Her annual salary—for her labor in the research department of the New York Public Library—would not have paid for the ankle-length silver fox coat she was now wearing.
“Great legs,” Ed Banning said.
“We can come back tomorrow,” Carolyn said as she put her hand on his arm. “The Christmas Show starts tomorrow. Great legs in Santa Claus costumes. I thought you would like the Rockettes.”
“Once is enough, thank you,” Banning said.
“What would you like to do now?”
“That’s supposed to be my line,” Banning said.
“This is my town. I’m trying to do my bit for the boys in service.”
“Well, if you really feel that way, three guesses what I would like to do.”
She squeezed his arm.
“Aside from that,” Carolyn said. “Are you hungry, Ed?”
“You’re speaking of food,” he said.
“Yes, I’m speaking of food. The word was ‘hungry.’”
“Oh,” he said. “Could I ply you with spirits?”
“Jack and Charlie’s,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“A saloon,” she said. “A real saloon. It was a speakeasy during Prohibition. Not far, we can walk.”
“Fine,” he said.
“My mother told me that Jack’s boy has just joined the Marines.”
“Sounds like my kind of place.”
“I think you’ll like it.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder as they waited for the light to change.
“I thought New Yorkers didn’t pay attention to red lights,” Banning said.
“They do when they’re with boys from the country they want to keep from getting run over.”
The light changed and they crossed the street. A few minutes later they came to what looked to Banning like a typical New York City brownstone house…except for a rank of neatly painted cast-iron jockeys surveying a line of cold-looking people waiting to move down a shallow flight of stairs to a basement entrance.
“Is this it?” Banning asked.
“This is Jack and Charlie’s.”
“We can’t get in here,” Banning said. “Look at the line.”
“I think we can,” she said. “I used to spend a lot of time in here in the olden days.”
“With your husband?”
“Yes, with my husband. Does that bother you, Ed?”
“What if he’s in there?”
“I don’t mind being seen with a handsome Marine,” Carolyn said. “As a matter of fact, now that you’ve brought that up, I’m determined to get in.”
She let go of his arm, then elbowed her way past the people on the stairs and disappeared from sight. Banning was left feeling distinctly uncomfortable.
She was gone a long time, long enough for Banning to conclude that her onetime clout at this place had dissolved with her divorce.
Out of the corner of his eye, he became aware that he was being saluted. He returned the salute without taking a good look at the saluter, except to notice idly that he was a Marine.
“Excuse me, Sir,” a familiar voice said; there was a touch of amusement in it. “Is this where I catch the streetcar to the Bund?”
The Bund was in Shanghai, and the voice was very familiar. Banning turned and saw First Lieutenant Kenneth R. McCoy, USMCR.
Goddamn it, of all people!
He smiled, and held out his hand.
“Hello, Ken,” he said. “What cliché should I use? ‘Fancy meeting you here’? Or ‘small world, isn’t it’?”
“Are you waiting to go in?”
“My…lady friend…is trying to buck the line.”
“Come on,” McCoy said, starting to shoulder his way through the people by the stairs. He turned and motioned Banning to follow him.
If I were these people, and somebody tried to move ahead of me, I’d be annoyed.
Halfway down the stairs, he met Carolyn coming up.
“Come on,” she said. As she spoke, her eyes fell on McCoy; and then she swung her gaze back to Banning. “I got us a table.”
A large man in a dinner jacket was standing next to a headwaiter’s table. He stepped aside as Carolyn reached him. Banning moved after her, followed by McCoy.
If he stops McCoy, Banning decided graciously, I’ll tell him he’s with us.
The headwaiter spotted McCoy and gave him a smile of recognition.
“Miss Sage called, Lieutenant. She’ll be a few minutes late.”
“I’m a few minutes late, myself,” McCoy said. “Thank you, Gregory.”
Another man in a dinner jacket appeared, this one looking a little confused.
“Are you together?” he asked.
“Why not?” McCoy said, smiling at Banning.
The sonofabitch looks like he swallowed the goddamn cat. He’s curious. Why not? I would be, in his shoes.
“This way, please,” the man in the dinner jacket said. He led them to a table near the bar, snatched from it a brass RESERVED sign, and moved the table so that Carolyn could slide into the banquette seat against the wall. McCoy waved Banning in beside her, then sat down.
“Where did you come from?” Carolyn asked with a smile.
“The rock turned over,” Banning said, “and there he was.”
“Ed!” Carolyn said, shocked.
“Would you like a menu right away?” the man in the dinner jacket asked. “Or would you like something from the bar?”
“I’d like a drink,” Carolyn said. “Martini, please, olive.”
“For me, too, please,” Banning said.
The man in the dinner jacket started to move away.
“You didn’t ask what this gentleman is having,” Carolyn protested.
“I know what the Lieutenant drinks,” the man in the dinner jacket said, somewhat smugly.
McCoy smiled at Banning, even more smugly.
You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, McCoy?
“Ken, may I present Mrs. Carolyn Howell?” Banning said. “Carolyn, this is Lieutenant Ken McCoy.”
Carolyn smiled and offered McCoy her hand; then the bell rang in her head.
