It helps that she has a degree in finance from the University of California and can keep up with him when he goes sailing grandly into some esoteric branch of economics. His lectures, the ones that sound so haughty and professional, she knows are just his way of dealing with people.
They were kidnapped and tied up for days in that barn and she saw that he’s brave and resourceful and she saw the admiration in his eyes when she got the knife and food. No trace of macho nonsense; he was as pleased at her accomplishments as he would have been of his own.
So now what?
She left his apartment early despite wanting to hear what Lou and Cassidy had to say, frantic to get some distance between them. Cassidy making comments about their relationship was either helping it or ruining it and she doesn’t know which is worse.
I, cannot, be falling for this lug.
It’s eleven-fifteen on Thursday morning and she has the walk to herself. The kiosks that sell soda and popcorn and chips to tourists are closed and boarded up, not yet ready to open for the season. She stops at a bench and watches the water, her thoughts and emotions as roiled as the lake.
“Hey lady.”
She looks up to see a guy in a light green jacket approaching. He’s got his hands stuffed in the pockets and a cigarette dangling from between thin lips. His hair is black and short and mussed by the breeze.
“Join you?” he asks, sitting down too close for comfort.
She studies him for a moment and says, “No. I’d rather be alone.”
“Ah, don’t be like that,” he says, grinning like he’s heard no a lot and doesn’t take it as a reason to say stop. ‘I get slapped a lot,’ that grin says, ‘but I get lucky a lot, too.’
She sighs, not at all in the mood for this nonsense. “Go away, Lothario,” she says. “I’m not in the mood.”
“Hey, can’t blame a fellow for trying, can you?” He leans in, takes a battered pack of Chesterfields from his shirt pocket, taps it to make one jump out and offers it to her. “Smoke?” he says, impressed with his smooth trick.
“I don’t,” says Bonnie.
“Sure, you do,” says the guy. He lifts his eyebrows in the direction of her purse where a pack of Camel filtered is showing.
“Ok, she says. “I do. But not with you.”
“Bet, there’s some other things you’d do too, am I right? Good looking girl like you, all alone here?” He puts emphasis on all alone.
“What’s your name?” Bonnie asks.
He grins like he’s won the big prize at the Midway over at Riverview Park. “Dwayne,” he tells her. “Rodman.”
“Listen Dwayne; I came out here to be alone. I like being alone. Now you come along and I’m not alone anymore. How do you think that makes me feel, Dwayne?”
“Glad that I showed up?” He suggests, with a leer in his voice could be heard at the Prudential Building downtown.
“Sure,” she agrees. She turns to face him, leaning in a little. He smells like cologne and hairspray and cigarettes. “That’s probably it. But Dwayne? Do you know what I was doing last week?”
“What?” He’s leaning in as well. Now she adds Juicy Fruit gum to the mix.
“I was kidnapped and held in a barn by a secret group of Nazis.”
“What?” He pulls back a little, alarmed.
“Yes,” says Bonnie conversationally. “The worst of them, a man named Aldo, was about to rape me.”
“You’re... you’re kidding, right? This is a joke.”
“No joke. Aldo was right there, ready to do it. Do you know what I did?”
“What?”
“I stabbed him, Dwayne. I stabbed him a lot.” She continues talking, looking out at the waves, thinking about Monk. Her tone is conversational as if she’s discussing the weather. “My boyfriend helped, of course; it wouldn’t be gentlemanly not to. So, it’s hard to say which one of us killed him the most.”
“Lady, what’s wrong with you?”
“Why, Dwayne: I don’t know what you mean. I’m just a regular girl on a bench by the lake, telling you what I did last week. Dwayne?”
The seat beside her is vacant and Bonnie watches with some amusement as Dwayne Rodman trots away.
That was fun, she thinks. But falling for Monk? No way.
