by Peter Quinn
“You never know.” He laid down the envelope and left.
It was a decade since he’d last been to Southold. Doc Cropsey had taken him and two other detectives for a summer’s weekend. They fished in the day (and caught nothing). At night they played cards by the light of a kerosene lamp and listened to the regular drone of the launches circling in from the ships parked outside the territorial limit to land illegal booze on Shelter Island.
Doc had fixed it so that Clem Payne, a sour, leather-skinned, tight-lipped, East-Ender, was waiting for Dunne at the Southold station. They stopped in a general store for provisions. A woman with a constipated frown filled a large cardboard box with milk, bread, eggs, crackers, jam, and other staples. Clem loaded the box on the back of his beat-up Ford truck. Dunne sat next to him on a torn seat. In several places the springs had popped through, their sharp, menacing corkscrew tips sticking straight up. They traveled east on the highway for a mile or so and turned onto a dirt road. Clem held the wheel tightly in his denim gloves as they jolted over the cratered, rutted surface, raising a cloud of dust that filled the cab.
Doc’s place hadn’t changed much. Inside were the same ripped screens and cork walls; same collection of secondhand furniture. The only noticeable improvements were the light bulbs that hung from the ceiling and the radio above the icebox. Outside, east of the small house, was an expanse of Sweet William. Closer in, the delicate leaves of a patch of Maiden Pink covered the ground like a mat. To the rear, by the fringe of trees that shielded the shack from the potato fields, a spread of lupines thrived. Peconic Bay was a hop, skip from the drooping screened-in porch.
It wasn’t till he’d stored away the provisions that Dunne realized he forgot to bring any booze or cigarettes. He could walk to town, but it was getting dark and he was tired. He lay down and was quickly asleep. In the morning, he went for a swim and dried off on the front stairs. The sun, like the bay, was at flood tide. The trees swayed in the breeze off Peconic Bay.
The flowers were as fragrant as in the garden of the Catholic Protectory where Brother Flavian had tried his best to make them learn the names and characteristics of everything they grew. It was a prized position to be on his “garden squad.” Unlike the Brothers who ran the laundry, the printing office, and the machine shop, big-handed, short-tempered Irishmen who didn’t hesitate to cold-cock a kid, Brother Flavian was an old Frenchman who never raised his hand or voice. As tough as the boys of the Protectory insisted they were, as unafraid, they loved his gentleness and competed to be around him.
“Pleeze, repeat again ze names after me,” he said, his accent thickened by the red wine that stained his teeth and sweetened his breath. Plants without a true stem. Names that sound like Italian saints. Narcissus, Hyacinth. Plants with stems twenty-four inches or above. Names from a burlesque marquee. Canass, Lily, Blackberry Lily. Flowers irregular, unsymmetrical. Prizefighters’ monikers. Canna, Gladiolus, Anthonyza.
Brother Flavian strolled through the garden as they hoed and weeded. He wore a white duster over his cassock. After a short while, he sank into the chair with the canvas webbing, his mumbled speech becoming a snore that needed no translation. A moment later they were over the fence, across Unionport Road, down the hill with the high grass. They stripped as they went, hanging clothes on branches and bushes, tripping one another, till they reached the sprawling pond and jumped, naked, into the murky water. No one carried a watch, but somehow they always knew when it was time to go. The race reversed itself, clothes on, over the wall, back to their garden chores.
When Brother Flavian woke from his nap, he always found them where he left them. “Bien, bien,” he muttered as he pushed himself from his chair and, oblivious to their wet, tousled hair, resumed his flower talk.
Dunne followed a routine for the next week, rising early, going for a swim, taking a late morning nap, and, in the afternoon, setting out on a long, leisurely walk. At night, he stretched out on the grass and watched the crowd of stars, unobscured and vivid. Star light, star bright, what’s your wish tonight, Fin? He thought about Elba and Roberta, two such different women joined together to save the same man. Elba’s motive was clear. But Roberta’s?