“You’re Killer McCoy?” she asked incredulously.
“Thanks a lot, Sir,” McCoy said angrily.
A young woman who wore her jet-black hair in a pageboy suddenly appeared at the table and leaned over to kiss McCoy on the top of his head. “You’re not supposed to call him that,” she said. “It really pisses him off.”
What did she say? Carolyn wondered, shocked. Did she really say what I think she did?
“Hi,” the young woman said. “I’m Ernie Sage.”
Banning rose to his feet.
“How do you do?” he said politely. “I’m Ed Banning. This is Carolyn Howell.”
“Oh, I know who you are,” Ernie Sage said. “Ken’s told me all about you.”
All about me? That I’m married? And that my stateless wife is somewhere in China…if she’s managed to survive at all?
A waiter delivered the drinks. Ernie Sage grabbed McCoy’s and took a swallow.
“I need this more than you do,” she said. “Today has been a real bitch!”
The waiter smiled. “Shall I bring you one of your own, Miss Sage?”
“Please,” Ernie said. She turned to Carolyn. “I guess you know these two go back a long way together. But I never met him before. I admire your taste.”
Carolyn was uncomfortable.
“Are you a New Yorker, Miss Sage?”
“Please call me ‘Ernie,’” Ernie said. “I was raised in New Jersey. I’ve got an apartment here. When I’m not being a camp follower, I’m a copywriter for BBD and O.”
“Excuse me, what did you say?” Carolyn blurted.
“When Ken has a camp I can follow him to, I’m there,” said Ernie Sage. “So far I’ve failed to persuade him to make an honest woman of me.”
“Jesus, Ernie,” McCoy said.
“I even have a red T-shirt w
ith MARINES in gold letters across the bosom,” Ernie said, demonstrating with her hand across the front of her dress.
After a long moment, Carolyn said, “You don’t happen to know where I can find one like it, do you?”
“I’m sure we can get one for you, can’t we, honey?” Ernie asked, grabbing McCoy’s hand.
The waiter delivered another drink.
“I’d like to wash my hands,” Carolyn said. “Ed and I just came out of Radio City Music Hall.”
“That made your hands dirty?” Ernie asked. She rose to her feet. “I’ll go with you.”
The men waited until the women had disappeared around the end of the bar.
“Very pretty, that girl,” Banning said.
“Pickering introduced us, when we were in OCS at Quantico,” McCoy said. “His mother went to college with her mother. Her family is somewhat less than thrilled about us.”
“Carolyn knows about my wife, Ken,” Banning said.
“I figured you would probably tell her,” McCoy said. “You know that Rickabee has people checking on her in Shanghai?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“He probably didn’t want to raise your hopes,” McCoy said. “There’s been word that some of the Peking Marines didn’t surrender; that they’re running loose with the warlords. Maybe she got in contact with them.”
“That sounds pretty unlikely,” Banning said.
“She’s a White Russian. She’s been through this sort of thing before. I’ll bet she’s all right.”
What the White Russians did to survive when their money gave out, and they had nothing left to sell, was to sell themselves. Preferably to an American or a European. But when that wasn’t possible, to a Chinese. Now that the Japanese are running things in China…
Banning had a very sharp, very clear picture of Milla, sweet goddamned Milla, who’d already survived so goddamned much…desperately hanging on to his hand as they were married in the Anglican Cathedral in Shanghai…seven hours before the goddamned Corps ordered him out of Shanghai for the Philippines, with no goddamned way to get her out.
“Shit,” Banning said softly, bitterly.
McCoy looked at him.
“Drink your martini. There’s nothing you can do about anything.”
“Fuck you, Killer,” Banning said.
McCoy let that particular “Killer” pass unnoted. And Banning, meanwhile, picked up his martini and drained it, then held it over his head, signaling he wanted another.
“So what brings you to the Big City, Lieutenant?” he asked, closing the subject of the former Baroness Milla Christiana Lendenkowitz, now Mrs. Edward F. Banning, present address unknown.
“I’ve been down at the Armed Forces Induction Station,” McCoy replied. “What about you?”
“Rickabee ordered me to take a week off,” Banning answered. “The week’s over tomorrow.”
“That figures. I paddle the goddamned rubber boat into the jaws of danger, while the Major sits on his ass in the Port Moresby Aussie O Club bar. And the Major gets a week off.”
Does he mean that? Or is he pulling my leg?
“Didn’t Rickabee offer you time off?”
McCoy smiled. “Rickabee suspected, correctly, that the goddamn Navy has been grabbing everybody who speaks Japanese and Chinese. He said if I could grab as many as I could for our side in a week or less, he’d call it duty and pay me travel and per diem. He knew my girl lives here.”
“I presume, then, Lieutenant, that you’re on duty?”
“Yeah,” McCoy said, and gestured around the 21 Club. “Tough, huh?”
“And then you go back to Washington?”
“To Parris Island. They’ve got a dozen boots down there who are supposed to speak Chinese. You know what we need them for.”
Banning nodded: As soon as arrangements could be made, McCoy was to be sent to China—to Mongolia, specifically—where he’d set up a weather-reporting radio station. It was of course hoped that he’d find a way to keep the Japanese from finding it and shutting it down.
