by Bill Mesce
He stirred at the sound of the door opening behind him. When it shut, there was Captain Jon-Jacob Anderson, his shirt, untucked and unbuttoned, advertising his muscled chest, his hands thrust into his pockets, leaning against the door as casually as a man waiting for a tram.
If Markham had offered a disappointing portrait of an air ace, Anderson seemed to have walked off the cinema screen. He was small-bodied but muscular, blessed with silky yellow hair, sparkling cornflower eyes, and a wide, cocky smile of bright, ruler-straight teeth. Hours of sun under a cockpit canopy had been gentle on his still-boyish looks, and afforded him a lustrous tan and a few lines of character about his eyes, the corners of his mouth, and across his forehead. When he smiled, the lines deepened in a pattern bespeaking good cheer rather than erosion.
“My guess,” he said in his flat Kansas twang, “is y’ain’t the Fuller Brush man.”
Harry smiled politely. He nodded at the chair across the table. “Nothing says we can’t be comfortable.”
“I consider spendin’ time in the calaboose a real big obstacle to bein’ comfortable.” Anderson reached across himself to scratch his left arm, which Harry noted hung at an unnaturally akimbo angle. He remembered the story of the Anderson youngster vaulting out of a Kansas hayloft, earning a compound fracture of the arm in the process.
Anderson shuffled by the table to the open chair. As he passed, Harry noted that the shuffling and pocketed hands had less to do with affecting an unconcerned air than they had practical application; his trouser belt and shoelaces had been confiscated. “Just a precaution,” the Provost would tell Harry later. “He seemed a little hinky down there in the cells. Made me nervous just to watch him.”
Anderson’s face lit up at the sight of the package of cigarettes. One of his arms shot out, scooped up the package with the exclamation, “Fenhunks!” and he was soon puffing on one. He tossed the package back to Harry’s side of the table. “That’s somethin’ I learned from ya Jersey boys. I hear that’s where ya from, right? Jersey? Had a Jersey boy in the outfit way back when.”
“Don’t believe I’m acquainted with the ritual.” Anderson chuckled. “‘Acquainted with the ritual’. Jesus, ya even talk like a lawyer, lemme tell ya. He told me it was like callin’ dibs on somethin’. Means ya gotta share.”
Harry shrugged. “I was going to offer you one.”
“Well, in that case...” Anderson tipped a few extra cigarettes out. He dropped them into his breast pocket. “Help yourself.”
“’Preciate it. Hey, it still rainin’ outside?”
“Still.”
“Good. Give the fellows a chance to stand down for a day or so. Cool things off, too. Not that we need to in here. Where we’re at downstairs, it don’t ever really get all that warm, lemme tell ya. I guess bein’ in the jug worked out awright for me, huh? Down there where it’s all nice ’n’ cool, let all the rest o’ ya poor bastards suffer through the summer.”
“I’m glad this is working out so well for you,” Harry said. He let a moment pass in which he held himself still.
Anderson shifted in his seat, and he scratched at his crooked arm. “So, at long last, huh?”
“At long last. I should remind you that you don’t have to speak to me without — ”
Anderson waved his cigarette dismissively about. “A lawyer’s what ya need when ya got trouble.”
“You don’t think you’re in trouble?”
Anderson’s grin widened. He lapsed into a fair imitation of Curly of The Three Stooges: “I’m a victim of coicumstance!” The grin faded a bit. “Heard the news ’bout takin’ Sicily coupla days ago. Guess it won’t be too long ’fore we’re on the mainland, hm? So, whatcha think? Think the war’ll be over by the time I get outta here?” Harry shrugged.
“’at could mean a short stay or a looong war.”
“It could mean it’s up to you.”
Anderson’s grin turned wary. “Ah.” One hand reached out and toyed with the book of matches on the table; Harry noticed the fingernails, bitten to the quick. “Now we’re gettin’ to it, huh? I figgered on this.”
“You’re a pretty smart guy, then.”
“I thought so,” he chuckled as he brushed at the cigarette ashes dribbling onto the table, “till I got myself put up in here. For nothin’! How smart can a guy be to wind up in the can for nothin’?”
“You hoping that if you say that often enough it’ll come true?”
