by Larry Crane
Then he feels it: a shot to the butt. Like a punji stake shoved to the bone and twisted. He’s hit.
“Get out of here, lieutenant!”
Groping in the darkness, he finds Holt’s harness and two more grenades. Pulls the pin. Crunch! Again. Crunch! Staggers to his feet. In the open. Drags Holt to his shoulders again. Rips the flare gun from his shirt. Points to the sky. A single flare arcs, crests, bursts, and becomes three red clusters settling into the treetops.
The howitzers of Base Camp Eagle crump in the distance and the trail ignites with the blast of high explosive and white phosphorous artillery shells.
Clopclopclopclop. Down the deep valley. The UH-1B medevac yaws, hovers, and then settles into the mud. The men of the patrol lift the wounded, slide them into the belly of the ship, and then gather in a worried clutch at the door to reach in, touch them, and tuck a heavy wool blanket around them.
He, face up, Holt face down, ashen, eyes staring straight from their filthy faces. Holt’s muddied hand in his. Mulrane waving at the door. Rising. The world spinning outside. Deep green jungle mountains turning to blue.
Medics rush in. Lift them on litters. Someone, Colonel Readfield, bends over Holt, strokes the side of his face. Bends over Lou, curled in a painful crescent, face to the side, breath coming in short, rasping gulps.
Readfield hangs over him, fist gripping the shoulder of his fatigue shirt, eyes boring into his ear, stale cigar juice poisoning his air.
“The private looks bad, hear?” Readfield shouts. “Hear? You, you’ll live. You were told to sit tight up there. Sit tight and report. A man gets shot up. You’ll get yourself a goddamn Silver Star. Take it home with you. Tell your kids someday what a hero you were. But get the hell out of this Army, Lieutenant Christopher.”
Chapter Three
The day started off with a rear view of Mag at the window in a flimsy, mauve, night thing.
“Look, a Pine Warbler,” she said, her face pressed to the glass.
“I’m staying right here,” he said, clasping his hands behind his head.
She crawled back in beside him and he began to rub her lower back, just the way she liked it; and if the alarm clock rang, they didn’t hear it. She delivered him to the station, panting.
The eight-fifteen was nearly empty as its silver cars clacked into the station pushed by a solid black diesel. A mother and her toddler at the far end of the platform boarded at the same time he did. The horn was unique. Two short bla noises and a mournful wa wa wa sounded just as it passed Sterling Place where they lived, a block from the tracks.
It was the tail end of the rush hour out of Bergen County, a milk run hitting all the stops to Hoboken, not the train favored by even the oldest veterans of Wall Street. You had to take the 8:07 Express if you wanted to be on the floor of the Exchange at the bell.
The sprawl of Bergen County blurred through the window as they sped toward the Hudson River. The conductor rocked down the aisle of the lurching train, stopped, and then spread out to steady himself as he reached for Lou’s ticket, tucked into the seat in front of him. Lou had not had time to get a newspaper, so he sat idly and his thoughts went their own way.
Something was missing. Whenever he talked with Mag about how this whole crummy deal came to be, they seemed to skip the main point. Well, he didn’t skip it. He chose to avoid it. It had to do with the boys. Mag could never understand. It was the paths they’d taken in life. Like it or not, he’d pushed them toward this crazy “follow your bliss” crap. He never had it as an option, but, by God, there was no reason why they wouldn’t. And so, in the end, the decision to “go brokerage” was a need-to-have-a-paycheck-right-away decision; and that was ultimately a complication of fatherhood, not career choices.
Pete, their firstborn, was contemptuous of authority from his first breath. He had always been more interested in building a world acceptable to himself than in finding a place in the one everyone else inhabited. He knew how to take care of himself, that one. Pete had done a lot, including cocaine. He’d seen no reason for college until he hit twenty-seven, when he began to think that law was for him. All this after only eight years of marriage and two boys of his own. Quite a transformation. It had taken every ounce of character Pete had to come to him for money—even then, only under the threat of expulsion unless he paid up his tuition.
In Hoboken, Lou squinted against the brilliant sun that knifed through the roof of the station platform and cut a diagonal plane of light through the dusty air. The diesel engine at the back of the train gave off a deafening roar. He made his way to the stairs leading to the tubes.
One of the older Port Authority Trans Hudson cars sat beside the platform. As soon as Lou descended the final two stairs, the putrid odor of sulfur pushed against his face. He went to the change machine, then through the turnstile. There were only a couple of people sitting in the first car. The rotten-egg smell immediately took him back to the training commute. The memory had been locked away somewhere in his brain and now came rushing back like a flood. He braced for the train’s sudden, jerking start he knew would come.
Oliver, his younger son, emerged from a different mold altogether. It wasn’t that he excelled in school; he just dominated schools and the people in them by the sheer force of his personality. From the time he was old enough to speak in sentences, he seemed to always be the center of attention.
