez was complaining that payments from Marion were being held up by the banks. Lambaugh’s domineering Spanish overrode Jiminez, mowing down his objections. And Pen listened, as she listened to everything. Names of banks. Names of people. Payment arrangements. Payment amounts. Timetables. Contacts. She’d write it all down, mail her statement to Bosse. Some days she learned little, other days plenty. But she was making progress.

  Week by week. Day by day. Flight by dangerous flight.

  57

  Ruxion, Alberta.

  November in Canada.

  Black pines standing around a freezing lake. A tumble of grey rocks. A sprawl of wooden houses hunkered down by the water. A couple of fishing boats, pulled up against the ice. A wind sweeping down off the Rockies. A landing strip squeezed into the grassy margin between the lake and the hills. An aircraft that Willard didn’t recognise poking its nose out of a hangar crammed in amongst the pines.

  He climbed out of the car, a De Soto that looked ancient, but maybe wasn’t. In that climate, it was hard to tell the difference.

  ‘Welcome to Ruxion,’ said the driver.

  Willard pulled his coat closer and groped in the pocket for gloves. He wore his usual grey felt fedora, but found himself envying the rabbit-skin trapper’s hat which the driver wore pushed back on the crown of his head. The driver might have had a decent hat to put on, but he clearly wasn’t over-fussed about the cold. His waist-length plaid jacket was open right down the front. His flannel shirt wasn’t even buttoned the whole way. The driver noticed Willard fussing.

 

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