Out of provisions, he was about to walk to town when Clem Payne showed up with a box of supplies. “Doc Cropsey says to make sure you don’t perish from hunger. ‘City folk don’t know how to feed themselves.’ The doc said that, not me, though I’d be fibbin’ if I says I disagree.” He put the carton of food on the front porch and went back for a fresh block of ice wrapped in burlap, which he deposited in the icebox. Seeming in no hurry to leave, he slipped one hand in the bib of his overalls, and with the other pushed his faded, battered fisherman’s cap to the side of his head. “Interested in some fishin’?”
“Never had much luck in that department.”
“Ain’t a matter of luck but knowin’ where the fish are. Be by in the mornin’, ’bout six. Poles, bait provided, cost of two dollars.” He took off his work gloves and put out a gnarled hand minus two fingers. It reminded Dunne of a lobster claw. “Deal?”
“Deal.” His handshake was powerful and firm, despite the missing fingers.
In the morning they went fishing on Peconic Bay. The weather was serene. Diamond-faceted water mirrored a sky so bleached with sunlight that the glare made Dunne’s eye sockets ache. On the sixth or seventh morning, as the boat chugged toward Shelter Island, Dunne asked, “Ever rain out here?”
“Plenty,” Clem said.
“Not this summer, I guess.”
“Weather’s got a will of its own, no tellin’ what it’ll do next, specially this summer, showerin’ one week, scorchin’ the next. You never know. Take, for instance, a great storm, like in ’15. Nobody seen more than spit from May through August when, from nowhere, the Good Lord sends a deluge old Noah would recognize.”
“Hurt your fishing business?”
“My business?” A thin smile spread across his dry, cracked lips. “I’m talkin’ about eighteen fifteen. Old as I may seem, I ain’t that old.”
It was their last exchange of the morning. The rest of the time was spent wordlessly hooking a variety of fish, some as flat as cardboard, others round and full. Dunne had no idea what they were and didn’t expose his ignorance by asking. When they were gutted and cleaned, he took home a supply of fillets for dinner, cooking them the way Clem told him, in a frying pan with butter and salt, boiled potatoes on the side. Nameless as they were, he relished their taste.
The weather turned cloudy and wet. Dunne skipped fishing and walked the several miles to Southold. He went to the pharmacy and sat in the phone booth. He picked up the receiver and hesitated. Brannigan’s warning: It’s over and done. Then again, maybe not. He placed a long-distance call to SP-3-1000, the general exchange at police headquarters. After several minutes, he reached Detective Tommy Hines.
“Dunne? What the hell do you want?”
“A favor.”
“I don’t owe you any.”
“Ever hear of a Roberta Dee?”
“This a joke?”
“I’ll let you know when I find out what the punchline is.”
“Word is, Chief Brannigan gave you a few punchlines of his own.”
“Told me to behave. I’m trying.”
“You’re not so bad, Dunne. I known worse, that’s for sure.”
“How about Roberta Dee?”
“Is it an alias?”
“Could be. Probably a sheet on her, if you wouldn’t mind looking.” As a cop, Dunne had used the files of the Bureau of Investigation, which cross-referenced every dip, thug, yegg, thief, murderer, pimp, and party girl by name, profession, and modus operandi, from auto thieves to zoo workers, first-story burglars to roof-top jumpers. A criminal Who’s Who, Who Was and Who Wants To Be, it cataloged the race, height, sex, eye color, distinguishing features, aliases, and arrest records, of every felon and perpetrator who’d come under the jurisdiction of the NYPD. More often than not, even if an alias was used, it had
some semblance to the real name, and if those patient enough to toil through the list were lucky enough to be guided by the surly clerks who oversaw it, they found what they were after.
“I got other matters on my mind. Dewey wants to retry my uncle.”
“They don’t call Jimmy Hines ‘The Silver Fox’ for nothing.” The operator broke in and asked Dunne to deposit more coins. He ran to the counter to get change. Come on, Tommy, let’s not waste time on Uncle Jimmy. The whole city knows he’s been on the take for years, a partner with the mob in operating the Harlem numbers racket, all those dimes sucked out of hopeful negroes producing riches for those who run the game and peanuts for those who play it. Sooner or later, Dewey will hunt him down. “Tammany will see to it there’s another mistrial or maybe even an acquittal.”
“Hope you’re right, Dunne.”
“Now, about Miss Dee?”
“Not for free.”
“Never entered my head.”
“See what I can find. No promises. Got it?”
“Got it, Tommy.”