Anderson laughed, but there was an edge to it. “Ya just don’t give up, do ya, Major? Lemme tell ya, I admire ’at! I wish ya’d use it on somebody a little more deservin’, but I still admire ’at.” He leaned forward, studying Harry with earnest curiosity. “Lemme ask ya; why ya got it in for us so bad? I heard ’bout ya, how back home ya was on yer uppers ’n’ all. So’s, I figger, OK, this guy wants to make himself a name or somethin’, I understand ’at. I don’t like it, but I understand it. But now I’m sittin’ here lookin’ at ya ’n’ I don’t see it. You don’t look the shark type, so what is it?”
“They call you J.J.?”
“Used to be ‘Jon-Jacob!’ when my daddy got all steamed. ‘Jon-Jacob, ya get yer bee-hind in this house right now, boy!’ But to be friendly, make it J.J.”
“Let’s keep it friendly then. J.J., I’m not in this to see how many scalps I can put on my belt. I don’t want to hang somebody that shouldn’t be hung.”
“Oh, ya think somebody’s gonna hang? ’Cause a’ what? I know what you think you got. I heard ya got yerself some pitchers from that whiz kid Van Damm got you thinkin’ you got somethin’.” The captain stood. He wanted to pace but there were just a few steps to any wall. Instead, he propped himself in a corner away from Harry, caressing his arm again as if to disperse a chill. “Lemme tell ya, Major, I seen those pitchers! Lemme tell ya somethin’ else: I was there! Boy, oh boy, ya guys...”
“What guys?”
“All ya guys! Ya fly a desk ’n’ ya think ya know somethin’! I was there when ’em tanks went up! Nothin’ happened out there ’at wan’ suppose’ to happen ’n’ lemme tell ya; when I saw those pitchers? I was surprised the place looked that goddamn good! ’at happens to be what the war looks like, Major.”
Harry’s cigarette began to taste flat and acrid. He dropped it into the C-ration can. “Sorry, J.J., I don’t buy it. You’re right: I don’t know what happened out there. I’ve just got the evidence to go on. But don’t tell me what I saw and Major Van Damm saw in those pictures is the way things are supposed to look out there. Make it make sense to me. Look, maybe it was a few strays. Maybe somebody got a head of steam up and couldn’t stop. I don’t know. You tell me.”
“Al and me been tellin’ ya! But y’ain’t gonna hear what ya don’t wanna hear!” Anderson shook his head as if he hadn’t expected anything else. He sat back at the table, pulled two fresh cigarettes from Harry’s pack, slipping one behind his right ear and lighting the second with the stub of the one he’d been smoking. “Lemme tell ya, Major, I ain’t afraid of ya. They always say if yer innocent ya got nothin’ to worry ’bout ’n’ I-am-in-no-cent! Ya can’t hang a fella for what he didn’t do.” Anderson spat out a fleck of tobacco. His grin turned malevolent. “Lemme tell ya who in this room is scared. You, Major. ’At’s why yer here.”
“J.J., you get an earful of one of the cracker-barrel jail-house lawyers that hang around a place like this and you think he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about so you listen to him. Let me clear up a point or two for you upon which your legal advisor of the moment may have failed to enlighten you. The least I have Markham for is killing Dennis O’Connell. I’ve got that locked up with ballistics evidence and testimony from two eyewitnesses — whom your friend also tried to take out!”
Harry leaned forward in his chair, crossing his arms in front of him on the table. “Here’s the part you really need to listen to, J.J. You were there. You watched it, you didn’t do a damned thing to stop it, you didn’t even do a damned thing to report it. That’s
conspiracy, complicity, aiding and abetting, compounding a felony, accessory after the fact, concealing evidence, making false reports, conduct unbecoming, and I can probably make it into a few other things, too. Forget everything else: On just O’Connell’s murder, if by some miracle you don’t hang, you won’t see daylight until you’re old enough to try out Mr. Roosevelt’s Social Security program.” He leaned back and softened his tone. “You made some bad choices, but I understand; Al is your buddy. You served together, you fought together. That doesn’t mean you have to go to the gallows together.”
For the first time Anderson’s grin disappeared.