Seriously, no way.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
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Potluck with Fred and Ethel
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Thursday evening at six-thirty, Lou sits rumpled and grinning next to Cassidy, herself far more presentable on the sofa in their living room. Across from them at the dining room table, Monk is absently dealing our poker hands, picking up each one as if he’s playing in a ‘Lemme see your hand” poker tournament. He checks each one, makes some internal assessment, picks up the hands and reshuffles. He’s been doing this for half an hour. Occasionally muttering something to himself.
“Can we get on with this?” asks Lou, over Cassidy shushing him. “What?”
“We’re waiting for Bonnie,” says Monk, glancing at cards, not them.
“She’s part of this now? Part of us?”
That gets Monk’s attention mid-shuffle. He loses his grip and cards spew across the table, on to the floor. Lou grins at his distraction.
The big Zenith console radio is playing something with strings, Montovani, possibly or Liberace. Something with pianos and no words. It’s like letting gooey warm syrup fill the room.
“She’s... we’re... ah.”
Monk is saved by Bonnie knocking, entering, apologizing. “I went up to Monk’s apartment, forgot he said you’d be down here.”
“Bigger couch,” says Cassidy, gesturing her to sit down on it. Instead, Bonnie goes straight to Monk and kisses him on the cheek, leaving him more flustered than before. “What were you talking about?” she asks.
“Nothing,” says Lou. “Monk wouldn’t let us start without you being here. Now you’re here. You want to get on with this, buddy?”
“I... ah... yes. Sure.” Monk gets up, lays his cards on the table. “We’re here to discuss what we all know, and what we’re going to do about it.”
“Call the cops,” says Cassidy. She’s feeling the warm glow of after sex and has no interest—at all—in getting her husband shot and killed. “Make an anonymous phone call, spill the beans, let them take the heat. Right, Lou?”
“Well...”
Not the answer she wanted. Cassidy pushes herself out of the couch’s embrace, an act like escaping Jell-O, and stands to face them all. “Come on, people. Haven’t we done enough? We’ve fought them, shot at them, Lou’s beaten them up...”
“Often,” agrees Lou, still firmly held by the sofa.
“And been beaten by them, sweetheart,” she reminds him. “Bonnie and Monk were kidnapped. They would have been killed even. I’d say we’ve done enough.”
She looks around for support, sees none whatsoever and shrugs. “Fine. We’re gonna fight Nazis.”
Lou reaches up for her hand and she uses it to pull him from the sofa, They join the others at the table and they all sit looking at each other like it’s a potluck dinner with Fred and Ethyl at Lucy’s house.
Monk clears his throat. “As I see it, we have several options; including, as Cassidy suggests, calling the police.”
“Thank you, Monk.”
“You’re welcome, Cass. However, we’ve had experiences with the police on several occasions and none have proven fruitful. That’s not to say that things won’t change vis-a-vis the detectives, but I don’t think it should be our main strategy.”
“Guns and violence have worked pretty good so far,” suggests Lou.
“This is true,” agrees Monk. “And they will probably be useful in the future. But first, we have to be clear as to their intentions.”
“I thought you’d already figured it all out,” says Bonnie.
“Yes,” says Monk, looking troubled, “and no.”
Cassidy says, “They’re going t
o do a demonstration Saturday morning downtown in front of the Ambassador Hotel. Me and Lou got that from one of their own boys.”
“Lou and I,” corrects Monk automatically, which Cassidy ignores, as always.
Lou adds, “And they’re going to kill this Ben-Gurian guy, using that demonstration as a distraction.”
“Yes, they are having a demonstration. And yes, they are going to try and kill Ben-Gurian. However, I can’t help thinking there’s more to the story.”
“Monk, you always think that.”
“And in all modesty, Lou; I’m usually right.”
“Okay, there’s that. Why do you think there’s more? And does anybody want food?”
They all do. Pizza is ordered, beers are poured, the radio starts playing, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”
Bonnie says, “I love this song,” and Monk smiles at her.
“I do, too.”
She reaches for his hand on the table.
He says, “Blowing up the Prime Minister of Israel is one goal.”