Clem Payne deposited him at the station. He bought the New York papers, a pack of Lucky Strikes, and a roll of assorted LifeSavers. He sucked a succession of Pep-O-Mint, Wint-O-Green, Molas-O-Mint, so that the roll was half gone by the time the train pulled in. The windows on the train car were dust-covered and almost impossible to see through. Not much to see anyway, dull, flat potato fields, same empty landscape he remembered from Camp Mills, in Hempstead, where he’d trained under Major Donovan with the 69th Regiment in the summer of 1917, tents pitched in the sandy soil, a siege of rabbits, skunks, flies, gnats, mosquitoes. Eventually, it was a tent city of 30,000 men, the Rainbow Division. Most of the city boys were permanently cured of ever wanting to see the countryside again.
The lead stories in the papers all concerned Europe, the Germans’ growls about Czechoslovakia, war games near the border, a repeat of what he’d heard on the radio plugged into the single porcelain outlet above the ice box, music interrupted by the urgent, self-important tones of newscasters who went on about “gathering war clouds” and “a drumbeat of aggression.” He flipped through the sports pages. As much as he liked to watch a fight or horse race or ballgame, he got no enjoyment from reading about them. He rested the paper on his lap.
War. They were welcome to it. Blow themselves off the map. Good riddance. He wrestled with the window, managing to open it just a crack. Outside was a continuous smear of telephone poles, fences, farmhouses. The train’s rock-a-bye motion made him drowsy. The odor from the countryside was musty and unpleasant, heavy with salt air and manure, a smell reminiscent of the wire.
They don’t believe it at first, when the limey sergeant major tells them that barbed wire has a smell. On their way to the front, they mingle with the English troops being relieved. The limey sergeant’s cigarette looks pristine and unblemished in his begrimed hands.
“How far to the Front?” Dunne asks.
“Not far at all, Yank,” the limey laughs. “You’ll know you’re there when you ’ad a sniff o’ the wire.” He repeats the phrase “sniff o’ the wire” and laughs again, a hot, foul stench passing through teeth the color of rusted wire.
They don’t smell anything at first, not until after the first leave and the return to the trenches. Sniff, Fin, sniff: the wire. The limey wasn’t gibing some gullible Yanks. It’s there, in the air, unmistakable. The wire is directly overhead. It’s pitch dark. They can’t see it but can definitely smell it. The artillery is supposed to blast a path straight through to the village of Landes-St. George. All it does is rearrange the wire, in some places making it even more tangled and impassable.
Major Donovan gives three long blasts on his whistle. He’s off to the right somewhere. A flare scorches the night sky white. The entire unit rises and pitches itself into the wire. The whistle blows constantly, making itself heard over the growing sound of German machine guns. When dawn comes, bodies are hung on the wire like crumpled, discarded puppets. The whistle has stopped.
There aren’t many bugles, not after Camp Mills, and no drums, not after they land in Southampton and the limey band plays a welcoming concert, banging away at hymns and Broadway tunes. Only gradually do they notice that the limey musicians are all in their fifties and sixties, a band of old codgers. There are no young men in sight. There’s an all-horn band when they land in France. That’s the end of the serenading, a froggy version of “Camptown Races” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” From then on it’s all whistles’ thin ear-pricking screech as sharp and uncomplicated as a bayonet.
Get up, you sons of bitches! Up and into the wire!
“Sorry, bub, if I spoiled your nap.”
From above, the open flap of a double-breasted suit rested on Dunne’s shoulder. The gut inside hung down like the underside of a cow.
“This is too good to miss.” Leaning over Dunne, the man in the double-breasted suit gripped the metal latches on the railcar’s window. He heaved, grunted, and jerked it open. “There, now we can hear better.” He stayed where he was, looming, big and bent.
The blare of bugles and drums seemed to piggyback on the heavy, wet air that flooded through the open window.
“Yes, sir, whether you like the heinies or not, gotta give it to ’em. Sure know how to set a fella’s feet to marchin’.” His voice was as oversized as his frame. Erect, at full height, the top of his straw hat almost touching the disabled fan in the middle of the car, he moved his feet up and down.
“Wanna march, they should go march in Germany. Kraut bastards.” The bantam-sized conductor, dwarfed by the would-be marcher, stood next to Dunne’s seat.
