TWO O’CLOCK, EASTERN WARTIME

by John Dunning

  He’s probably well aware of the risk he took. But he’ll always take a risk if he can hurt or embarrass England. The bigger the embarrassment, the bigger the risk he’s willing to take. He’d gladly die if he could take England with him.

  He knows he shouldn’t have used Paul Kruger’s name but the temptation to be symbolic was too great, and in that name he left a small trail of paper. Harford’s check for the play was a necessary evil—not that the money mattered, it couldn’t have been much, but the check had to clear before the station owned the rights and could legally put it on the air. The check was endorsed by Paul Kruger, who might’ve been anyone, and made over to a John Riordan of that house on West Fifty-sixth Street. The Irishman, probably the same one who roughed up Kendall. Now we’ll find out what that’s about.

  Our Paul Kruger became a spy, that’s clear enough. When the first war broke out he was all for Germany, at least until we got into it—late, as usual—in 1917. Whatever he did, it had nothing to do with Uncle Sam: only England was his mad passion. We may never know if he worked for Germany in the first war but I’ll bet he did. I think Whitemarsh, if we ever find out what it means, will be a code name, what they knew him by in Berlin. Who knows what he might have done for them over the years? You read about what spies do and some of it seems so harmless. Even if they’re not in defense work they can be funnels of information. They pass along the stuff they hear in everyday talk. They put up and hide fellow travelers. They take pictures of British ships docking in New York and pass along the departures and routes when they can get them. Everything counts in wartime, everything adds up.

  He wrote this play because somewhere along the way he discovered the power of the air. Without a doubt Mrs. Harford would play Margaret. But suddenly Mrs. Harford died and it languished in the office until the program director quit and Barnet took over.

  Early summer 1936. Maitland and Kidd were here then, but Harford was devastated and the station was slipping into ruin.

  This much is certain. At some point March Flack read the script and was infuriated. The old imperialist, whose hero was being slandered. I can almost hear his voice. It’s a goddamn lie. What the hell do you think we are, a race of savages? . . . See here, old boy, let me give you the real life of Lord Kitchener. Obviously he had some sway with Barnet. But imagine the effect on a certain man when the Boer piece was shelved and Kitchener was glorified in full dress with ribbons and medals . . . it must have been like calling up the devil.

  March was killed in a hot rage. The others were all cover-up for the German operation, killed by the same killer for the same personal reason. Somehow Carnahan discovered what they were doing and decided to get some proof. Whatever he got, he sent it to me for safe-keeping. But someone found out and we know what happened then.

  Kendall was just an actor playing a role he didn’t understand. Probably paid with German money, more cash than he’d seen in a month of Sundays. Now I know why he always wanted to pick up the mail. But he never did get it, and the package—whatever it was—is still out there, probably sitting in some dead-letter office.

  If I know anything about our boy it is this. He’s a deadly shot. He could’ve killed me three times over that day in Pinewood. He didn’t want me dead, that’s the only answer. Somehow, perhaps, he still had a watch on my mail. RETURN—DECEASED wouldn’t do: God knows where it would end up then, or who would open it, or when.

  Dulaney remembered the day his papers arrived at general delivery; the package ripped apart and retied. He remembered the newspaper clipping in the German girl’s apartment, telling of Nazi spies in radio, shipping companies, and post offices.

  Someone wanted to scare me, stall me long enough that I’d miss my train. So he could get into the city before I did. So he could do what he had to do.

  I like this, Dulaney thought. He stopped near West Fifty-third and stood thinking it through again, and he felt certain about almost all of it. Far less certain was how he would approach this Riordan fellow. He was prepared for anything from deception to intimidation. But he was not prepared for what he saw when he walked up the last three blocks.

  A police car, parked in front of the house.

  He went into the café and took a table near the window and ordered lunch. There wasn’t much business on Saturday and it looked like he could sit here as long as he wanted.

