Dreams Bigger Than the Night

by Levitt, Paul M.

  Clarence smacked his lips and spat some evil-looking black juice. “Right up my alley but . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Will she pay?”

  “No, I will.”

  Opening his wallet, Jay removed a sawbuck. “You decide what plants she needs and keep something over for your labor.”

  Clarence took the money and asked for the address of the lady who needed his expert gardening skills. Later, Jay wondered if he should have asked for a receipt, but T assured him the old man would show up and do a good job in the hope of getting more work.

  That evening Jay told Miss Patulous about Clarence, bringing to her face a blush that spread from the roots of her hair to her neck. She protested that she had done nothing to deserve such generosity, but broke off when T said simply, “You let me stay here.”

  In the morning papers, they read that another prominent member of the anti-Olympics crusade—the fourth in two months—had been shot to death. The victim was opening his garage door when someone hiding in the bushes pumped two slugs into him. His wife, hearing the shots, ran to the front of the house and found him lying in a pool of blood from wounds to the head and chest. Jay’s concern for Arietta now bordered on the desperate.

  His attention was also drawn to a newspaper article about the opening of a gun show, to be held under a large tent in Cape May Township. Knowing Arietta’s pistol skills, he thought, why not give it a try before heading back to Newark? He wondered if they would run into Clarence, who, in fact, was one of the first to arrive. Jay parked in the large lot next to the tent. A few yards away, a Packard sedan pulled up, and a fellow in a sporty tweed suit, white collar, and striped shirt stepped out, carrying a black briefcase. He had a mangled left ear that resembled a cauliflower.

  If intuition is a mixture of savvy and luck, Jay had both, because when they entered the tent, he saw Arietta admiring a long-barreled pistol, with her father some distance away studying the floral display that ringed the tent. Arietta was dressed in a natty suit with a jaunty black hat and looked fetching. She revealed more leg than other women were inclined to show, giving her the appearance of a John Held model on the cover of Vanity Fair. Mr. Magliocco, seeing Jay approach, reacted with astonishment and then pleasure. “Do you know that fellow?” Mr. M. asked in a troubled tone of voice, pointing to the cauliflower ear who was bearing down on Arietta.

  “No, but I’ll check.”

  Unnoticed, he approached Arietta and Cauliflower. When he spoke, they swiveled as one.

  “Miss Ewerhardt,” said Jay, deliberately using her undercover name, “you have no idea how glad I am to see you.”

  On seeing him, Arietta cast her eyes so low, he thought they’d suffered an eclipse. Cauliflower, on the other hand, stiffened his back and set his jaw. Before she could respond, Jay added:

  “This is my good friend T-Bone Searle.”

  Arietta introduced her “friend” as Rolf Hahne, with whom Jay shook hands and feigned cordiality, remembering all too well what Francesca Bronzina had said about a man of that name. Arietta’s expression bespoke relief, which suggested that Cauliflower was menacing her.

  “At last I’ve found you,” Jay said. “We’ve been sick with worry, but we can’t talk here. Would you mind accompanying Mr. Searle and me to the parking lot? Your father can join us.”

  An uninvited Rolf Hahne followed a few steps behind.

  Stopping under the leafy gold canopy of an oak, Jay said loud enough for all to hear that he would be only too glad to drive her back to Newark. T-Bone and Mr. M. could follow in the Waterhouse sedan. Before he could say more, Cauliflower opened his briefcase, removed a Luger, and stepped forward.

  “She’ll be traveling with me,” Hahne said, placing a hand on her shoulder and pointing the gun toward his car. “The fourth one on the left . . . the Packard.”

  T suddenly bolted behind the line of parked cars. For a moment Jay thought he’d done so from fright. But T had found Hahne’s Packard and, kneeling on the far side of the back wheel, was letting the air out of the tire. Rolf, after shoving Arietta into the passenger seat, came to the driver’s side, saw T, and pistol-whipped him.

  Jay and Mr. M. had stood transfixed, worried about Arietta’s safety.

  “Get rid of your car keys,” Jay muttered to Mr. M. “I just tossed mine into the bushes.”

