Donnelly and Levitz returned to the group. Donnelly jerked a thumb at Dietrich. “Get him out of here.” The Army men led Dietrich away, the Nazi still chuckling at his own humor.
“Gordon,” Levitz said, “walk with me.” He put an arm around the young reporter and led him out of earshot.
“You think what he said is true?” I asked Donnelly.
He sighed. “Not sure, but there’s at least a grain of truth in it. There are parties in this country that cannot wait until we get into the war. There are other groups who hope and pray we never do because they know what it’ll bring. Then there are the other groups, the ones Dietrich belongs to. They’re the scary ones. They want to cause havoc just to see both sides fight each other.”
I pointed at Gardner. “What’s he being told?”
“Never to utter a word of what he read to anyone at any time. To do so would be”—he paused for effect—“unfortunate.”
“And me?”
“You read anything?”
“No.”
“He tell you anything?”
“Nope.”
He smiled broadly. “Then you’ve got nothing to worry about. Just keep your friend in line. Oh, and I wouldn’t be sharing this story of Nazis in Houston with anyone. Don’t get drunk and start babbling on and on about how you saved the city.” He wagged a finger. “That wouldn’t be kosher.”
Gardner and Levitz returned, the reporter looking not unlike a chastened schoolboy. Our eyes met and I knew. He shrugged. “At least I get to write the story about tonight. But I have to make it up. Who knew my first fiction sale would be to a newspaper?”
Chapter Eighteen
My body was sore from the day’s exertions. I just wanted to climb into bed and sleep for a week. But I had news to deliver. With one knuckle, I knocked on Lillian’s hotel room door. At this late hour, not even the carpet seemed to dampen its loudness.
I waited, pondering which words to use when I told her Samuel Saxton was dead. In all of my cases, this was the first one that involved a death and, more to the point, the first one in which I’d had to tell a person that their loved one was gone. The taste in my mouth was sour.
No sound emerged from behind the door. I knocked again, a bit louder this time. Surely she wasn’t sleeping. Even if she was, I felt it my duty to let her know the case was completed. And, as crass as it was, I needed to present her with my bill.
A few feet away, another door opened and an older man stuck his head out. He held a book, his index finger keeping his place. “Is your name Wade?”
I cocked my head. “Yes.”
“I have something for you.” The man retreated into his room, then reemerged holding an envelope. He handed it to me. “The young lady, Miss Saxton, told me to give this to you when you came here. Sure enough, she was right.”
“Right?”
“Right that you’d come here tonight. I told her I could give it to you. I’m a night owl, you see. It’s the only time I have to catch up on my reading.” He waved the book.
I turned the envelope over in my hands. My name was scrawled on the front with a distinctive feminine handwriting. “When did she leave?”
The man checked his watch. “Oh, a little under three hours ago.”
I did the mental math. Three hours ago, I was—at Bubba’s BBQ. The last I saw of Lillian was after she excused herself, left Burman, and went to the ladies’ room. Then I had been kidnapped. If what the old man said was true, that must have meant she left Bubba’s and came straight here, packed her bags, and left.
She didn’t even wait for me to give her the report about her brother. That made no sense. Then a thought struck me. It didn’t make sense unless she already knew the truth about her brother. No, that wasn’t right. How in the world could she have known if the only answers were in Rosenblatt’s files? At the time, those documents were with Gardner.
I tore open the envelope. Inside was a folded piece of paper and three crisp hundred dollar bills. The old man’s eyes widened at the sight of the cash. I turned away and started walking. I took out the letter and read it.
“I’ve been ordered to a new assignment. I hope the cash is enough to cover your fees. I thank you for your help. And please, don’t feel like you owe me for saving your life. If you find out what happened to Samuel, please send word to this address. Don’t use his name. Just write it as if you were telling me of an old friend.”
Just below her signed name was a P.O. box number in Washington, D.C. I shook my head in amazement and walked down the stairs. I left the Rice Hotel and walked around the block to my car. I slammed my palm on the hood, then clambered inside. I was bone-tired, but sleep had just taken a back seat to my desire to see Lillian again. I wanted to let her know about her brother, but I didn’t want to do it the way she asked.
Starting the car, I drove the streets and watched as my hometown passed in front of my eyes. Dietrich’s words stuck in my craw. How many more Nazis were in Houston? In Texas? In the United States? If Dietrich thought nothing of killing Rosenblatt to keep the Führer’s secrets from seeing the light of day, what else might his associates be capable of? It was as if a veil had been removed from my eyes, like the curtain in the Wizard of Oz. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what was behind that curtain.
But now I knew. I cursed Lillian Saxton for coming into my office. I liked my job when it was just the sordid details of normal life: the lying, the cheating, the adultery, the burglary, the missing persons. I could deal with those.
But this? National security? War? Espionage? That was way out of my league.
Chapter Nineteen
I didn’t want to go home. I wouldn’t sleep anyway. Sleep would come eventually, but not now. I ended up back at the Post building. I went up to Gardner’s floor and looked for him at his usual desk. He wasn’t there, and some of his knick knacks were missing.
“Over here.”