  For the fiftieth time that morning he thought of Holly, and the question was always there. What if she doesn’t show up? She had no blood kin and no ties to any purpose or place. She could disappear forever if that’s what she wanted, sink into the vast American woodwork.

  What would he do if she decided not to arrive? Of course there was only one answer. Promises be damned, he would find her.

  Out on the street nothing was happening. Only that cop car sitting ominously empty. No one on the street going into the building or out. Just the sunlit street and the quiet house and an occasional cab going by.

  The waitress brought him some bread and his mind drifted as he waited.

  Suddenly he saw the radio career that he would never have, encompassed in last night’s broadcast.

  Gus?

  Just tell me what you need, champ.

  Livia?

  An enormous explosion shakes the room, a bombshell that makes Stallworth leap away from the speaker with a cry of alarm.

  Miss Teasdale seems to be ready.

  A wave of uneasy laughter flutters across the soundstage. She drowns it out with a spectacular thirty-second artillery barrage.

  Miss Teasdale is definitely ready.

  Maitland offers to stick around and Jordan is grateful for the help. For this important opening show they will have two directors—Jordan will work with the cast and sound on the floor while Maitland cues the orchestra and coordinates the entire production with Stoner in the booth. Blake is still here: he stayed over, and will play the white colonel and a few of the smaller colored parts. Potentially a touchy situation, but Blake plays it straight in the first reading and the blacks accept him as one of them. Waldo speaks for all of them from the booth. He sounds just like my grandfather.

  A few musicians trickle in, and this is how it begins.

  The biggest problem as the clock ticks down is Eli. He can’t seem to break free of his fear. It has been coming over him as he realizes how far removed this show is from their simple Sunday broadcasts. He will be asked to carry much of it and he knows he’s not ready, and the sight of the microphone makes him tremble as it waits for his presence.

  Jordan hears Waldo breathing through the open mike from the booth. He looks up and meets the old black eyes through the glass.

  Waldo?

  Waldo shakes his head. It’s not my place to say this.

  Say it anyway. Do . . . do say it.

  Waldo leans close. He’s tense and you’re trying to get him to play it calm. Maybe it’d go better if you let him play it tense.

  What a revelation! Turn it into a suspense play! Let him be afraid, even in the quiet passages he writes in his diary to open the show. Make the audience ask themselves, Why is this man so goddamn terrified?

  Let’s try it that way, Eli. Take it from the top.

  Jordan Ten Eyck looks at his script as Eli begins to read. Diary entry, Ruckus Nation, Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Colored Infantry, Morris Island, South Ca’lina, July 18, 1863.

  Say it with a trembling heart, Eli.

  I ought to, my own heart’s doing the trembling.

  The same lines work both ways. The voice of Ruckus Nation.

  I am the doomed.

  Good, Jordan thinks. Be as scared as you are, Eli.

  We have been thrown down here on this little piece of sand to prove to historyand the Confederacy the valor of our race. I must prove this with my life. Forthree hundred years they’ve been saying that we are too lazy and ignorant foranything but the very worst kind of work. Only the African is fit for the field ina tropical Southern climate, they say, and their Bible backs them up. The
ir biblical defense of slavery has been published in all their newspapers. All I’ve got toshow them what a lie that is is that I’m willing to die.

  Good, Eli . . . good.

  Again Jordan meets Waldo through glass. The old man nods and smiles faintly. He has earned his money this week.

  At some point Kidd appears. He stands quietly watching from the back as the table reading continues and cuts are made. Jordan can sense Kidd’s anger. A second unexplained absence is grounds for dismissal, but Kidd says nothing and in a while he leaves. Becky has sweet rolls and coffee delivered and they take a break. The blacks are standoffish and reluctant, but they eat hungrily when she hand-delivers it to them.

  A flash of white as Harford’s face appears briefly on the balcony, leaning out of the darkness to see what they are doing. If it’s attention he wants, he must be in hog heaven. No other radio station would air this show. It will swamp them with phone calls and bury them under a ton of mail. Racial injustice in the military is not a thing you do in wartime, and the biblical references will drive the zealots wild.