  Cauliflower immediately returned with Arietta in front of him.

  “Your car keys!” Hahne demanded.

  Jay turned out all his pockets to show that he had none.

  “Give me yours,” Hahne said to Mr. M. “And don’t tell me you have no car.”

  Mr. M. also turned out his pockets. Nothing. By this time, all the commotion had attracted the attention of a policeman patrolling the grounds. Jay could see panic in Cauliflower’s face. Without a car, what could he do? Take Arietta hostage, but where? Spying a man in the distance entering his car, Cauliflower forgot about Arietta and raced toward it. When the car started to ease out of the parking spot, Cauliflower ordered the driver from it, slid in behind the wheel, and drove off. The owner of the hijacked car came running toward the policeman, yelling:

  “Stop him, stop him. He stole my car!”

  “Who is he?” asked the cop.

  A badly frightened Arietta replied, “A man from Berlin.”

  At that moment, T-Bone, temporarily blinded by the blood running down his forehead and into his eyes, staggered toward them.

  “I’ll get out an alert at once,” said the cop. “And let’s get this man to the hospital for stitches.”

  But T refused to leave, using his handkerchief and Jay’s to stanch the bleeding. When the Maglioccos suggested coming to their rented cabin where they could attend him, Jay insisted that they all return to the Patulous house.

  But Arietta seemed to think that she and her father were safe in their current digs. Mr. M. agreed, fetching his car keys and, with Arietta in tow, making for his auto.

  “Where are you staying?” Jay shouted, but they made no reply.

  “Those folks huntin’ you,” mumbled T, “are bad ’uns. You’d best hear what Jay has to say.”

  The Maglioccos listened, but Jay could sense that more than the fear of Nazis had driven them to flee. They did, however, collect their belongings and stay with Jay and T at the Patulous house. They all ate together that night in Frog Hollow, with Jay and T taking turns keeping watch outside the Maglioccos’ bedrooms. By morning, they looked and felt pretty ragged. From afar, Sunday church bells sounded. When the Maglioccos appeared, Jay said they should leave directly for Newark; but Arietta insisted that they first had to drive to Chatsworth, in the Pine Barrens, to see her Aunt Amalie’s son, her cousin. He knew that in matters concerning her mother’s family, there was no point in arguing. She described the area, which sounded prelapsarian, and suggested a picnic and swim to put them both in a better mood. He grudgingly told himself that another day wouldn’t matter. Arietta packed a straw basket and took some towels from the linen closet.

  “A swim in one of the cedar lakes would be absolutely divine,” she said. But Jay found her enthusiasm insincere; moreover, the water in May could be pretty damned cold.

  Mr. M. volunteered to take T fishing, on an excursion boat, so that Arietta and Jay “could have some time alone.” They all agreed on that plan, with T and Mr. M. leaving first. As Jay said goodbye to Miss Patulous, she whispered:

  “Your friend is quite a beauty. Good luck.”

  Jay gassed up at a station on the other side of the causeway and continued north. At first, he and Arietta said nothing, but slowly they reestablished a communion of words, seeking safe ground by identifying the wild flowers as they inched along the road in the Sunday traffic. Once they had exhausted the innocuous subjects, they gravitated toward the real one.

  “You are wondering how I knew about Axel’s death. An anonymous caller rang
me and said that unless I cooperated—his word, cooperated—I would be the next one to go. Frantic with fear, I told my father about the call. It was he who insisted we leave at once.”

  “I thought there might be more to it.”

  She nodded. “There is.” She studied a fingernail and looked out the side window. “I feared that my work for Mr. Zwillman would be exposed.”

  “You supplied him with information, until Longie asked you for a favor that was a bridge too far. Right?”

  Putting one hand on the dashboard and the other behind his seat, she turned to face Jay and, in this S-shape, marveled at his disclosure. “How did you know?”

  “Longie told me.”

  “Frankly, I liked working for him—he paid me well—until he asked me to steer someone to a particular Portuguese restaurant near the station.”

  “Axel, you mean?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “A man marked for murder?”