The train screeched to a halt and sat in total darkness until a train going in the opposite direction screamed by in a riot of sparks. The train lurched into motion again.
Oliver had misfired during a brief fling with international banking. He responded to logic, however, and it was logical for him to rebound into broadcast journalism as a career. From that came an application to Columbia University at twenty-three and tuition bills approaching thirty thousand. Lou’s pension from twenty-five years of military service was a start, but now he needed more than that, lots more.
Under the World Trade Towers, Lou stepped out of the car as the doors slid open. He strode to the escalators and through the turnstile, and then stepped nimbly onto the long escalator that carried him to the promenade level of the complex. Another short escalator ride deposited him at street level in downtown Manhattan.
He made a right turn coming out of the World Trade Center and walked past NYU, through the Trinity Churchyard, across Broadway. He walked into the shadows of Wall Street, a chill wind burning his face, a kind of low roar joining the dusty air, pushing furrows through American flags that lined the marble canyon walls.
The main offices of Pierson Browne were on the second floor of 14 Wall. It was exactly nine-thirty when he told the receptionist, a woman who could've been Terri Garr, that he was Mr. Christopher. Patricia was expecting him. The receptionist asked him to please have a seat behind the potted plants while she checked Ms. Buck’s availability.
It was nine-fifty when Terri Garr opened the door and said, “Come on in, Mr. Christopher,” then quietly slipped out behind him.
Buck was out of her chair and halfway across the room by the time he got in the door; her handshake was a brief, hard clasp. She wore a short brown skirt, a beige blouse that hugged slightly across her breasts, and a signature scarf draped around her neck and pinned at the side. Her hair was black with one streak of gray, pulled back straight from her face. She wore a light shade of lipstick, and the whole effect made it look as if she had just emerged from a cabana.
“Now that you’re here, I remember you very well, Louis. What was it, four years ago when we first chatted? Cal says you’re doing fine out there in Paramus.” She had small humor lines at the corners of, and just below, her large, black eyes. And when she smiled, her whole face seemed to flash—a flash that said, “look out.”
“Good to see you again,” Lou said. If you’re expecting a “Ms. Buck” out of me, you’ll have a long wait.
“You’re not used to the wind down here in Manhattan,” she said, glancing at his ruffled hair. “I like your shoes.” Flash.
“How do you like Paramus?”
“How could you not like Paramus?” he said, ignoring the dig at his hair.
The office was immaculate. Buck used a Sheraton writing table as a desk, its surface barren save for a thin crystal bud vase and a yellow rose. Her chair was black leather. Next to it, by the large window that overlooked Wall Street, a tall dictionary stand held a cream telephone console that periodically blinked red.
Buck motioned to the corner of the office where a camelback sofa sat between two big wingback chairs and faced one of those Chinese Chippendale tea tables. What had she paid for that little gem? Maggie would have flipped.
“Would you like a cup of coffee, Louis? I’m going to have one. I can’t get started in the morning unless I have some caffeine.”
“Yes, I’d like a cup,” he said, timing it so that he sat down on the sofa at just about the same time Buck dropped into one of the wingbacks and crossed her legs, exposing a healthy, tanned thigh.
Okay, you have a hell of a thigh, but I’ll roast in hell before I ever let you catch my eyes on it. In fact, if I had a cup of coffee, I’d set it right out there on that thigh, saucer and all.
“Winnie’ll be in, in a minute. How long have you been out in Paramus, Louis? Cal said it’s been long enough to start getting established.”
“Well, it’s been a long haul. Longer than I thought it was going to take. The market hasn’t been the best. The little guy just doesn’t feel much like doing anything with stocks.”
“Maybe you ought to be going after the big guys and leave the little fish to someone else.” Flash. “Cal said you came out of the Army.”
So, here we go.
“Yes, Patricia, the infantry. Other worlds sometimes seem to offer a little more sparkle, don’t they? I felt I ought to be operating on a couple of more cylinders, so to speak.”
“And?”
“And I found that Army life and civilian life aren’t really that much different.”
“How many cylinders are you working on right now, Louis?” Flash.
“Well, I guess I’m operating on all eight, but I’m not sure that my carburetor is adjusted properly.”
At that, Buck laughed, slapped the thigh, rose quickly and strode away toward the door. He refused to give her butt as much as a glance.
Winifred appeared at the door and spoke quietly: “Pardon me, Miss Buck. Your daughter’s in the waiting room.”
“Ashley!” Patricia roared.
A bulky girl of nineteen or so, a baseball cap crushing her voluminous brown hair, strode in and hugged her mother with one arm as an enormous leather shoulder bag slid down her other arm to the floor.
“Darling, this is Mr. Christopher out of the Paramus office.”
“How do you do?” she asked, reaching with the back of her hand.
“Hi, Ashley. Glad to meet you,” Lou said, gripping it lightly. Go on. Kiss it. Go on.
“Sorry to interrupt. I’ll only be a second. Mother, I’m on my way to Bleeker and I’m really short. Could you...? Just a few bucks?”