I looked up and saw Gardner by the window. I went over, spreading my hands out in a question.
“I decided to leverage my vow of silence and get myself a window desk,” Gardner said.
“You blackmailed your own boss?”
“The word is ‘leverage,’ Wade. Learn it. Might do you some good.”
“Whose desk was it?”
“Terry’s, but he’s close to retirement anyway. Johnny Flynn and I were angling for this spot. I just had the clout to make it mine.”
“By blackmailing your boss,” I joked. His typewriter was empty of paper. Beside him were two or three drafts of the story. “You done writing?”
“Yes.” He rubbed his eyes.
I sat in the chair next to him and plopped my hat on the next desk. I put my head in my hands. “I hate knowing that guys like Dietrich are out there in our city doing the things they’re doing. It’s going to make me question every murder in this town from now on. Who’s to say it isn’t just another cover-up?”
“You think you got it bad. At least you didn’t read what Rosenblatt discovered.” He slipped a cigarette between his lips and put fire to it. He leaned back in his chair and put his feet on his desk. It was the posture he used when he was about to pontificate. I didn’t want to hear it, but I owed it to him to listen.
The phone on his desk rang. “It’s probably the copy room with the draft.” He picked up the receiver and spoke. He listened, and then the cigarette fell from his lips. It flipped over and over in the air, landing partly on his leg and then on the floor. He stamped it out with the heel of his shoe. Looking at me with a blank expression, he held the phone out to me. “It’s for you.”
With shaking hands, I picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
“You need to make sure Mr. Gardner doesn’t talk about what he learned,” a woman’s voice said. Lillian Saxton’s voice.
“How did you know he was...?”
“I can read people. His body language indicated he was about to tell a story. The only story worth telling is what happened tonight.”
I look
ed around the room. It was large, with a few offices on the perimeter. No one sat at the desks. That left only one other way she knew this. I gazed out the window, peering into the night. There were a few buildings near us, but one in particular caught my attention.
The building that met my gaze had four rooms still lit by lights at this time of night. But only one had a shadow at the window. “You’re still in the Rice Hotel. But in a different room.” I sighed. “Why’d you leave?”
“I told you. I have a new assignment.”
“So,” I said, looking at Gordon, “you really are a spy.”
“I am.”
“And that story about your brother?”
“Real.” She grew silent. “Did you or your reporter friend actually find out the truth about Samuel?”
I nodded, then remembered she might not be able to see it. “Yes.”
“Tell me.”
I did. When she started softly sobbing, I wanted to hold her, comfort her. I had counted the floors and pinpointed her room, but it was clear she didn’t want me there.
“Thank you,” she said, sniffling a little. “At least I know now.”
“What are you going to do next?”
“I can’t tell you,” she said, some frivolity returning to her voice. “It’s top secret.” She paused. “But we might meet again. You did good, Wade. You found what others couldn’t. It’s just too bad you can’t use it. You never know: when we go to war, we might use someone with your talents.”
I sighed. “Not you, too. Everyone seems to think we’ll eventually get into this war. What if we don’t?”
“Mr. Wade, I’m much more worried about that scenario than the one in which we do get into it. At least if we’re in it, we can shape the world once we win.”
“You sound pretty confident about winning a war we’re not even in yet.”
“I have to be because the alternative is something too dire to think about. Good night, Mr. Wade. Get some rest. You look horrible.” She hung up.
I gave the phone back to Gardner.
“Where is she?” he said.
I pointed at the Rice Hotel. “Seventeenth floor.”
Gardner whistled softly. “She’s good.”
“Yep, she is that.”
A door banged open and a copy boy ran to us. He slapped down the morning edition. We all read it. Splashed across the top was the lead headline, “Local Police Foil Bank Robbery.”
Not without pride, Gardner pointed to his by-line. “First time on the front page.”
I clapped him on the back. “Good job, Gordon, good job.” I scanned the rest of the page. There was a recap of the latest events in Europe. The Germans, it seemed, were on the verge of something and the French were getting ready for it. Over in the Pacific, the Japanese were already in China. Heaven help us all if they decided to team up.
War, I thought. On both sides of us, and we’re in the middle. In my mind’s eye, I pictured a world map, putting all the warring countries in red and the United States in blue. There was so much red throughout the world, and so little blue.
Maybe Lillian Saxton and Donnelly were right. Maybe war was coming. Hell, a part of it had already dropped here in Houston. Did that mean we had already waded into war?
A part of me thought so.
“Come on, Mr. Front Page Man,” I said to Gardner, “let’s get some breakfast. I got paid today. It’s my treat.”
Acknowledgements
This is a very big occasion for me, your humble author. What you hold in your hands is my debut book, my first-born if you will. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing.
The writing of this book has a long gestation period. Way back in 2005, a friend of mine asked me if I would read chapters from the book he was writing. Without fully thinking, I replied with something along the lines of “Sure, if you read mine.” The problem was that I didn’t have a book but I started writing one. Nearly a year later, I wrote The End on that book. I did all the things you were supposed to do in the pre-ebook era: I queried multiple agents, found one, but, ultimately, that novel went nowhere.
