The plateglass was like a sheet of tar but he knew the lettering on it: Wheelock Printing Company. He approached the door. It was open. He entered, shutting the door behind him and smelled a strong vinegary-like breath and heard a voice say: “I will light a match so you can see where things is.” Those were the words Hayden had told him he would hear and he answered the words he had been informed to answer. “Close the cover before striking.” He listened to the tearing sound a match makes when struck. And light gleamed and a man’s face was smiling. “This way,” the smiling face said. They walked into the interior, the match illuminating a printing press, huge stacks of cardboard. The match burned out. “This way,” his guide said. “Turn right around.” Bill bumped into his guide, stopped, blundered forward again. He heard knuckles rapping on a door. He felt as if they had somehow passed through the cardboard mass he had glimpsed.
A door creaked open, light flared, light impenetrable as the blackness, then condensing, receding and Bill could see where he was. He and the guide strode into the light, into a small back room; sitting at a flat table was a stocky man in a white shirt. The stocky man lifted arm and hand in the fascist salute. “Heil Hitler,” the stocky man said.
Surprised, Bill lifted his arm and hand in the salute but he didn’t return the “heil Hitler.”
“Sit down, Johnson. I’m Lester Darton.”
Bill smiled into a good-looking face topped by a brown pompadour haircut, a face that was square and compact with wide-apart brown eyes and a mouth with a thin upper lip wedged into a full lower lip. It was a sailor’s face, the face of a man who did things with his hands and liked doing things. The hands, too, were square, big-knuckled and furred over with thick brown hair.
“You found us, my friend,” Darton remarked. “Meet Herb Baumgartner, that big hulk over there.”
Bill smiled at his guide. Baumgartner was standing at the door, a burly middle-aged man, one of those dark-haired Germans who seem in many ways more Germanic than the blond types. His nose was exaggeratedly pug, his mouth wide and very thin like the mouths of some of the Nazi leaders Bill had seen in magazines.
Darton waved at the whitewashed walls. “We print calendars, Johnson. Calendars with oomph. If you know any girls who’d like to get in pictures, send them to me.” He laughed. “All they’d have to do is what they do for the Hollywood hebes.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Bill said, sitting down.
“I’m not one for ceremony. Hayden only gave me the Johnson end of your name. Who the devil wants to call you Johnson?”
“Bill Johnson.”
“Bill, I’ve got the bombs for you. All ready! I always keep a supply on hand. Otherwise, how the devil could I have filled Gauleiter Hayden’s order on such short notice? Some of our Gauleiters believe all they have to do is pick up a phone and bombs make themselves.” His mouth curved into a mocking U-shaped smile, the smile of a clown and as false. “How is Gauleiter Hayden? Herb, show the customer the bombs.”
Bill watched Baumgartner walk over to a box in the corner of the room. Baumgartner’s arm scooped into the box and he lifted up a cheap drugstore valise which he brought over to the table, setting it down between Bill and Darton. Darton unlocked it. A white layer of cotton filled the top of the valise. Darton pried up the cotton and underneath, Bill saw a tightly corked glass vial about five inches long. “How many are there?” Bill asked.
“Fifty,” Darton said. “Fifty stinkeroos.”
“Why’d did you pack them into one bag?”
“No complaints, Bill. Save them for the complaint department. Herb’s packed them satisfactory so don’t you drop them. Have your cab drive slow. Tell him you’re fresh from an operation. Sterilization,” he laughed, “or something like that.”
“You’re a card,” Bill said.
“I would have liked to have used asafoetida,” Darton continued, ignoring him. “As a chemist, I have a fondness for asafoetida. It’s a product of Asia and it stinks like garlic. Garlic stinkeroos breaking in the wop bars would have, my dear sir, certain propaganda values. All the niggers would have a good laugh. Garlic to stink out the garlic eaters. My dear sir, I suggest you pass on this idea to the Gauleiter.”
Bill smiled, silent. Lester Darton was too cute, he thought; that “heil Hitler” greeting; the snotty way he spoke of Hayden; too damn cute. “What did you use?”
