We ended up at the farthest back booth, around which the crowd seemed thickest, and Ben called, “Step aside, step aside,” when I was in knee pants, and they did, and I’ll be damned if a gray-haired version of Barney Ross wasn’t sitting there.
He looked at me with those same goddamn puppy-dog eyes in the same old bulldog puss, only his face was less full than it used to be. Like mine. He didn’t seem to have my dark circles under the eyes, though; but his once dark hair, which when last I saw him was salt-and-pepper, was now stone gray. He was sitting next to Cathy, the brunette showgirl he got hitched to at San Diego, but immediately slid out on seeing me, leaning on a native-carved cane he’d brought back from the Island, and stood and looked at me.
“You got old,” he said, smiling.
“You’re the one with the gray hair.”
The music was still loud, who make you to sing the bloooes, but we weren’t yelling over it. We could understand each other.
“You’re gettin’ there yourself,” he said, pointing to the white around my ears. Then he pointed to his own head of gray hair. “Turned this way that night in the shell hole, just like my pa’s did in the Russian pogroms.”
“Christ,” I said, getting a good look at his uniform. “You’re a fucking sergeant!”
His grin drifted to one side of his face. “I see they promoted you, too.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Back to civilian.”
His smile turned lopsided, sad. “Shouldn’t have got you into it, should I, Nate?”
Blues in the night…
“Shut up, schmuck,” I said, and he hugged me and I hugged him back.
“Sally!” he said, to the little vision in black and white standing next to me and looking on benignly at this sorry display of sentimentality. “It’s great to see you, kid!” He hugged her next, and I bet that was more fun than hugging me. “It’s good to see you two back together again.”
“Easy,” I said. “We’re just friends.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said. “Come on, slide in and sit with us!”
A couple of sportswriters had been sitting across from Barney and Cathy, in the booth, and they made way for us, thanking Barney, slipping their notebooks into their pockets. But Sally didn’t join us—Nat Gross, the “town tattler” on the Herald-American, stole her away; Sally smiled and shrugged, handed me her fur coat, said “Publicity’s publicity,” and was soon lost in the smoky throng.
“Reporters,” Barney said, shaking his head. “Take those sports guys, for instance. They wanted to know all about me bein’ voted boxing’s ‘man of the year,’ which is a crazy stupid thing anyway. I ain’t been in the ring since ’38! It’s supposed to be for the man who did the most for boxing last year, and they give it to me. What for?”
“Beats me,” I said. Cathy was beaming at him; they were holding hands. “When d’you get back? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”
“My furlough came through early,” he said, shrugging. “I was in New York, getting that ‘man of the year’ deal, and got a chance last night to hop a military flight here. I called Ben before I left to ask him to round some people up. It was his idea to surprise everybody. Anyway, I got in this afternoon, and spent the evening with Ma and the family. Tomorrow there’s going to be a reception with Mayor Kelly and the hometown fans and all; but tonight I just wanted to see my old pals. Damn, it’s great to be home!”
“I saw that stupid picture of you,” I said, smirking, shaking my head, “kissing the ground when you got off the hospital ship at San Diego. Some guys’ll do anything to get in the papers.”
He smiled back at me tightly and waggled a finger at me. “I swore if I ever got back home, my first act would be to stoop and kiss the ground. Remember?”
“I remember.”
“And I keep my promises.”
“You always have, Barney. So promise me you aren’t going back over there.”
“That’s an easy one to keep. I won’t be going back, Nate. I got an arm and leg loaded with shrapnel. It’ll be months before I can get around without my trusty voodoo stick.”
He was referring to his carved native cane, leaned up against the side of the booth next to him. The big head of the cane was a face with mirrorlike stones for eyes. In the mouth were what seemed to be six human teeth.
“Genuine Jap teeth,” Barney said, proudly, noticing me noticing them.
“Good, Barney,” I said. “It’s nice to know you didn’t go Asiatic or anything over there.”
Cathy spoke up. “Barney’s been transferred to the Navy’s Industrial Incentive Division.”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with social disease, does it?” I asked him.
He made a face. “Are you nuts?”
“Yeah, but don’t knock it—it got me out of the service.” I explained briefly about Eliot’s VD-busting role, and how he’d tried to hide behind governmental gobbledygook telling me about it. Barney got a laugh out of that.
“They’re gonna send me touring war plants,” he shrugged, seeming embarrassed, “telling the workers how the weapons and stuff they’re making are helping us lick the Japs. Fat duty. Pretty chickenshit, really.”
Cathy looked pointedly, first at him, then at me, and said. “Don’t listen to him. The brass told him this was important duty, just as important in its way as Guadalcanal. There’s a serious absenteeism at some war plants, and a half-time talk from a hero like my husband can really get those workers off their rears and breaking their necks to beat production schedules!”
She was as full of energy as all three Andrews Sisters, but there was something wrong behind all that pep. Something a little desperate. I didn’t know her very well—I’d figured Barney marrying a showgirl was trouble, him being on the rebound from Pearl, his first wife, who I’d liked very much. So I’d resented Cathy, I guess, and never really gave her a chance.
