Blame the Dead

by Ed Ruggero

“I didn’t want to get shipped off to North Africa. He blames me, blames the other nurses.”

  You’re goddamn right, Boone thought.

  She was quiet for a moment. Then, “All that shit he let happen.”

  Drake stood quietly. A cat came out from the open door and rubbed against his leg.

  “What did Stephenson have on Boone that kept Boone quiet?” Drake asked.

  Boone held his breath. Then the door behind him opened and a woman coming out of the apartment yelped, surprised to see an American soldier crouching beside her door. She ducked back inside, slamming the door behind her.

  Boone looked over the edge of the balcony; Ronan and Drake were gone, the door to the apartment shut.

  “Shit,” Boone said, going down the stairs two at a time. He glanced out through the gate to see if they’d left the courtyard, but the street was empty.

  He was frantic now. If Drake hadn’t colluded with Ronan and the others, he was about to start. They were ganging up on him. He had not come this far and worked this hard to be destroyed by gossiping nurses.

  Boone pounded on the door.

  “Who’s there?” Drake asked.

  It was a ridiculous question, and Boone laughed. “Colonel Boone. Open the door, First Sergeant.”

  There was shuffling inside, talking, Drake giving instructions to the woman, no doubt.

  “I said open the goddamned door, First Sergeant!”

  Drake waited another moment, then slid back the iron bar on the door.

  “Where is she?” Boone said as he barged in, nearly hitting Drake with the door.

  “She’s not here,” Drake said.

  Boone stomped around the front room, then pushed through the curtain that separated it from the only other room in the back. There was a window, big enough for Ronan to climb through. Boone pushed the shutter open, but the back alley was already empty. When he turned, he caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror. He looked like a patient he’d seen recently, a GI who’d taken a handful of the army’s stay-awake pills: eyes wild, face flushed.

  “But she was here, wasn’t she? Whose place is this? Who brought her here?”

  “I guess it was Colianno, that paratrooper who drives the MP lieutenant around.”

  “So she’s fucking a private now?” Boone said. “And that little tramp has the nerve to smear my command?” Boone was beyond angry. He felt like his heart was about to jump from his chest. His hands shook; he saw spittle flying from his lips.

  “Why did you come here, Colonel?” Drake asked. He was looking at Boone’s pistol.

  “We have to stop her,” Boone said, as if it were obvious.

  “I came to find her and bring her back. Then you obviously followed me. Why did you think you needed to come out here?”

  “Look, Drake, you and I both know that Stephenson wasn’t the only asshole doing what he was doing. If Ronan takes this complaint—and that’s all it is, an allegation—if she takes this to the corps level or even up to the Seventh Army surgeon, we’re all fucked.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You think your hands are clean here? There isn’t anything that goes on in that hospital that you don’t know about. You knew that Ronan was shacking up with that wop paratrooper. I’m not the only one who can be accused of not taking appropriate action.”

  “You’re the commander,” Drake said.

  There was a sound in the next room, maybe the cat Boone had seen. Startled, he pulled his pistol.

  Later, Boone would tell himself that it wasn’t until that moment that he realized why he’d come, why he wore a sidearm.

  “Where is she?” he shouted. “Where the fuck is she?”

  Drake’s voice was surprisingly calm when he asked, “Did you kill Stephenson, Colonel?”

  Boone stopped his rant and looked at Drake closely. When he pointed the pistol, Drake lunged, grabbing for the barrel. Boone heard the report, felt the slide jump back and forward again under Drake’s hand as they struggled.

  Then Drake bent forward, air rushing out of him as he fell heavily, his knees hitting the floor like pile drivers.

  Boone stepped back. He could see Drake’s eyes move. Looking for the pistol? Looking for help? He was still alive, his eyes tracking Boone’s shoes as the colonel stepped over him and out the door.