Buck went swiftly to her writing table and her bag. She pulled out a sheaf of twenties and handed it to Ashley without looking at it.
“Thanks, Mom,” the girl said, kissing her mother on the cheek, slinging the bag to her shoulder again. “I’m out of here. Good to meet you, Mr. Christopher.”
“Goodbye, Ashley,” Lou said.
“Winifred, could we have some coffee in here?” Buck requested, following her daughter to the door. Returning, to him: “Where were you stationed, Lou?” So, now it’s Lou.
“I was mostly overseas in Germany, Korea, and Panama, and two tours in Vietnam. Is that Chippendale?”
“Are you interested in furniture? I know nothing about it. It’s supposed to go well with that mirror over there. They say it was made around 1760 or so.”
She abruptly stood and strode to the telephone. “Winnie, get me Bud Gilhaus in Institutional, will you?” Then almost immediately she started talking in a low voice as she paced over to the window and looked down on Wall Street leaving Lou adrift in mid-conversation. He sat back and gazed around the office. The woman had not a note, not a scrap of paper lying around.
Across the room, she pressed the phone to her chest and said: “So you were a field soldier?”
And before Lou had a chance to respond, turned her back to him again. She was looking out the window and murmuring into the phone. Terri Garr brought in the coffee and placed it on the table in front of him: a silver coffee service and real china.
We’re dancing all around it. Just go with the flow, as Cal put it. Wait her out.
Lou was finishing his cup of coffee when, off the phone, Buck dropped down beside him on the sofa and reached across him for the pot. Okay, the personal touch. Very well.
“Excuse me. As usual there are a number of things going on. Where were we? I think you said that most of your Army time was spent in the field, wasn’t it, Lou? I mean you didn’t get a chance to sit behind a desk.” Flash.
“I didn’t say that, but that’s pretty much the way it was. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy field duty. I did.”
“But you wanted to move a little faster?”
“Something like that.”
“Calvin probably mentioned to you that I’m looking around for someone in the organization to handle an account. What kind of business have you been doing out there in Paramus, Lou? Anything in particular?”
“I’ve done some business in just about everything we handle, Patricia,” he said, playing the first name game. “Munis, common, mutual funds, even some commodities on occasion.”
“How about new issues, secondaries? Any of the oil drilling fund?”
“Those things only come along once in a blue moon for us out in the hinterlands. Any time we get some, we eat them up.”
“Okay, I’m going to turn this account over to you, Lou. All that’s involved is for the contact man on the account to call you from now on, instead of Bud Gilhaus here at 14 Wall. Bud knows that you’ll be handling the account. The client’s name is Barry Westover. I meant to have you talk to him this morning, but it didn’t work out. You’ll just have to deal with him over the phone to begin with.” Flash. “That shouldn’t be a problem?”
She worked her way over to the windows and the phone. She picked it up and spoke in a low voice again. For a good five minutes she talked into the phone, looking out the window.
Lou poured himself another cup of coffee. Finally, Buck turned around and covered the mouthpiece. “Barry Westover will make all of his calls straight to you out in Paramus, Lou,” she said. And five minutes later, off the phone and next to him on the couch again: “I’ll have Bud give you a call tomorrow morning with the account number. The name of the account isn’t important right now. We’ll try to get you and Westover together as soon as we can. Is there anything else you’d like to know about the deal?” Flash.
Anything else, Patty? Yes, I have something else. This is a big new account, and I had squat to do with bringing it in.
“Why is it coming to me? Why now?”
“You’ve been with us close to four years, Lou. You’ve worked hard and we think of you as a quality guy, the kind we want to have sticking with us for a while.” Flash. “All of the producers had a break given to them somewhere along the line. This account was one of mine at one time. I want to know that it’s being handled properly. I want to know that the person who deals with Barry is going to be with the firm for a long time to come. So don’t worry too much about the formalities of how you came to get it. Just do your best to handle it the way we know you can. Okay?”
Bullshit. “You’ve been asking all about my military career. It’s the first time it’s come up in four years with the firm. Anything to it?”
“Listen, Louis. Nobody said the account was yours forever. Think of this as a test; if you pass it, you keep it. As for your military career, it constitutes the bulk of your work experience. I look for dedication in a per
son before all other considerations. You’ve always shown exceptional commitment and loyalty to important causes, starting as a first lieutenant on Fire Base Eagle in the Central Highlands of Vietnam.”
Who had she been talking to? There probably weren’t two dozen people in the world who knew that Eagle ever existed.
Buck sidled back over to the window and the phone again. With her back to Lou, she seemed to resume her last conversation without interruption. Suddenly she turned and, cupping the phone, said: “Louis, excuse me, I’m not going to be able to get away from the phone all morning and I don’t want to hold you up.”
“I’m out of here,” he said, regretting the mindless Ashley-ism before it was halfway out of his mouth.