But I could see, tonight, in this smoky gin mill, she really loved the mug. I could also see something was deeply bothering her, where he was concerned.
Barney looked at her, movie-star pretty with her perfect pageboy and smart little blue dress, and it was clear he loved her too. “Cathy’s turned down two movie roles, Nate, just so she can travel around with me. This war-plant tour’s going to mean hitting five, six, sometimes seven plants a day. And we’ll be doing War-Bond rallies and blood-bank drives… I don’t mind, of course—we both know how the boys are suffering in those jungle islands, how bad they need guns and ammo.”
He’d do fine on the “Buy Bonds” circuit.
I said, “How long will you be in town, Barney?”
“It’s an extended furlough. At least a month. And this’ll be our home base, after we start the tour.” He smiled at Cathy and squeezed her hand. She had on an aluminum bracelet he’d given her fashioned from a section of a Jap Zero.
I said, “Remember D’Angelo? He’s here in town.”
Barney’s smile disappeared. “I know. I had Ben invite him here tonight, but he didn’t show.”
“He lost a leg, you know.”
“He’s one up on Watkins,” Barney said. “He lost both of his.”
“Damn. Where is he?”
“San Diego. I stopped in on him. Still in the hospital, but he’s doing pretty good.”
“I want his address.”
“Sure. Those two Army boys pulled through okay; I’ve got their addresses, too, if you want ’em.”
“You wouldn’t know if Monawk had any family, would you?”
He shook his head; his expression was morose. “I checked. No immediate family, anyway.”
I just sat there. The Mills Brothers were singing “Paper Doll” on the jukebox now, which somebody seemed to have turned down.
He said, “I’m going out to Kensington and see D’Angelo soon as I can.”
“He’s getting a raw deal in the papers, you know.”
“No, I didn’t,” Barney said, sitting up.
I explained that D’Angelo had been e
xchanging love letters with Estelle Carey; Barney knew of the Carey killing—apparently it had been getting some national play.
“They’re spreading his love letters all over the damn papers?” Barney said. “The lousy bastards!”
“One of the guilty parties is standing right over there.”
“Davis, you mean?”
“That’s him. The man with the purple badge of courage on his jaw.”
“How’d he get that?”
“He earned it.”
“You?”
“Once a Marine, always a Marine.”
“Fuckin’ A told,” Barney said, and slid out of the booth and, with aid of his voodoo cane, hobbled over to Davis, and started reading him off, from asshole to appetite. It was a joy to behold.
I slid out and went over and sat by Cathy. I said, “What’s the matter, honey?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re worried about that little schmuck, aren’t you?”
Her mouth tightened. Then she nodded.
“Why?” I asked.
“He’s very sick, Nate. His malaria is flaring up something awful. Chills and fever. And he’s having trouble sleeping, and when he does sleep he has nightmares.”
Familiar story.
“Hell,” I said. “He looks fine. Look at these dark circles under my eyes. He doesn’t even have one.”
My weak attempt to cheer her up had only served to bring her to the verge of tears.
“He’s having simply terrible headaches,” she said. “He’s in so much pain. I want him to put this tour off, but he won’t do it.”
“That’s why you turned down the movie roles. To be at his side if he falls apart.”
She nodded. “I’m afraid for him. I want to be with him so I can watch out for him. He really needs a good six months to recuperate, Nate, but he’s so stubborn, he just won’t hear of it.”
“He’s a scrapper, honey. I thought you knew that.”
“He thinks the world of you, Nate.”
“I think the world of him.”
“Maybe you could talk to him.”
“Maybe I can.”
She gave me a kiss on the cheek.
Then she grinned and said, “You thought I was a gold digger, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. I was wrong. About the digger part, anyway.”
Sally came over with Barney on her arm.
“I caught him bullying the press,” she said. “That’s no way to run a cocktail lounge, is it?”
“Barney, I’m ashamed of you,” I said.
Sally said, “Actually, I don’t blame you, the way that little bastard’s paper’s putting that poor soldier’s love life in print for the world to see and salivate over. How do they get ahold of that stuff, anyway? Isn’t it evidence?”
“It’s supposed to be,” I said, and didn’t give her the rest of the explanation till later, when we were in bed together, in the dark, in her small but swank room at the Drake, overlooking Lake Shore Drive and the lake that went with it.
“You mean, some police detective smuggled those letters out, and made photostatic copies, and sold them to the newspaper bidding highest? What kind of police officer would do that?”
“The Chicago kind,” I said. “Let me tell you a story.”
And I told her about the diary. How a high-hat client had hired me to outbid the papers for that juicy little page-turner. And how I’d arranged with a certain police sergeant to pay him two thousand dollars of my client’s money for the book, which was now in my possession.
“You’re kidding me,” she said. “You have Estelle Carey’s diary?”
“Well, I did.”
“What do you mean? You mean, you turned it over to your rich client?”
“Not exactly.”
“To Drury, then.”
“Not him, either.”
“What, then?”
“I burned it.”
“What?”