“Valerian. Valerian consists of the rhizome and the roots of Valeriana officinalis. We get our supply from New Jersey. It makes a pure white powder, zinc valerate. All you have to do is dissolve it in a small quantity of alcohol, put it in a container, cork and seal with wax.” He locked the valise and Baumgartner returned it to the box. “Bill, as you no doubt see, I am a learned man. And it’s all for the cause. How long have you been in the organization?”
“That’s not your business.”
“He’s worried, Herb,” Darton said to Baumgartner.
“I’m not worried.”
“Friend, I can read that scarred but handsome pokerface as easily as I concoct stinkeroos. A good chemist, friend, can tell what’s in a man, chemically speaking. You don’t know me but a bottle of beer will fix that. Herb, bring us some beer. Too damn dry talking without wetting the hatch. And Herb have Jesperson make us up some sandwiches.” As Baumgartner, smiling, left the room Darton said, “Jesperson is the Dane on the corner. He makes good sandwiches. I wish I could offer you some good German beer. Later on, when the war’s over.”
“I didn’t come here to drink beer but talk business.”
“Get off the high horse for Pete’s sake! Who do you think you are? A movie agent in some Hollywood hebe spy story. For Pete’s sake, that’s what’s wrong with the organization. The blood’s running dry, chemically speaking. It’s getting to be another corporation!” he shouted, pounding the table with the flat of his palm. “Do you think we’re winning the struggle from a row of desks?”
“You’re drunk, if you don’t mind my saying so, without your German beer.”
“I can get drunk without touching a drop.”
“I believe that.”
“I’m funny to you? All because I’m not a corporation lawyer who needs a quart of Scotch before he can even imitate a man. I’m natural so you’ve got be afraid of somebody like me. Hayden warned you, did he?”
“About what?”
“About me. I’m not one of the Gauleiter’s male stenographers. Tell him that from me but without any regards. Let him transfer me out of his district! Think I’d be the first who can’t stomach the Gauleiter?” He threw up both hands. “Damn him, he won’t transfer me!” His eyes fixed balefully on Bill and his upper lip seemed to have disappeared, his mouth was so knotted. “He needs me too much, chemically speaking. He needs what I’ve got because he hasn’t got it. Hayden,” he sneered, “H20 for blood and gas for ideas.” His forefinger darted to within an inch of Bill’s face. “Where’d you get those scars?”
“What’s the difference?”
“Come, come.”
“A tear gas riot,” Bill said in a constrained uneasy voice.
“Doing what?”
“Breaking a strike.”
Down smashed Darton’s hand on the table. “I thought so! You’re marked with the signs of the struggle. But what’s the Gauleiter marked with except the dollar sign? You’re a fighter like me. They’re lots of our kind in the organization but too many of the other kind — ”
“I’m not getting into a debate with you, Darton.”
“Lester, you son-of-a-bitch.”
Bill shrugged.
“Don’t trust me?” Darton questioned. “How long have you been in this district?”
“Since Friday.”
“Why didn’t you say so? That’s why you don’t know about me. Where from?”
“The South.”
“Stay there. If you work up here you’ll have a hebe accent in no time. Who have you met up here?”
“Just yourself.”
“That’s the Ga
uleiter.” Darton shook his head. “Up from the South, a stranger in town and he introduces you to nobody. It’s all business with him. If he didn’t need zinc valerate you’d never have met me.”
“I met a man called Dent but I’m not sure if he’s in the organization.”
“He’s in. A Hayden man. You’ve met the Colonel?”
“Bretherton? Yes, once.”
Darton sprang from the table, agile and muscular as a gymnast. He strode up and down, his eyes on Bill. “You’ve met Hayden men. That’s one thing the Gauleiter can do well. Surround himself with his handpicked ass-lickers. I’m not one. Never was as you’ll find out if you’re north any length of time. I’m in their hair where it’s short but they need me.” He was boasting openly like a small boy. “I was more important than Kuhn in the Bund or McNaughton in the Destiny Party. I took Kuhn and McNaughton and a dozen others their orders from the organization. I was the ambassador from the organization, you might put it.”