  30

  4 August 1943

  1030 hours

  Lieutenant Cohen walked Lindner back to the street and the waiting staff car. There was a woman selling flowers from a pushcart, and some Sicilian men clearing rubble with shovels and wheelbarrows. Other men stood or sat in the shade, and Lindner wondered if they were hoping to be hired by the Americans.

  Dozens of soldiers hurried into and out of the headquarters building. Lindner doubted anyone noticed the small P above the breast pocket of his American uniform. Of course, he wore no insignia of rank or unit patch, either, but the average GI paid little attention to wearing the uniform correctly. They were always adjusting things, adding and subtracting pieces to suit their work and comfort. They hardly looked like soldiers.

  And yet they’re winning the war, Lindner thought.

  “I’m not going back to the hospital with you,” Cohen said. “Sergeant Cordell here will drive you.”

  Lindner looked at the driver, who stood on the opposite side of the big car, smoking a cigarette. When Cohen called him, he flicked the butt away and stood at what probably passed for the position of attention in the American army.

  “Got that, Sergeant?” Cohen asked the driver.

  “No problem, Lieutenant. I’ll take care of him.”

  Lindner reached for the door handle, but Cohen leaned in front of him. “Let me get that for you,” he said.

  Before he opened the door, Cohen, whose face was just inches from Lindner’s, looked the doctor in the eye for a long few seconds. “You know, Doctor, it’s not like we need a reason to put you on one of those POW ships,” Cohen said. “You’ve been useful up to this point, but that could all change.”

  “Of course, Lieutenant,” Lindner said.

  Cohen yanked the door open and Lindner climbed into the hot car. The lieutenant, standing curbside, was still studying him when the driver put the car in gear and pulled away.

  Lindner felt as if he’d been holding his breath since Cohen came up behind him at Glass’ desk. He wanted Cohen to find some American doctor to treat Glass. He wanted to go back to the ward and lose himself in work. He would even prefer, he admitted, one of the POW ships headed for America. But none of those things were in the cards. He finally had a piece of useful information, or so he thought, and he had to pass it along if it was going to do any good for him, for his family back in Essen, for his brother in Italy.

  He felt sick to his stomach, but it was possible, at least, that the terrible burden of waiting might, at last, be over. First, he had to gather his courage.

  “Sergeant, I wonder if we might make a small detour,” Lindner said.

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Colonel,” the driver said.

  “It’s Sergeant Cordell, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you see, I was stationed here in Palermo for many weeks before the invasion. Time enough to develop relationships with some of the locals. One in particular.”

  Cordell looked at him in the rearview mirror, and Lindner could see the man was smiling. “Hot damn, Doc!” he said, slapping the steering wheel again. “You got a little piece of dago tail stashed somewheres? You want to pay her a visit?”

  Lindner swallowed. He wasn’t sure which was more distasteful: lying to this man or allowing the American to think he was no better than any rutting twenty-year-old. No better than the late Captain Meyers Stephenson.

  “There is a woman, yes. And I would like to visit, if you could see fit to drive me a bit out of the way and perhaps wait for me. Just a short time.”

  “I know what you mean about short time, Doc. I mean, I’ll bet it’s a medical fact that a guy with blue b
alls can only last a minute or so next time he’s with a woman. Am I right? Right?”

  Lindner wasn’t sure what the driver was talking about, since the point of the conversation seemed to turn on the meaning of the term “blue balls,” but Cordell wanted to be right.

  “I believe you are correct,” Lindner said.

  “Say, is your friend a working girl?”

  “Sorry?”

  “I’m just wondering if there was another woman around who might make this worth my time and trouble,” Cordell said. “I’m taking a risk here. Lieutenant Cohen is pretty straitlaced, doesn’t even drink, if you can believe that. Anyways, I could get in trouble. So I was thinking that maybe there was a little something in it for me.”

  The driver was asking if Lindner’s imaginary friend was a prostitute. He wanted to know if other women were available.

  “I’m sorry,” Lindner said.

  “Oh, well. I reckon it don’t hurt to ask,” Cordell said.