“I burned it. I read it this afternoon, and I realized that none of the names in it were new ones. That is, they’d already turned up in Estelle’s address book or other effects. So there were no new leads, nothing fresh that would be helpful to an investigation, in my considered opinion. But what there was was a lot of steamy descriptions by Miss Carey of her love life. Who did what to her, with what, for how long, and how long some of those things were that did those things, and, well, you get my drift.”
“Why’d she keep this diary, d’you think? Eventual blackmail?”
“No. That wasn’t her way. She was greedy, but she was honest, in her dishonest way. She was a dirty girl, in the best sense of the word. She liked sex. She liked doing it. And, judging from what I read today, she liked writing about it, after.”
“So you burned it.”
“I burned the goddamn thing. Rather than see it end up in the papers where they’d make her out an even bigger whore and ruin the lives of dozens of men and women who had the misfortune of being attracted to her.”
“Am I right in guessing that an earlier diary could well have had a Nate Heller chapter in it?”
“You might be. So, yeah, I can put myself in the place of my engaged-to-be-married high-hat client. I know all about Estelle Carey’s charms. So I burned the fucker. What do you think of that, Miss Rand?”
“That’s Helen to you,” she said, snuggling close to me. “And what I think about it is, hooray for Nate Heller, and let’s see if you can’t do something with me worth writing down, after…”
Five detectives, Donahoe among them, got transferred and censured after the scandal hit the papers. The other four cops, assigned to back up Drury’s investigation into the Carey case, were attached to the coroner’s office—“deputy coroners,” a job I’d been offered once by the late Mayor Cermak, back before he was late, as a bribe. I hadn’t taken it, for various reasons, not the least of which was the company I’d have been in: severely bent cops like Miller and Lang, owed political favors, tended to land the coroner’s plum investigative positions. But that was over now.
From now on, the coroner would be required to use county investigators, at a savings to the taxpayers of Chicago of six grand a year.
It seemed that Otto A. Bomark of Elmwood Park, the late Miss Carey’s uncle and administrator of her estate, reported many items missing, including several expensive gowns, thirty-two pairs of nylon hose (better than money these days), three dozen fancy lace handkerchiefs worth ninety bucks a dozen, a set of ladies’ golf clubs, a camera and, oh yes, photographs of Estelle that had apparently been peddled to the papers.
And then there were the persistent rumors of a diary, which had been “stolen” from Estelle’s apartment, possibly by a police officer. But as yet the memoirs of Miss Carey had failed to surface. For some reason.
All this and every other in and out of the Carey case stayed in the headlines of every paper in town for a solid week, except the Tribune, which tastefully backed off after a few days and played it inside. Then on the Tuesday after the Tuesday she was killed, Estelle got bumped out of the headlines.
JAPS GIVE UP GUADALCANAL
Letters several inches high. Impressive as all hell. But abstract. Remote. Somehow, not real to me.
Yet there it was in black and white:
New York, Feb. 9.—(AP)—Japanese imperial headquarters today announced the withdrawal of Jap forces from Guadalcanal Island in the Solomons, the Berlin radio reported in a dispatch datelined Tokyo. This constitutes the first admission from Tokyo in this war of abandonment of important territory.
Why couldn’t I make it feel real? Why couldn’t I make my face smile over this great news? Well, I couldn’t. I could only feel weary, on this clear, cool morning, even though I’d had a relatively good night’s sleep last night, in Sally’s arms, in Sally’s room at the Drake. I wouldn’t be seeing her tonight, though. She was gone, now, and she took her arms with her. Took the train to Baltimore where she was playing a split week at some nightclub or other. I’d have to
try to sleep on my own, again, in the old Murphy bed. Good luck to me.
As I came up the stairs onto the fourth floor, I saw a familiar figure, although it wasn’t one I ever expected to see in the building again: my recruiting sergeant, in his pressed blue trousers and khaki shirt and campaign hat. Some of the spring was out of his step, however.
MR. AND MRS. BARNEY ROSS
As I met him in the hall, I said, “What’s wrong, Sergeant—haven’t you heard the news?”
I showed him the headline.
“I have heard, Private. Outstanding. Outstanding.”
But his expression remained glum.
“What brings you here?” I said. “Who got a medal today?”
“No one, I’m afraid.” He looked back toward my office. “I’m glad you’re here, Private. There’s a young woman who needs you.”
I ran down the hall and threw the door open and she was sitting there, with the telegram in her hands, sitting on that couch I’d caught them humping on.
She wasn’t crying. She was dazed, like she’d been hit by a board. Prim and pretty in her white frilly blouse and navy skirt. A single rose in a vase on the desk nearby.
Telegram in her hands.
“The newspapers said we beat them,” she said, hollowly.
I sat next to her. “I know.”
“You said he’d just be mopping up.” No accusation in her voice; just an empty observation.
“I’m sorry, Gladys.”
“I don’t think I can work this morning, Mr. Heller.”
“Oh, Gladys, come here.”
And I held her in my arms and she cried into my chest. She cried and cried, heaving racking sobs, and if ever I’d written her off as a cold fish, well, to hell with me.
The Million-Dollar Wound (Nathan Heller) Page 29