Bill grinned. “His honor, the ambassador.”
“Son-of-a-bitch, don’t take me up on it. It’s true just the same. You stay in New York, Philly, Boston, you’ll hear of me. What are you up for?”
Bill hesitated, remembering Hayden’s warning. “You’ll hear about it sooner or later,” he grinned, “that is if you stay in New York or Boston. I’m here on the Harlem job.”
“Is that where the stinkeroos are going?”
“Yes.”
“A nigger job. That’s the business coming out of the shooting last week?”
“Mr. Hayden wants two of your men to shadow Big Boy Bose.”
“All he told me was that you’d be here for valerate and you’d be needing two men, the Gauleiter! When do you want them?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
Darton flipped his hand up in the fascist salute. “Okay. Heil Hitler.”
“Heil.”
“Speaking seriously, where the hell’s Herb?” He sat down again at the table. “Speaking seriously, we can learn from Hitler.”
“Hitler’s finished business.”
“We will be able to learn from Hitler for generations to come.”
“Hitler arrived on the world scene last,” Bill agreed, quoting Hayden. “Because he was last, he took advantage of all that had preceded him.”
“Dead wrong.”
“Why?”
“Hitler’s main contribution to the struggle was his appeal to the emotions of the plain man.”
“Mussolini appealed to the emotions.”
“The wop was effective but Hitler was genius. All the dictators followed Mussolini into the aristocratic past for their appeal. The Japs. And Franco with his dream of reviving the Spain of the Inquisition. All these Mannerheims and Horthys sniffed at the dead bones like Mussolini. The glories of Rome. What a mistake! The past is dead with all its Caesars.”
“But how about Hitler glorifying the Teutons, the Baltic barons?”
“Fundamentally he went forward. Forward to a new Europe, a new world order, a new master race. No Roman togas for Hitler but the new Nazi super race.” Darton’s eyes were burning and he was breathing hard, his mouth open. “Hitler has made one mistake,” he said after a pause.
“Sure, the Russians.”
“No. He relied too much on the Krupps, the Thyssens, too much on capitalists and capitalists’ sons. It’s true he kept the money bags in the background, the new men in the foreground, the men of action and daring. Men like me!” Darton bellowed in a self-intoxicated voice. Spittle flecked his lips and his eyes were as unwinking as a bird’s in a cage.
Bill stared, thinking that Darton was unbalanced but hadn’t even Hayden admitted the chemist was invaluable?
“That’s the trouble with the organization,” Darton said hoarsely. “The Haydens are the gauleiters and men like us the operatives.”
“What do you want? A revolution from Moscow?”
“Hitler learned from Moscow that only a new society would attract the herd. I’ll tell you something. I was a Red myself in Chicago, or did you know that? What are you, some bastard agent provocateur?”
“No kidding, comrade?”
“I know my Marx and Engels.”
“No kidding? You’re the first C.P. I’ve ever met in the organization. I met some ex-union men in training school in Chicago but never a Red — ”
“I didn’t have to go to training school,” Darton laughed. “The Reds schooled me and all that was needed was to turn it upside down.”
“How’d you get out of the C.P.?”
“They threw me out. Called me a wrecker, a deviationist, a leftist. The usual C.P. patter.”
“Ever take their patter seriously?”
“For about a year, I did.”
“What changed your mind?”
“I saw they would never get anywheres. For all their crap about men being equal, they had their leaders, too, like everywhere else. Leaders and followers. I realized the only world idea with any future was the leadership idea of fascism. Those Reds always preaching that the herd ought to act together! Dumb, isn’t it? If one of those city hebes would’ve gone out to the country and looked at a flock of sheep or a herd of cows he might have found out that the herd only moves when a leader leads them. Ever see cattle marching into the slaughter pen?”
“No.”
“I have. Dumb beasts smell their own blood, their own death, but a billy goat leads them and they have to follow. No, I couldn’t get along with the Reds. I was sick and tired of calling every hebe tailor and nigger pigsticker comrade. What is communism but the herd idea at its lowest, all men in one common herd, Jews, niggers, Polacks, Chinese, Russians — and the Russians are white Chinese racially; ever notice their wide cheekbones and the shapes of their eyes? There was nothing for me in communism. Heil Hitler.”