  The time-out is short. The orchestra begins to tune up, and in the lull, he sees now, a stranger has entered the studio.

  Becky goes out to greet him and he hears the name. Palmer of the New York Times.

  Palmer declines her offer of food, of course. The integrity of the great newspaper cannot be compromised for a bit of pastry. He draws her off to the back of the room, and Jordan goes around through the sound room into the hall, coming up close to the door where he can hear them.

  Who is that writer-director, Miss Hart? . . . and where did he come from?I’ve got a pretty good memory for people in radio, but I’ve never heard that nameTen Eyck before. He seems to’ve written you a good script.

  We think it’s a great script. I guess you could call him our homegrown talent.

  How long has he been here?

  I believe he came in May.

  You mean he just walked in here cold, without any prior experience?

  We needed a writer and Mr. Kidd liked the way he handled himself.

  And now he’s not only written this play but is directing it as well. And Kiddtells me he’s done others. A serial that’s to start soon, and some specials of a fairlysophisticated nature. I can’t help thinking that he must have had some kind ofapprenticeship on a station of near-network capability.

  Not that I know. But he’s been a writer most of his life, so it’s not as if he’dnever touched a typewriter before. As a matter of fact, he published a novel a fewyears ago.

  Jordan cringes, hoping they will move past it. No such luck, of course.

  Really? What’s the name of it?

  Now I’m embarrassed, Mr. Palmer. He never told me.

  A quiet moment. Palmer scribbles away in a narrow steno notebook.

  I’d like to interview him when the play’s over.

  Becky doesn’t say anything for almost thirty seconds. Then:

  He’s really not keen on that. Don’t get me wrong, it’s just that Mr. Brown’sbeen doing this show for years. You can see why Jordan would be uneasy aboutany appearance that he’s taking it over. He would much rather have any publicity concentrate on Waldo and the cast.

  I don’t do publicity. I’m a newspaperman.

  Well, of course. I only meant—

  Look, I know the program’s history, I’ve been tuning it in occasionally onSunday mornings for years. With all due respect to Mr. Brown and what he’saccomplished, you’ve got to admit that this is a far different animal.

  Yes, it is.

  Silence. Palmer is waiting her out.

  He can almost see Becky shrug. All I can do is ask him.

  Back on the soundstage Jordan takes note of the clock. Behind him Maitland’s voice comes through the bitch box. Do you want to read them again before the dress? We’ve still got time to go over the rough spots.

  I really think they’ve got it now. Let’s not lose that edge.

  The room begins to fill with people: with salesmen and clerks and secretaries and finally the air staff. The show has gained much word-of-mouth notoriety and everyone wants to see it. Pauline and Hazel come in together. Rue arrives alone and sits by herself in a corner. Even old Poindexter is there, standing with Barnet, the two of them watching malignantly. Jordan takes refuge for a moment in the booth, where he shares a last few words with Stoner and Maitland. I think we’re ready, he says, and thanks them both. Stoner slaps his arm and says, It’s a great show, champ, but Jordan is only half listening. Through the glass he sees that the local newspaperman has arrived and is talking with Palmer of the Times.

  Waldo leans back noisily in his chair. Looks like we got a full house.

  Maitland frowns. Remind me to get that chair oiled, Waldo. I hate a squeaky chair in a radio station.

  Stoner looks up from his dials as Jordan says the obvious. Nobody can hear it in here.

  But Maitland is determined. These things have a way of getting out into the studio unless they’re nailed to the floor. Next thing you know it’ll be out there, squeaking like hell on the air.

  A cardinal rule in radio . . . let nothing disrupt your sound, even in the smallest way.