  “For roughing up, I was told. When I refused, he threw a paperweight against the wall, swore, and walked out.”

  In light of Longie’s extravagant praise, her story rang only partially true. Jay couldn’t believe that one refusal would have angered him; she must have not only refused the assignment but also cautioned Axel to lie low. That would explain his absences from the Friends meetings. If Arietta had indeed saved his skin, albeit temporarily, it made sense that Axel would shower her with affection. But apparently she rebuffed him. Jay didn’t like the direction of his logic. If Longie hadn’t hit him, then who had? Jay wondered if that enigma might explain her running away.

  “Who do you think killed Axel?”

  She bit her lip and resumed her former posture, looking straight ahead at the road. They bumped along, past shacks and gritty farms and thousands of blueberry bushes, through stands of pitch pine and different kinds of oak—white, scrub, black, and chestnut—smelling the wild laurel and the heavy air, until finally she spoke. “If I give you a name, you’ll be equally at risk.” Resuming her former S-shape, she pleaded passionately, “Don’t you see? That’s why my father and I can’t return. Mr. Zwillman knows that I know.”

  “Knows what? I’m confused.”

  “There were two murders: Heinz Diebel and Axel Kuppler. As far as the police are concerned, they both remain unsolved.”

  Jay could hardly keep his eye on the road. “Do you know who shot them? Was it one of Longie’s boys?”

  “Please don’t ask me that question, Jay. As far as Mr. Zwillman’s concerned, I’m the unknown, the X factor, the person who could be caught and made to talk. Of course, I would never say anything, but could I convince Longie of that? He wants to pack me off to Canada, for safekeeping.”

  If true, Jay’s involvement in her return would make him complicit in her . . . what? Disappearance? If untrue, his assistance in her escape would earn Longie’s displeasure. It suddenly occurred to him that Longie had never said what to do if Jay found Arietta. Was Jay to bring her back to Newark? Find a safe place in another state? Leave the country? He needed time to think, time to clear his head and find in this state of unknowing some safe harbor. Unfortunately, Arietta would not give him time.

  “Just do this one thing for me,” she importuned, “let my father and me slip away. I promise that I’ll never breathe a word of it. Then, in a few years, when the matter’s long since forgotten, I’ll write to you, God willing, and we can be as we once were.”

  He probably would have been tempted, but for that staged, insincere “God willing.”

  “Let’s enjoy the day,” he said lamely, “and I’ll give you my answer later.”

  Her crestfallen expression spoke volumes, but she did not plead her case any further. Just as if a veil had been cast over the past, they stopped trying to pierce it and spoke only of the present and her work as a courier.

  “Are you still part of the pro-boycott movement?”

  “I am, but it’s fruitless. Most Americans are too preoccupied with making a living or finding a job. Why should they care about the Olympics when they have little or nothing to eat? I’ve seen parts of the hinterland they call rural America. It’s a wasteland. I hate to say so, but Negroes don’t see much difference in the treatment of Jews in Germany and colored people in America. A boycott won’t stop the spread of fascism. Jobs will.”

  Jay had no desire to test that hypothesis. For now, he just wanted to get Arietta safely back to Newark, but first they had to taste the enjoyment of Chatsworth, which they soon reached. The dirt road leading into the town ran past a barracks maintained by the New Jersey mounted State Police, who patrolled the pines for criminals on the lam and for big-syndicate stills, which, according to the pasty-faced, porcine owner of the local general store, the locals usually exposed. Apparently the police turned a blind eye to small bootleg operations but intervened in the larger ones because they attracted thugs from the city. At the general store, Jay inquired about boat rentals. Down the road, they were told. As they descended the wooden steps, he asked Arietta where her cousin lived. Dropping her head on her chest, she murmured:

  “I lied to you. I have no cousin in Chatsworth.”

  They returned to the car and for several minutes sat silently. He then told her about his going to Wildwood and finding her Aunt Amalie’s house shut. “Where does she spend the fall and winter?”

  “Los Angeles. When she finds a place she normally writes to me. But now that I’m on the run, I don’t know how we’ll connect.”