Considering that no one was sure the Marines could hold on to Guadalcanal, it seemed pretty farfetched that the top-level planners were already considering the problems of long-range bombing of the Japanese home islands. But in one sense it was encouraging; somebody thought the war could be won.
“When does that start?”
“They don’t confide in me,” McCoy said. “Rickabee probably knows, but he won’t tell me.” He laughed.
“What’s funny?”
“Do you know what an oxymoron is? Sessions just told me.”
Banning thought it over a moment. “Yeah, I think I do.”
“Rickabee had him in his office while he told me who to look for at Parris Island: Boots who would volunteer for this thing. ‘The important thing to find there,’ he said, ‘is intelligence. I don’t just want volunteers; I want smart volunteers.’ And Sessions said, ‘Colonel, that’s an oxymoron.’ I thought it meant sort of a supermoron or something. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. But Rickabee was pissed and threw him out of his office. Sessions told me later that an oxymoron is something like ‘military intelligence.’ Anybody intelligent who volunteered for this thing would prove by volunteering that he was pretty stupid.”
Banning laughed.
But you volunteered, didn’t you, Killer? And you’re not stupid. Or are you? What is the difference between valor and stupidity?
Carolyn Howell met Ernestine Sage’s eyes in the ladies’-room mirror.
“I know about Mrs. Banning,” she said.
“I thought maybe you did,” Ernie said as she repaired her lipstick. “According to my Marine, your Marine is a man of great integrity.”
“I met him in the library. He was researching the Shanghai Post to find out any scraps he could about what happened after the Japanese occupied the city.”
“You’re a librarian?” Ernie interrupted.
“Yes. I went back to work after my divorce,” Carolyn replied absently. “And it just…happened…between us. I already knew about his having to leave his wife over there.”
“You didn’t have to tell me that,” Ernie said.
“You didn’t have to call yourself a camp follower,” Carolyn said. “Why did you?”
“Well, for one thing it’s the truth,” Ernie said. “He won’t marry me. So I take what I can get. Whither he goest, there goeth I, as it says in the Good Book, more or less. Except that he doesn’t often go someplace where I can follow him.” She gave her head a little regretful shake. “I lived with him outside Camp Pendleton for a while.”
“Why won’t he marry you?”
“The Killer thinks he’s going to get killed…or rather, that’s his professional opinion. He has integrity, too, goddamn him; he doesn’t want to leave a widow.”
“Have you two got plans for tonight?” Carolyn asked.
“The office boy has a reputation for coming up with anything you want, for a price. I gave him twenty dollars and told him to find me some steaks. He couldn’t get any steaks, but he came up with a rib roast. I am going to pretend I’m a housewife and make it for him.”
“I’ll give you thirty dollars for it,” Carolyn said. “And invite the two of you to join us for dinner in the bargain.”
“Deal,” Ernie said. “And in the bargain, I will smile enchantingly at Gregory and charm him into letting me raid their wine cellar.”
[THREE]
The Andrew Foster Hotel
San Francisco, California
1730 24 October 1942
Mrs. Carolyn Ward McNamara was by nature a very fastidious woman. Consequently, she was at the moment a very annoyed one. Not only had she not bathed in seventy-two hours, or changed her clothing (except underwear, once) during that time, but her skin felt gritty from the coal ash that blew through the window of the passenger car on the final, St. Louis-San Francisco, leg of her journey. The last time she combed her hair—as they were coming into San Francisc
o—she could literally hear the scraping noise the ash made against her comb.
Before she actually entered Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station (how long ago? it seems like weeks), she really had no idea how overloaded the railroads were. Even in the middle of the night, 30th Street Station was jammed. Still, she was able to buy a ticket to San Francisco, thank God!…even if she didn’t have a seat for most of the way to Chicago. And the passenger car was old!—even older than the one that brought her from Chicago to here; it had probably been retired from service after the Civil War and resurrected for this one. Anyhow, she found a place at the rear of that ancient passenger car, behind the last seat, where she was able to crawl in and rest her back against the wall.
During the trip, she subsisted on cheese and baloney sandwiches, orangeade, and an infrequent piece of fruit. She’d sell her soul right now for five ounces of scalloped veal, some new potatoes, and a green salad.
At the station, she waited thirty minutes for a taxi, then had to share the cab with two people who apparently lived at opposite ends of San Francisco.
And now she was finally arriving at the Andrew Foster, but God only knew what she was going to find there. If she managed to connect with Charley at all, he’d probably be in the same shape that she was: tired, dirty, and with no place to go.
“Here we are, lady,” the driver said as the cab pulled up in front of the hotel.
Coming here, she realized at that moment, was not the smartest idea she ever had. But when she heard Charley’s voice, and he told her he was on his way to San Francisco, it seemed like an inspiration. They would meet where they had parted, in San Francisco’s most elegant hotel.
The doorman opened the door (looking askance, Carolyn was sure, at the filthy lady with the coal ash in her hair). She glanced out. People were standing in line in front of the revolving door.
Not only is there going to be no room at this inn, but what made you think they would obligingly provide a message-forwarding service for you and Charley?
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