Not coincidentally, my writing went nowhere as well. I started and stopped other books multiple times but to no avail. This non-writing went on for six years. In that span, I began blogging regularly and met lots of great people online. The enjoyment of blogging intoxicated me and it filled the need-to-write void quite well, but there was no next completed novel.
Ideas always came to me. Some of them stayed with me, some vanished into the ether of my imagination. One that insinuated itself pretty firmly was the image of a man, dressed in a suit, knocking on a door and then bullets being fired at him through the door. I liked that image and started to wonder who the man was and why would someone shoot at him.
Wading Into War is the answer. Back in May 2013, I decided that I was going to write a story about that unnamed man and just get a longer story completed. Soon thereafter, I had written The End for the second time. In many ways, the Second The End was the hardest.
Now, I had a finished manuscript. What next? Well, here’s where all the thank-yous start.
In my time blogging, I have connected with dozens of fellow writers, each one sharing the same passion for writing and reading that I do. One of the more inspirational and prolific authors is James Reasoner. I can’t recall exactly how he first came to my attention but my gut tells me it was probably when I started reviewing books for Patti Abbott’s Forgotten Books blog series. Nonetheless, James and I connected and, through comments on blogs and direct emails, have come to understand that we enjoyed many of the same types of books. I sent him the story to get his take. He did something that directly led to the book you now hold in your hands. First, he enjoyed the story, a huge relief to me. Second, he said I ought to publish the then-unnamed story myself and, if I didn’t want to do that, he would be happy to publish the tale under Rough Edges Press, the imprint he runs with his wife, Livia. Little did he know then that the seed of independent publishing and the creation of Quadrant Fiction Studio had been sowed with those words. So, a hearty and heartfelt thank you to James for agreeing to read a story that, to be honest, was seven years in the making and liking it enough to encourage a bourgeoning writer to continue.
Once the decision to publish was made, the next step was editing. While I knew some editors, I wanted to ensure that Wading Into War received editing from someone I didn’t know. I wanted the cold, hard, and honest truth. A fellow writer friend of mine, Dawn Greenfield Ireland, highly recommended the editor she uses. I contacted Anna Marie Flusche via email and telephone and she agreed to read the story. We didn’t meet until she returned her verdict. She made the story much better and caught errors I had overlooked, but any issues with the final draft are all mine. So, thank you Dawn for the recommendation and thank you Anna Marie for doing such a splendid editing job.
It’s a fact: people judge a book by its cover. This was going to be my first book published so I needed a cover of which I could be proud. I contacted a former co-worker, Ike Eichenlaub, to see if he would be interested in creating a book cover. Above all else, I wanted a cover that featured art, just like the old-school novels I enjoy so much. Ike matched my vision. He took cobbled together pencil drawings and emails filled with “I’d like for it to look like all of these attached images” and created this wonderful cover. I often identify authors with the first book of theirs I read. Thinking that might apply to me, I wanted an awesome cover. I got it. Thanks, Ike, for making the image I saw in my head a reality.
All of this, up to now, covers the nuts and bolts aspect of getting this book written. Here’s the emotional part. I can never fully thank my parents enough for the love, devotion, and encouragement they have always given me. Even as a child, they let me know that I could do anything I put my mind to. Well, I finally put my mind to publishing a book. It wasn’t the shortest or easiest path, but it was a path cleared by my parents. Mom and Dad, I hope you understand how important y’al
l are to me.
Finally, my wife and son. They are the ones who have to live with me every day when I’m getting up before dawn to write or when I have to sequester myself in my office to complete something. I try my best to keep the home life and writing life equal, but there are times when the writing part edges into the home part. Thank y’all both for your love and understanding. I couldn’t do it without y’all and, ultimately, it’s for y’all I’m doing this.
Other Books by Scott Dennis Parker
ALL CHICKENS MUST DIE: A Benjamin Wade Mystery
Benjamin Wade Returns!
May 1940, the last days of the Great Depression, and private investigator Benjamin Wade isn’t exactly rolling in the dough. He doesn’t even have a secretary. So he’s in the unenviable position of taking any client that walks in his office.
Elmer Smith, a local farmer, has a problem: all of his chickens are scheduled for slaughter. He’s desperate to save his livelihood. He got a court injunction to slow the process, but time is running out.
Instead of laughing Smith out the door, Wade suppresses his pride to take the case. It seems like a simple, straight-forward paycheck. He zeroes in on a central question: What really happened the night police chased someone through Smith’s farm? Wade isn’t the only one asking that question, but he could be the only one who might die for it.
Excerpt:
CHAPTER ONE
Do you know how embarrassing it is to be a private eye without a secretary? It means that every potential client sees you sitting in the outer office, typing your own reports and notes, and not in your main office with your feet on the desk, whiling away a hot summer’s day looking at the Houston skyline. It would also have meant that clients such as Elmer Smith and his chicken problems would have been turned away and I never would have learned that a secret society existed here in Houston that had, as its one rule, the obligation to avenge any wrong done to any member, real or imagined.
Wading Into War: A Benjamin Wade Mystery Page 6