  Dulaney had been here an hour now and the street was eerily quiet. The waitress brought him a small rice pudding and he ate it, and for the tenth time he read the sign in the window across the way. ROOMS BY THE WEEK OR MONTH. His eyes paused over each letter as the deeper symptoms of boredom set in.

  He was working on his third cup of coffee when the door opened and a cop came out, stopping at the top of the steps. A moment later two men in plain suits joined the cop and the three of them talked for a few minutes. Then the uniform got into the police car and drove away. The two suits walked around the house and were gone for ten minutes.

  The waitress asked if he wanted anything else.

  “What’s going on across the street?”

  She shrugged. “Some accident is what we hear. Somebody fell from the roof and got killed last night.”

  ( ( ( 2 ) ) )

  IT meant nothing to him then, only that he must stay away from the house and try again another time. He hated to dismiss anyone’s life as an annoyance, but this was an annoyance to him now.

  He went over to Fourth Avenue and picked up his Paul Kruger books. Walked up toward the library. Sat in the William Cullen Bryant Park, reading and browsing through the dusty pages. Thought it all through again.

  When he arrived in the old neighborhood it was well after three. He had plenty of time yet, but something told him even then that she wouldn’t be there.

  He sat on the steps where they had sat that summer night in 1939, and he watched the faces of people going by. Slowly as the hour came his eyes probed anxiously down the block and beyond, looking, looking for any familiar female shape. A look at the watch told him it was four thirty.

  It never occurred to him that something might have happened to stop her from coming. If she didn’t show up, that meant only that she had changed her mind, and what could that mean? Was she playing some hide-and-seek game, to lure him away from Harford? . . . Or had she actually cast herself to the wind without as much as a final word?

  He couldn’t believe that, and yet the notion gripped him tighter as five o’clock passed. Her words haunted him. You don’t deserve the grief I’m going to bring you . . . I’m no good for anyone anymore . . . Some of us are just unlucky . . . We bring bad luck to everyone who loves us . . . That’s why I’m going to hold you to your promise . . .

  He couldn’t say she hadn’t warned him.

  He began to pace, up to the end of the block to stand on the corner, looking far off at the crossing streets. Back again to sit nervously on the steps. Down the other way. Back again, and back, and back again.

  Shadows fell over the sidewalks. Again he had a clear vision of the bleakness of life without her. At six o’clock he knew the worst. She is gone.

  Still he waited. By nightfall his last faint hope had trickled a
way. All that was left was to find her. He had to do that, even if she only said no and walked away again.

  He couldn’t bear to leave. If he waited just another five minutes she would come, running breathlessly up the street. But half an hour later he was still sitting on the steps.

  What is it about despair? he wondered. As a fiction writer it almost always led him to some unrelated insight. If you grieve deeply enough the soul will cry uncle. If you grieve long enough the mind will offer some small sacrifice to quiet the grief.

  Suddenly he knew how to trap a killer.

  ( ( ( 3 ) ) )

  JUST as suddenly she was there on the street, a mirage coming toward him in the dark.

  Not a mirage, a miracle. A real woman walking up the block. He forced himself to sit still and wait, but already his heart surged with relief.

  She stopped a dozen feet away, still in shadow.

  “Holly?”

  He got up from the steps and she moved back a few feet, keeping herself in the dark. When she spoke, it was only his name. Just “Jack,” but it was enough.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “God, what a question. I hardly know where to begin.”

  “Come over here. Where I can see you.”

  “No, you come out to me.”

  He joined her and they walked, two shadows alone on the street. She led him out of the neighborhood toward the park. He sensed trouble and because of this he waited for her to get at it in her own way. Nothing was said for several blocks, until she said, “I knew you’d still be here.”

  “I was here at four. Like you said.”

  “I know, I saw you. I watched you for a while, then I left.”

  “At least you came back.”

  Again she shied away from the light, turning him into a dark path at the edge of the park.

  “What’s wrong? . . . Why won’t you let me see you?”

  “I had an accident.”

  He was alarmed and it came out in his voice. “What happened?”