  * * *

  Lindner had Cordell drop him alongside the steep rock topped by the Castello Utveggio, a palace that had been turned into a hotel and, before the invasion, was a billet for German officers. He looked up at the crenelated tower and wondered if the Americans had moved in, wondered if they also co-opted the best properties.

  Lindner walked south along the waterfront by the Grand Hotel Villa Igiea, where he had enjoyed a few meals during his time in Palermo, before the Allies came. He turned back to admire the view of its stone tower and, below it, the recently tidied outdoor restaurant. There were a few civilians and a handful of Americans; officers, he judged. About twenty yards back along the sidewalk, a young man in a rakish hat looked directly at him, then turned in to the garden and headed down the steps toward the waterfront.

  Lindner moved along the seawall, turned west into a side street just past the hotel proper. Just ahead of him was a block of four apartments in a sand-colored building. Lindner turned back at the corner, looking for the man in the hat, the one he’d seen at the garden, but there was no sign of him. He ducked into the shadow of a doorway, waited nearly a minute, then stepped back out into the street. His imagination was getting the better of him, but he wasn’t imagining its effect: His pulse hammered away as if he’d just run a mile.

  Lindner walked toward the apartment block. The entrance was in the center on the ground floor and led to a tiny, pleasant courtyard with four lemon trees. He had no idea if his contact would be there, did not even know if the man lived there or just visited, but he’d been told to come when he had an urgent message. And Doctor Lindner had an important message.

  He believed the war was already lost, that the Nazis had destroyed Germany for the second time in a century not half over. He believed the moral answer would be to help the Allies advance to a quick victory, save the Fatherland from a prolonged struggle that would leave it in ruins, its cities bombed, its people homeless and hungry.

  But Lindner also believed that the Abwehr and the Gestapo would kill his younger brother, would deny his family the permits necessary to travel to the countryside if he failed to produce any intelligence at all.

  But what if the Germans adjusted their defense of the mainland based on his report? Would they move the Luftwaffe antiaircraft units into the very zone that was to be attacked? What if his report put his brother into even more danger? What if he got Albrecht killed?

  Lindner reached the entryway to the apartment block just as the young man he’d seen earlier came around the corner in front of him. The civilian had circled the building and removed the hat, but the hatband had pressed a red line into his forehead. Terrified, Lindner turned immediately and walked away as quickly as he could without running.

  31

  4 August 1943

  1100 hours

  Harkins spent the morning tying up a loose end, corroborating Colianno’s story about where he was the morning of the murder. The two soldiers he’d claimed had been with him that morning—men who’d also ignored the air-raid warning—had both returned to their units. Marshall, a First Infantry Division artillery soldier, was back in the fight, his unit on the move behind the Allied advance. It would take days to track him down.

  Harkins sent a message to Patrick to find the other soldier, a paratrooper from Colianno’s own regiment. In a conversation with the chaplain, Private Eugene Harris confirmed that he, Colianno, and the artilleryman, Marshall, had ignored the air-raid warning and had spent the time packing their gear for discharge.

  Harkins found Gallo, the doctor he’d seen the morning of the murder, the man who said that Stephenson had been right behind him, running for the same shelter. It was another dead end, and it reminded Harkins why so-called eyewitnesses often turn out to be unreliable. Gallo couldn’t tell Harkins how far back Stephenson had been, did not hear what, if anything, Stephenson had been saying, couldn’t even say for sure if Stephenson had been headed for the same shelter trench.

  By the time Colianno came to pick him up, Harkins felt he’d wasted the better part of a day with nothing to show for it.

  “Learn anything new so far?” Colianno asked when Harkins climbed into the jeep.

  “Not a goddamn thing. You?”

  “We’ll know soon enough.”