Lined up by the tracks, in precise formation, were several squads of ten across and five ranks deep. The one to the east, at the rear of the train, was made up of teenage girls in dark blue ankle-length skirts, white blouses, and red and white kerchiefs around their necks. A handsome, big-boned girl with blonde hawser-like braids was in front with a long pole, a limp flag hanging from it. On the west flank were teenage boys in khaki shorts and shirts, knapsacks on their backs, with the same kerchiefs as the girls. A tall muscular boy held another flag.
The middle formation, men in brown trousers and shirts but with black ties instead of scarves, wore brown legionnaire-style caps and armbands on their right sleeves, white circle on a field of red, black swastika in the center. The all-male band, also in uniform, was several yards behind, in front of the black-lettered station sign: YAPHANK. Farther back, in the parking lot, was a casual mix of blank-faced spectators and what appeared to be proud relatives, smiling, pointing, applauding.
The conductor took off his hat and swiped the leather sweat-band with his thumb. “Nazi cocksuckers,” he said. “Maybe they got the trains runnin’ on time in Germany but here on Long Island, they got us runnin’ ten to fifteen minutes late.” He shouted to make himself heard over the music.
On the front page of the newspaper in Dunne’s lap was a picture of a Nazi parade in the Sudetenland. Three shades of black and gray. The spectacle beside the track had noise, color, action, as though the photo had popped to life. The conductor pulled on a gold chain hooked around the belt loop of his pants and lifted out a gold watch. He flipped the filigreed lid, an embossed tangle of Madeira vines, and looked at the face. “Longer we stay here, longer the cocksuckers will be waiting for their Führer to arrive.”
“Ain’t he still in Berlin?” The flap of the double-breasted jacket waved in front of Dunne’s face as the giant once more leaned across and tried unsuccessfully to get his massive head through the window.
“Not Hitler but that Kuhn character, the clown that heads up the Bund.” The conductor put his watch away and pointed at a line of cars snaking toward the station. “Here they come now. A greeting party of muck-a-mucks to welcome the kraut-in-chief. They’re all nested together out there at Camp Siegfried, a regular Nazi Coney Island, full of beer bums and their fat-assed wives.”
The procession of cars entered the parking lo
t, the first two nondescript sedans, the last a black Cadillac touring car, small swastika flags mounted on either side of the engine. The band stopped playing. The three formations came to attention.
“We won’t move till we’re sure all our passengers are aboard, and that means the eastbound Camp Siegfried special can’t pull in till we’re outta, here.” The conductor walked to the rear of the car, took hold of the metal handgrip by the door, and swung the upper part of his body out over the crowd. “All aboard!” he yelled.
The ranks beside the tracks drew tighter. They raised their right arms in a single, synchronized motion. “Sieg heil!” they answered in unison, a phrase they kept repeating.
Retreating to the middle of the car, the conductor shook his head. “Give an inch, they want a mile. Here the railroad hands ’em their own special train every Saturday mornin’, right from New York to Yaphank, a regular Nazi express, and how do they show their gratitude? By holdin’ up the west-bound train with all this hoopla.”
The train’s sudden jerk sent everyone forward in their seats. The giant plopped down next to Dunne, turning the seat into a seesaw that sent him several inches in the air. The conductor kept his balance, jumping back and forth on his feet like one of those wishbone-legged sailors on the Atlantic convoys who moved around the decks steady and nimble in the worst ocean howler. “Here we go!” he said.
The train stopped again after a minute or so. The Cadillac pulled up several yards behind it. The driver popped out and opened the rear door of the car. Two men emerged. The first wore black boots, black jodhpurs, Sam Browne belt over white shirt, and a swastika band on his arm. The second, the larger of the two, was in khaki slacks and a white shirt. He leaned over and looked down the tracks. Dunne got a view of his face as he stood with his hands on his hips, turning slowly but not casually, the way a bouncer scouts a barroom to pinpoint where the troublemakers might be. He nodded as his companion whispered in his ear, his mule-sized jaw moving up and down. A face you don’t forget, no matter how hard you try. Stand back, unless you wanna start a pushin’ contest with this car. Doctor Sparks’s chauffeur, Bill Huber.