Harry continued. “I’ve got more than O’Connell’s death. General DiGarre doesn’t seem to think my case is as shaky as you do. In fact, He’s so afraid it’ll stick he’s willing to promise me that you and Markham’ll go to the gallows if I don’t bring up Helsvagen. That solves an awful lot of messy problems for them, J.J. So that’s it. No matter how I prosecute, Al Markham’s a dead man. I don’t lift a finger and he hangs on O’Connell. The only question for you is, Do you want to hang with him?”
They sat for a long while, Harry watching Anderson, Anderson watching the cigarette in his fingers burn down. Then the captain flicked the long ash onto the table and reached across to scratch at his misaligned elbow. “What it is, is ya want me to sell him out.”
“I want you to testify for the Judge Advocate.”
“I finger ’im for ya ’n’ ya go easy on me.”
“I want you to tell the truth.”
“Truth is,” and Anderson looked up, his blue eyes wide and fixed on Harry’s, “I don’t know what happened out there.”
Harry blinked, confused. “Come again?”
“I don’t know what happened, Major. I testify for ya, ’at’s gonna be a lie. I testify for Al, ’n’ ’at’ll be a lie, too.”
“Captain, your debriefing report states that after you made your runs on Helsvagen, you flew to cover for Angel Red — Markham’s section — and then withdrew with Markham. What’re you saying now?”
“I wanted to stay with Al, but he ordered me to light out after O’Connell. He knew O’Connell’s ship was hurt ’n’ he wanted me to fly cover for ’im. Me? I coulda given less a damn ’bout O’Connell. Little turd goes down? Fuck ’im. But lemme tell ya, Al wouldn’t have it, no sir. Ordered me out after ’im. I didn’t tell nobody’ cause ’at meant Al’s section went in on their runs with their ass wide open. It was stupid for ’im to go in open like ’at, ’n’ I figgered he was in deep enough trouble, so I said I was there. Truth is, Major, I don’t have the goddamnedest idea what went on at Helsvagen after I left.”
Had Anderson punched Harry square on the nose, it wouldn’t’ve left him any more flummoxed. It was a perfectly logical, perfectly plausible, perfectly inarguable story, and it left Harry absolutely no maneuvering room. Harry could see Anderson’s eyes narrowing in study. Don’t show him he rocked you, he told himself. He settled in his chair, relaxed, smiled as he shook his head appreciatively. “That’s a hell of a story, Captain. A hell of a story! But get this through that plowboy head of yours: Even if a jury panel buys it, that doesn’t get you off the hook for O’Connell. Your only way out on that one is me.”
Anderson’s face turned sad. He stood and shuffled to the door and knocked. The door opened, revealing the escorting turnkey outside. Anderson sniffed at a heavy aroma of hash and potatoes in the air and his grin returned. “Ahh. Luncheon is served. Would you like me to ask ’em to set another plate, Major?”
Harry stood and tossed the package of cigarettes to Anderson. “For dessert.”
“Obliged.”
The turnkey stood at Anderson’s elbow and followed him down the hall, Harry tailing behind. At the counter, the turnkey led Anderson to the barred door leading to the cells downstairs.
“Hey, Major,” Anderson called, “let’s say you win this thing, ’n’ me ’n’ Al...well, you know...” He smiled as he drew his index finger across his throat. “Whatcha gonna do when you find out you was wrong? You sleep on ’at tonight, Major.” Anderson made a pistol of his throat-slashing hand, aimed it at Harry, and fired.
Harry watched the heavy door clang shut behind them and heard the captain’s tenor on the stairwell: singing about someone rocking his dreamboat.
*
“It’s simple,” Grassi declared. “He’s cutting Markham loose. He knows it’s time to save his own ass.”
Harry had found Grassi and Ricks still hard at work in the conference room. He sat on the windowsill, enjoying the breezes that had come with the rain, and recounted his conversation with Jon-Jacob Anderson. Ricks had taken the story with his usual quiet contemplation, but Grassi had a ready opinion.
“That was my first thought,” Harry responded. “But you want to hear something funny? After they took Anderson back to his cell I sent word to Markham that I wanted to talk to him. Thought I’d bounce all this off him and see what happened, maybe shake him up a bit. Markham wouldn’t see me. So, I sent down a note with the gist of Anderson’s story. He still wouldn’t see me.”
“He didn’t believe it,” Grassi explained, untroubled.