Which kills the mood and reminds Bonnie—again—why Monk is single.
“Not the only goal?” she says, letting the potentially romantic moment go.
“No. Maybe. I don’t know. What I can’t figure is, what’s in it for Erich?”
Lou offers, “Since you don’t have a handle on that, if there is a that, we do know he’s going to try and kill the Prime Minister, right? So why don’t Cassidy and I mosey down the Ambassador and give Larry a heads up?”
“Mosey?” says Cassidy.
“Trying to make you feel at home on these wide-open spaces, Ma’am.”
Cassidy explains,” He’s been watching ‘Gunsmoke’ again.”
“And Maverick,” says Lou. “I love that show.”
“Hardly accurate, though,” says Monk “I think it’s fair to say it’s not a good reference for how life was lived in the west.”
Bonnie says, “I like Bonanza. Pernell Roberts is dreamy.”
“Adam,” agrees Cassidy, herself a fan of westerns. “My favorite’s Little Joe.”
“Really?” says Bonnie and the two wander off to the kitchen talking about television.
Monk, watching them leave, says, “Well, that ended the discussion.”
“I’m kind of partial to Hoss, myself,” says Lou.
Thursday evening, eight-thirty. Eighteen of the twenty-four Nazi recruits have arrived, parking out on side streets to avoid overflowing the Motel lot. And for an easier getaway, many are thinking, in case this all goes bad again. As they file into the big dark empty room, none of them can help but think about the last time they were together. The drinking, the camaraderie, the Colonel making speeches, telling them they were soldiers, were real men, worthy of respect.
Since none of them had ever felt anyone respecting them, including their mothers, wives, children and themselves, these were heady emotions. Lots of beer, lots of laughter and all of them believing, even if only for the night, that they could somehow be somebody.
The short guy and the drop-dead beautiful woman had burst in, and out. They caught the guy and he challenged the Colonel and everybody laughed and drank thinking this was going to be great fun.
Until the short guy absolutely demolished the Colonel and three others, all men who were real soldiers that none of them would even dream of challenging. Just beat the crap out of them all.
And then other people showed up and there was shouting and shooting and fire and everybody fled into the night wearing their uniforms and how hard that was to explain to those mothers, wives, children, neighbors, whoever?
So they slink into this abandoned diner rather than strut, all thoughts about master race as dim as their own convictions.
The room’s been cleared, tables and chairs shoved to the edges to leave a large open area. Lightbulbs have been replaced and the interior of the room glows like the inside of Aladdin’s Lamp. The Colonel is in full uniform, red swastikas blazing on each arm. He greets them at the door by name, making them feel, a little, that sense of belonging again. There’s a couple of tin ice coolers on some tables, with cold beer in cans, Schlitz and Budweiser and Hamm’s and the men are beginning to feel a bit better about coming all the way over here.
The Colonel gets up on a stool.
He talks about honor and the threat to their values and how the Jews and the Papists and the homosexuals and everyone who isn’t them are destroying the world and it’s their duty to protect...
It goes on—and on—for an hour or so and if it’s missing any logic, it’s filled with patriotic phrases and the men slowly start to respond with, “Yesses” and, “That’s rights” and soon fists are being raised, some with beers that slosh onto sleeves, and the voices get louder and the Colonel yells, “Are you with me?”
And every one of them yells, “Heil Hitler!” without even once realizing what they just agreed to.
Which is that they will all gather Saturday morning before nine at a parking lot beneath the Ambassador Hotel. They’ll be in full uniform. At exactly ten AM they will march up the parking garage ramp into the light of day outside the Hotel, flags held high, goose-stepping and raising their right arms high in a salute to the Fuehrer and...
“Wait.”
A voice in the back of the room. A small voice in the back of the room, small enough to get attention.
The yells and catcalls and “Heil Hitler,” clank to a halt like a car running out of gas and the Colonel, furious, glares at the back of the group seeking the speaker.