  Colianno dropped Harkins off on the waterfront at a sidewalk café owned by a cousin, told him to wait while he retrieved the other cousins, the men he’d sent after Lindner. Harkins thought he’d be conspicuous, an American officer sitting around sipping coffee in the afternoon, but it turned out that there were plenty of GIs killing time in Palermo. He wondered about his own platoon—he’d been temporarily assigned to the provost marshal’s office, thanks to Captain Adams’ paper shuffling—and was surprised to find he missed them.

  He’d finished half of a tart lemonade when Colianno pulled up.

  “How’d it go?” Harkins asked before the four men had dismounted. He had a couple of theories about what was happening at the hospital, and he wanted to drop the ones that did not look promising. Having Lindner followed had seemed like a stretch, a little desperate.

  “Not good,” Colianno said. “The Nazi doc saw them following. Saw Enzo.”

  At the mention of his name, the youngest cousin dropped his head. “M’â scusari.”

  “They followed him to an apartment building, and it looked like he was going inside. Maybe there’s something going on in there.”

  “How big an apartment building?” Harkins asked.

  Colianno posed the question, got an answer. “Four.”

  Harkins looked at the cousins. The oldest, Colianno had told him, was twenty-three, the youngest and brightest only sixteen. Same age Michael had been when Harkins helped him lie his way into the navy.

  “OK,” Harkins said. “I have an idea, but maybe they leave Enzo home this time.”

  “He’s real sorry,” Colianno said.

  “I’m sure he is. I’m more worried about the fact that he’s been made. Lindner has seen him, knows that Enzo was following him.”

  Colianno spoke to Enzo, put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. Enzo protested, but eventually nodded his head in agreement.

  “What’s the plan, boss?” Colianno asked Harkins.

  “Think they can find out who lives in those four apartments?”

  “Then maybe we can link someone back to Lindner?”

  “Something like that,” Harkins said. “I want to know what our German friend is up to.”

  While Colianno was explaining what he wanted his cousins to do, an army ambulance stopped along the waterfront and Kathleen Donnelly got out. She told the driver to wait for her on a side street, then walked toward Harkins.

  “This where the brain trust is meeting?” she asked.

  She had changed into a clean uniform—no bloodstains—and had her hair wrapped against the dust in an olive drab scarf that had once been an arm sling.

  Harkins stood, checked the impulse to kiss her, and instead pulled up a chair for her. “How’d you find us
?”

  “Dominic pointed out this place when we came out here with Ronan. Said his cousin owns it.”

  “So now you’re taking in the sights?” Harkins asked.

  “No. I came out to tell you that it looks like Boone is no longer enamored of Herr Doktor Lindner.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “First Sergeant Drake’s clerk came to the admin area, looking for Drake, who has been gone all day. Very unusual. Anyway, the clerk said that Boone told Lindner to ship out with the next batch of prisoners.”

  “Did they get another dick doctor?” Colianno asked.

  “No. We’re down two docs and three nurses, by my count. And we’re getting ready to jump.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We got a warning order to be ready to jump forward, relocate the entire hospital somewhere closer to the front; shorten the ambulance ride for the patients who need care right away. We try to stay no more than twenty-five miles or so back from the fighting.”

  “So you just pick up the whole hospital?” Harkins asked. There had to be tons of tents and equipment, not to mention two hundred–plus patients, some of whom were in bad shape and probably could not be moved.

  “We have three platoons, and we usually move one at a time. Leapfrogging. We support the First Division and their attached units, but I guess somebody else is covering while we move the whole hospital. “It is a giant goat rope. All those vehicles getting loaded up. Everything has to be labeled correctly and put in the right trucks. We have to discharge or move our patients. We have to send people forward to scout another location, and when we get there we have to set up right away and be ready to receive patients. We’re actually pretty good at it, compared to other hospital units, but it’s still FUBAR.”

  “And when does this happen?”

  “We’ve been given a warning order. Could be anytime in the next twelve hours, or we could sit around here for another week. It’ll be a lot harder if Drake isn’t back by the time we start. He’s the ringmaster of this operation.”

  “Is there any way Boone is behind this move?” Harkins asked.