“They certainly taught you to spiel it from a soap box,” Bill said maliciously. Darton wasn’t kidding him, he thought; he was still a God damn Red at heart.
“Bill, you’re another American damn fool.”
“Aren’t you an American?”
“Yes, but not an American damn fool. There’s Herb. Where were you, you hulk?”
“Jesperson was busy,” Baumgartner said, depositing two brown paper bags on the table and taking out quart bottles of beer, paper cups, cardboard containers of potato salad, mustard, pickles, sandwiches in waxed paper.
“I better go,” Bill said. “The sooner I get those bombs over — ”
“They for tonight?” Darton asked, uncapping a beer bottle.
“No.”
“Then what’s the rush?” He poured the beer into the cups. “Got a whore somewheres? Let her wait.”
“No.”
“Get yourself one, a whore that won’t talk. Me, I like a Jewish whore. Don’t know why. I hate the race but the women are different. I had one in Chicago before the C.P.’s threw me out. I lived with her almost six months.” He drank his beer noisily. “Another thing we can learn from Hitler is Gemutlichkeit; I mayn’t be saying it right but the idea’s to relax, drink beer and have fun.”
Baumgartner said. “What about your sheeny sweetheart? I never heard that one?”
“Her? Her name was Florence. She had Jewish eyes. You’ve seen them, Bill. A little bulgy, brown as a spaniel’s, like wop eyes. She had fleshy ears and her tits were big although she was kind of small herself. All the time she was interested in my future. That’s a Jewish disease. They have no future so they’re always interested in it.” He lifted his beer. “To Florence. She screwed like a rabbit.”
Baumgartner roared. Bill drank his beer slowly. He ought to get the bombs over to Big Boy and go home to Isabelle.
“Drink up,” Darton smiled. “We’ve got four more bottles to kill and the organization’s paying for it anyway.” He lifted one of the uncapped bottles to his lips and took a long drink from the neck.
“Would you live with a sheeny girl now?” Baumgartner asked.
“Why not? I’d live with any
body I want. I’d live with a nigger.” He lit a cigarette, blew smoke out of his nose. “You’ve got to squeeze the juice out of life, you hulk Herb. To hell with the conventions. Sometimes, I wish I was a Nazi. They’re already living like the master race. Strong and daring! They take over a country and crush out the laws of the past. The men? Into the work battalions. The women? Whores.” He made a circle out of his thumb and forefinger and bursting with laughter, poked the forefinger of his other hand through the circle. “Whores! Suppose the Polack twist’s devout and the mother of a lot of brats? To hell with all that! Suppose the Russian girl’s a virgin, fourteen years, and no tits and instead of praying to Jesus the hebe, she prays to that bastard Stalin. To hell with her! Into the whorehouse with them all! Rape them and throw their crucifixes and Karl Marxes into the shithouse. All these ideas of courtship, of honor! Didn’t starvation fix the French and Norwegian women? Didn’t they screw when their brats cried for food. Rape them all! They’re only two breeds worth a damn in the whole world. The Nazis and we Americans. All the others are jackal peoples.”
“The Fuehrer,” Baumgartner said, “he is for the Herrenvolk princip. One Herrenvolk for Europe and one Herrenvolk for America.”
“Each with their jackal peoples,” Darton amended. “Hitler’s got his Italians and Rumanians and Finns. We’ve got the Gold Shirts in Mexico, others.” He started another bottle. “The main thing to remember is that the enemy is always the idea of the herd, whether it’s a bolshevik herd or a democratic herd.”
“Not fight each other like now,” Baumgartner said sadly, chewing on a turkey sandwich. “I have many in my family lost on the other side.”
“We’ve made too many mistakes in the organization,” Darton said, banging on the table with an empty bottle. “What’s in that suitcase? Valerian. You should be picking up hand grenades, Bill. Our mistakes are nauseating. In ‘36, weren’t we ready to seize the Government?”
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