“Maybe,” Harry said. “I asked the guards down there to keep an eye on the two of them, let me know if they talked to each other. Not the content of the conversation,” he added in deference to the perturbed look on Ricks’s face. “We wouldn’t want to intrude on a private conversation, would we? Just if they talked.” Harry glanced at his watch. “It’s almost an hour and I haven’t gotten a call. If I was sitting where Markham is, and I got word that my co-defendant — and my only defense corroboration — was throwing me to the wolves, I’d want to ask him about it. These two have been flying buddies for four years. You’d think one of them would at least say, ‘How’d it go?’ when the other one comes back from a meeting with the prosecutor. But not even a hello.”
“Look, Boss, you’re the one that’s always going on about what a cool cookie Markham is,” said Grassi. “Maybe he just doesn’t want us to know he’s spooked.”
“There’s another possibility,” Ricks said. “Markham’s been taking us through a series of fallback positions, only giving ground when he has to. He comes back from the August fifteenth raid, MP’s show up to hold him, but he doesn’t open his mouth. We press harder, and he cops to O’Connell’s murder, hoping that’s where we’ll stop. But we get beyond that. So now he has to retrench again. It’s possible he and Anderson rigged this story together about Anderson cutting out.”
“Why?” Grassi demanded.
“There’s no direct evidence putting Anderson in the air at Helsvagen during Markham’s attack,” Ricks replied. “There’s not even a circumstantial tie. His debriefing says he was there and saw nothing, now he says he wasn’t there, that he was already on his way home when Markham’s section attacked. Threatening him with filing a false report is hardly going to shake him up, not when the alternative is a charge of accessory to multiple murder counts. If Anderson holds to this story that he wasn’t there, and we can’t crack it, it removes him as a defense witness and as a possible prosecution tool.”
Grassi was shaking his head, not wanting to accept an unpalatable possibility. “You said that was only part of it.” Ricks and Harry exchanged a look of understanding. Harry took up the thread now. “Anderson’s Markham’s friend. It’s not Anderson cutting Markham loose. It’s the other way around. Markham’s trying to save Anderson.”
“And there’s always this, Harry,” Ricks said. “We have to consider the possibility — unpleasant as it may be for you — that Anderson’s telling the truth.”
“Truth? Never heard of it. Not in this case.” Grassi turned to Harry. “So the trip to Anderson is a scratch.”
“Not quite.”
The rain had tapered to a sporadic dappling, and great seams of warm light were beginning to lance through the cloud cover. Harry slid from the windowsill. “Damn.” Dampness had seeped along the sill, leaving a wet s
tripe across the seat of his trousers.
“You were saying,” Grassi prodded, unconcerned with Harry’s predicament.
“No matter what Markham wants and Anderson says, Anderson is in the crosshairs on O’Connell.” Harry thought back to the captain’s sunlined but youthful face. It was not unflappable, he was certain of it. “Let him stew for a while. It might take him a bit to see how far in the frying pan he’s sitting. Now, why don’t you boys show me what you’ve put together for me so far?”
*
I found myself spending the better part of the day watching the rain sluice through the soot on the windowpanes of our Fleet Street offices. I would look at my familiar desk and all the other familiar desks about me in the newsroom manned by familiar faces doing familiar tasks and I thought how nice it would be, even for a moment, not to be so familiar with it all.
“You seem to be taking an inordinate interest in the weather,” Himself noted, drawing a chair up to my desk. “Thinking of writing the meteorological column?”
Normally such lackadaisical conduct would have earned me a frown from The Boss, along with a growling harrumph and possibly some drollery about how perhaps he could grant me more time to pursue this new climatological interest of mine by relieving me of the burdens of a job. But instead came a dark, concerned look under the heavy brow. He’d never seen me behave this way and, frankly, it was new — and equally unsettling — to me as well. He sat quietly for the moment, not looking to probe, waiting for me to volunteer, but all I could offer was a shrug. “You haven’t had a proper holiday since you’ve been back,” he finally said. “Perhaps it’s due.”
I began to say something along the lines of how unnecessary the offer was, that it was, oh, just the effect of the weather, my leg, the weather on my leg, too much scotch, a coming illness, whatever, but he spoke over me.