He spots him, an overweight, undereducated white male, half leaning to hide behind another overweight, uneducated white male and recognizes him.
“Gerald?” says Erich. “Gerald Weebs? You have something to say?”
Gerald, with the spotlight of attention firmly on him, desperately wants to say, “No; nothing to say. Never mind,” but he sees the Colonel watching him, everybody else turning his way and they all have the same look.
Gerald says, “This guy,” and loses his voice, his bladder and the will to live. He’s shrunk to as small as an overweight, uneducated white man can possibly be as he notices that everyone around him has moved away and he’s standing alone in a very small circle of very big attention.
“A guy?” says the Colonel. “What guy?”
“The one,” manages Gerald. “The one... the one...” He’s stuck there, unable to say more until somebody slaps him on the shoulder and the words all come spewing out.
“The little fat guy: the one that beat you up at the bar. He came to see me. Hit me with his car. He made me tell him things.”
The Colonel’s face has gotten red as he speaks and even Gerald can see this wasn’t the time or place to bring up the visit from Lou Fleener and if he’d paid any attention at all in seventh grade when they talked about ancient Greece in Mr. Sullivan’s fifth period history class, he’d be recalling the part about messengers and shooting.
“What things?” says the Colonel. He has his hand on his holstered pistol and a look that says he knows history. Especially the part about shooting the messenger. “What things?” He bellows.
“The, the, the group,” Gerald says, gesturing around at all of them. “This group, us. He wanted to know what we do, why we get together and I told him, I...”
“Told him what?” The Colonel has stepped down from his soapbox and is coming toward the cowering Gerald. The crowd splits apart to let him through and now he’s standing in front of Gerald, one hand raised not to salute but to hit and Gerald faints.
Carlton, in the emergency room of Cook County Hospital, is getting treatment for major burns on his genitals. The hospital, even on a Thursday evening, is a madhouse. It’s a scene like a Marx Brothers movie with blood.
Lots of blood. He and George look on in horror at men with deep wounds, from knives or guns, women with pulped beaten faces from men with too many muscles, too few brains. Children with broken bones, car accidents, drunk fights, police beatings. Cook County Hospit
al is the bottom half of the medical industry. Way down on the bottom.
Carlton is led to a room down a hall crowded with people moaning on stretchers, placed on an examining table, told to strip. George, of course, isn’t allowed in. Being a homosexual in a relationship he has no rights at all. Most likely, if he protested, he’d be arrested.
A woman doctor carefully examines the burns. “How did this happen?” she asks, probing.
They’ve discussed this in the car coming here. Obviously, they can’t say, ‘tortured by a sadistic Nazi,’ so Carlton tells her an embarrassing lie about getting drunk and falling asleep in the car with a lit cigarette.
“The heat didn’t wake you?” asks the doctor.
“Like I said, I was drunk.”
“You didn’t feel your dick getting burned?”
“Very drunk,” says Carlton.
She gives him ointment for the burns, pills for the pain. He signs paperwork under a fake name and pays cash. George drives as he sits sideways on the wide bench seat.
“We can’t do this, Carl,” says George.
“I know,” moans Carlton. “But we have to.”
“No, we don’t have to,” George yells petulantly. In private he’s as demanding as any nagging wife.
Carlton just wants to get home and go to bed. The pills are easing the pain but making his head fuzzy. He’s feeling shame at how Erich treated him and that George had to see it. He wants to cry and scream in frustration and pain but he holds it all in and tries to stay rational.
“I don’t see that we have a choice, Georgie.”
“We could run away.”
“To where? Where would be go that he couldn’t find us? Besides, you love our house. You’ve made it our home.” Unspoken was the added benefit that their neighbors knew their lifestyle and were mostly indifferent to it. There weren’t many places in America where you could say that.
San Francisco, maybe...
George pulls the car into the garage behind the small wood frame house in Markham. It’s old and needs maintenance; the yellow paint is peeling and the window screens are torn, but neither man is much good with tools.
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