  Arietta brightly smiled, as if she hadn’t just led him on a wild goose chase, and suggested they not waste the day.

  “Let’s rent the canoe you wanted and go to the river.”

  The day had warmed up pleasantly. He reluctantly agreed, though once again he felt emotionally used. They stopped at the rental shop. She selected a canoe, and he strapped it to the top of the car. The road took them north, and he parked in a stand of trees. They intended to paddle a short distance to Chatsworth Lake and swim there, but given the pristine, Edenic beauty of the river they paddled only a short distance before they banked the canoe and undressed. Although both of them had brought along bathing suits, Arietta insisted that their past intimacy entitled them to swim au naturel. Before he could dive in, she had disappeared in the breath-stopping cold water. He stood and watched, waiting for her to surface. At last, she exploded from the deep like a geyser, rising up to her waist with her hands extended overhead, and then sank again. She performed this rising-and-falling act several times, dripping water from her hair and glistening breasts as she rose and then disappeared completely from sight in the slow black current. Every time she submerged herself, he feared she’d disappeared. She called him to join her. He knew that her swimming skills eclipsed his; nevertheless, he stroked toward her in the middle of the river, but as he approached, she turned and swam to the far bank, where she disappeared into the woods. As naked as Adam, he followed, plunging through the scratchy underbrush.

  He discovered her lying in a small open area covered with moss. She had brambles in her hair from running in the forest, and her body, like his, still exhibited the slime of the mossy slope. Holding out her arms in a come-hither manner, she eagerly embraced him, a reminder of that first night when her nipples stood rigid with anticipation. But he could not control his pent-up anger, which led him to take her not gently but roughly. Lying down next to her, he put one hand behind her head and brought her lips to his, holding them against his own till she gasped. He wanted to ravenously devour her mouth and tongue, but she murmured, “Don’t!” Pressing her breasts together, all the better to suckle her nipples, he would have bitten her had she not said, “Be gentle!”

  Breathlessly, he slid his penis down the length of her body and rested his head between her legs while she ran a hand through his hair. Tonguing her labial lips, he quickly induced lubrication and then slammed into her body wanting to knife his pe
nis right through her. Furiously, over and over again, piston-like, he drove into her soft flesh. Wrapping her legs around his waist, she forced him into a sitting position; a moment later she sat astride him with her hands pressing his head to her breasts. Suddenly her body stiffened. She turned his head and pointed. A small water snake slithered across the moss and disappeared in the ferns. Her body relaxed, and she, now in postural control, took his face in her hands and kissed his mouth, whispering, “Just tell Mr. Zwillman you couldn’t find us.”

  Without answering, he slipped his arms around her waist and they gently reclined. Her smile and eyes said yes, yes, so they recklessly loved until she drove her fingernails into his back, which so excited him that instead of spilling his seed on the ground, as he had intended, he poured it into her. They lay on the moss for a long time, until she wordlessly rose and ran further back into the woods. Reaching a small tributary, she slipped into the water and, as before, disappeared from sight into the blackness. He swam to the spot where he had last seen her, but she miraculously appeared yards downstream, beckoning him to follow. Again he lost her. When she materialized, she climbed the bank and, heedlessly jumping over tree roots, made her way deeper into the woods. He trailed her into a part of the forest that must have resembled the original darkness and oozy wetness that fecundated the earth. The only sound came from birds cawing against the intrusion into their world. Ducking under branches and dashing through the sumac, she finally came to a halt. Her expression, one of radiant contentment, seemed to suggest that she had at last arrived in that primeval place from which came the first simple light. Spellbound, he took her again, but this time tenderly as if the woods shone and they, Adam and maiden, were the progenitors of creation.

  Lying in a postcoital reverie, they said nothing. At last, she murmured one word, “Yes.” He knew what she meant.

  Later, she spread a small tablecloth on the ground and from her basket took fruit and cheese and bottled sodas that she opened with an opener she had thoughtfully packed. As they ate, he observed that the ground seemed to move, not violently but ever so slightly.